Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole • Hacker News Board

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#201

Post by api » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 9:36 PM UTC

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #186

api wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you are right, but all it takes is a visit to any large social media site or 30 minutes of watching political news ( any political news) to renew my cynicism. I really don't see anyone anywhere who is even interested in the truth. People want their side to win for non-rational emotional reasons. They're only interested in what truths can be cherry picked or spun to support their cause. Truths that don't suppor…

Absolutely. The rise of Trump and the alt-right shows how shame is an unsustainable mechanism for social change, though most people in the US still seem to be applying shame/outrage. Trump and Russian bots have also shown how emotionally reactive we are, as a people. I see this as the result of us not teaching emotional responsibility and boundaries as part of normative cultures. Learning and practicing nonviolent co…

I totally agree about shame. I've been going on for a while about what I call "abstinence based environmental policy," which is trying to shame people into being poorer to save the Earth. It works about as well as shaming teens into not having sex, hence the analogy.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#202

Post by thraway180306 » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 10:00 PM UTC

verylongname wrote: post #165

Assuming the basic facts claimed by the author are correct, this is really bad. I'm not referring to the behavior attributed to the U Chicago professor and her husband, either. That might be exaggerated by the author (the account is only one side of the story) and, even if it isn't, strong feelings are not uncommon when it comes to controversial topics. Systems should work even when individuals or small groups of peo…

The process, as told by the author, was that one of the editors invited to submit, and three weeks later it was published upon which the rest of the editorial board took notice and threatened resignation.

By that telling it was published practically on the spot, especially for mathematics where things are famously glacially slow. Browsing through the journal one mostly sees submission and publication dates separated by many months. Last published paper in the current volume was received over a year before. But this paper made it in three weeks.

So it was fast tracked by an editor. Editorial board could take issue with that, arguing it haven't gone by the review properly or whatever the usual procedures before publication are. It might have been put up on the web by the managing editor (since on leave and replaced in the interim) or whomever had the admin password, but editorial board to whom the journal's reputation really belongs hasn't deemed it to be their publication.

Of the timeline, author says he's uploaded to ArXiv in September, while by that time he was on revision 3 of https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184 uploaded in March. What was added in September however was a piece of journalism in an appendix, that then disappeared in most recent revisions. Last revision was posted just 2 weeks ago, apparently there still were arguments to strengthen (or journalism to remove) before Quillette ran the story.

There he paints his work as "science" and some people including the editorial board as "activists". By Google however appears the same Ted Hill founded a site "to promote campus activism in general" and "to serve as a focal point for organizing activists" where he chronicles his long history of activism http://www.motherfunctor.org/CompleteHistory2013.php

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#203

Post by jquery » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

majos wrote: post #174

another-cuppa wrote: post #66

I don't even understand why this is controversial. I've explained this to a number of women before and none of them have felt hurt. On the contrary, in fact, it makes them feel better. Humans always fixate on extremes. Men and women. It's a problem in our society. We always want to see the very best and we're not interested in others who are still way above average. There are thousands of women doing great science, e…

I used to think this, but I don't any more. One argument that swayed me came from Izabella Laba [1], a math professor at UBC and former IMO competitor. The point that stood out to me is that women tend to be socialized away from extremes, for example it is generally more acceptable (to parents, guardians, and affiliated people choosing for children) for gifted boys to skip many grades than for gifted girls to do the…

Men are much more likely to have a very low IQ and this is uncontroversial. Are they socialized this way or is increased variability only in one direction.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#204

Post by joshuamorton » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

js8 wrote: post #195

tzs wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm...what? There are more than two theories. Here's one I've seen a few articles on within the past year or so. According to test data (SAT, PISA, and I believe others) on teens, girls who are at the top in science tend to also be at the top in other areas too [1]. Boys who are at the top in science tend to be more ordinary in other areas. People in general tend to to enjoy more and go into careers in areas they are…

But doesn't the fact that top girls are more well-rounded than top boys also follow from the GMVH? (I am not sure, genuine question.)

Not obviously no. I could propose some reasons it might, but they'd require delving into pseudoscience in a field I'm not familiar with.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#205

Post by brenschluss » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

brenschluss wrote: post #150

yorwba wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be absolutely incorrect to say that "all of the next generation will be offspring of the more variable subpopulation B1". No, that's exactly correct. The example is set up so that no individual from B2 gets to mate with A. Therefore, the next generation only consists of offspring of B1. (I think you understand that, since you say "sex A is choosing most desirable mates who happened to be part of the subpop…

This is helpful, thank you. > If B2 ever got to reproduce, it would have B2 offspring, while B12 would produce B11 or B12. Okay, this is clear regarding the paper’s assumption of heritability of variability. Assuming that variability is a completely static characteristic innate to a population and perfectly heritable seems to me such a simplistic assumption as render most of the conclusions ineffective or correct onl…

Actually, I change my statement upon rereading the paper: If offspring is "distributed the same way as the parent subpopulation", then B12 would only produce B12.

In other words, if subpopulation B11 is chosen by A, then B11 would produce B11, this reducing the variability, not increasing it.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#206

Post by brenschluss » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

waterhouse wrote: post #54

brenschluss wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd understand your assumption but think that it is incorrect, since the paper defines desirability not as genetic healthiness but as a mechanism for sex A to select sex B: "The actual magnitudes of these desirability values are assumed to have no significance, and are used only to make comparisons between individuals. Here and throughout, it will also be assumed that the same desirability value is assigned to each i…

The desirability of an individual is often strongly influenced by heritable traits. In the example with my interpretation, "beauty" is a trait we assume to be desirable (for the sake of illustration I'm assuming it's the only trait considered), and how much of it an individual has is heavily influenced by the coin-flip gene. I see no contradiction here. I might interpret the sentences you quote as "We can give each i…

> The desirability of an individual is often strongly influenced by heritable traits.

