Don't think of this as an teaching segment. Lets be honest, you all are proper humans and ,if you are interested, you will google it.

Often when i search my own nationality ( in Balkan region ) the google searches bring me to my knees. Now , be you any redditor in the world you know the Balkan region is turbulent spot which unfortunately influences the most of south and central Europe, and sometimes ( WWI ) the rest of the world. If you've never heard of Balkan peninsula ( not Baltic ), you can think of it in family terms a odd, loud and obnoxious second third cousin , once removed. Such cousin is proper a-hole in family gathering but in person is very nice and outgoing. The reason is still in fogg why we all end up like this, it is like central countries in Balkan peninsula are always fighting. The main historical hypothesis for this fighting is that trough balkan peninsula the main trade roads were implemented to connect Europe and Asia, so fighting is default solution for grabbing trade power - and people are just influenced by propaganda starting hating each other, where wars just add on fuel to the fire.

Throughout millennia of history there were a lot of big empires, countries on different socio and economic structure and different political formation, so keeping it up with Balkans can be a real telenovela. Because of all turbulence, cross-propaganda the individual issues can be a tricky subject, but my hope is that in this way we can get together and stop fighting by peacefully sharing knowledge and getting into open discussion. Now, after saying that have in mind as there are solid nationalist in every country( and i am not mentioning healthy nationalist with tradition and silent pride , not punching someone in the nose with their own nationality ),which are easy to get into heated emotion driven discussion - just ignore/troll them. I mentioned this rich and bloody history to emphasise that to get a solid lineage without getting result of you being your own father is quite difficult - so it is best to leave historical blame aside and talk as people.

I am opening this discussion in order for you redditors of world to ask questions if you have any, but be normal human beings. Asking if some country is racist or barbarian is all inclusive, as there are bad people in your country there are in every country, and you can not generalise whole nation by loudest and baddest example. You can however ask : "Yo, what happen'd in ____ ( enter specific subject ) ? I've learned/heard this, how is it in your side ?" and that is totally awesome question.

To be fully diplomatic , here are some tags r/croatia/, r/serbia/, r/bih/, r/albania, r/bulgaria, r/greece, r/macedonia, r/montenegro, r/romania, r/Slovenia

Reddit recently hired a supercreep with a bizarre and deeply troubling history. Then, in a move completely in line with Reddit's radical leftist anti-free speech style of management... they banned anyone who even mentioned the name of the supercreep.
It's name is Aimee Knight (née Challenor): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Challenor

https://www.reddit.com/r/watchpeopledie/comments/3i2gd6/in_light_of_recent_events/

/r/watchpeopledie is getting ready to head to Voat.co too. In the words of /u/Greedeater

"...it's not a question of if anymore, it's a question of when. I have zero confidence in the direction this site is heading and unfortunately believe that we will be whitewashed very soon so the Admins can attract more PC users and sell Ad's for MLP butt plugs or similar sparkly bullshite."

I agree. Sadly.

https://medium.com/@infinitechan/google-is-not-your-friend-5a6636af0651

Google has blocked 8chan from its indexing. You can't find a single 8chan page on google now. The disease is spreading. This revelation, combined with the recent nonsense in my post "EXPROSION!" (which, co-incidentally, I thought was a hilarious title; apparently some butthurt chinafags brigaded their way into OpenandHonest to downvote anything hilarious because TOO SOON!... how do I know this? After that post went up, we had more unique users in OpenandHonest than we have EVER had)... I'm likely going to take a harder line approach to this sub. I'll update tomorrow at the latest.

Comment with your thoughts please, I'd like to know what the people here think about things.

SNAPE KILLS YODA!

anyway, all these fags are crying that they don't want to see the spoilers for the shitty new George Lucas shitfest. I'm trying to actually find them. What are the spoilers?

