NotableAlamode

hace 6 añosdiscuss

    blind to the history 
    of scientific racism

Slavery is much older than the period that the term "scientific racism" refers to. Older slave holders had no trouble justifying slavery.

Interestingly, the many slave rebellions of antiquity (and after) by and large did not seek to abolish slavery, only to switch who's a slave, and who's a slave holder.

NotableAlamode

hace 6 añosdiscuss

From the quoted article:

- "modern Europeans and East Asians apparently inherited about 2% of their DNA from Neanderthals"

- "African individuals on average had [...] more Neanderthal DNA than previously thought—about [...] 0.3% of their genome."

So the article seems to confirm a 10x difference in Neanderthals DNA, which might be significant. It's also unclear what they mean by "Africans, did the same include, e.g. Egyptians of Greek descent?

NotableAlamode

hace 6 añosdiscuss

What credibility do the RAINN numbers have?

The Wikipedia article [1] leads to [2], a RAINN page which links to itself (quote: "Please visit https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system for full citation."), and also (Footnote 1) to the following 'three' alleged data sources [3, 4, 5]. Note that [4, 5] are exactly, letter for letter, the same (!) in [2]! Why? Does that sound like serious science to you? Anyway, the RAINN page [2] then claims: "This statistic combines information from several federal government reports. Because it combines data from studies with different methodologies, it is an approximation, not a scientific estimate.". Let's look at the methodology in [3], starting on Page 17:

> "The NCVS is a self-report survey that is administered from January to December. Respondents are asked about the number and characteristics of crimes they have experienced during the prior 6 months [...] . The survey collects information on threatened, attempted, and completed crimes. Te survey collects data on crimes both reported and not reported to police. Estimates in this report include threatened, attempted, and completed crimes."

Of particular interest is the subsection "NCVS measurement of rape or sexual assault", starting on page 19. I cannot see any meaningful attempt at scientific rigour here. Can you explain to me why such figures should be taken seriously? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence! There is no evidence in any meaningful sense here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape,_Abuse_%26_Incest_Nationa...

[2] https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system

[3] Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, 2010-2016 (2017).

I think this is https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv17.pdf

[4] Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based Reporting System, 2012-2016 (2017);

[5] Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Incident-Based Reporting System, 2012-2016 (2017);

NotableAlamode

hace 7 añosdiscuss

I completely agree with you.

That's why publicly saying "you are wrong" is so powerful (and so dangerous). The powerful are not used to be challenged in public. They typically respond by a combination of

- reframing, changing the subject

- attacking, belittling you

You can see this in action in stand-up comedy with hecklers. If you anticipate this reaction, you can turn this around very effectively in a professional context (not in standup-comedy though): "I note you are NOT answering my question, instead ...".

With great power comes great responsibility.

NotableAlamode

hace 7 añosdiscuss

    Praise in public, criticize in private

In my (considerable) experience of working in large organisation (private and public), whether this works or not depends strongly on the power differential between praiser/criticiser and praisee/criticisee. Basically this is the most likely outcome:

- Powerless praises publicly and criticises privately: criticism will be ignored, praise will be milked.

- Powerless praises privately and criticises publicly: if played right, this is working, since the powerful cannot brush aside the criticism, but this is likely to lead to retaliation!

A way of making public criticism more digestible is to make it very constructive: "You are wrong because XYZ, I recommend ABC instead because <reasons>". Ideally the <reasons> align with the organisation's goals, e.g. "ABC is clearly in the interest of our shareholders / voters / students / environment because <other reasons>.

Make of this what you will.

NotableAlamode

hace 7 añosdiscuss

What you are saying is that classical should appeal more to popular tastes.

Maybe we should restrict classical rhythms to 4/4, ensure that all songs are around 4 minutes long, 132 BPM, and have Intro-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Middle8-Chorus-Chorus-Outro structure. Maybe we should also ensure that all classical music has a young moron rapping over the song, maybe about his "hoes" and "biches"!

NotableAlamode

hace 7 añosdiscuss

Classical music is fine as it is, no need to change.

Why should being based on improvisation and unique personal expression be the be-all-and-end-all of analysis? Not everybody wants to play / hear improvised music.

NotableAlamode

hace 8 añosdiscuss

The OP didn't suggest she had better data, the OP said that there is no consensus. in another post the OP said that is no serious, solid research.

NotableAlamode

hace 9 añosdiscuss

To paraphrase Brecht:

Who fights for XYZ must be able to fight and not to fight,

to say the truth and not to say the truth,

to render and to deny service,

to keep a promise and to break a promise,

to go into danger and to avoid danger,

to be known and to be unknown.

Who fights for XYZ has of all the virtues only one:

that he fights for XYZ.

NotableAlamode

hace 9 añosdiscuss

There is an interesting related paper "Copy and Paste Redeemed" [1] that is based on the assumption that a lot of copy/paste happens (and discusses why this is not necessarily a bad thing). [1] investigates how copy/paste can be auto-detected, how similar pieces of code can automatically be merged together, and how abstractions can be automatically created from copy/paste code.

I have not used the tool myself, so I cannot comment on how well it works in practise. But I found the idea intriguing.

[1] K. Narasimhan, C. Reichenbach, Copy and Paste Redeemed http://creichen.net/papers/cpr.pdf

NotableAlamode

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Interesting. Have you got an 'official' link for Calacanis' proposal?

NotableAlamode

hace 9 añosdiscuss

I'm curious: why and how do you think Exterior Algebra will have such an impact on programming in general? What programming constructs that EA capture that are currently not well-abstracted (apart from graphics/linear algebra)? And can EA not be expressed anyway in modern languages with expressive typing systems such at Haskell/Scala which even have higher-kinded types?

NotableAlamode

hace 9 añosdiscuss

You keep ignoring the elephant in the room: that she was wrong (in the charitable interpretation). Why?

I'd appreciate it if you could state clearly whether you think

- F. got it wrong, or

- she knew/assumed early on that it was a helix, but lied about it?

Thank you.

As to whether the X-rays should have been seen by Crick/Watson, The research was publically funded. Publically funded research should be open and transparent. Or do you disagree with transparency of taxpayer money? Would it have even been legally possible for F. to refuse the communication of her tax-payer funded results?

NotableAlamode

hace 9 añosdiscuss

The section you cite does not mention that F. explicitly campaigned against the helix model for a while. Why? If we exclude the option that she deliberately lied about it and publically spoke against the helix model so as to mislead others (which would be a major breach of scientic ethics) -- and we should: "de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est" -- then she failed to see what others did see. To use the vernacular:

   she got it wrong.

NotableAlamode

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Might this criticism have been politically motivated?

For a while she actively campaigned against DNA being a double helix, see e.g. her 'obiturary' for the double helix [1] which preceeds Watson and Crick’s paper. Might her insistence that DNA is not a double helix have misled Wilkins and others?

[1] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/fire-in-the-mind/files/201...

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