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quantumofmalice | 7 years ago | on: Politics Isn't About Policy

It's a catchy title and so-so article, but I have to be autistic and point out that "X isn't about Y" is almost always false: rather it should be "X isn't (only|mostly) about Y". Clever false dilemmas are the opiate of the 115-IQ set.

I'll see your contrarianism and raise you an ad hominem.

quantumofmalice | 7 years ago | on: Future generations will laugh in horror and derision at the folly of facadism

As with post-modernism (which this is simply a late stage manifestation of) you shouldn't blame the superficial reaction, you should blame the initial problem, which was architectural modernism and an obsession with discarding all the lessons of the past in the name of innovation, so called. Tom Wolf nailed it in "From Bauhaus to Our House":

https://www.amazon.com/Bauhaus-Our-House-Tom-Wolfe/dp/031242...

As badly as these buildings suck, they at least make a gesture at a humane world.

Christopher Alexander tried to warn us.

quantumofmalice | 7 years ago | on: Has Consciousness Lost Its Mind?

> Unfortunately, the more difficult it is to gather experimental evidence (as it is psychology), the more this desire takes over, I think.

And doubly unfortunately, even the gathering of experimental evidence is subject to this problem: funding is denied for politically incorrect studies, the methodological problems found in all real world experiments are emphasized in the studies we dislike, ignored in studies that confirm our biases, etc.

quantumofmalice | 7 years ago | on: Eugenics never went away

That is simply emotional nonsense, on par with young earth creationism. The heritability and heredity of intelligence, for example, has been established beyond all reasonable doubt and no one in the intelligence research arena disputes it.

I appreciate the moral sentiment, and to an extent I even feel it myself, but being a denialist is not an answer. We need sane, sober and humane discussions about public policy dealing with the increasingly uncomfortable results coming from the genetic research community.

quantumofmalice | 7 years ago | on: Eugenics never went away

Eugenics has a bad name, but it is scientifically valid. We now know that genetics play a huge role in life outcomes (e.g. adult IQ appears to be 70-80% heritable) and, for better or for worse, the eugenicists were right, even if their methods were morally wrong.

We don't focus enough on positive eugenics: getting smart, non-violent and conscientious people to have large families. Right now we do the opposite: smart folks feel all sorts of pressures to have a small or no family due to careers, the expense of elite schooling, the environment, etc. The opening scene of Idiocracy nailed it.

It is reasonable to look at soft negative eugenics, such as offering free, voluntary sterilization for reduction of prison sentences for violent crimes, but getting smart folks to have more kids is far more important.

quantumofmalice | 7 years ago | on: Material UI v1 for React is out

It is worth meditating on the fact that such a terrible idea was and is able to dominate the visual design community for so long without any significant push back. It has caused real pain for end users, and people who objected were shouted down or ignored.

All the more outrageous in an industry that likes to wear the mantle of empiricism.

quantumofmalice | 7 years ago | on: Tom Wolfe Has Died

Yes, that is a great book as well.

I think "From Bauhause to Our House" is more important because we can survive a period of terrible art: most people will simply ignore it and when it is over you can throw most of it into the dumpster easily enough.

Unfortunately we are not free to ignore the work of architects, and correcting their mistakes will take us centuries.

quantumofmalice | 7 years ago | on: Tom Wolfe Has Died

Very sad to hear. His book "From Bauhaus to Our House" changed my life, finally giving me a plausible explanation as to how we managed to create such a horrific built environment post WW2.

quantumofmalice | 7 years ago | on: Male Sexlessness Is Rising, but Not for the Reasons Incels Claim

Setting aside the logical impossibility of people f-king up but not f-king down, that is not true at all: men will f-ck down quite readily if it is convenient and there is low commitment. This is due to the obvious reason that males can have ten kids in a day by ten different women, whereas females can have perhaps 10 kids in a lifetime and each birth is incredibly high risk to her.

The core problem in the mating world is that the middle of the female attractiveness curve is having sterile sex with the top of the male attractiveness curve and then failing to pair bond with the middle of the male attractiveness curve. This is due to female hypergamy coupled with male promiscuity, arising from the dynamics of male and female reproductive constraints.

quantumofmalice | 7 years ago | on: Does growing up poor harm brain development?

I am saying that the evidence suggests that 70-80% of adult[1] intelligence is based on genetic factors (that is distinct from heritability, which is lower, ~60% iirc) leaving the remaining 20-30% as unknown environmental factors. Wealth intuitively does play a role in that, although I believe (with as strong of evidence any anyone else does in the matter of environmental outcomes) that a strong parental bond matters more than wealth.

Again, my concern is that if unstructured wealth transfer is treated as a panacea, it will end up having compounding dysgenic effects that outweigh whatever short term individual benefits come of it. This will, in the not very long run, make poverty worse.

It isn't saving me any karma since people can't be rational about this topic, but I'll stress again that I think we should help the poor for moral reasons.

[1] - It is important to specify adult intelligence, because interventions do appear to help childhood IQ, but this effect fades into adulthood and eventual life outcomes. This is why there was a lot of excitement around Head Start initially, but it has failed to produce the large changes in society that was hoped for.

quantumofmalice | 7 years ago | on: Does growing up poor harm brain development?

The consensus amongst intelligence researchers is that adult intelligence is ~70-80% based on genetic factors. I refer you to The Neuroscience of Intelligence - Cambridge Fundamentals of Neuroscience in Psychology by Richard Haier and the many studies sited therein.

We should help poor and less intelligent people for moral reasons, but it is unlikely to improve intelligence in the poorer population and, if the aid is structured dysgenically, it will serve only to compound the problem.

quantumofmalice | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?

Because, like monarchy, they are still the least worst option when considering both the OS and hardware combined, for most people.

The issues with the latest macbooks are real and severe, but running windows or linux, even on nice hardware like an X1, remains a sufficiently annoying and disruptive change to stop people. We can all hope that eventually this will change, but as of right now I don't see a forcing function.

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