Log
RF Foster’s highlights in Chapter 14 of his book that while post-famine Ireland had demographi decline, large-scale emigration and altered farming conditions all thes trends can be traced to a ‘watershed’ year in economic history for Ireland, the ending of the Napoleonic wars in 1815.
This resulted in less tilling as demand for crops in Europe was reduced. Tilling seems to have been the more ecomical and easier method of agriculture. Pastoral farming now became the economical best choice. Despite the figures not really showing this reduction in tillage before the famine, it was something Ireland was going to have to deal with.
I have a question about the dislocation between the landlord and farming class after the famine? Why was there a division there?
I need to be careful too about confirmation bias. Part of me wants to go against the regular narrative for Ireland which is also not good. It seems that the British government demanded rates to be paid for relief. Landlords with poorer tenants could not afford these rates as the tenants could not pay rent.
There’s an intense sense the irish are a land of aimless paupers. One landlord who owned close to 240km2 saying that he would not “breed paupers to pay priests” as some justification for his evictions.
Yesterday, I was thinking a bit about justification and the placebo effect. I read before that you can have justified belief that is not necessarily true. This reminded me of the placebo affect but its not always related to getting better. It pops up in this template where you do something, that you believe is good for you, then when evidence to counter that is present the feelings attached to what you were doing are maintained while the feelings for the evidence aren’t so strong. It’s an irrationality but thats never stopped us before.
Research
Getting some interesting results now that I’m trying to produce them. Should have done this earlier!
- Can demostrate non-lineraity in some stages.
- Can demonstrate possible covariances in one stage.
- Should be noted that the inputs are somewhat arbitrarily chosen.
The general thesis is that a tool is developed that can cope with abstraction of a formal nature in the literature so that common techniques can be applied.
Need to try and tighten up the results and discussion, what are the main points?