Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 February 11

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 11

Ethical questions for drivers and for autonomous cars

SteveBaker raised (at WP:RD/S#Three cars colliding) some good ethical questions about how autonomous cars should behave in collisions. That made me realize that everybody who steers a car in dense traffic, be it a human or a robot, makes ethical decisions every second, namely, when we decide what distance we keep to the car in front of us. The more distance we keep, the more we contribute to public safety, but the easier we make it for others to cut in line. This creates an ethical dilemma, on which we probably haven't spent much thought, because it is harder (or sometimes impossible, as Steve points out) to change the behavior of millions of humans under stress. But designers and buyers of autonomous cars will make that decision with ample deliberation time. If autonomous cars come in different driving styles, what are the ethical implications of supplying or demanding a more aggressive one? — Sebastian 02:08, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Just so this doesn't look like a request for predictions about a hypothetical thing, cars are getting aggressive/"assertive". The ethical idea, according to software guy Nathaniel Fairfield, is "If you're always yielding and conservative, basically everybody will just stomp on you all day." Apparently, shoppers hate getting stomped. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:24, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

• You'll probably want a book on driver's ed, and the local DMV will have one. We were taught something like, given the choice, hit a bush before a tree, a tree before a building, a building before a car, a car before a person, and a person before a crowd--the idea being to do the least damage, including to the driver. If you have ever driven in New York City, aggressive driving is the expected and preferred method. People who drive slow and who don't immediately take advantage of openings are a hindrance and pain-in-the-ass. The opposite is true in rural and suburban South Jersey. There everyone yields and waves the other driver on. The difficult part is North Jersey where you can't predict whether the driver will be aggressive or not, making it very hard to predict the best course of action. μηδείς (talk) 02:59, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

• I was amazed at the driver etiquette in West Orange, New Jersey. There somebody pulled out right in the path of oncoming traffic, making everybody in two lanes stop until he could get across the street and make a left. Nobody seemed upset by that, so I have to assume that extremely selfish behavior is par for the course. On the other hand, somebody waited a second too long to go at a green light, and the guy behind him just laid on the horn until he moved. Apparently inconveniencing others is OK, but only so long as it benefits yourself. StuRat (talk) 03:11, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

A lot of the problem in that area; Newark, Jersey City, The Oranges, is that old roads like US Route 1 started out as small highways and then expanded to 4, 6, or 8 lanes or more. Given the inability to take major highways out of commission for upgrades, you do run into situations where what used to be a left across one lane has become a left across two lanes, and you simply either have to pull out and block traffic, or get nowhere. As for the horn-blowing, people are more quick on that especially if the first car is so far forward they may not have seen the light change. And of course there are the texters. They should be honked at when the opposing light tuns red, before your light turns green. If it gets the attention of a cop, the texter will get a hefty ticket. μηδείς (talk) 18:21, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Here in Michigan, horns are only to be used in emergencies, so somebody honking like that would be likely to get a ticket for disturbing the peace. As for not being able to make a left, I have a street like that here. Instead of blocking traffic, I make a right and go around the block, or turn around in a business ahead, as I would expect of others. It's simple math. If I save 5 minutes but cost a dozen people 2 minutes, that's more time wasted in total by making the left.

The most extreme example of selfish driving behavior I saw was actually in Norwich, CT where somebody was in the fast lane and decided they wanted to exit the highway, so they just parked in the fast lane until such time as the way was clear for them to move across the highway and exit, almost causing me to slam into them, and several other cars to slam into me. StuRat (talk) 19:34, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

That's an interesting usage of "ethical decisions". Cynically, I'd say the decisions are mostly about self-preservation and self-interest, rather than ethics. Even a veritable saint would have to make many decisions without time to rationalise sufficiently for ethics. --Dweller (talk) 10:18, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I find your statement odd. Are you actually saying ethics has nothing to do with self-preservation and self-interest?, Dweller? μηδείς (talk) 18:21, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm saying ordinary people don't have time to weigh "ethical decisions every second" they're driving. --Dweller (talk) 22:34, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

