hodwik2

Thomas, I would love to get some insight on OS choice from someone so well respected in the security community, and maybe a short mention of why OpenBSD's security laurels may not be well deserved.

How does that sentence acknowledge income inequality as a problem? It just acknowledges it exists, it doesn't make any claim about whether or not it is a problem.

No, this work was done by the London based CEPR -- which is a bipartisan bank-funded research group for economists, not the leftist CEPR out of Washington, DC. They are completely unrelated.

And the research drew this back to Government health initiatives which would be described as "victim blaming" by American Progressives -- healthy eating education and anti-smoking initiatives.

I've worked with a lot of linux distros. I'm a Fedora person myself, but enjoyed Debian and Gentoo also.

For Slackware heads, why should I look at Slackware?

If you're going to learn another language, learn something from a different programming paradigm, or one which is lower level.

Learning Ruby would be an absolute waste of time.

This isn't a hip or cool answer, but I'd suggest learning Java. It's one of the most popular languages by a large margin, and knowing it will help you speak the object-oriented lingua franca. If you only write Python, you're probably mostly writing procedural code. Learning OO is a good idea.

If you had spent a small amount of time and energy propping up the general sentiment that your rock collection was the next big thing, yet had bountiful positive results in the the rock hype cycle, and the rock hype cycle regularly paid out considerable profits on such investments, I would indeed consider buying one of your rocks had I the $15m.

People regularly spend millions on sculptures which are indeed just special rocks. The Guennol Lioness comes to mind.

Then, if you made the rock cost a negligible amount of money given the regular payouts on such ventures, I would really start considering it. Don't be a boob.

I believe they did indeed sell at a huge discount. Valuing all of Urbit at only 12m seems like a low ball.

Granted, I may not understand it at all, I only really started reading about it a few hours ago, but here it goes:

It's a decentralized internet, where your computer is the server, and it communicates directly with other computers by calling directly to their addresses.

As a result, e.g. your facebook data is stored on your computer, and other facebook users call your computer for posts.

Because the data is stored locally, and called through relatively universal APIs, any app can be written to call and display from those APIs, combine them, and let them inform each-other in any way you desire.

You can put your facebook in your reddit in your gmail.

That all runs inside a VM which ties your data to your address, so your identity (real or pseudonym) is singular, and uniform across all apps. This creates a real cost to ugly behavior, like spamming or trolling, as addresses are too limited to burn through willy-nilly.

Apps running on that VM are coded in a rather confusing functional language. Lots of people think he made it that confusing to stop newbs from writing for it.

I bought a star.

Yours is fun, in that it's more free-form, but HIBP seems to cover more ground.

Monarchism is a sort of leftism. It's still about having the state own and manage industry, rather than spreading its ownership out among many people. In the end, leftism always ends up looking like Monarchism anyway, to go to your 'affinity not taxonomy' claim.

It's unclear how reminding us that Socialist Fascists locked up Socialist Democrats is proof that Nazis were somehow secretly Libertarians.

The Nazis nationalized industry. They're Socialists, on the left.

It's really heartbreaking.

As a person who was raised very leftist, and only became a conservative (to the consternation of all friends and family) in my 20's, I really don't know how to talk someone out of the left's bubble. I count it a miracle that I found my way out of leftism. Their politics are so lush and their imagery vivid. Ours, on the right, are dull, utilitarian, and based on comparatively dry topics like economics and social psychology.

It's no wonder politics is swinging left, but it is profoundly frightening. Young Americans, just 5-10 years younger than myself, have reached a new extreme. I believe the US is about to take a hard dive to the left, and I don't want my kids to grow up impoverished by it.

I've been looking for a country, to move to, which is more dedicated to classical liberal/capitalist ideals, and who's young people know and understand the value of hardwork, sobriety and dedication. Somewhere in Asia, perhaps?

" there are plenty of people too busy trying to get the next meal than to do anything else."

Incredible that they have on average 6 hours per day to watch television, given how busy you say they are.

There are arguments that you'd need to create a computer capable of doing "infinite" precision real computation to recreate this effect.

Strange, when I hit that link before there was a paywall. Must've hit it indirectly or something.

Agreed. I wish I better understood how a PR firm manages to place an article that is so clearly an advertisement, like this, with such a major news outlet, without it setting off the editor's spidey-sense.

