281–290 of 308 posts
Cars are a problem, not a solution
Religions are a problem, not a solution
Democracy is broken. Weighted democracy may work slightly better: (you take a test on the voting matter and the weight of your vote is proportional to the score)
this feels good...
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HIV transmission is a good example of a wildly controversial topic, that is actually no longer discussed. it's considered a settled issue that everyone is equally likely to get HIV. on IQ - I'm not sure that's necessarily true, or at least, the differences are complex (one group has a slightly higher average, the other a higher standard deviation, which has implications at the right-end of the bell curve). but for da…
> it's considered a settled issue that everyone is equally likely to get HIV. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Under every interpretation I can think of, it is incorrect. In the first place, people vary in their CD4 and CCR5 (&c.) receptors, so they also vary in their susceptibility to HIV infection given exposure. My understanding is that some alleles confer such resistance to infection that carriers ar…
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> it's considered a settled issue that everyone is equally likely to get HIV. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Under every interpretation I can think of, it is incorrect. In the first place, people vary in their CD4 and CCR5 (&c.) receptors, so they also vary in their susceptibility to HIV infection given exposure. My understanding is that some alleles confer such resistance to infection that carriers ar…
I think the OP is saying for the general public it's considered a settled matter that everyone is equally likely to get HIV. Not that it's true, but that for PC reasons thats the acceptable "truth". To imply or state otherwise, regardless of its actual truth, would be some kind of ism.
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HIV transmission is a good example of a wildly controversial topic, that is actually no longer discussed. it's considered a settled issue that everyone is equally likely to get HIV. on IQ - I'm not sure that's necessarily true, or at least, the differences are complex (one group has a slightly higher average, the other a higher standard deviation, which has implications at the right-end of the bell curve). but for da…
PG really only stirs up controversy because he won't admit the fact that we're all biased to some degree. Even women in tech are biased against women in tech. It's natural because pattern matching is natural, and female developers & founders are (currently) rare. Women _on average_ may very well be better or worse than men in all sorts of ways, but that doesn't mean some of them won't be extraordinary. We have to be…
Very often times ideas which stir controversy do so because of a real or perceived agenda behind them. If I say, for example (as I have on HN and gotten flack for) that women tend to be more likely to think in ways which are socially more complex than men, I get flack because there is a fear that anything essentialist about gender (outside of, say, the abortion debate) is essentially a way of trying to imprison women in limiting gender roles. That isn't my intention naturally but I have to accept that this is the framework behind the controversy that saying something like that arises.
Similarly if I argue that the natural order is for people to retire with their children, this has huge impacts for modern ideas of sexuality and the choice of childlessness.
There are tons of attitudes that I think that I would be cautious (though perhaps I am too foolish to be reluctant) about discussing. But the key issue is the concern about the perceived agendas, and the perceived power structures that come with those.
Ideas themselves must exist in a context, and that context is defined in part by how they are used, not only by the person discussing them but also by others.
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Exactly. Even in Paul Graham's own essay, some things are always forgotten. He's smart enough to question why the Church/Italian state attacked Galileo for repeating Copernicus' ideas, who was a celebrated hero of the church. And nobody ever realizes that Galileo was not at all interested in the scientific facts (well he was, up to the point he went insane and became a political agitator and generally a lunatic, read…
> There is at least a decent case to be made that Galileo was executed Where do you get that he was executed? Also, regarding differences between Copernicus's treatment and Galileo's. Copernicus didn't publish a lot of his material, nor was it widely known, until late in life. Galileo basically stepped into the controversy that had developed after Copernicus died. Essentially, there was little controversy in Copernic…
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This is my point. Galileo didn't advance knowledge by his acts, that was already done (within the scientific community if not within the wider world) (And granted, he did advance knowledge at other times on other subjects). He attempted to use it to change the state by agitating large portions of the population using that fact. I would even say he was not so much looking to change the state, rather to destroy it, bec…
Can you cite some sources on Galileo as instigator against the state? I've never heard of this before. Also, did you really mean, in your OP, to say that he was executed? That was the first I'd heard of that, and everything I checked (in an admittedly short search) indicated that he died of old age.
I find that in engineering circles theology and the notion of the existence of God is one of those 'moral taboos.' And advocating more nuclear power stations or private gun ownership. It is fascinating that were you to advocate gun control in the late 19th century, it seems nearly everyone would have laughed you out of the room. But that sentiment has reversed here in the 21st century. Always interesting to think abo…
Re: gun control, depends where you live. I grew up in a rural area where you'd still be laughed out of the room for suggesting that gun control was a good idea.
Here are some things I think future societies will condemn us for: 1. Prison. Almost every modern penal system focuses on punishment rather than rehabilitation. I think that as our understanding of the brain improves, we'll be able to find the causes of violent behavior and cure them. Punishment will become cruel and unusual. 2. Eating meat (and other animal rights issues). Even if they're not conscious, most tasty a…
I am however interested in your root cause - is it religion?
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HIV transmission is a good example of a wildly controversial topic, that is actually no longer discussed. it's considered a settled issue that everyone is equally likely to get HIV. on IQ - I'm not sure that's necessarily true, or at least, the differences are complex (one group has a slightly higher average, the other a higher standard deviation, which has implications at the right-end of the bell curve). but for da…
PG really only stirs up controversy because he won't admit the fact that we're all biased to some degree. Even women in tech are biased against women in tech. It's natural because pattern matching is natural, and female developers & founders are (currently) rare. Women _on average_ may very well be better or worse than men in all sorts of ways, but that doesn't mean some of them won't be extraordinary. We have to be…
That could eliminate unconscious bias during the application screening process, but it would be hard to run face-to-face interviews without revealing the sex of the person doing the interviewing.