That was the main purpose we had drivers' ed in highschool, to work out ahead of time what could go wrong and how to deal with it, rather than wating until the situation was already upon you. μηδείς (talk) 22:27, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

The original context here was this: I observed that if you're sitting still in traffic and believe that you're about to be rear-ended by a fast-moving vehicle that you spot in your rear-view mirror, then applying the brakes will lessen your likely whiplash injury...but it comes at the price of actively worsening the injuries of the people in the car that's about to rear-end you. Irrespective of your feelings for the idiot who was driving too fast for the conditions and who is about to cause you a lot of future grief, there is a moral aspect to this - suppose (s)he has a small child on board? In reality, it doesn't matter because you really don't have the time to consider all of the moral angles before doing something...and self-preservation is a big behavioral driver that's hard to overcome even with conscious effort. So this isn't a practical moral decision...only a mere theoretical one.

HOWEVER, (and here is the practical issue): if this is a "self-driving" car - or a car with 'accident avoidance' features...and especially if the car that's about to hit you is ALSO a self-driving car...as will increasingly be the case in the future...then the car itself has to be pre-programmed to make the correct moral decision. If it detects the likely impact using its onboard radar even one second before it happens, it has plenty of time to fully explore the issues involved before commanding the brakes to be applied. What greatly complicates the reasoning is that I also hypothesized that these cars will probably be interconnected so they can share data about what's around the next bend or whatever. In that case, the two cars will have time to exchange data before the impact happens. Obviously, some part of the conversation goes "You're going too fast, I believe that you're about to rear-end me, please slam on your brakes!"...but it also occurs to me that the conversation might include: "Do the pressure sensors in your seats indicate that you have a small child on board?" or "Does the terms of the accident coverage of your auto insurance policy include a co-pay that's larger than $200?" ...all of which could possibly factor into the stationary car's moral decision about whether to apply its own brakes in order to protect its owner, or whether to deliberately allow its owner to get a worse case of whiplash in order to avoid injuring a child - or to follow policies set out by the insurance companies about who should get hurt and who should not.

SInce we already have cars with the ability to automatically apply the brakes - and which have fancy rear-pointing sensors - this is no longer an abstract, hypothetical question. We already have cars that could (in theory) be programmed to either apply or release the brakes when they detect that they will be rear-ended half a second from now.

That's the original moral dilemma that I was pointing out here. It's been discussed in some detail in some autonomous robotics forums, and it leads you to think about Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics and the inadequacy thereof in situations where we're really going to have to enact them in actual, for-real software out there in the real world over the next few years.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:19, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

If these autonomous cars are interconnected, and indeed I don't see how they could not be interconnected, then their program is designed so that collisions cannot possibly happen. They are designed to know in advance whether another car is too close or driving towards a collision pace or direction. Akseli9 (talk) 16:11, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Re: "collisions cannot possibly happen" ? Sorry, but no device is perfect. Sensors will fail (optical sensors could be covered with mud or salt spray), programs will have bugs in them, CPUs will fail, unpredictable weather conditions like sudden wind gusts will still happen, tires will blow when they hit potholes, etc. Indeed, people must make thousands of correct decisions each time they drive to avoid an accident, so any autonomous driving system has to be very good just to match the performance of humans. And a weakness of computer programs is the inability to deal with the unexpected. What to do if there's a cow in the road ? Would it just park on the road until the cow moves ? That could mean the car would be rear-ended. I might lay on the horn to try to convince the cow to move, and maybe gently push it with the car if that didn't do it, then call 911 to tell them about the danger. Would a computer program figure this out ? Or would the program know that deer running next to the road is a danger because they often dart into the road right in front of cars ? StuRat (talk) 16:27, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Nowadays computer technology certainly cannot drive a car the way you rightly describe, with thousands of micro smart decisions made every second. But it's the ultimate aim programmers seek. Before this happens, before we finally get a car that can properly drive autonomous, my guess is that we are going to get a lot of clumsy shitty behavior that they will undoubtedly sell us as "security precautions" and such bullshit, when we are going to complain about the systems being far less efficient than human driving... Akseli9 (talk) 17:17, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