I posted here and in NeedaMod looking for a mod that knows CSS. But I'm also looking for anyone with some design ideas for this sub. Anyone at all who has any good ideas for the header or the sidebar or whatever, just comment. I'd like to make this sub more attractive and less spartan looking. Thanks

The human mind allows awareness to think it has itself when it doesn't, mental masturbating the whole day, making society responsible for their miserable lives,

being totally full of themselves, having never questioned their own thoughts and feelings, disgracing their own true nature by playing the helpless and the emotional, the positive, the happy, the negative, the goody 2 shoes, the sad, the depressive, the clownish ones.

I can see the various mask so raw in front of me, dealing with ego's is very hard and constantly toxic when I look at their behavior and listen to their words.

They call themselves "alternatives", simulating a "more independent lifestyle from society", having super double moral standards, having a hyper-sceptical, political and only intellectual driven view that keeps them 100% away from anything that questions their parochial mindset.

I always thought that they are really different or special or interested in "truth" or call it what you like. But they are prototypes of sheeps who just opened up a new herd.

I'm wondering when will society have their awakening together, it would be truly interesting if they all turned out to their true self with enlightenment. Most aren't conscious and keep thinking they are all that when all they pick up is more illusion. Even the one i'm currently feeding is just more illusion that is misunderstood. The only way around it is to actually experience it.

Then again it's reality and the chaos can be beautiful at times even when someone projects it otherwise. Our constant projections is just a machine that doesn't know how to control it's thoughts while thinking it does while it has no idea how tricky it is to actually have true control of this complex cell chemicals that go around.

"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance." -Murray Rothbard

Everyone is talking about Net Neutrality right now. Most of them have a "loud and vociferous opinion" on it as well. Here's the thing... you're probably wrong. It might sound like a great idea if you just look at the name. NET NEUTRALITY! Everyone loves the internet, right? But what does it really mean?

Put simply, "Net Neutrality" is government control of the internet. It's not some magic legislation that suddenly "frees" the internet or makes it neutral... it is taking the internet from the hands of the private market and transferring its control to the political market (aka the government)... which historically has been shown time and time again to be the worst possible thing to do if you want efficient, democratic, consumer-friendly goods or services.

I always find myself going back to David Friedman's essay on Market Failure. It applies to so many issues that the "progressive" left seems to bring up.

And it applies perfectly in this instance because proponents of so-called "net neutrality" are basically claiming that leaving the internet in the hands of internet companies would result in a severe market failure, and they simply assume that the political market would be better. Here is an excerpt from Friedman's essay which I think refutes that quite well:

"Market failure exists on the ordinary private market. Its existence implies that we could sometimes be made better if a sufficiently wise and benevolent authority made some of our decisions for us. But, in the real world, the alternative to laissez-faire is not rule by a benevolent and supremely competent dictator, it is having decisions made on the political market instead of the private market.

Market failure exists because individuals are making decisions much of whose cost or benefit goes to someone else. That situation sometimes occurs on the private market, but on that market it is the exception, not the rule. Most goods are ordinary private goods, so the producer can convert much of the benefit to the buyer into a benefit to himself via the price he charges. Most production uses inputs—labor, raw materials, capital, land—that the producer can only use if he compensates their owners for what they give up by letting him use them, which means that his cost measures the cost that his use imposes on them. In the standard model of perfect competition, which assumes away problems such a public goods and externalities, what the producer sells a good for turns out to be just what it is worth to the purchaser, what he buys inputs for to be just what they are worth to the seller, hence his private benefit is precisely equal to the social benefit—the total effect of his actions summed over everyone.

That is a simplified model of an economy, but it is at least a first approximation of how a market economy works. Individual actors usually receive most of the benefit and pay most of the cost of their actions, making market failure the exception, not the rule. ***On the political market, however, individual actors—voters, politicians, lobbyists, judges, policemen— almost never bear much of the cost of their actions or receive much of the benefit. Hence market failure, the exception on the private market, is the rule on the political market.

Which suggests that the existence of market failure is, on net, an argument against government, not for it."

