User:JohnAdams1800

Disclaimer: This is my user page, not a blog or article. I don't disclose my personal information on Wikipedia, and my real name is not John Adams. Please post on my user talk page to discuss editing.

Edward Coles, the man who kept Illinois free of slavery.

I am a Wikipedia editor who is sometimes busy (WP:VOLUNTEER), and can make mistakes or disagree with the consensus. My specialization is statistics.

For the most part, I edit articles to contribute information and knowledge, and are often detailed but not among the most-viewed articles. Some of my favorite articles to edited have been Social class in the United States and Solid South.

Link: https://hypertext.niskanencenter.org

Link: https://prospect.org/politics/2024-12-02-what-is-democratic-party/

Editing practices

My main goal is not to right great wrongs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tendentious_editing#Righting_great_wrongs), but to document events and information. There are some exceptions, such as genocide denial and slavery, but in general my goal is not to judge right from wrong.

I generally prefer to edit topics that I feel are important or enjoy. These are often niche or specialized topics that often get far less attention as contentious or famous topics.

I usually prefer not to edit articles about contentious topics. In particular, I usually avoid editing articles related to politics.

• As an exception, I do sometimes contribute to articles about current events, like 2024 or forming consensus for ITN.

Long story short, my goal when editing Wikipedia is to be able to contribute knowledge, rather than be involved in resolving editing disputes or providing rapid information about contentious topics.

About me

I am a graduate student (PhD statistics) at UIUC in the United States. I have a Bachelor's of Science in mathematics and statistics from UT Dallas, and I can verify the results and proofs for most mathematics and statistics articles that are at the undergraduate college level or below. I don't focus as much on editing mathematics articles on Wikipedia, because I prefer using LaTeX formatting.

Link for graphs: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:RCraig09#Inequality,_social_issues

Side-note: My username is inspired by John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, who were the only 2 presidents out of the first 12 that never owned any slaves. Note that Martin Van Buren freed the 1 slave he owned, and was founder of the Free Soil Party who stayed loyal to the Union.

Some other relatively unknown anti-slavery leaders I admire are Edward Coles (Illinois), Jonathan Jennings (Indiana), Harriet Robinson Scott (Dred Scott's wife), Daniel Henry Chamberlain (Massachusetts-South Carolina), and Henry Cabot Lodge (Massachusetts).

Favorite quotes

“Out of every one-hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior and he will bring the others back.” -- Heraclitus

This is an analogy for the 1% rule in Internet culture over 2,000 years later.

"We have to be faster in calming down a resentment than putting out a fire, because the consequences of the first are infinitely more dangerous than the results of the last; fire ends burning down some houses at the most, while the resentment can cause cruel wars, with the ruin and total destruction of nations." ~ Heraclitus

"A man's character is his fate." ~ Heraclitus

Explanations:

• The Pareto principle in war.
• The second is self-explanatory.
• It's not about what happens to you, but about how you acted and chose to respond that matters. In other words, Amor fati.

Wikipedia Articles and Projects

James C. Scott in 2016

I regularly edit articles, mainly related to world events, both in the United States (my home country) and around the world. I am a regular editor of the pages War in Sudan (2023-present) and Myanmar Civil War (2021-present), because they are important armed conflicts that don't get much media attention but have an effect on the lives of millions of people.

• In particular, I mainly use Sudan War Monitor as my main website for information on the War in Sudan, and The Irrawaddy as my main source for the Myanmar Civil War.

I do edit other articles, such as articles related to economics, history, and society. I usually don't edit articles related to contentious topics.

Some of my favorite articles to edit have been social class in the United States and Solid South.

I don't usually edit mathematics articles because they are well-sourced and written, and mathematics hasn't change much in recent decades. Of the seven Millennium Prize Problems, only one has been solved. Fermat's Last Theorem took 358 years to prove.

The diploma divide

Higher educational attainment in the US corresponds with median household wealth.

The biggest class divide in the United States and many other countries is the diploma divide, between those with and without an academic degree. There are gray areas--i.e. those who dropped out; those with Associate's degrees--but the divide approaches a chasm after receiving a Bachelor's degree.

This divide is so ubiquitous as to become imperceptible for those on either side of the divide. The divide has a political element to it, but almost everyone with influence (i.e. business, politics, media, etc.) has a Bachelor's degree or higher.

• White high school dropouts are still richer, on average, than Black college graduates.

This divide is astounding, creating a Bourgeoisie of education for lack of a better term.

Democratic Party's collapse

"Consider that when Obama last ran, the Midwest was still known as an impenetrable Blue Wall, while Florida and Ohio were still purple states. When Bill Clinton gave his acceptance speech in 1996, the Democrats were competitive throughout large swathes of the South. During that period, they had gone on to win not just Clinton’s Arkansas and Al Gore’s Tennessee, but states such as Kentucky and Louisiana too."

Link: https://unherd.com/newsroom/is-obama-the-reason-democrats-are-now-underdogs/

Link: https://unherd.com/2024/11/the-progressive-case-against-immigration/

Link:

Spiritual beliefs

I am agnostic, and have seen too much tragedy to believe in happy endings. I agree with Indeterminism and absurdism, but not nihilism. Nihilism has been used to justify some of the worst atrocities, such as the Holocaust and Khmer Rouge.

