This has always felt like such a weird quirk in human behavior. Imagine a 5 year old who is good at basketball. His parents notice it and enroll him in a class. Coaches recognize his talent and dedicate special time to him. He trains every morning, every night and entire weekends through primary, middle and high school. Gets barely any time for classes, but he anyways just needs a passing grade (which teachers are ha…
lol true, actors are probally the most visible as well on this. I think it's partly because fame also brings a large number of "yes man" around people. If you let your ego get to you you'll believe it. Kinda a common and real problem amoung the ruling classes of history forever now. It's also why some of the best rules have lower egos because it's less effective.
Nobel Disease
111–120 of 139 posts
Re: Nobel Disease
#112Re: Nobel Disease
#113One of the beautiful things about coding is the immediacy of the feedback. Screw up and your program crashes. Get it right and the machine does what you want. Tests turn green - that's nice. Subtle bugs can be deceptive, you might be thinking. True, but lots of bugs are not at all subtle. When you get good at coding, you get a lot of positive reinforcement coming from a machine rather than other people. What that doe…
Re: Nobel Disease
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hispanic is probably the perfect example for this. A blonde Argentinian is probably not predisposed to diabetes. What I’m trying to say is racial categorizations don’t follow any rules based in our biology or genetics. For it to be scientific you would need to be able to categorize any given individual 100% based on some unchanging rule that is based on underlying biology. We cannot currently do that and what I’m say…
I was under the impression doctors do this exact categorization all the time? Given an individual's race (looking at them and asking) and the medical literature they change their treatments if need be. Skin color and place of origin is a pretty rough but decent way to do this? If need be they could just sequence your genes, afterall isn't that exactly how they connect and learn about hereditary diseases or know that…
Re: Nobel Disease
#115Billionaires are also susceptible to extreme forms this disease. It was also known as hubris to the ancient Greeks.
Re: Nobel Disease
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, if we wanted every human on Earth to be over 6' tall, we could just cull the short ones (or stop them from reproducing), and this is scientifically valid, but, of course, evil. As far as lobotomy, I don't know, but it seems to be widely discredited inasmuch as it didn't achieve its aims (or if it did, the aims themselves were highly questionable) Given the title, lobotomy is an apt reference "The originator o…
"6 feet, 6 figures, 6 inches" is unironically eugenics.
Re: Nobel Disease
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree ethics can be subjective, so much so that there is more than one model of ethics. However, please tell me which model of ethics supports eugenics. Is it Utilitarian, Rights, Fairness, Common Good, or Virtue?
Since it's subjective, you can just make up your own model supporting eugenics, and it'll be just as valid as any other model.
Re: Nobel Disease
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, if we wanted every human on Earth to be over 6' tall, we could just cull the short ones (or stop them from reproducing), and this is scientifically valid, but, of course, evil. As far as lobotomy, I don't know, but it seems to be widely discredited inasmuch as it didn't achieve its aims (or if it did, the aims themselves were highly questionable) Given the title, lobotomy is an apt reference "The originator o…
> I mean, if we wanted every human on Earth to be over 6' tall, we could just cull the short ones (or stop them from reproducing), and this is scientifically valid, but, of course, evil. What's scientifically valid about that? What part of the scientific process is being utilized? What hypothesis is being tested? If you're implying that people would start to be taller because we are culling short people, then you're…
To reiterate - I do not support this! I think it's evil! but isn't that basically what it is?
Re: Nobel Disease
#119The first entries are a bit weird to me. They are mostly about eugenics for people who got their Nobel prices in the early 1900s. The thing is that in those days even the state of California promoted eugenics [1]. And according to Wikipedia, so much so that they might have even played a role in influencing Germany [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_California [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_e…
You've touched on the whole problem with the "cancel culture" of today. Scientific and political beliefs often do not stand the test of time, but is it fair to blame the people of past eras for their misjudgements using the values of today? How do we know for sure when we're right about something? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8V8rtdXnLA
the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes or tries to imply that people "back then" all held such backwards beliefs, which far too often is not the case. For instance, see how Morse's diatribes on slavery and racism are presented - but the state he was born and operated in already abolished slavery about a decade before his birth.
Re: Nobel Disease
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hispanic is probably the perfect example for this. A blonde Argentinian is probably not predisposed to diabetes. What I’m trying to say is racial categorizations don’t follow any rules based in our biology or genetics. For it to be scientific you would need to be able to categorize any given individual 100% based on some unchanging rule that is based on underlying biology. We cannot currently do that and what I’m say…
I was under the impression doctors do this exact categorization all the time? Given an individual's race (looking at them and asking) and the medical literature they change their treatments if need be. Skin color and place of origin is a pretty rough but decent way to do this? If need be they could just sequence your genes, afterall isn't that exactly how they connect and learn about hereditary diseases or know that…
How, exactly, would we know it's a decent way?
I suspect it's not really about "race" which is full of wrong meanings; it's just that "race" in the US mostly also means genetically close populations, like black people originally coming through slave trade from one of a few places in Africa and therefore sharing some similar traits. But if you scaled research to a representative sample of all "black" or "asian" (etc) people, any advantage this gives you would evaporate