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> the idea that some huge percentage of males are simply not desirable enough (as we shall see, the paper requires this percentage to be over 50) to have a chance of reproducing bears no relation to the world as we know it In early humans only the top 16% of males mated Most people mate now, due to religious/society-enforced monogamy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2833377/
There is more going on than this. It's important to know a bit about the venues in question. Mathematical Intelligencer isn't really a journal at all; it's literally a magazine, carried on the shelves it bookstores. It runs some original research but also poetry and jokes and general cultural coverage. NYJM is, on the other hand, a serious (if online-only, lower-tier) theoretical mathematics journal. Ted Hill's paper…
My take on this is that something is badly wrong in NYJM's editorial office.
A retraction would have made clear what the problem with the paper was. Sure, publicly saying "we made a mistake" sucks, but not doing so empowers the author of the paper to claim they are being persecuted for their beliefs.
Issues with the paper and its relevance to the platform it was published in notwithstanding, I think that we have two highly politicized sides, one wishing to promote a finding of "this is how things have been through history" as "this is the way things ought to be" (The MI staff expressed this concern), and another side that seeks to minimize or hide these findings because it will hinder efforts to engineer a "better" future.
I think both sides are causing problems and this kind of stuff is getting tiresome.
> the idea that some huge percentage of males are simply not desirable enough (as we shall see, the paper requires this percentage to be over 50) to have a chance of reproducing bears no relation to the world as we know it In early humans only the top 16% of males mated Most people mate now, due to religious/society-enforced monogamy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2833377/
Not sure who is downvoting you, this seems to be correct?
a) Only 16% etc b) most people mate now c) due to religious etc
The first is well backed up. The second, not so much, it depends on community (look up the number of childless people in, say, Milan). The third, WTF?
Mixing up facts with WTF like that attracts downvotes.
Honest question, the general physical differences between the sexes or even races are undeniable, so why is it so taboo to talk about the differences that almost certainly exist in our minds?
> the idea that some huge percentage of males are simply not desirable enough (as we shall see, the paper requires this percentage to be over 50) to have a chance of reproducing bears no relation to the world as we know it In early humans only the top 16% of males mated Most people mate now, due to religious/society-enforced monogamy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2833377/
Honest question, the general physical differences between the sexes or even races are undeniable, so why is it so taboo to talk about the differences that almost certainly exist in our minds?
If you take some group of 1000 people which has been selected in some way that skews towards intelligence, you might find that the men have IQ 105.14 on average and the women 105.13. Like, wow. You can find groups with bigger differences if you're willing to pick an obscure group, but then you have a bigger but more obscure difference.
If you talk about that you risk attracting the companionship of people who need to get a life, or sounding like one of those people.
Honest question, the general physical differences between the sexes or even races are undeniable, so why is it so taboo to talk about the differences that almost certainly exist in our minds?
In this very particular context, if I had to choose between publishing a theorical scientific paper on marginal physical effects and undermining efforts for a better society having effects on real people, I may hesitate.
He does have some arguments but math is nowhere found, making this a joke of a refutation.