Religions can be both good or bad. Some of the worst uses of religion have been to justify slavery, discrimination, and unjustifiable violence. Some of the best uses of religion have been to promote peace, mindfulness, and freedom.

Yet the existence of nearly-miraculous numbers such as pi (3.14), e (2.718), and the 50-50 sex ratio have convinced me that external forces do exist, but are not those prescribed in religions.

I don't believe in the afterlife. As Stephen Hawking said:

There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.

Personal Philosophy

Do not speak ill of the dead

Rest in peace

My political, economic, and religious views don't fit in an ideological box, and are guided by the maxims of truth, introspection, and pragmatism. I am an empiricist, and open to changing my mind on most issues. My ideological views often change with time.

The fact I have a Bachelor's degree and am getting a PhD itself likely inclines my relatively politically liberal views, but I'm also Asian American. Most racial minorities in the United States are not ideological (defined as agreeing more than 75% of the time with the left or right), and I count myself as non-ideological.

Truth is stranger than fiction

Perception is not reality, that is beliefs or founding myths can often be totally wrong. Here are some examples:

• Wealth and income inequality was just as high, if not higher, in France during the Belle Époque compared to France on the eve of the French Revolution.

• Broadly speaking, the United States aspires to be an egalitarian country with social mobility, epitomized by the American Dream. In practice, socioeconomic mobility in the United States is relatively low, compared to Nordic countries and Canada, and income inequality in the United States is relatively high.

Although Latin America is a largely Roman Catholic region, it has the highest rates of non-marital childbearing in the world (55–74% of all children in this region are born to unmarried parents).

One of my favorite shows is Adam Ruins Everything. One of my favorite scientists is Nicolaus Copernicus.

Economic Views

You could call my economic views as part of heterodox economics. I reject many of the fundamental tenets of mainstream economics, such as the time value of money.

I am a believer in the political economy. Culture is important to understanding economics, including models of economics.

Some of my favorite economists include Peter Turchin, Bryan Caplan, Ha-Joon Chang, etc.

Ideology

Ideology should not be a litmus test, but adapted to particular circumstances. Confucius gave different advice to different people, depending on their circumstances.

Some people who have influenced my views include James Wilson (Founding Father), Mellow Melon (https://aops.com), MJ DeMarco (businessman), Adam Khoo (Singaporean businessman), Peter Turchin (historian), Matthew Syed (journalist), and Adam Conover (comedian).

• For example, in my view the left-right political spectrum doesn't represent a worldwide perspective on politics, rather just the Western world. For example, much of the rest of the world has a shame-based culture, while the western world has a guilt-based culture: Guilt–shame–fear spectrum of cultures.
• The United States has a two-party system, but much of the rest of the world with electoral competition has a multi-party system.

The Pareto distribution and Zipf's law from statistics have influenced my political and economic views.

My economic views can be classified as part of heterodox economics, and I focus on empirical evidence, not merely conjecture. One example includes the anchoring effect, where individual judgement is based on relative comparison, and has been used as part of the decoy effect.

• In my opinion, mainstream economists do not take into account the realities of physical force, taxation, and borders. Before World War II, the right of conquest was the standard by which the world operated, and even today the Russian invasion of Ukraine highlights how physical force--blood and iron or the barrel of a gun is the foundation of political power.
• They also don't take into account how money is a social construct, with no inherent value, and the only reason it carries inherent value is because we choose to believe it does. Inflation is due to an increase in the money supply, which is inevitable due to the paradox by which the fiat currency system and fractional reserve lending operate (P < P + I).

Side-note: I am neither a communist nor a fascist. Both ideologies have usually led to totalitarian regimes that have committed democide and genocide in their wake.

Influential Economists

Some economists who have influenced my views include Thomas Piketty, Ha-Joon Chang, Bryan Caplan, and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.

Piketty inspired my views about the political economy, Chang inspired my views about economics, Caplan inspired my views on pragmatism, and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita inspired my vies about political science. In particular, Capital and Ideology by Piketty is one of my favorite economics books.

• One of the most important points of Piketty's book was that income and wealth inequality increased in France after the French Revolution, particularly in the French Third Republic (1870-1940) in the Belle Epoque (1880-1914). Even though France was no longer an absolute monarchy and had universal male suffrage, it was still extremely plutocratic.

Education

Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education was an intriguing book, and while I don't agree with all of it, his coverage of signaling is thorough. I don't agree with him on everything in the book, but I have ironically learned a lot from it.

People mostly forget what they have learned in classes, particularly in arcane subjects (i.e. history, fine arts, literature, etc.). Even as a mathematics major, I often forget some content I learned in prerequisite mathematics classes that aren't used in later classes.

Most people don't use what they have learned. For example, I'm a mathematics & statistics major, and although I do genuinely enjoy some areas of knowledge, I likely will never use them--i.e. most history, literature, fine arts, even some science and English.

• To expand on this, most people will not get a college degree. Less than 40% of American adults over the age of 25 have a Bachelor's degree, and even including an Associate's degree, less than 50% of American adults over the age of 25 have a college degree. Today's schools prepare students for college, even though most won't graduate from college.

Finally, even what students have learned that is relatively relevant is simply signaling. As someone who has taken advanced graduate courses in mathematics, which are arcane by every standard, there are few jobs available. I became a statistician because I need to have a viable way to make a living, though I generally do enjoy statistics.