Random links

Israeli Christians Think and Do Almost the Opposite of American Evangelicals
"in 2013, 82 percent of white evangelicals believed that God gave the land of Israel to the Jews. In contrast, only 19 percent of Christians actually born, raised, and living in Israel believe that God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people." Or "The vast majority of Israeli Christians (86%) believe the United States is too supportive of Israel. Just 6 percent said the American government wasn’t supportive enough, while 7 percent said the level of US support was just right." (Worth noting that the vast majority of Israeli Christians are Arab but still...).
Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization
"we constructed a database of historical and archaeological information from 30 regions around the world over the last 10,000 years. Our analyses revealed that characteristics, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems, show strong evolutionary relationships with each other and that complexity of a society across different world regions can be meaningfully measured using a single principal component of variation."
Echo chamber and trench warfare dynamics in online debates
The article takes "issue with the claim by Sunstein and others that online discussion takes place in echo chambers, and suggest that the dynamics of online debates could be more aptly described by the logic of ‘trench warfare’, in which opinions are reinforced through contradiction as well as confirmation."