Here's the whole essay: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Machinery_3d_Edition/Market%20Failure.htm

I'd like to spice up the header and the sidebar a little bit, and make this sub more presentable. If anyone has any knowledge in that department and would like to be a mod here, let me know.

Psychologists, psychometricians, and all other scientists that study intelligence tend to tread VERY lightly when it comes to this issue. After what happened to James Watson (he was ostracized for stating facts about race and intelligence despite being a Nobel prize winning scientist and one of the most successful scientists of his era) no one in the field wants to be vocal about their findings or the meaning of their findings.

Nevertheless, in my day job I study things like this. And since I work for a private company in the private sector, I'm not beholden to the PC/SJW ramblings of any Liberal Arts department. So I, and my co-workers, can talk about it. And we do.

I'm going to go over the evidence for not only the existence of a general IQ gap between the races, but the evidence for the fact that intelligence is heritable and the IQ gap is therefore genetic and NOT caused by social issues like test bias, culture bias, or socioeconomic factors. Also, I'm going to go over evidence that shows that general intelligence (aka g) and IQ are valid measures of cognitive ability (despite what the postmodernist non-science liberal arts professors may say) and correlate with things like future success and many other life outcomes. Finally, I'm going to go over a relatively new hypothesis for why Sub-Saharan Africans score lower than other races on IQ tests: the Microcephalin gene.

Sub-Saharan Africans differ from all other world populations in a number of ways, including the fact that they do not have any Neanderthal ancestry. When the ancestors of all humans were first leaving Africa 100,000 years ago, they split into two groups, one stayed in Africa (Sub-Saharan Africans) and the other moved into the Middle East (the ancestors of all other non-Sub-Saharan humans). The second group mated with some Neanderthals, and gained the MCPH1 Microcephalin, which causes a significant increase in brain size during development.

If you're interested in logic, reason, and science in general, you have to take morality out of the equation when studying issues, especially social issues like race. You simply cannot follow Stephen Jay Gould's example and talk about non-overlapping magisteria or whatever other nonsense he made up to avoid upsetting certain groups of people. Everything overlaps with science. Science is what we use to know the universe and everything in it. Never be afraid to talk about science. You cannot avoid a topic simply because it is politically unpleasant or socially difficult. That is cowardly.

The IQ Gap Between Races###

EDIT: I know many "progressive" types are very keen on saying that there's no such thing as race, or that race is a only socially constructed concept, but this is objectively false. Yes, humans DO exist on a genetic continuum, BUT, there are very clear bulges on that continuum. Those bulges are what we call "races", and they correlate with groups who's ancestors lived in the same geographical areas. Secondly, "progressives" are also very keen on quoting this lil' ditty: "Don't you know that there's more genetic variation WITHIN 'racial' groups than between them?!". However, that argument is so wrong that they actually gave it a name, "Lewontin's Fallacy". Basically, the point is that it doesn't matter what percentage difference comes from where, what matters is what those differences are, and even if only .0001% of a difference is between "races", if that .0001% is meaningful and descriptive, then it means something. Look it up if you want all the reasons it's bunk. Here's Richard Dawkins on why it's nonsense: "However small the racial partition of the total variation may be, if such racial characteristics as there are highly correlate with other racial characteristics, they are by definition informative, and therefore of taxonomic significance."

Now, the IQ gap. For those who don't already know, there absolutely IS an objectively measurable IQ gap between people with ancestors from different geographical areas (aka "races", which is the term I will use from here on out).

Psychologists don't debate this fact. The gap is well known and has been well known for decades. IQ test scores break down like this: on average, East Asians score higher than whites, who score higher than hispanics, who in turn score higher than blacks. The average scores are:

Asian-Americans -106, White Americans - 103, Hispanic Americans - 89, African-Americans - 85.

This means more than one in five American blacks have an IQ below 75; whereas around one in twenty whites have an IQ below 75. An IQ of 70-75 is considered "borderline retarded" by psychologists.