• I think the big advantage of automated driving will be that it will ultimately put an end to or drastically minimize stop-and-go driving. For example, we were told when in a line at a red light to take our foot off the brake and begin slowly accelerating as soon as the light turned green and not only after the car in front of us started moving. But of course people are off in their little worlds and don't accelerate before the car directly in front of them has already started moving, if even then. So instead of all the cars moving steadily and immediately at once, you have to wait for each of the ten people ahead of you to wake up and make an individual decision.

In the time it takes for 10 cars to get through a little, a train of 40 automated cars could have gone through the intersection. I'd certainly accept a tradeoff where my trip is a constant 50mph, instead of stop-and go traffic and standing waves alternating with 75-mph mad-dashes. Consider that the Jersey Turnpike actually has electronic warning signs that say "Slow Down, Slow Traffic Ahead". With an automated system they'd all be getting the signal to speed up simultaneously. μηδείς (talk) 18:37, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't know who "we" is that "were told" that. A line of cars at a stoplight is too densely packed to be a safe column of moving cars. You have to increase your following distance in (at least) linear proportion to your speed. That means you might as well wait a short time after the car in front of you starts moving. --Trovatore (talk) 22:06, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

"We" were the students in my high school driver's ed class in the early 80's. Of course the moving at once as a perfect train method won't work without automation. But, if you are not already tailgating the car in front of you at the light, which is also wrong, it is easy for all the cars to start moving increasingly faster all at the same time when the light changes, so long as there's not a blithering fool in the line, rather than wait for each car driver individually to start moving only after the car before him has moved. μηδείς (talk) 18:23, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

This so-called advantage has become an advantage only since drivers don't proprely drive anymore. As long as we were used to drive our cars in a responsible, active way, before we chose (beginning of the 90s) to drive in a deresponsibilized way (giving up our control to various devices and to a passive security mentality), we indeed used to do it ourselves. There must be other good examples in the world, but the best two ones I can remember, where it used to work so perfectly well, in such a perfect harmony and consciousness of the whole traffic and all other drivers, were the driving in and around Paris, and the driving in West-Germany. Akseli9 (talk) 20:02, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it's likely that all cars in one city/state/country/continent will be switched from manual to autonomous driving on the very same day. There will therefore inevitably be a period of years where autonomous cars have to exist alongside manually driven cars...and for that reason alone, accidents will still happen and 'smart' cars will have to make ethical decisions. Also, I doubt there is a software engineer anywhere on the planet who truly believes that autonomous cars will be bug-free or that they'll be designed in such a way to tolerate any conceivable hardware fault of the kind that occurs in cars all the time.

As for changing the behavior at stop lights...once we have smart cars everywhere, we won't need stoplights. Cars can be programmed to zip between each other in the most alarming way imaginable, varying their speeds by a few percent in order miss each other by inches as they zip through major intersections at 100mph. That stuff is actually very easy to do...but with humans still behind the wheel, it's a heck of a lot harder!