I don't disagree with you, but that is not what the paper states, and that is not how the paper defines desirability.

I am not saying that the paper's definition is correct for a broader understanding of biology. Rather, the paper's stance is to generate a simple model and to prove an argument within that model. I am saying that, within the definition that the model is using, the model is internally incorrect.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#207

Post by joshuamorton » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

cbolton wrote: post #158

Quanttek wrote: post #136

I have to issues with it: The write-up seems very one-sided as can already be noticed in the language (1) and the paper, as others have pointed out, is not much of a good scientific paper (2). It seems like the whole controversy was engineered or, at least, he deliberately tried to provoke/"troll" the academic community with his paper. 1) Certain parts of the post ring my alarm bells when it comes to the language use…

I don't see a problem with any of this. For 1) maybe you want to explain more explicitly what bothers you? I don't find the U.S. army ranger thing surprising in a personal blog post. If one cannot write this without losing credibility... now that's something that worries me. For 2), this looks quite normal in terms of mathematical modelling. You make a model based on some simplifying hypotheses. You show what result…

And as others note, that would be a reasonable social science paper, but "flimsy oversimplified model that might explain a phenomena" does not a mathematics publication make.

It's not made clear (and others mention) that the paper has changed a lot, so it's current form is different than it was originally, and it appears that the author tried to sneak it in to at least one journal, without normal peer review.

That's not good science.

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#208

Post by brenschluss » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

zeth___ wrote: post #105

brenschluss wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will have much less variability of fruit type in bag 2 because you used color selection to fill it Yes, I completely agree with you! You will have much less variability. However, that's not what the paper argues. The paper argues that you would have more variability. I'd appreciate you taking a look at the original paper (specifically, the bottom of page 2 [edit: and Figure 1]) and understanding my original arg…

Right, and now compare it to the original bag. You have increased variability between generations by reducing the variability in the second generation.

I agree with you that there is a difference in variability between generations.

I agree with you that the variability has been reduced in the second generation.

It seems that we both disagree with the original paper, then, as it states

"If sex A is relatively selective and will mate only with the top most desirable quarter of sex B, then all of the next generation will be offspring of the more variable subpopulation B1"

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#209

Post by brenschluss » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 10:48 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #45

brenschluss wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The effect doesn't apply to female children, since a female mammal cannot have 200 offspring in her lifetime, but a male mammal certainly can. From the paper: "Note that this theory makes no assumptions about differences in means between the sexes, nor does it presume that one sex is selective and the other non-selective" So the reproduction capacity of sex A and sex B is equal. I'm attempting to debate the paper st…

The paper then goes on to discuss, in detail, how differences in selectivity drive differences in variability, so the passage you quoted does not mean that the author is imagining A and B to be equally selective. The author is just asserting that both of his arbitrary sexes might be selective in an absolute sense. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, especially since you've opted not to quote or address the…

> This paper is arguing that in addition to sexual selection's first order directional effect, there's an overlaid second order effect on variability, and the argument makes sense. Male reproductive success is already highly variable, because male gametes are cheap. Some males end up being disproportionately successful, e.g., Genghis Khan. From a gene's point of view, being hosted in Khan was winning the jackpot.

The paper makes no distinction between sexes -- so a discussion of male or female differences, whether in reproductive success, does not discuss on the paper's model.

> If you have a number of male offspring, some of them will be evolutionary "duds" no matter what. If you increase the variability in reproductive success of your male children, then some of them will be less reproductively successful and others will be more successful. But there's an asymmetry: "duds" are already duds and can't be made less successful, but on the other side of the curve, by increasing variability, you increase the likelihood of a jackpot.

Your argument holds the selectivity of the female sex as constant, and discusses variability of the male sex.

The paper's argument is about variability in one sex ('sex B') being a function of the selectivity of sex A. These are fundamentally two different arguments, and so whether your argument is true or not, your argument does not discuss the paper's model.

> The effect doesn't apply to female children, since a female mammal cannot have 200 offspring in her lifetime, but a male mammal certainly can.

Addressed in a previous comment.

> (Your fruit analogy is inapt, since fruit in a bag don't reproduce among themselves and regress toward the population mean.)

Thank you - I did not know this until now. I assumed that fruit reproduced asexually in bags.

My fruit analogy is presented because the error that the paper seems to make happens at a simple statistical level -- because the paper assumes that you can 'sort' a two variably desirable populations (B1 and B2) on a histogram by desire, find the top 25% of the population (B11), and assume that the top 25% desirable population (B11) is as variable as the original population it came from (B1).

Re: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole

#210

Post by haberman » Sat, Sep 08, 2018, 11:30 PM UTC

thraway180306 wrote: post #202

verylongname wrote: post #165

Assuming the basic facts claimed by the author are correct, this is really bad. I'm not referring to the behavior attributed to the U Chicago professor and her husband, either. That might be exaggerated by the author (the account is only one side of the story) and, even if it isn't, strong feelings are not uncommon when it comes to controversial topics. Systems should work even when individuals or small groups of peo…

The process, as told by the author, was that one of the editors invited to submit, and three weeks later it was published upon which the rest of the editorial board took notice and threatened resignation. By that telling it was published practically on the spot, especially for mathematics where things are famously glacially slow. Browsing through the journal one mostly sees submission and publication dates separated…

According to the article, publication was approved by Editor-In-Chief Mark Steinberger, who founded the magazine 25 years ago.

The members of the editorial board did not just threaten resignation, but (according to the article) threatened to "harass the journal until it died."