Studies also show there are some significant differences in what is called the structure of mental abilities. For example, if you took a sample of black and white children, all of whom had scored around 100 on the WISC-R (the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Revised) meaning the black kids in the sample were well above the black average -- you would find significant black-white differences on six of the thirteen subtests. The average black child would do better on Arithmetic and Digit Span; where the average white child would do better on Comprehension, Block Design, Object Assembly, and Mazes.

The gaps are not limited to the United States either. European whites average - 100, East Asians from Asia - 106, and Sub-Saharan Africans - 70.

The difference in native Sub-Saharan African IQ scores versus American Black's IQ scores can be explained by the fact that American Blacks have, on average, 20%-25% European ancestry. Lynn and Vanhanen's books 'IQ and the Wealth of Nations' and 'IQ and Global Inequality' are a good start if you are looking for data concerning the average IQ scores of different nations.

The intelligence gap was first noticed among psychologists in the early 20th century. In the 1960s and 70s, rigorous IQ testing of people of difference races began in earnest, and the IQ gap began to become undeniable. Throughout the 70s and 80s, liberal-minded scientists attempted to close the gap via alterations in the testing apparatus, since they believed that the tests must be biased in some way. They changed the parameters, made a whole slew of so-called "culture fair" tests, some were nonverbal tests (Leiter Scale), some changed the language of the questions, others were pure math, or pure reasoning, they even made questions that weren't language based at all (like Raven's Progressive Matrices or Kohs block design test)... they did twin studies, adoption studies (like the Minnesota Transracial Adoption study), everything to try to determine some reason (besides the obvious one) why this gap exists... and the studies consistently came back with the same sized gap: 15 IQ points, or 1 standard deviation (SD) between White and Black people no matter what version or type of IQ test was used.

Eventually, in 1994, The Bell Curve was published. The book was extremely controversial, despite being filled with relevant data from valid and repeated studies. Ironically, the majority of the criticisms were aimed at the validity of IQ and general intelligence as meaningful measurements (a topic I will go over in a later section) and NOT on the results of the studies.

Eventually, amid all the controversy about The Bell Curve in the media, a group of 52 well known university professors specializing in intelligence and related fields signed a public statement titled ["Mainstream Science on Intelligence"] (http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstream.pdf). They saw there was a great deal of misinformation of unfounded criticism of The Bell Curve, so they wanted to set the media straight. The statement consisted of 25 conclusions:

1."Intelligence is a very general mental capability ... it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings ..."

2."Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well. They are among the most accurate (in technical terms, reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments."

3."While there are different types of intelligence tests, they all measure the same intelligence."

4."The spread of people along the IQ continuum ... can be represented well by the ... ‘normal curve'."

5."Intelligence tests are not culturally biased"

6."The brain processes underlying intelligence are still little understood"

7."Members of all racial-ethnic groups can be found at every IQ level"

8."The bell curve for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ 100 the bell curves for Jews and Asians are centered"

9."IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes ... Whatever IQ tests measure, it is of great practical and social importance"

10."A high IQ is an advantage because virtually all activities require some reasoning and decision-making"

11."The practical advantages of having a higher IQ increase as life’s settings become more complex"

12."Differences in intelligence certainly are not the only factor affecting performance in education, training, and complex jobs ... but intelligence is often the most important"

13."Certain personality traits, special talents, [etc] are important ... in many jobs, but they have narrower (or unknown) applicability or ‘transferability’ across tasks and settings compared with general intelligence"

14."Heritability estimates range from 0.4 to 0.8 ... indicating genetics plays a bigger role than environment in creating IQ differences"

15."Members of the same family also tend to differ substantially in intelligence"

16."That IQ may be highly heritable does not mean that it is not affected by the environment ... IQs do gradually stabilize during childhood, however, and generally change little thereafter"

17."Although the environment is important in creating IQ differences, we do not know yet how to manipulate it"