Yes, there are correlations between genetics and IQ.

There are undoubtedly hereditary factors which will effect nurture, which will subsequently effect IQ. That is not synonymous with IQ being hereditary.

For example, there are hereditary factors which will effect career choices: temperament, physical strength, race, gender, height, and so on. Thus, career choices will correlate with genetics. That doesn't mean that career is a hereditary trait. This is an important distinction.

Likewise, twins being adopted and raised by other families does not correct for nurture. People are still treated differently depending on their genetics: temperament, physical strength, race, gender, height, facial structure, etc. As a result, seeing a correlation between intelligence in separated twins is not enough to prove a genetic cause.

Asking me to see researching backing up my view is asking me to support the null hypothesis. That's not how science works.

Wikipedia: "In inferential statistics, the term 'null hypothesis' usually refers to a general statement or default position that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena, or no association among groups. [...] The null hypothesis is generally assumed to be true until evidence indicates otherwise."

Until IQ Heritability researchers can prove that twin studies aren't just measuring nurture as a result of genetics, the burden remains on them.

I would argue that it is dangerous to hold an idea just because it 'feels' right.

I'm on the not heritable side because I think that's what the science will show, given my understanding of how complex systems work.

It would be immoral not to understand intelligence heritability if it were true -- how could you help those who were disadvantaged if you were not aware of it?

Why would we assume the software is identical across humans?

My point is that the software is NOT identical. It's where intelligence comes from, as opposed to the hardware.

"Intelligence is produced by the brain"

Depends what you mean by produced. If you mean it happens in the brain, then the following would also be true:

- I prefer Strawberry ice cream. Preferences happen in the brain, which is a physical organ. Ice cream preference must be physical.

- I speak English, which is a language, and language happens in the brain, which is a physical organ. English must be physical.

If by produced you are just repeating that you think it is physical, that is begging the question.

Do you argue that every process in a computer is physical, since it all runs on top of hardware? Do you have no conception of software when it comes to the human mind?

I was inspired heavily by some chapters in the book "Intellectuals and Race" by Libertarian theorist Thomas Sowell.

You can hear him talk about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6ImP-gJvas

A few things on torsio dystonia.

One, Torsion Dystonia could just as easily be effecting something else which effects IQ.

Two, the studies on Torsion Dystonia decided to only study people who were not showing symptoms. This means they were selecting around heredity, since those who show symptoms and those who don't were not divided on gene expression -- there is only one allele in play as far as we know.

Three, the study was 14 persons. Removing a single person from the sample could have swung the data to say the opposite.

"But not IQ? What's the exception?"

I don't think intelligence, outside of unusual situations, is a physical characteristic. So I'm not sure how to answer your question.

The change in the brains from early protohumans to homo was a change of kind not quantity. We evolved new mental apparatuses.

On the other hand, from homo habilis/erectus to human, I do not believe there was a drastic change in kind of mental capacity, but rather, in a slow build in the technology of language made possible by our new mental apparatuses, which finally provided us a means for expressing and exploring complex ideas.

The brain is a very complicated system. Like other complicated systems, it is very easy for it to break from small changes (and thus we see mental disorders). On the other hand, it is nigh impossible to make a very complicated and robust system more effective -- a small change here or there generally won't do it.

So, barring us finding major physical differences in the brains of the general populace, they would seem to me to operate with roughly a uniform capability.

The difference that people ignore between the evolution of the brain and visible traits like skin color, is that skin color is a very simple system. We can expect it to change quickly. On the other hand, for human mental capacity to change would require enormous amounts of time because of the complexity involved.

It's possible there are modicums of difference in their operation, but it is unlikely to make a measurable difference between humans when compared with differences in the software of nurture, of culture, of 'thought'.

As with computers, you'll get more out of a little software tuning than you will by shrinking transistors by a nm, and software tuning is much easier.

As for twin studies, see my comment above.

"Heritability of traits can be measured by twin studies."

No, correlations between traits can be measured in twin studies, but they do not prove a causal link.

In the realm of intelligence, it could be (and I would argue) that looking like a nerd generally proceeds becoming one. People become social outcasts, and then become intelligent as a defense mechanism. That is,once in that nerd social caste, a greater percentage of people will find themselves using their brains more often. As a result, they get smarter, and score better on IQ tests.

