gottasayit

Please. Look at what's happening in the Ukraine. Can you see the US invading Mexico or Canada and keeping the territory because our President was a megalomaniac?

Even when we do invade somewhere to take out someone like UBL, Saddam Hussein, or Noriega; when we're done we clean up, rebuild some infrastructure, and leave.

No other nation on earth in history has restricted the wars it fights in such a principled way, rather than using them as excuses to just take more territory.

Of course Clapper isn't going to be punished. Holder was held in contempt of Congress for stonewalling on Fast and Furious, but since pursuit of his punishment would require action from an Obama political appointee, nothing will happen.

No one went to jail for the Wall Street fiasco.

No one was fired for being wrong about WMDs in Iraq.

We still don't know anything about Benghazi while some poor sap who published a video rots in jail as a scapegoat... no one will suffer consequences.

No one in this administration will cooperate in determining the origins, extent, and details of the IRS attack on conservative political groups.

The list of government protecting its own goes on forever.

Why is anyone surprised that things are the same for this particular scandal? Particularly with this administration that gets a lot of political cover from the press?

Please drop the stereotype of the social sciences.

Did you read the article? These researchers were legitimately frightened at how their work would be received and in my opinion it's only heretical in a minor way... AND THEY'RE SOCIAL SCIENTISTS!

I always find the hostility some HN members have towards the social sciences

Yeah, that's why my original post (that in a computer analysis context wouldn't have raised an eyebrow) is being moderated into the dirt.

Only if you consider American to describe a particular set of genetics does this question even make sense.

It's not about having the exact same genetics.

For example, it might be about sets of genes or functionally equivalent sets of genes that function in a similar manner despite appearing in members of ostensibly different "races".

The article mentioned that students are chosen for these experiments. Maybe students self-select for having particular genetic sets so you end up with homogenous-enough results that are going to differ radically from the results obtained from genetically isolated groups in other parts of the world.

You start talking about genes, and people panic and worry that you're talking about race. Genes are more complex than that.

And BAM, there goes the moderation hammer for uncomfortable thoughts.

If we were talking about whether flaws in a computer system were because of the data fed in, the software running it, the hardware, or impurities in the silicon -- we'd all be very clinical and think about it rationally (minus a few Linux/Windows/Mac flames).

But when talking about analyzing basic differences in people, there are elements in the community that can't even hear the blasphemy.

Sadly, this is why the social sciences will never make progress. A fear of really looking in and doing the Science is why the social sciences will always resemble a cargo cult in its lack of real value.

Go ahead, mod me down until this text is one with the background. It won't improve or validate your religious-like belief system because it just isn't good Science.

Henrich’s work with the ultimatum game was an example of a small but growing countertrend in the social sciences, one in which researchers look straight at the question of how deeply culture shapes human cognition.

It's so sad that academics in the social sciences fields are terrified to ask honest questions that they might not like the answers to.

I guess that's the reason that social sciences get disrespected so heavily.

The funny thing is that the REAL question that these people don't want to face is "Are these differences more than just cultural? Are they genetic?"

They'd as soon ask that question as a Baptist congregation would seriously ponder Occam's Razor and a need to posit a deity.

Meh, and you'd think that a singer as popular as Justin Bieber actually produced good music.

Bitcooin like any tool from the invention of fire

Well, yeah... Mr. Stross doesn't trust people to make their own decisions about using something like bitcoin, but he seems to advocate trusting those same people to vote for government overlords who will create rules that all of us should live by.

Meh, I have never owned a bitcoin. Never mined one. Don't intend to do so soon.

I'm pretty ambivalent about bitcoins. I view them as something people want to trade with each other. They're an interesting experiment in new ways to break free of some problems of fiat currencies and precious metal currencies. If they survive it's because people find some value in them. Good for them.

I read Stross's article because I was curious about arguments against bitcoin. All I read was a bunch of knee-jerk emotional dribble about carbon footprints, lack of taxability, and the dreaded "some people own too many".

So I called it like I saw it.

TL:DR;

Big government socialist type doesn't like financial decentralization and a monetary system that can't be strictly controlled. Wants it to die quickly because ultimately free people might decide that it's worth keeping and using. News at 11.

I really like this author's writing style. The prose flows and is fairly tight yet colorful.

That said, his angst seems to be misplaced.

When younger, he seized upon Sagan's rules as though they were The Way(tm)... and now he's disillusioned that they haven't made him invincible. Then he tries to use mostly logical argumentation to explain how the Baloney Detector Kit is flawed. That's ironic.

Looking at his other blog posts, you can see similar angst at a lack of comfort being completely absorbed in a specific ideology: http://plover.net/~bonds/nolongeraskeptic.html#jump

I guess he has a brain that wants really badly to see everything in black and white - but at least he's smart enough to reason past that.

I would argue that the baloney detector kit, his skepticism, and similar logical mechanisms are all that has kept this individual from going over the ideological cliff into unshakable belief syndrome.

The OWS Manifesto completely contradicts your contention.

http://www.peoplesassemblies.org/2012/05/may-12th-globalmay-...