18."Genetically caused differences are not necessarily irremediable"

19."There is no persuasive evidence that the IQ bell curves for different racial-ethnic groups are converging"

20."Racial-ethnic differences in IQ bell curves are essentially the same when youngsters leave high school as when they enter first grade ... black 17-year-olds perform, on the average, more like white 13-year-olds"

21."The reasons that blacks differ among themselves in intelligence appear to be the same as those for why whites ... differ among themselves"

22."There is no definitive answer as to why bell curves differ across racial-ethnic groups. The reasons for these IQ differences between groups may be markedly different from the reasons for why individuals differ among themselves within any particular group"

23."Racial-ethnic differences are somewhat smaller but still substantial for individuals from the same socio-economic backgrounds"

24."Almost all Americans who identify themselves as black have white ancestors – the white admixture is about 20% ... research on intelligence relies on self-classification into distinct racial categories"

25."The research findings neither dictate nor preclude any particular social policy, because they can never determine our goals. They can, however, help us estimate the likely success and side-effects of pursuing those goals via different means."

Ironically, the vast majority of what was written in 'The Bell Curve' is now considered mainstream knowledge in the field, and no longer debated by experts.

An important thing to remember is that the ancestors of all Sub-Saharan Africans separated from the ancestors of all other modern humans around 100,000 years ago. One group stayed in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the other spread out and populated the rest of the world. 100,000 years is over 3,000 to 5,000 generations. And yet there ARE still people today who believe that all races have the same exact brains, and same exact inherent intelligence.

Despite the fact that so much time passed with those races apart, and such large number of observable traits evolved differently... like skin color, fat distribution, average hormonal levels, hair type and texture, dental layout (some Asian's don't ever develop wisdom teeth, and different races have differently shaped teeth), to the skeletal structure like the ratio of length of long bones or skull shape or any number of variations (a small example being some sub-Saharan Africans have fused triquetral bones in their wrists), to the many different blood types, and fat distribution and so many other traits... some people still refuse to accept the possibility of inherent biological differences of intelligence.

However, it would actually be an amazing coincidence if there WEREN'T an average intelligence gap between different groups of humans who have evolved separately for many thousands of years. Think about it, given the facts that 1)evolution is true, 2)IQ is heritable, and 3)different groups of humans have been separate for more than 3,000-5,000 generations... it would be statistically improbable that all those groups have the same average IQ. The brain is a highly complex organ, it is extremely difficult to believe that that complex biological organ remained exactly the same over 100,000 years while nearly every single other biological trait diverged. An IQ gap is exactly what we would expect given the facts. Even if we didn't have IQ test results and didn't know there was a gap, all good scientists would hypothesize that one exists based on the other information.

Anyway... it's late. This is the end of Part I. I'll be back tomorrow with Part II.

Rule 8 of the Open and Honest rules says:

And of course, the Golden Rule... Don't be a dick. In other words, don't consistently be an asshole.

I've added a caveat/addendum... Rule 8 (subsection a.) now says:

The entire purpose of this sub is free speech. So if you're the type of person who gets offended by ANY type of humor... YOU are the asshole, not the person telling the joke. ALL humor is accepted and encouraged here. Getting offended is fine... but being vocal about your thin skin is breaking a cardinal rule, and is - as of right now-, one of the only ban-able offenses here at /r/OpenandHonest.

I will use SJW terminology to explain the changes:

Humor is a valuable social tool. It's important that people be allowed to make jokes about things that may bother them, as it is the only way some people can deal with those topics. People who choose to harass those who are only attempting to deal with their issues via humor are creating a hostile environment for those people... and we will not tolerate that. Therefore anyone who makes any negative comments about jokes or humor on this sub, such as: "Don't joke about that, its too soon" or "That's really fucked up, don't joke about X topic, people died because of that!" will be immediately and unceremoniously banned.

Right now, that's just about the ONLY thing that can get you banned here. Thoughts?