Because twins are liable to look the same way, have the same temperament, same physique, etc. they are liable to be pushed into the same sorts of social groups, and as a result the same sorts of interests, ultimately pushing their IQs up or down together.

This would not mean that IQ is heritable, but that traits which can have a forcing effect on nurture (and thus IQ) are heritable.

I do not believe IQ is heritable -- racially, or otherwise. Full stop.

Intelligence is, by my estimation, entirely a function of nurture, not nature. Those exceptions are in situations where it is lacking due to handicap.

Which is to say, everyone's brain has the same chance at brilliance (barring fetal alcohol syndrome, neglect, etc.) if they are not intellectually handicapped, and are provided the same child-rearing and temperament.

But, if you believed IQ to be heritable, as many of you do, it would seem a fair guess that it would be distributed unequally among races, as is height, hormone levels, muscularity, and so on.

I don't believe this, as I don't believe IQ is heritable, but I don't see how one could possibly buy into the heritability of IQ while vehemently denying that it could be spread unevenly among races. You guys, to me, all seem to be grappling with two wildly incompatible ideas -- that race can't effect intelligence, and that intelligence is heritable.

You'll need to choose which it is.

I'm happy, even having read his (wrong) ideas on IQ, to entertain Urbit because he seems no more wrong than the rest of you. Cheers.

Of course. It's something like 3% of Syrian refuges, for example. No population is uniform.

But if we were talking casually about, say, Hong Kong, and I said the Hong Kong-ese speak Cantonese, would you complain because some percentage do not?

Or if I said Spanish people speak Spanish?

It's not a useful distinction to draw unless you provide it in the context of some larger argument.

I've not made any arguments that we are pre-disposed, as a race, to these traits. I made no mention of the heritability of these traits. Describing my comment as racism is a complete nonsequitor.

My comment was on the state of the predominant Irish culture at the time of the diaspora.

By 1800 Ireland had been victim to hundreds of years of British misrule, shortly followed a major famine.

Our culture was devastated, our institutions were devastated, our life expectancy was in the mid 30's. We had little experience in self-governance, little experience of Democracy, Catholics were banned from most universities, couldn't fully own land until 1778.

It was even illegal for Catholics to teach elementary school, so childhood education was in an unimaginably desperate state.

Worst of all, Irish immigrants (unlike the H1Bs of today) mostly came from the lowest rungs of society in this already destitute nation and culture.

When my Irish great great grandmother came here she was 16, sent to America by her stepfather (along with her younger brother) because he no longer wanted to care for another man's children. She was fortunate enough to have come from a family of domestics for a wealthy estate, so she spoke well, and could cook and clean. She was comparatively lucky. Even so, it took multiple generations before my family pulled out of poverty, in NYC, and became a normal middle-class family.

Trying to assimilate a population like that into a nation with limited government and social institutions, as the US was in the 19th century, is a recipe for disaster. And it was, for a long time, a disaster.

There is something to be said for having been born (and as a result, raised) in a post-Enlightenment society.

Migrants from pre-Englightenment societies almost always raise the general crime levels, take value that they didn't earn, and become the new underclass.

Look at Irish and Italian immigrants in the US in the 1800s. We came from countries that did not have the same level of education, without the history of liberal philosophy, and as a result we caused a lot of damage to the US -- between organized crime, debauchery, civil unrest, general violence, but also, politically/socially. We didn't understand the American political space, we voted for statist governments, and then began taking over the police forces and unions and mobilizing them against our rivals (blacks, Polish and Jews).

Eventually, we were assimilated, but that was much easier -- we were already Christians (albeit Catholic), and a lot of us could pass for a more desirable nationality. So far, Middle Eastern immigrants have shown little interest in assimilating at all.

It, in no unclear terms, says that you can limit free exercise, so long as you live up to two pretty low standards:

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"b. Government may substantially burden a person's exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—

(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest;

and

(2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."

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This is much less binding than the first amendment: "Congress _shall make no law_ respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

The constitution provided no exceptions whatsoever. By definition, a law which adds exceptions has moved the bar textually. It is, by definition, unconstitutional.

Again, it was a bad move by conservatives using liberal laws to protect themselves, rather than just pushing for conservative laws.