So it's my view that these ethical decisions will have to be made by smart cars for the forseeable future - and the people who write the software that operates them will have to make the toughest moral judgements about the classes of people who will be more or less injured in a collision...and big business (in the form of insurance companies) are bound to get involved (in a collision between a $250,000 Ferrari and a $14,000 Kia, you can imagine that they'll be wanting software to minimize the damage to the vehicle that's the costliest to repair - and if we haven't gotten people to demand fairer moral decisionmaking in their vehicles, you can be sure that'll be the outcome!) 21:32, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't see lowering the margin of safety by having cars cross each other's paths at 100 MPH as a good idea. Maybe it might work in underground tunnels where most risks can be eliminated, but on roads you have all sorts of risks, like weather, potholes, objects, animals, or people in roads, etc., to deal with, so that margin of safety is needed, even if we assume the autonomous car itself to be foolproof. StuRat (talk) 19:44, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Still an interesting question. A really basic aspect is speeding. It is very common - especially in areas where there are many traffic warnings, double fines, etc. - that the flow of traffic in the U.S. will be going 15 miles an hour over the speed limit. This leaves the driver to decide how many cars to have passing him every minute vs. what risk to take of a ticket. But what do people under the All Seeing Eye of the Mechanical State do? Does the Google car have a license to speed? Does it drive much slower than everyone else, constantly getting traffic detoured around it? Or does it serve as an eye of the state, dutifully radarring and logging license plates from every car that passes it until no one dares challenge its supremacy? Wnt (talk) 19:15, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Mayan caves in the Yucatan ( seeking additional information for this article)

Hello ! I have a question about Maya archeology . In the mid- 90s . I watched an interesting TV show . In it a group of people studied karst system in the Yucatan . At the deepest and furthest from the surface of the cave they found a small, stuffy stones input ( such as having the right kind of masonry ) , allegedly leading to the lower world (or sanctuary) Maya. This entry allegedly walled Mayan priests to keep out strangers in a holy place (like Spanish ) when they invaded their land. Log in to open did not. In this TV show is over. For information about entering I have never found . If you know , please tell me : what was this cave , and where in fact this is the input? Thank you in advance. text in Russian - http://www.mezoamerica.ru/forum1/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2131 . Vyacheslav84 (talk) 08:35, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Do you mean a cave, built/sealed by the Mayans somewhere in the Yucatan? You said mid-90s but this was found more recently. There's also this (also from National Geographic) about exploring Mayan cave ruins on the Yucatan Peninsula. Our article on Mesoamerican cave sites might have more information. St★lwart¹¹¹ 08:55, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Our article on Mesoamerican cave sites (written partially by the OP) would need some care with respect to the language and content, by the way. --84.58.246.235 (talk) 09:45, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, didn't realise Vyacheslav84 had contributed extensively to that article. Probably didn't need to point him there. St★lwart¹¹¹ 10:39, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

In this article no suitable under my description cave. Vyacheslav84 (talk) 13:39, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

It's worth noting that many caves of the Yucatan are the result of Chicxulub crater, the site of the impact that killed the dinosaurs. Therefore, there is an underlying pattern to many of them that might have been understood by the native priests, and quite mysterious to the newcomer in the land. Wnt (talk) 22:35, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

The cenote article covers some of the related background, but my understanding is that the Mayan cave systems in general appear to exist independently of the Chicxulub impact crater. I'm a bit skeptical, therefore, of your claim. Viriditas (talk) 12:32, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

United Kingdom: Parliamentary Sovereignty

What are the current challenges to Britain’s traditional system of parliamentary sovereignty? --Spoœekspaar (talk) 11:32, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

That really reads like a homework question. Sorry for the assumption of bad faith, but:

Please do your own homework.

Welcome to Wikipedia. Your question appears to be a homework question. I apologize if this is a misinterpretation, but it is our aim here not to do people's homework for them, but to merely aid them in doing it themselves. Letting someone else do your homework does not help you learn nearly as much as doing it yourself. Please attempt to solve the problem or answer the question yourself first. If you need help with a specific part of your homework, feel free to tell us where you are stuck and ask for help. If you need help grasping the concept of a problem, by all means let us know.

