Earlier quoted context omitted.
Monogamy was your first unrealistic assumption.
Monogamy is something that is mathematically well defined.
Yes, a one-to-one injection, nudge nudge, wink wink. At least they didn't start assuming spherical women...
Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?
181–190 of 232 posts
Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a little confused by your assertation that therefore we can't dismiss it because it's "classically liberal" rather than "libertarian." I think the point still stands - that they have a very particular perspective, however you choose to define that. I happen to be sympathetic with a lot of their viewpoints, but it is in fact very axe-grindy. Reason magazine comes off as a lot more reasonable to me than Quillette,…
My point is that it's not fair or accurate to call describe it as "highly partisan libertarian-right". I'm with you on the axe-grindiness of Quillette, and since you mention it, that's probably why I don't read it much anymore. "Libertarian" can mean all kinds of things these days, but in the comment to which I was replying, the description connotes associations with things like: extreme positions against state welfa…
I broadly agree with your characterization of Quillette, but I'm curious (genuinely, not in a gotcha way) if you see publications like HuffPo or Vox as similarly having an axe to grind? The thing that makes Quillette stand out IMO is that among many venues with an axe to grind, they get called out for it a lot while publications with equal or worse histories of partisan priorities get a pass as "mainstream web media".
Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for going trough the issue for us. Something about the hypothesis itself: The variability hypothesis seems plausible, but there seems to be little evidence linking it to biological differences. Variability differences undoubtedly exist, but not universally and not with same degree across cultures. As the measured variance is very culture dependent and even disappears, existing data does not support the hypothe…
I would be very cautious citing that paper. They draw some very strong conclusions based on unsupported assumptions and evidence of dubious significance from populations with unusual cultural features. > Therefore, we conclude that both variance and [variance ratio] in mathematics performance vary greatly among countries. Confirming our earlier finding ([21]), we also conclude that [variance ratio] is reproducibly es…
> unusual cultural features.
If culture affects the outcome, it waters down the premise of the variability difference theory.
And what is unusual about Czech Republic, where VR and gender gap were near unity and zero?
Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
> not in the brain of the classifier. Sure, but you can see physical differences between your paternal and maternal grandfather, too, even if your culture considers them the same "race." > to say that I could extremely accurately > classify blue and brown eyed people? And why not classify them as deep blue, light blue, hazel, and deep brown? Or blue, gray, and brown? Etc. The point isn't that everyone's eye color is…
I'm not arguing that race is a useful basis for determining someone's value in society, or anything like that. Merely that it actually does exist, and different peoples at this point in history have vastly different lineages.
I wasn't arguing that you were a bigot. I wasn't denying that the average Englishman is more similar to the average Greek, than to the average Japanese.
I'm saying a belief in distinct "races" of people is bogus.
Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?
#185here's a genetics paper that covers this topic: https://investigativegenetics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... 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), an…
Sometimes it feels like we are in competition to claim that we are the least fortunate of all sub-groups. Not future focused at all.
I agree but I also think that the competition makes sense when you look at the incentives for being recognized by society as unfortunate.
Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?
#186> wouldn’t that suggest that males would have a much higher selection pressure to become more desirable than females? I would think they would want to be more variable as conditions are variable (and therefore fitness criteria are variable). This is such a chaotic theory, that no amount of mathematics could categorize it in a definitive way.
there has to be losers when it comes to selection pressures.
we can modify our memes faster than we can modify our genes so this doesn't really apply to decent with modification through biological reproduction.
biological evolutionary theories unrelated to biological reproduction are meh.
Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?
#187Honest 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?
Saying "the differences between the races are undeniable" is a tautology; races are a construction based on observable differences, it could not be any other way. The ill-defined phenotypical traits that are used to group people into the various races only account for the minuscule fraction of their DNA that can be discerned with the naked eye.
Genotypic differences usually correlate strongly (although not always) with phenotypic differences. Continental races can easily be distinguished on phenotype alone.
Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?
#188Honest 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?
Because the differences are small. Insignificant. 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…
"Because the differences are small. Insignificant"
Some differences, like IQ between whites and blacks in America, can be one or more standard deviations.
Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be very cautious citing that paper. They draw some very strong conclusions based on unsupported assumptions and evidence of dubious significance from populations with unusual cultural features. > Therefore, we conclude that both variance and [variance ratio] in mathematics performance vary greatly among countries. Confirming our earlier finding ([21]), we also conclude that [variance ratio] is reproducibly es…
> unusual cultural features. If culture affects the outcome, it waters down the premise of the variability difference theory. And what is unusual about Czech Republic, where VR and gender gap were near unity and zero?
>it waters down the premise
Couple of points here. A culture biased along gender lines may bias the outcome thus obscure the effect of genetics on gender differences. Also, no one in their right mind claims that environment has no effect, and so measuring some environmental influence doesn't undermine the greater male variability hypothesis.
>And what is unusual about Czech Republic
I wouldn't hazard a guess, but the "paradoxical effect" of gender equality negatively correlating with female interest in STEM might have some hard-to-tease-out influence here.
Re: Has an uncomfortable truth been suppressed?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Making the paper disappear after having published it, replacing it with a different paper without any explanation at all of what did happen, should also be embarrassing for everyone involved.
It very much is embarrassing to everyone involved; there's no denying that. It's less clear to me that the outcome is bad. Hill's paper really doesn't make sense in NYJM. It's so out of place I think it's actually pretty embarrassing to Hill as well.
I understand that a paper may be published by error. But just removing it without explaining the move to the readers is a shameful lack of respect towards them. If I was on the editorial board of this journal I would resign immediately.
It doesn't matter how silly the paper is, the problem is that they are treating their readers as idiots.