Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Sports fans in particular mis-use the idea of "regression to the mean," speaking of it, as though it were some causal power, impacting real, physical events. This is mistaken; let's look at why. If I have a fair coin, and I have flipped 20 heads in a row, that does not mean that I am "due" for a tail. My odds of getting a tail on the next flip are still one in two. Furthermore, my odds of flipping 20 heads in a row are no different after just having done so then they are at any other time. They are very high against doing so (around one in a million), but your past series of flips does not affect them at all. Thus, if you just flipped 20 heads in a row, your chances of now reaching a streak of 40 are the same as your chances were for getting the original 20. So even in games of pure chance, regression to the mean is not some strange physical force that controls future flips of the coin. All it says, in simplified terms, is that you're not likely to get th...

 The Romans did not have to ideologically defeat every culture they brought into their empire. They only required that they acknowledged the empire's sovereignty. Americans should really just acknowledge that their government rules an empire, and the government folks might admit it as well. Then the question would become, "How can we rule this empire most prudently and justly?" And at that point we'd be having a genuine discussion.

If Marx had modestly said, "Hey, this class business I'm talking about is one useful way of understanding society," he would be undeniably among the greatest of sociologists. (For instance, as Musa al-Gharbi has shown, wokeness is largely a way to distract from class privilege by throwing the focus onto race, sex, gender, orientation, etc.) Unfortunately, instead he claimed, "This class business I'm talking about is the only useful way of understanding society." And thus inspired many of the great atrocities of the 20th century. He could have been a great sociologist if he had not wanted to be the messiah.