If it's not a homework question, wording it in a way that tells us what you're really interested in would help, because that's a broad and vague question - the type teachers too often like to ask, and not really the type that ordinary people do. --Dweller (talk) 12:05, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Saladin

In Saladin#Family it says, Al-Afdal's mother bore Saladin another child in 1177. So, who was the father of this child, since Saladin left Egypt in 1174?--Doug Coldwell (talk) 12:45, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

What makes you think she didn't go with him? See Camp follower. --Dweller (talk) 13:08, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, in the way it is worded as I understand Saladin left Egypt, but it didn't say with his wife. Also it didn't say Saladin was back in around 1176. Also it says, A letter preserved by Qalqashandi records that a twelfth son was born in May 1178, while on Imad al-Din's list, he appears as Saladin's seventh son. = which seems strange. Explanation?--Doug Coldwell (talk) 13:27, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Differences in enumerating - live issue? Ooh, a juicy refdesk inspired redlink. --Dweller (talk) 13:37, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

The answer to your original question is disappointingly prosaic and unsalacious. See Saladin#Return_to_Cairo_and_forays_in_Outremer. --Dweller (talk) 13:40, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for link. I'm not sure what all you meant or were implying by disappointingly prosaic and unsalacious = perhaps it had something to do with Differences in enumerating.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 13:51, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I mean he was back in Egypt in time to father a child in 1177, so his wife wasn't necessarily cuckolding him. --Dweller (talk) 14:08, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

The article also says, Saladin's oldest son, al-Afdal, was born in 1170, and Uthman was born in 1172 to Shamsa who accompanied Saladin to Syria. = two women with sons?--Doug Coldwell (talk) 14:28, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like it was [at least?] two women with sons! --Dweller (talk) 14:43, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Exactly = that's what I thought. Therefore it could then be a twelfth son was born in May 1178 that also could be Saladin's seventh son. Who knows how many women??? = perhaps 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7.--Doug Coldwell (talk)

No idea. But Saladin was quite a guy. The stories of his chivalrous behaviour at the siege of Krak in Moab and following his overwhelming victory at the Battle of Hattin are two of my favourite stories from history. What makes it all the more remarkable is that we read of his admirable behaviour from Christian sources, as well as Muslim. --Dweller (talk) 15:20, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't put it past him to have seven wives. That's how 12 sons could have been produced. But who knows for sure. Perhaps that information is hidden away in some old manuscript somewhere.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 15:29, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

He certainly had more than one wife. Our article quotes (or actually copies directly, which it shouldn't do) Lyons and Jackson's book about Saladin, which contains all the information you're going to be able to find about his wives (on page 135). Nothing hidden away anywhere, unfortunately; it's just that no one bothered to write anything down about his wives, so we just don't know very much. That's typical for medieval Muslim women, we don't know a whole lot about any of them. It could be that some of his children died (also not uncommon in the Middle Ages), so the 12th one named by Qalqashandi was the 7th one still alive on Imad ad-Din's list. Or maybe the 12th son was actually the 12th child, boy or girl. Personally I'd trust Imad ad-Din since he was a member of Saladin's retinue... Adam Bishop (talk) 18:02, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Adam for the lead. I have ordered the book through I.L.L. so I can study up on him. Looks like a very interesting character.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 18:19, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

contemporary art

What is the oldest museum of contemporary art?--82.55.179.186 (talk) 15:19, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Contemporary art could mean many things. Do you mean art that was current, at the time the museum containing it was founded ? StuRat (talk) 16:36, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes.--82.55.179.186 (talk) 17:52, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

In that case, according to TripAdvisor it would be the Bhimbetka rock shelters.--Shirt58 (talk) 04:43, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

*slow clap* LOL. St★lwart¹¹¹ 05:42, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

• Stab in the dark - the Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Rome first exhibited in 1883 and was constituted in 1925, ahead of most of the well-known ones in France. It closed, though, a couple of times. The Bonnefanten Museum was founded in 1884. The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag was built between 1931 and 1935 and its the oldest "proper" contemporary art museum I can think of. I couldn't find anything with a museum officially claiming the title of "oldest". But a museum/institution specifically established to display works contemporary to the same period; perhaps Library of Alexandria? St★lwart¹¹¹ 05:42, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Global net worth distribution

Where can I find a worldwide version of this chart[1]? WinterWall (talk) 16:33, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

