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James Watson has died

nytimes.com

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Re: James Watson has died

#151

Post by exoverito »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #91
terminalshort wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the guy was into eugenics So are you (probably). Do you think incest should be legalized? > thought some races are smarter than others What other conclusion can you reasonably come to based on the available data?

A biologist can correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand "race" in humans to be little different than, say, hair-color. Perhaps there's data showing that brunettes are smarter than blondes? EDIT: Never mind, user krapp's comment is what I was reaching for, "Race isn't biological, it's a social and political construct."

Race is obviously biological.. You can determine someone's ancestry and ethnicity by their DNA...

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/PCA-clustering-Principal...

Re: James Watson has died

#152

Post by prmph »

echelon wrote: post #137
prmph wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these excuses for a blatant case of cheating... > she didn't realize its significance or implication. That does not change the fact that they plagiarized and cheated. They could have collaborated with her and/or credited her

> All these excuses for a blatant case of cheating The man just died and it's as if you're trying to pry the Nobel Prize from him. Franklin didn't know what she had. If she did, she would have been working on it. In a moment of supreme clarity, the universe revealed itself. Watson and Crick knew immediately the photo would cut down their search space from alternative structures. They still had work to do, because the…

[flagged]

Re: James Watson has died

#153

Post by bdangubic »

jojobas wrote: post #148
Teever wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collective action to dissuade assholes from being assholes is a net positive for everyone. The less assholes you have to deal with in your day to day affairs the better off you are.

There's no dissuading someone from being an asshole.

yup! and I love they are around and celebrated as that helps weed out people not worthy of your time better than most other things

Re: James Watson has died

#154

Post by manquer »

moralestapia wrote: post #133
manquer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably it is worse. Society tends to transfer skills/talent/achievement/luck in one field and assume those attributes hold good in all fields because they were successful in one area, even if there is no justification, so their beliefs tend to carry lot more weight and influence than the average joe and hold the field back. Talented people when sidetracked may no longer be as effective contributors, for example Ein…

>Einstein >diminished contributions in later part of his life Whew, that's a wild one.

What exactly is wild about the 30 odd years of his later life that he spent trying to build a unified field theory ? The rest of the physics community at the time(and even largely now) did not share his ideas, maybe grand unified theory is possible maybe not, but getting stuck with it without a lot of progress did happen?

I would have thought of all examples this would be less controversial, it had nothing to do with politics or ideology or religion, it was an entirely technical belief, he felt chasing.

In an alternative reality he may have switched to another area of study after hitting dead ends with unified theory with better results.

It is not for us to say or expect what luminaries do, it is privilege for us they do share anything at all, but it is not also true we do lose a bit when such brilliant minds do get sidetracked ?

Re: James Watson has died

#155

Post by aoasadflkjafl »

nradov wrote: post #143
Teever wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are lots of people who do great things who aren't assholes. We as a society should prioritize valourzing the non-assholes who do great things over the assholes who do great things.

Is that really true thought? I can't quantify this but qualitatively it seems like most of the people who accomplished great things really were assholes. I mean even here in the tech industry think of the people we commonly consider great. If you look deeply into their lives and talk to people who knew them personally you'll usually find they were kind of jerks. Is that just a coincidence or could there be a causal r…

More people are simply more aware of Watson and not Bernal, Klug, Wilkins, Fankuchen, Hodgkin, i.e. other people from that era involved in x-ray crystallography, many of whom made significantly more and larger advances, precisely because he was a self-aggrandizing and controversial asshole while they were not.

Re: James Watson has died

#156

Post by JKCalhoun »

terminalshort wrote: post #136
JKCalhoun wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A biologist can correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand "race" in humans to be little different than, say, hair-color. Perhaps there's data showing that brunettes are smarter than blondes? EDIT: Never mind, user krapp's comment is what I was reaching for, "Race isn't biological, it's a social and political construct."

But it is biological. You can try to obfuscate and use big words all you want, but it is, in fact, biological.

No one said it wasn't biological. Hair color is also biological.

Re: James Watson has died

#157

Post by nradov »

aoasadflkjafl wrote: post #155
nradov wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really true thought? I can't quantify this but qualitatively it seems like most of the people who accomplished great things really were assholes. I mean even here in the tech industry think of the people we commonly consider great. If you look deeply into their lives and talk to people who knew them personally you'll usually find they were kind of jerks. Is that just a coincidence or could there be a causal r…

More people are simply more aware of Watson and not Bernal, Klug, Wilkins, Fankuchen, Hodgkin, i.e. other people from that era involved in x-ray crystallography, many of whom made significantly more and larger advances, precisely because he was a self-aggrandizing and controversial asshole while they were not.

Are you sure they were not assholes? How much do you really know about their personal lives?

I'm not trying to criticize those people or imply anything about them. But in my experience a lot of assholes kind of fly under the radar because they're not in the public eye and no one speaks up.

Re: James Watson has died

#159

Post by peterfirefly »

manquer wrote: post #154
moralestapia wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Einstein >diminished contributions in later part of his life Whew, that's a wild one.

What exactly is wild about the 30 odd years of his later life that he spent trying to build a unified field theory ? The rest of the physics community at the time(and even largely now) did not share his ideas, maybe grand unified theory is possible maybe not, but getting stuck with it without a lot of progress did happen? I would have thought of all examples this would be less controversial, it had nothing to do with…

> is wild about the 30 odd years of his later life

There's also the extremely important EPR paper from 1935, twenty years before his death. He certainly didn't stop producing useful science just because he felt it was a good idea to explore ideas that didn't work out.

What is truly embarrassing is stuff like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Socialism%3F

Re: James Watson has died

#160

Post by peterfirefly »

gaogao wrote: post #70
saghm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your definition of "nice" is, but mine doesn't include saying most of what's here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Comments_on_race

> In 2007, the scientist, who once worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, told the Times newspaper that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really". > While his hope was that everybody was equal, he added, "people who have to deal with black e…

> whereas all the testing says not really

This part is (still) true. Is that fact racist?

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