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People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

freakonomics.com

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Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#441

Post by phkahler »

lisper wrote: post #81
phkahler wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the collection of genes is. There are exactly zero individual genes roaming around replicating in isolation.

This is a common misconception. The collection is the unit of replication, but the gene is nonetheless the unit of selection. This argument was laid out in excruciating detail by Dawkins, but the TL;DR is that reproductive fitness can only ever be measured relative to some environment, and all the other genes in a replicative unit are (part of) the environment for a gene and its alleles.

Collection, chromosome, Gene, base pair. Selection happens at all these levels.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#443

Post by lisper »

phkahler wrote: post #441
lisper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misconception. The collection is the unit of replication, but the gene is nonetheless the unit of selection. This argument was laid out in excruciating detail by Dawkins, but the TL;DR is that reproductive fitness can only ever be measured relative to some environment, and all the other genes in a replicative unit are (part of) the environment for a gene and its alleles.

Collection, chromosome, Gene, base pair. Selection happens at all these levels.

Nope. Selection can only happen at the level of something that has an effect on the phenotype. That's the definition of a gene.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#444

Post by [deleted] »

ballenf wrote: post #296
smhost wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did he mean at 1:09:22 ( https://youtu.be/R1R2jH4PQEo?t=1h09m22s ) when he says "nobody complains about multiplying one fraction by another because it looks reasonable, but it turns out it isn't reasonable at all"?

He explains that it was a "triumph of Greek mathematics" to prove that multiplying the top and bottom of a fraction is how you multiply two fractions. That is, we accept as true that you can multiply fractions this way, but we kind of just got lucky that it does work that way. Proving that it always works is non-trivial, but that is totally glossed over in math classes, doing a disservice to students. This is in cont…

[deleted]

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#445

Post by gilbetron »

hutzlibu wrote: post #403
gilbetron wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting, care to provide arguments? Read a history book. Hell, read Timeline by Michael Crichton.

Not an argument. I believe I read a lot of history books. So can you then provide me with your enlightened wisdom that you got, I apparently failed to grasp?

"needed lots of dumb workers and peasants who were able to do their simple work"

Sounds like a very Monty Python-esque view of history, that's all. Perhaps you have a far more nuanced view, but it doesn't come across as such.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#446

Post by ibeckermayer »

freeflight wrote: post #381
alankay wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memorizing equations is "religion" not "math". "Understanding" is "math".

I wish more math teachers would actually understand this. The amount of crap I got for using the "wrong way" to calculate something in math class, was probably one of the major reason I never really got into it. I remember math classes in the beginning actually being fun, I loved figuring out more convenient/to me more logical ways to calculate something, only to be constantly shut down by the teachers for using them…

I consider this a tragic story. It sounds like you have the type of genuine curiosity and will to understand (not just get the answer) that would make you a really good math student, but your dopey teachers--who probably don't have your natural disposition towards math--beat it out of you.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#447

Post by eli_gottlieb »

Zimahl wrote: post #425
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, there's a certain classist dismissal here of people who just plain did not attend university , let alone take "liberal arts classes" (someone please tell me what the normative value of my Chinese mythology course was!). How about we stop assuming the working class can't think for itself, eh?

It's not a dismissal of those who 'did not attend university'. It's a dismissal of people who are devaluing a university education because they did not attend university. There is no reason to believe that 'the working class' (not sure what that means really, many of us all work for a living) can't think for itself, but we have to be honest in an uneducated person thinking they know more about economics, climate chan…

>and they have appealed to the masses that are uneducated in how the internet works and why it was successful in the first place.

I question this premise. How much of the public actually buys the Republican line on net neutrality?

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#448

Post by russdpale »

Klathmon wrote: post #219
relic wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well to be fair a lot of people contacting a front-line service center for a non-specialized product/service can't even articulate their problem accurately, if at all. I'm sure it'd be pretty easy to get jaded about people after hearing "I don't know if it's on or not, it just doesn't work...fix it" enough times.

That person calling in more than likely knows significantly more than you about some other topic, and that's the point. Someone calling in that doesn't know the difference between the PC tower and the monitor and doesn't care to learn isn't "stupid" any more than you are stupid for not knowing an alternator from an AC compressor, and chances are you won't remember even if shown once or twice because you pay someone e…

Yeh but what would the mechanic think if I didn't know the keys had to be in the ignition? Such are the level of questions you field at First level tech support.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#449

Post by Klathmon »

russdpale wrote: post #448
Klathmon wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That person calling in more than likely knows significantly more than you about some other topic, and that's the point. Someone calling in that doesn't know the difference between the PC tower and the monitor and doesn't care to learn isn't "stupid" any more than you are stupid for not knowing an alternator from an AC compressor, and chances are you won't remember even if shown once or twice because you pay someone e…

Yeh but what would the mechanic think if I didn't know the keys had to be in the ignition? Such are the level of questions you field at First level tech support.

You also get those kinds of questions at a shop.

Stuff like "where's my seat warmer?", "How do I turn off the windshield wipers" and "why does my window go up all the way when I just touch the button" are all questions I was asked when I worked as a mechanic.

And if they are coming to my shop to get those answers, then it's my job to help them. Hopefully come tax time when I need to talk to that accountant he wont laugh me out of the room because I didn't know I needed to keep my own tax when working as a contractor.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#450

Post by collinmanderson »

ctchocula wrote: post #347
azernik wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, by the way, a problem I see with a lot of public policy - in a market system, what's good for companies is not necessarily what's good for the system . Steve Eisman puts this well in [1] when talking about why he's investing in bank stocks even though he thinks prospective rollbacks in Dodd-Frank reforms are a bad idea: "There's two issues. There's what I think about the financial system and what I think abo…

I liked the Steve Eisman character from The Big Short, but I was disappointed his prediction bank stocks would do well didn't play out. KBE: 44.49 Jan 30, 2017, 47.82 July 11, 2018 = 7.48% price growth (I couldn't find numbers for total return and too lazy to compute from distribution history) VFAIX: 20123 Jan 30, 2017, 23569 July 11, 2018 = 17.1% total return VFIAX: 22291 Jan 30, 2017, 27729 July 11, 2018 = 24.4% to…

KBE total return is about 12.8% (42.70 to 48.19) based on http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?KBE,VFAIX,VFIAX (those numbers are adjusted based on distributions and splits)
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