To clarify: I'm only interested in the negative net worth portion. There are tons of global net worth charts, but I can't seem to find one that contain the negative net worth data. WinterWall (talk) 16:45, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

You might have more luck looking under "personal debt". StuRat (talk) 17:10, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Not exactly in a chart form, but you can take a look at [2]. It has a lot of information on the global wealth. Particularly, table 6-5 has wealth shares of each wealth decile, which indicates that the bottom 10% own -0.4% of the world's wealth (i.e., are in debt). I'm sure you can find total wealth in the report and work out how much -0.4% is.129.178.88.81 (talk) 08:21, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Communist influence in America since 60's?

This essay by a academic claims the following:

"What this means is that if you look for Americans in 1913 who have the same basic worldview of an ordinary American college student in 2013, you can find them. But you can't find a lot of them. The cultural mainstream of 2013 is not descended from the cultural mainstream of 1913, most of whose traditions are entirely extinct. Rather, it is descended from a very small cultural aristocracy in 1913, whose bizarre, shocking and decadent tropes and behaviors are confined almost entirely to exclusive upper-crust circles found only in places such as Harvard and Greenwich Village.

What were these people called? By themselves and others? Communists, generally. Though when they wanted to confuse outsiders, they'd say "progressive" - and still do. But poking at this paper-thin euphemism, or any of its friends - "radical," "activist," and a thousand like it - is "Red-baiting" and just not done."

And goes on to further claim that modern America is a communist nation controlled by a narrow group of aristocratic communists. That Negros in America were prospering before anti-racism at the hands of this communist aristocracy came along. There are many other claims and such, too. Would these claims be accurate and backed up by historical fact and/or the analyses of other academics in the relevant fields? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.66.128.228 (talk) 18:18, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Maybe ask the author? I don't see a real name listed, or anything that says it's an "academic" author. The "about" page claims he knows something about programming languages. Skimming the blog post, I didn't see any references to academic sources, just links to other blogs and things (and some Wikipedia articles).

My impression is that this is fringe crackpot territory (the "red pill" and "blue pill" are a big tip off there). I don't think you'll find credible academic reports that the USA is a communist nation. I also don't think you will find respectable historians saying that black people had it better in the USA before the civil rights act. The burden of proof for these claims lies on the author, and the lack of credible citations is telling... far from "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

We'll see if anybody wants to try to find supportive citations, but I won't waste my time with the much harder task of finding a reference that explicitly refutes these specific silly claims. SemanticMantis (talk) 1:54 pm, Today (UTC−5)

I closed this before, SemanticMantis, but the IP reopened it-- the source he calls a scholar is a blogspot post by a "Mencius Moldbug" and the IP is trying to draw us into an off-wiki debate. μηδείς (talk) 19:07, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Funny, I see someone who read some weird stuff, and came here looking for references. WP:AGF. I've taken the liberty of bolding the part of the question, which clearly marks it as a request for references. If I was better versed in historical literature, I'd find some refs myself. But we do have plenty of people who know history here, and I'll be interested to see if anyone can find refs that support or refute these claims. If you don't want to participate, you're allowed not to :) Also, it looks like the IP's polite followup question somehow got deleted in the mix. So sorry about that, IP. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:11, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree there's no clear evidence there's any intention to draw anyone in to debate so have reverted the closure. Nil Einne (talk) 21:13, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

The blogger (who is described as a computer programmer), and their views are mentioned in the Reactionary#21st century and Dark Enlightenment articles with reference to a TechCrunch article [3]. There is also mention in other places e.g. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]. I can't say for sure any of these will answer your question, particularly since many of them are more about it than anything (and one of them specifically notes it may be more about the views of one specific person associated with the movement and this person isn't the blogger you're concerned about), but these views seem to have received enough attention that you can probably find some discussion of what you're asking about somewhere. As with SemanticMantis, I'm not personally interested enough to make sure I've found specific stuff which address your questions. Nil Einne (talk) 21:27, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Whoever wrote that piece is an idiot. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:12, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

