asianthrowaway

If this publication is false, its premise is true, which would mean the publication is true?

I'm not sure to what extent the problem is due to economics and to what extent it's due to culture. I read recently that half of single men in Japan are virgins, which is quite staggering. Lots of Japanese people seem to have simply "dropped out" of the idea of having an intimate relationship, replacing that with video games and pornography.

When I lived in Japan, what struck me was how infantile and coddled the whole culture seemed: lots of "kawaii" anime everywhere, in advertisements, on product wrapping, etc. Signs everywhere telling you how to act (in grocery stores they have footprint markings on the floor to tell you what path to follow...). Grown men watching anime about little girls. I wonder if all this is creating a masculinity crisis in Japan.

Funny how they went from Samurais to this.

Thanks Trump?

I didn't say Africans and Europeans, I said black people and white people.

Same thing

A black person from Africa and a black person from elsewhere are considered the same race because of their visual similarities, regardless of their background. That's the social construct.

And also perhaps because they actually are from the same race? Do you consider all the current inhabitants of the USA to be native americans?

It can be inaccurate enough that it isn't useful, though.

That's true, but racial categories are really accurate, especially in this age of cheap DNA testing. As for usefulness, I'd say it's pretty useful in the medical field, for instance certain drugs work in some races but not in others due to racial differences in body chemistry.

Two black people living in the same area, sharing the same cultural and ethnic identity, can differ more genetically than either with a white immigrant.

I'm pretty sure that's false. What is true is that africans exhibit a great amount of genetic diversity, i.e. two africans will typically be more genetically different than two europeans. But the genetic distance between either of those two africans and either of those two europeans will still be even greater.

In other words, that "black" is a race, and "white" is a race, etc, is entirely a social construct, which should be non-controversial given that these categories were created and solidified, culturally and politically, long before genetic science was even a thing.

It's a social construct to the same extent as colors are a social construct, which were formulated long before the theories of electromagnetism was even a thing.

A thing being a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't describe an underlying reality. That applies to any category invented by mankind. For instance, considering plants and animals, or even living beings and inanimate objects, as belonging to different categories is also a social construct. Because, after all, they're all just an association of atoms.

What do you mean by racism? Discriminating against people based on their race? I think the reason we've forced ourselves not to be racist is because it's morally wrong.

All dog breeds are part of the same species, and dog breeds are fundamentally a social construct. Does this mean that we need to stop categorizing dogs into breeds?

I find it hard to understand how some people still cling to 1960s "there is no such thing as race" arguments while in the real world you can send a swab of spit to 23andme or similar services and get a precise breakdown of your ethnic background down to the percentage.

From those I remembered to log on goodreads...

1) Art of Unix programming - amazing book, lots of "ah-ha" moments. Enlightening is the word I suppose.

2) Mythical man month - very uneven. Some chapters are insightful, some are hopelessly outdated. It's short though so it's not too hard to finish.

3) Flowers for Algernon - meh

4) Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh - fun pop sci, enjoyed it

5) Whatever and Elementary Particles by Houellebecq - really liked them (especially Whatever), but I'm not sure I would recommend them since they're so... dark

I'm surprised Bezos doesn't empathize more with the working class, especially given his own humble origins. In fact, I find it hard to discern his personality.

So it seems that a good chunk of us got interested in computers and programming due to wobbly windows. I guess that's Compiz' main legacy, heh.

Maybe we could strike from home on slack

A good programmer plans ahead.

Edit: of course it is up to individual judgement on a case by case basis, and there are instances were it is obvious that no other concrete implementation of an interface will be required. But otherwise, writing an interface is good practice because it helps safeguard against time consuming future refactoring.

Why all the animosity towards "frat bros"? I worked in a "nerd only" environment before and I felt incredibly lonely. Nobody ever wanted to go out for drinks, nobody even talked during lunch.

Things are changing with PSD2 regulations. Banks in the EU starting in 2019 will have to provide open (and secure) APIs to third parties.

what possible vocabulary do they have left for all the superhero films we now have in the cinema?!

"excrement" comes to mind!

They're both well made, well paced, engaging movies. I especially liked inception due to its unique premise.

