There was this incident a few months ago where Scott Adams made unbelievable 
remarks about segregation.  Someone that was once sort of a cool guy, seemingly 
degenerated into madness.   In conservative circles in the U.S. there’s a 
strong resentment of Black Lives Matter, and one story that I have heard is 
about a mansion that the organization purchased, supposedly in the words one of 
the principles, using “White Guilt money”.    In Berkeley there were in fact 
many white people in the streets for days over the George Floyd killing, and 
some of that is probably just that.    At the same time, I know a bit about the 
city of Berkeley and have heard stories about how “white privilege” is 
weaponized by individuals who happen not to be white, but see that there is a 
lever they can use to get what they want even if what they want only serves 
their needs and not any greater cause of justice.   The pushback against 
affirmative action is similar.  Why should Asians that get top scores step 
aside for people that did not when it comes to admission to the best schools?   
Will the people that displace them act like the individuals who cynically game 
the system or will there be a productive social process of equilibration?   I 
have not run into many people that are against these reallocation techniques 
that acknowledge the equilibration goal or the need for patience to make it 
happen.   They simply focus on the individual injustices of reverse 
discrimination.

From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Thursday, June 1, 2023 11:08 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] India

Hi Glen

In so far as the report of dropping the periodic table and evolution from the 
Class 10 syllabus, it is essentially a question of Hindu class and caste 
dynamics operating in India.

Traditionally, education / knowledge in India was the domain of the Higher 
castes like Brahmins (Pundits), the next caste beneath them (Kshatriyas) were 
warriors so didn't need much bookish knowledge as they also had Brahmins to 
advise them, the 3rd highest caste (Kayasthas) were scribes and scriveners so 
allowed to read books but not to apply them .. and so on. All the  castes 
beneath them were prohibited from reading books or acquiring Brahmanical 
knowledge - on pain of death.

Over the centuries by marrying endogamously the genetics of the various castes 
evolved to amplify the physical characteristics required for each castes' 
profession. The Muslim and then the British rulers of India were more than 
happy to allow this state of affairs to continue while they ruled as it kept 
the Hindus divided and segregated.

However, after India became independent in 1947, with the spread of universal 
education the Brahmins were subjected to intense reverse discrimination and 
negative reservations intended to curtail their education domination. With the 
infiltration of the lower castes throughout the education system the education 
standards of India have been pulled down to the lowest common denominator. To 
take a simple example which I cited earlier, a Brahmin student needs to score a 
99+% percentile to get into a top engineering or medical college (scoring 250 
marks out of 300 in a negatively marked exam) whereas a low caste (barely 
literate) student gets in even with a score of negative 50 out of 300, with 
over 40% of the students unable to score +ve marks.

The reasons these chapters are being removed has nothing to do with religion or 
creationism, and everything to do with the poor state of the Indian education 
system where the bottom students can't cope. The low caste Prime Minister of 
India (who has only passed Grade 4) claims to have acquired graduate as well as 
post-graduate degrees from top universities (which seem completely fake), 
Universities which he publicly admits he never set foot in, especially seems 
determined to pull everyone in India down to his semi-literate level.

Sarbajit

On Thu, Jun 1, 2023 at 9:29 PM glen 
<geprope...@gmail.com<mailto:geprope...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I don't follow Indian politics. But these seem scary:

Religion and the decline of freethought in South Asia
https://freethinker.co.uk/2022/04/religion-and-the-decline-of-freethought-in-south-asia/

India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01770-y

Again, going back to Sweet Tooth, the tension between having to sacrifice 
hybrids to get the 'secret sauce' for the anti-viral (or the cure) against a 
vegetarian ideology is interesting, flies in the face of naïve utilitarianism.

--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ

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