You can’t ever get any concrete proof for a broad statement like "China focuses on economic growth first and foremost, rather than militarization and forceful expansion". But the best proof you can get is this precise situation. Of course even looking at it from a purely militarist perspective attacking Taiwan is very bold. Considering it’s geography and the potential of third party‘s (USA) intervening militarily.. but hey, Putin faced similar concerns and didn’t give two fu*ks. The main reasons Taiwan is not under attack yet are of economic nature. It’s semiconductor monopoly that China depends upon and the possibility of Western sanctions crippling China‘s export business, as well as the possibility of Western companies pulling out of China. Both of these Xi does not want to have under any circumstances, as it appears.

Best way to see he‘s correct is China‘s reluctance to attack Taiwan.

I thought it couldn’t get worse than the first thing you said but here we are. If you haven’t noticed we‘re on r/books if I‘d looked for responses like yours I‘d have posted on r/conservative

Thanks for being helpful! Unlike many others here lol

I am trying to learn. That is essentially my biggest aspiration in life. About anything and everything lol. These 3 things were just fields that I could think of off the top of my head.

Worst advice here yet

I‘m sure that‘s great advice if I want to know whether eating 5 hamburgers a day is recommended or not, but if I‘m trying to find out whether Vitamin K improves absorption of carbs, I don’t think browsing such websites will do.

Unfortunately your assumption was incorrect. I am 6‘0 and 122 lbs. the last thing I need to do is to lose weight lol. I want to gain weight & just generally to feel less dreaded and out of energy. Also I simply enjoy learning about virtually anything, I just named 3 topics that came into my head first

Yeah being dumb sadly is nothing that a PhD makes disappear there are some really delusional people in academia as well I remember a story about a guy (PhD in biology) that claimed viruses don’t exist. Basically he said that he‘ll give anyone that can prove the existence of viruses to him $1,000 someone then linked him 6 peer-reviewed articles that do just that and after he (suprise!!) refused to give out the money the other guy took it to court and the dr. was forced to give out the reward. Lol Anyway such stories are funny but I don’t think I‘m at serious risk of falling prey to some strange people suggesting delusional conspiracies antivaxx or whatever else.. I trust myself to be able to see through that

> because the medical community has come to the resounding consensus that vaccines are safe. If that doesn't tell you the state of medical science, I don't know what does.

That’s exactly the kind of knowledge that I‘m looking for. Things that are agreed upon by a majority of experts in the field. I think for most topics the majority of experts have already come to agree on lots of viable knowledge. So I just have to find someone reliable who tells me what those things are that are widely agreed upon. But I reckon there’s no easy way to find a book that credibly does so I‘ll have to use my critical thinking skills.

Thank you, helpful response! Tbh journal articles sort of scare me they’re just very difficult to understand and I mean since most commonly they contain some sort of study that was conducted it’s like a very very specific niche thing you get out of it + looking at a single study may be too one-sided even if it’s a peer-reviewed and methodically properly conducted one.. you’d probably rather look at meta-analyses of studies but that’s all a bit too high-level anyway I don’t think the time you have to extend to extract knowledge this way is really worth it even if after this process you might certainly have the most up to date, scientifically accurate knowledge on one certain thing. That’s only really viable if you either have infinite free time or are a scientist in said field and it is your job to possess this "super knowledge"). That’s why I’d prefer really good books because that’s ideally supposed to be sort of the condensed knowledge of someone who has done all that extremely hard work and can now present you with their findings in an easier to understand manner. And the outdated issue may apply to some books but generally I don’t think science moves that fast that if you get a more general overview over things written in idk 2017 that significant parts of that knowledge have been nullified through new findings since.. but of course you have to be careful if you read things about economics written in a time prior to wide-spread internet for example.. anyway where I think you’re correct is that it’s probably a good idea to look out for prescribed readings of reputable universities for certain classes they have or identifying authoritative figures in certain subjects and try to get booklist from them or read a book they‘ve published! Still alot of work but hoping for an easy way to this was maybe rather naive haha

Maybe that’s sort of a misunderstanding with reception I didn’t really mean Amazon reviews. I‘m talking about books that were so popular that when you google them you get a wiki article about the book with a section labelled reception and that states how tbe book‘s been received by the public / journalists / the scientific bubble that book was related to. And then ideally I‘d want books where that Wiki section is mostly people saying positive things instead of things you commonly see such as book failed to adress x, y or disregarded/neglected z ..

Will you update this for Chp4?

Why is there such a huge disparity between rich and wealthy people lol

Lmao u sure ur iq is 144 and not 14.4?

The HDI is not really a good way of measuring human development, unfortunately. For example tax havens have an unfair advantage and in general the amount of factors taken into account is just way too little to give an accurate depiction. There are far better indices taking a look at development that are worth seeing.