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.
> "X isn't about Y" is almost always false: rather it should be "X isn't (only|mostly) about Y".
That's literally almost the first sentence of the article:
> When I say “X is not about Y,” I mean that while Y is the function commonly said to drive most X behavior, in fact some other function Z drives X behavior more.
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":
> 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.
It depends...for some tasks, it's less context switching. For example, Apple's Preview app has a feature where you can add a signature to a document. You can scan your signature, but you can also enter it on the touchpad. But the latter is very difficult because you can either look at your finger or the screen, but not both. Having this kind of screen would solve that problem.
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.
The methods weren't "just" morally wrong but a bunch of hokum rationalized as science.
Just like yours.
Heritability does not mean heredity. Even taste is heritable. Results of the GWAS crowd are so bad that Plomin recently truned to praising his levels of signal for being not worse than social sciences. This is astounding from someone previously selling behavioral genetics as a rigorous science up there with actual genetics.
But IQ performance likely predicts success in data science, and not only that, it does predict success in a variety of subjects. I'm also with the post on the bottom -- I don't think Lior believes in his post. I interpret this as humble-bragging. There's enough silliness in this post that permits the author to wiggle away; I'm sure the author already agrees that it's unfair to pick two highly prejudicial examples, or reduce causal modelling down to Occam's razor.
Or perhaps it's a jab at subtle misconceptions on causal learning and empiricism. Either way it's not meant to be taken seriously at face value.
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.
Look at the definition, there is no possible way you can equate heredity with heritability unless you can't math, sorry. There's no moral sentiment to appreciate in understanding this definition, just education.
Denialism of the variance it isn't either, the issue is it's fallacious reification. That would be a concern for explanatory power and drawing conclusions even if actual statistical research into these very poorly understood mechanisms weren't so spurious on mathematical level (which was my initial interest).
Granting the validity of many aesthetic criticisms of over the top skeuomorphism, it will be a good day for users when the fashion-chasing flat ui era is over.
Material is slowly moving more in the "flat 2.0" direction that the article points out as fixing flat UI's usability problems. It's not fully there yet, but you can see aspects of it in say Google's floating add buttons in Calendar, Inbox, YouTube's search box, etc.
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.
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.
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.
this is my favorite wolfe as well. i was taking undergrad classes in architecture and my dad gave me the book. it made me realize that all my classes were avoiding the negative or downright stupid aspects of modernism.
my favorite part was how mies van der rohe liked buildings that looked “authentic” with undecorated steel beams visible, but because it was against the fire safety code in the usa he just glued some i-beams to the side of his chicago skyscrapers. the guy literally decorated buildings to represent a lack of decoration. this is the guy famous for the slogan “less is more.”
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.
IQ tests are frequently biased. How biased will vary from test to test. Also, the data is can be misinterpreted by those unfamiliar with the tests procedures/results 1
70-80% comes from where? Nobody knows exactly what the "smart genes" are, and studies in twins show that variance between individuals in IQ is about 50%-60% genetic...or 40-50% environmental factors2A/2B
Even Haier has said that the fact that intelligence is in some way genetic just means that the factors that might influence those aspects of it would also need to be genetic. This can include things like nutrition and mental illness/stress, which are more prevalent among poorer communities.
Mostly from twin studies. This number (at least the ballpark figure) is essentially uncontested amongst researchers at this point (see e.g. [1]). However, this is the heritability of the variability of intelligence in adults. In children, that number is close to the one you cited. The rest of what you’ve said is essentially true: heritability is extremely complex and we’re only now getting the first few association studies in to ascertain which genomic loci are associated with changes [2].
I'll see your contrarianism and raise you an ad hominem.