He's a notorious crank, not quite the same thing. —Tamfang (talk) 22:39, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Does he believe in what he's writing, or is he just trying to cause trouble? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:44, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I skimmed the article. It is certainly not academic in style, and does not strike me as having been written by an academic. It seems to me to have been written by a crank. This is not to say that the author is stupid - some cranks have a very high IQ - but the article is not structured so as to present a carefully reasoned argument. One thing that causes me to be immediately on my guard when reading the article is that the author identifies himself as a member of the Austrian School. In my experience this is invariably the mark of someone who prefers rhetoric to fact (largely because the facts of economics largely disprove the Austrian School's claims!). The internet is full of cranks, and you need to be cautious when reading articles that make outrageous claims.

In particular, though I am not qualified to comment on everything that the writer says, for one important question you ask I can give a definitive answer: no reputable academic would describe the political, social or economic organisation of the United States as communist or socialist. This is not to say that there are no socialists or communists in America, but they have failed to implement their ideas in any lasting fashion.

Further, in respect of the claim that black people were prospering before the Civil Rights Era, it is possible to definitively refute this assertion. Though in the early part of the 20th century there were some black people who were doing pretty well for themselves in some states of the union, at the time you mention (1913) the Great Migration had not really begun, and the large black population of the southern states were highly disadvantaged economically. In particular, black people had only negligible access to free capital, which is a key determinant of current and future prosperity. White-owned banks did not offer the same terms to black-owned businesses as to their white rivals, placing severe restrictions on economic growth of black-owned corporations. (This has been a persistent problem, and there is evidence that it remains a problem today.) Only 60 black-owned banks were established in the 40 year period 1888-1928, with an average bank failure probability of about 11% per annum (recall that the Federal Reserve only came into being in late 1913, and that smaller banks would have been unlikely to be able to take advantage of the sort of co-operative arrangements that helped mitigate the Panic of 1907). The banks that were established were generally small, and thus unable to benefit from portfolio diversification effects that were available to larger institutions. Loan portfolios were thus excessively concentrated on a restricted number of markets. All of this meant that one of the basic tools of middle-class wealth creation, credit, was unavailable to virtually all black people. Further, a second important tool necessary for building a broad-based middle-class, education, was largely inaccessible to almost all black people. This astonishing waste of resources was, of course, largely driven by white racism and a general segregationist impulse.

This situation continued into later periods - in the Great Depression and throughout the Second World War. Between 1929 and 1953 only five black-owned banks were started, and the fundamental problems - thin deposit bases and poorly diversified loan portfolios - remained the same. There is evidence that lending behaviour in these later periods was less targetted at the development of black-owned businesses, and that black-owned banks served more as depositary institutions that sought to place a higher proportion of their funds in liquid securities. This made the banks less profitable, though more stable for their depositors, but provided relatively less economic advantage for black communities than in the earlier period. More generally, though by this time the Great Migration had finished and was being echoed by a second wave of movement of black people from south to north, the proportion of black people still in the south, still poor, and still subject to the Jim Crow laws was still very high. Though some cities in the north of the United States had what we might call "black business districts" these were very small as a fraction of the total economic activity in these northern cities. Again, of course, a tiny number of black people were economically successful, but, as before, they were vastly outweighed by their poorer brethren. Both median wealth and median income for black Americans was very significantly below the corresponding figures for white Americans. This is still the case today, though the situation is slowly improving. One thing that you can be sure of, though, is this: there was no "golden age" of wealth, income, or capital accumulation for black people. Articles claiming to the contrary are factually incorrect. RomanSpa (talk) 00:55, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