The thing with movies like interstellar and inception is that they're ultimately action/romance movies set in a sci fi context. 2001 is the only movie that I know of which is exclusively about themes such as human evolution, alien life, etc... and dispensing of all "hollywood fluff". I'm not trying to diss interstellar or inception (I loved both of them), but they're not of the same caliber as 2001.

I wonder if we'll ever see a sci fi movie as deep as 2001 again...

Smoking weed is way better than getting drunk to enhance creativity (in my experience).

I always wondered why Franco has such a bad rep. I'm not really knowledgeable about the Spanish civil war but it seems he prevented Spain from becoming a Stalinist totalitarian country, which is a good thing in my book.

I mean no doubt he was a brutal dictator but in the grand scheme of things he was by far the lesser of two evils.

Edit: also I think your comparison of the American prison system and the gulag to be rather ridiculous. Afaik, american prisoners aren't worked to death in arctic conditions.

Well, I heard it's rather... controversial, to say the least.

I'm still really unconvinced by this whole "Russians influenced the election" narrative. I doubt a few articles written in poor English about how Hillary runs pedophile sex rings would have had a greater influence on the electorate than Hillary being actively endorsed by nearly every respectable establishment media outlet.

I'm pretty sure Venezuela was (and still is) a democracy.

I think people tend to conflate liberalism (in the classical sense), and democracy. You can have undemocratic liberal states (the Austro-Hungarian empire was a good example).

Yeah, establishment journalists consistently provide accurate information, like the time they discovered that huge stockpile of WMDs in Irak.

I don't think he was disparaging his looks, but rather his social skills. It's undeniable that Zuckerberg is not really an extroverted social butterfly with good public speaking skills, which is kind of a requirement if you want to get into politics.

Pot calling the kettle black.

5 points have been deposited in your social credit account

Edit: why did you censor yourself? At least own up to what you post.

I always wondered, why don't women get very harsh sentences if they get caught making up false rape allegations? I think that would discourage that sort of behavior and sort of balance things out.

I don't think you're very informed on the current state of IQ research (which is totally fine, not many people are, it's a very taboo subject). Perhaps you would gain from reading a bit on the subject (wikipedia has good articles on IQ). But I'll try to address your points.

I reject the premise: I don't think it is possible to predict intelligence accurately from DNA. While some degree of intelligence is heritable, perhaps even a substantial degree, environmental factors still play a big role in intelligence. A poor prenatal environment, malnutrition, toxins like lead, and disease all negatively impact intelligence, none of which you could measure or account for from just DNA

That's true, but the degree of heritability here is important. If intelligence was 10 percent heritable, then I would agree that trying to predict intelligence from DNA would be an absurd endeavor since most of the variance in intelligence would be caused by environmental factors.

But in fact, most recent studies converge towards the fact that IQ is 80 percent heritable. This leaves a lot of wiggle room for the 20 percent of environmental factors to either increase or decrease this genetic component, but I think you really overestimate the effect of environmental factors. Intelligence is predominantly determined by genes, with the environment having mild influences. In the USA they are especially mild since most children thankfully do not grow up starving or suffering from tropical parasites.

Then I would say to allocate the money to provide the best net increase in intelligence

You can't influence intelligence through education. Study after study has shown that effect of education on adult IQ is exactly zero. The point would not be to increase a kid's intelligence, but rather to identify kids with potential and transfer them to an environment where they could flourish.

Though I think you'll find that, if the goal is improving the intelligence of the average population, putting funds into prenatal care and lead abatement programs will probably have the same impact for a lot less money than college scholarships.

Oh definitely, my hypothetical scenario would not increase the average intelligence in the least, that was not the point of it. I agree that prenatal care and policies for a clean environment would probably raise the general intelligence.

since the environmental factors that the poor tend to be more exposed to that lead to downward deviations from genetic potential have had significant impact before schooling starts (in many cases even in utero),

It's true that adverse environmental conditions can lower IQ, but not whole standards of deviation. There are many people who grew up dirt poor and yet managed to achieve academically, which if intelligence was really irreparably impaired by a poor environment would not be possible.

and school performance numbers today basically just reflect the student body (and in very large part the engagement and socioeconomic background of the parents) they are dealt more than outcome differences produced by the school

Which is exactly why a genetic test would be more accurate! It would not take into account differences due to quality of schooling.