Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 June 17

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June 17

What is this man saying

"Sabeeduna, Sabeeduna". I am wondering about is 12:51 in the video. I think this is in Arabic but it might be Pashto or something. Does anyone know what it means? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Radioactivemutant (talk • contribs) 05:01, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't know the answer, but just for the future, you can make a link to an exact point in a youtube video by adding "&t=xmys" to the end of the youtube url, where x is the number of mins and y the number of secs, like this. --Viennese Waltz 08:41, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, changed it Radioactivemutant (talk) 13:31, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

He's saying "sabeeluna" and the other people respond "al-jihad". "Sabeeluna al-Jihad" seems to be a song, in Urdu maybe? Something about Taliban fighting the government of Pakistan. I don't know enough about that to explain any further, but it's definitely "sabeeluna". Adam Bishop (talk) 13:14, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

The video is about fighting Americans, but its lstil related to what you said. There were also a few takbirs, and some other stuff I don't know. Radioactivemutant (talk) 13:31, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Errmmmmm... Language desk might find you an answer? --Dweller (talk) 15:14, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Aktien-Gesselschaft Gladenbeck

Hello:

I just created this article. Unfortunately I misspelled the word "Gessellschaft". I only have one "l" in the title. Can someone please fix it for me? --Wapiti (talk) 10:04, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I really butchered the spelling. It should actually be "Aktien-Gesellschaft Gladenbeck". There should be one "s" and two "l"s in the word "Gesellschaft". --Wapiti (talk) 10:31, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I managed to remedy this problem myself by doing a "move" or renaming of the article. Therefore, no assistance is needed from the Reference Desk. --Wapiti (talk) 11:17, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Donations in the name of...

When a wealthy person or organization says that they're giving a donation to a charity in the name of some other person who is not as wealthy, are there any financial pros or cons for the less wealthy person? Does that person have to pay taxes on the money that was given because it's as if it was coming from them and was therefore a sort of income that bypassed their hands to go to the charity? Do they get to put it on their taxes at the end of the year like they would had they actually donated the money themselves?

The jurisdiction for this question is the United States in general. I'm aware different states may view this differently, so I'm not looking for a 50 row table but if there are any noteworthy exceptions that anyone knows about, I'd like to hear about them.

Also, I'm not wealthy, I'm not giving to or taking from anyone any amount of money, I'm not using this as financial advice. So, I'd appreciate it if it didn't get hatted or deleted due to some notion that I might be looking for financial advice. WP:AGF.

Thanks, 129.42.208.182 (talk) 11:47, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

In general the answer is no: The actual giver is entitled to the tax deduction and there are no real consequences to the honoree beyond the sensation of having inspired a charitable gift by another. John M Baker (talk) 16:02, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Prisoner's dilemma, etc

If there a general term to describe scenarios like the Prisoner's dilemma or the Tragedy of the commons? I.e. situations where:

i) everyone cooperating would result in everyone being well off

ii) exploiting others or gaming the system makes the exploiter better off than they would otherwise be (or protects them from others doing the same),

iii) everyone doing that would make things worse for everyone overall

iv) the system encourages people to do (ii) even though the net result is (iii)

Iapetus (talk) 12:47, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Game theory is the general area of study, but the tragedy of the commons seems to be your specific case. Why aren't you happy with that term ? StuRat (talk) 13:19, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

One way of generalizing is to say that the purely cooperative strategy in PD is a Dominated strategy - it doesn't get at point iii), but covers i) and ii) - Basically, you are outlining the case where the strategy for optimizing personal score is not the same as the strategy for optimizing total score, which does indeed apply to many games. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:31, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

You might want to look at Nash equilibrium - the situation where no player has an advantage in changing their strategy. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:54, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

You (the individual) are always better off in both the PD and ToC if you defect. However, if everyone (or a large number; it depends on the payoff matrix) of players defect, then everyone is worse off than if they had all cooperated. You maximize your payoff by being the one person who defects when everyone else cooperates. The generic term for these games is Social_dilemma, although this also refers to other games with subtly different payoff structures (such as a public goods dilemma, where you are still better off defecting, but your defection doesn't actually decrease the amount of the resource available to others: you just avoid paying for your share of it). OldTimeNESter (talk) 20:20, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. And to answer StuRat - my assumption was that both the Prisoner's Dilemma and Tragedy of the Commons were specific forms of a more general concept, and the Social_dilemma seems to confirm that. Iapetus (talk) 12:15, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

R & L Peacock

Who is the "R" in R & L Peacock? R & L Peacock was a publisher of children's book in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The "L" is Lucy. Can't find out who the 'R" is. Bettyhart (talk) 21:20, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

See Lucy Peacock and this paper, but there doesn't seem to be any more information available on "R Peacock" than you've already got. Tevildo (talk) 08:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Rachel Dolezal and race as a social construct?