As far as communism in the US, it may have hit it's peak during the Great Depression, perhaps exemplified by The Grapes of Wrath. It survived through WW2, as the Soviet Union was then a US ally. However, after that the Soviet Union became an enemy, we had the House Un-American Activities Committee, the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, revelations of Stalin's purges by Khruschev, and eventually the understanding of Mao's incompetence and cruelty in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. After that, there weren't many US fans of communism left, by which I mean the type of authoritarian governments that passed themselves off as communist in the Soviet Union and China. Socialism, on the other hand, remained, perhaps mostly at liberal college campuses, but does occasionally break out as in the "99%" protests and the anti-WTO/World Bank protests. StuRat (talk) 01:11, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

In the US, socialism could refer to anything from "I think taxes should be 1% higher" to "I want to kill every rich person alive". --Bowlhover (talk) 09:16, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

The extreme right in the US considers communism, socialism and liberalism to be essentially all the same thing. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:56, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I didn't read the essay, but some general comments: Progressive ideas predate Communism in the Marxist-Leninist sense, certainly in the U.S. Some examples of earlier progressive sentiment include the Georgist beliefs of the Single Taxers, which actually are represented by the introduction of property tax. Beliefs in a progressive income tax date back to 1861, but the 1913 Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States certainly reflected strong support. The Haymarket Affair is more typically associated with anarchism but in any case reflected an actual victory of great significance, a change from 12-hour to 8-hour workdays with no decrease in pay, which to be sure was a Marxist demand but as you can tell had broader support than that. Specific cases of Communist countries affecting the U.S. likely exist, but it's been hard to get particulars. For example, the Black Panther Party got its start buying copies of Mao's Little Red Book for $0.25 and selling them for $1.00. But I don't actually know where did they come from, or if that was a sweetheart deal meant to subsidize them for spreading Communist belief. Many of the Communist papers became much less visible after the collapse of the Soviet Union ... was that morale, or funding? These things are really obscure to track. But I don't think that Communist countries or capital-C Communism really had that much of an impact compared to the simple fact that people hated the robber barons, company towns, Pinkertons shooting strikers, and corrupt railroad deals of the 1800s. Wnt (talk) 18:24, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

King James Version

As a rough guess, about how many copies are there worldwide of the English KJV? How many copies of the KJV are printed each year? Are there just separate versions of the New Testament in the KJV?--Doug Coldwell (talk) 20:56, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

www.kingjamesbibleonline.org says that "...more than 6 billion copies [have been] published...", a number confirmed by realtruth.org (note that both these sites may not be entirely objective). How many of those are still extant is going to be difficult to calculate. Alansplodge (talk) 22:45, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

The last question is a bit puzzling. King James ordered a new translation of Old and New Testaments. I have a copy with both in one volume; I've also seen the NT as a separate volume. —Tamfang (talk) 22:49, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I would guess that the Gideon organization has distributed many millions of small books containing the KJV New Testament and books of Psalms and Proverbs, along with selected supporting material (list of helpful passages by subject, translations of John 3:16 into multiple languages) in North America -- at the beginning of the academic year at entrances to certain college campuses, you have to make a special effort to avoid being offered one... AnonMoos (talk) 22:56, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

In recent years they now distribute NT-Psalms-Proverbs in NKJV instead of KJV, I guess; not sure when they switched over... AnonMoos (talk) 16:25, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Our New King James Version#Circulation claims the distributed NKJV for anyone wanting a more modern variant, but doesn't say if this was the whole bible, or if the KJV variant was the whole bible in KJV. It only says they now distribute ESV in place of NKJV. It has sources, but I didn't check them. As per an old comment of mine on the talk page of that article relating to colours, I also wonder if this is US centric. It's claimed here that they distribute the NIV in the UK [12]. As per the KJV article, they would need permission from someone to distribute the KJV in the UK, but it may not be that hard to get so I'm not sure if this is the reason, or just a belief from local members that another variant may be better. Nil Einne (talk) 18:06, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

[13] says the Gideons International have now distributed 1.9 billion Bibles and continue at a rate of 81 million per year. Collect (talk) 16:02, 12 February 2015 (UTC).

That answered my questions very well = Thanks.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 16:51, 12 February 2015 (UTC)