Other than the stories of hate mail, hate crime, and life stories that Rachel Dolezal made up to justify her blackness, why is there an outrage itself about her claiming to be black when she was actually born white if, unlike gender, race is considered to be a social construct and there is not an agreement around the world about what race actually is? Why is race a social construct in light of the Rachel Dolezal controversy? Willminator (talk) 21:36, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Why wouldn't it be? Social constructs are no less able to elicit social responses than physical constructs. Consider the number of wars fought about religions or ideologies. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:45, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

It's not entirely a social construct. If it was, there wouldn't be medical problems almost unique to blacks, like sickle-cell anemia. The social construct part is in where exactly the lines are drawn. In that sense it's similar to gender. (There's no doubt that males and females exist, but exactly who qualifies as each is where we hit the grey area.)

And I'd say the controversy is over her dishonesty. Had she always told everyone she was white but "chose to identify as black", they would have been more accepting of it. StuRat (talk) 21:49, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Actually, the distribution of the sickle-cell trait is a very good illustration of why social constructs like 'black' seldom concur with genetics:

Distribution of the sickle-cell trait shown in pink and purple

"Social construct" does not mean imaginary, non-existent, or unimportant. Countries and citizenship are also social constructs, but the consequences of pretending to be a citizen are very severe, potentially including imprisonment, deportation, and even death. --Bowlhover (talk) 04:29, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Right. Those who say "race is [only] a social construct" are engaged in wishful thinking. It would be closer to the truth to say that racism is a social construct. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:14, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Sigh, we've been over this many times. Read Race (human classification): "There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined." --Viennese Waltz 09:24, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Note they said "the racial categories that are common in everyday usage". That means just calling anyone with dark skin "black", for example. That doesn't mean that different gene pools don't exist within the human race with significantly different genetics, which are commonly called either race or ethnic groups. As I pointed out above, the fact that scientists have established that disease prevalences vary by racial categories confirms the value of those categories for scientific research. StuRat (talk) 13:34, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Consensus among the wishful thinkers, not necessarily among the general population. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:34, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

No, consensus among the experts. --Viennese Waltz 09:48, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Those alleged experts know nothing. Bus Stop has it right. And her own adoptive brother is calling her a liar.[1] According to those so-called "experts", there's no such thing as race, therefore it's not possible for her to have misrepresented herself. Wishing don't make it so. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:52, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Ah, time for WP:RANDY again. You conflate the general question and the quite unrelated individual case, you misrepresent nuanced opinions in the grossest possible way, but thank god Experts Are Scum (tm). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:36, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Ah, so you agree with Bus Stop and me and the rest of the great unwashed. Good for you. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:39, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I'd put it that collectively, not individually, we all know more than the experts. And race is a special case, where an expert who argues that race does exist might be accused of racism and suffer as a result. So, they continue to use race for medical demographics, etc., and otherwise avoid the debate. StuRat (talk) 23:19, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

I think that the concept of social construct becomes applicable where the distinction is slight between black Americans and white Americans. But where the distinction between the two different types of people is very obvious, I don't think we would say there is an applicable social construct. Bus stop (talk) 03:19, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

My point was that race is a social construct, but being a social construct doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, or is unimportant, or even that discriminating on the basis of race is wrong. To echo Stephan Schulz, there's no reason why a social construct should cause less anger or concern than a physical construct. --Bowlhover (talk) 19:24, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

One of the most important social constructs in this case is, I think, affirmative action. If Ms Dolezal got jobs on the basis of affirmative action in favour of black applicants, then she's not only defrauded the employer and deprived genuine black candidates of the job, she's also undermined the very concept of affirmative action by making it more difficult to reliably categorise people, not to mention making it look ridiculous. --Nicknack009 (talk) 06:56, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

One of the stories circulating suggests that's exactly what she was up to, having lost out to an affirmative action candidate at a university when she was still white. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:40, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

The problem is the dealing in stereotypes. As a non-black person she is drawing upon stereotypes to facilitate her becoming a black person. A person with a legitimate claim to blackness can be any person they choose to be, meaning they can draw upon traits that might be considered white. But a white person pretending to be black is locked within those traits considered to be black. Her antics have been likened to blackface. This is unfair but only to degree. Stereotyping is offensive because it implies that a group of people are easily defined. Bus stop (talk) 09:50, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

@Stu: Transgender people are not in a "grey area". They're not in between male and female. They are people who happen to identify as one gender when their chromosomes say they are part of the other. The question is: if someone can "choose" their gender (in the sense of feeling they belong to one gender when their biology says they belong to the other one) why couldn't someone "choose" their race (in the same sense)? Incidentally, defining races is much more difficult than defining gender even if you want to keep that concept (which many people find futile). The difference between male and female is (in humans) the difference between having your 23rd chromosome pair shaped XY or XX. Defining a race is so complicated that it requires you to read this. Contact Basemetal here 14:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

There are people with extra sex chromosomes, and also those who, despite an XX or XY set of chromosomes, appear to be the other gender, due to hormone imbalances, etc. See intersex. StuRat (talk) 11:42, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

@Bugs: I have not heard a single "expert" argue that it is impossible that Dolezal lied because there is no such thing as race. That she lied is obvious: she was claiming someone other than her real father was her father. That lie has nothing to do with the definition of race, etc. Contact Basemetal here 14:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

If race is only a social construct, then what is its definition? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:23, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Its definition depends on the context, as anyone with the slightest interest in the topic should surely be able to figure out for themselves. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:17, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Race can be defined cladistically by ancestry, by local maxima in genetic similiarity, by phenetic similarity. These are all biological and largely corroborate one another. Further these constructs, especially the first two, have good predictive validity, especially for groups. "Race is only a social construct" is a Boasian piece of nonsense, common in American institutions. Captain JT Verity MBA (talk) 21:42, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

But that belief seems to be common in the majority of countries' institutions as well. Willminator (talk) 23:08, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Even Rachel Dolezal said in an interview that race is a social construct, a fluid issue, in trying to justify why she wanted to become black. I wonder if there is any truth to the idea that race is a fluid concept. 173.170.95.52 (talk) 05:28, 19 June 2015 (UTC).

No. Captain JT Verity MBA (talk) 11:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

It is, in some ways. Race is a categorisation system, but it's a very crude one that doesn't map particularly well onto human genetic diversity. There are clusters of physical characteristics that we call "races", but it's impossible to draw clear lines between them because those clusters of characteristics naturally shade into each other, and people migrate and interbreed. Race is a continuum of physical characteristics. It becomes an issue when people from different points on the continuum are put together in one place. Europe used to obsessively categorise what is now considered its white population into races mostly based on language, but now generally only considers recent immigrant groups who look different as racially distinct. America has the particular racial breakdown it has because it's a country populated mostly by relatively recent immigrant populations, some of whom look distinct from each other, but even there people have been mixing for longer than most people can trace their family tree. --Nicknack009 (talk) 12:07, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Is it possible to draw clear lines on a perfect continuum? And as for imperfect continua (human variation cannot be described as a continuum contrary to popular belief), do you know what maxima and minima are? The lines are drawn through minima in genetic space. It's a no brainer. You are closer to one maxima or genetic cluster, or you aren't. Captain JT Verity MBA (talk) 12:12, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

That's simply not true. First, racial categorisation varies not only with genetics, but also with social standing. And secondly, "genetic minima" (whatever that is supposed to be) do not correlate with social races. There is more genetic variation in Africa than in the rest of the world, so if we go by genetics, there would be several "black" races and one "other". Features used for social classification seem to be a subset of those easily perceivable without much analysis - skin colour, hair colour, eye colour, shape of facial features. And even then, social status seems to override prestige features - "fair like Hitler, tall like Goebbels, slim like Göring", that's the Aryan Master Race. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:12, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Also things like the one-drop rule, where if you have any perceptible black ancestry, you're black, even if the all rest of your ancestors are white and you're genetically closer to the white cluster. Barack Obama and Rio Ferdinand, two pick two high-profile examples, are both considered black, though each has one white parent. Examples of the line being drawn some distance from the genetic "minima". --Nicknack009 (talk) 15:31, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

You are referring to biraciality but she isn't biracial. Her parents supposedly are Czech, Swedish and German. No mention of black. There is no reason to think she is in any way black. Bus stop (talk) 16:01, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree. Race is a fluid concept in some ways, but not as fluid as Ms Dolezal would seem to think. --Nicknack009 (talk) 16:13, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

So, in other words, you can have a "social construct", but there has to be some material to construct it of. You can't have a "social construct" in the absence of construction material. Bus stop (talk) 16:33, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that you can build artificial social distinctions without significant underlying physiology, and it certainly is true that the most superficial attributes suffice, sometimes with dire consequences in the real world. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:00, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

She is merely garbing herself in little symbols of blackness. An actual member of a group is free to wander outside of that group. Is this person free to deliberately wander outside of blackness? She can accidentally slip up and allow a bit of whiteness to show through. But as a make-believe black person it would be impossible for her to pursue traits that might presently be associated with whiteness. Bus stop (talk) 23:46, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Europe categorises no-one by race since 2000. "(6) The European Union rejects theories which attempt to determine the existence of separate human races."[2] Nanonic (talk) 15:19, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

So then no form of affirmative action or quotas ? Or do they just use "ethnic groups" instead of "race" ? Interestingly, I just filled out a US census form (I was one of those lucky people to be selected for an extra census outside the normal decade-end period) and they still ask all the old race questions. StuRat (talk) 17:34, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

In the last UK census there were questions about ethnic background, but that's just for producing statistics. You're not legally classified as an individual by race. There is no affirmative action in hiring. You can sue for discrimination on the basis of a legally defined set of "protected characteristics", one of which is race or ethnicity, but that's after the fact.

In Northern Ireland, where I'm from, there is a separate "monitoring form" with every job appplication, where you state whether you come from the Protestant community, the Catholic community, or neither. This is also for statistical purposes, so the company's recruitment practices can be monitored - not for the filling of particular positions. It's supposed to go in a separate, sealed envelope and not be available to the people carrying out the recruitment, although if recruiters care what foot you kick with they can usually made a good guess from other information in your application. --Nicknack009 (talk) 14:29, 22 June 2015 (UTC)