> Because this trait appears to be genetically inheritable, unless well-meaning doctors interfere by transplanting bone marrow, the donors will be replicated. Natural selection will favour those resistant to HIV infections, and within a few generations, people with this survival trait will have produced noticeably more offspring. Of course, this is of little value to those who would develop AIDS or other HIV-related diseases in the mean time...
I don't think so. Selection for the HIV-immunity gene is very weak, since very few people have HIV. Now if we were to stop using drugs against HIV and all have unprotected sex, then natural selection would kick in properly and the gene would spread. Then again, having this gene may not be that great. Maybe having it increases chances of getting some other, even more vicious disease (although it wouldn't be the first time useless genes/organs/bones/whatever are found, so maybe there are no downsides to having the HIV-immunity gene).
> Transplanting bone marrow to a HIV-infected individual should, IMO, be followed by a mandatory sterilisation. Else, we will be working against natural selection, and will in the long run assist HIV in surviving by increasing the number of non-resistant individuals in future populations.
Ah, but where to stop? I guess we should also sterilise blind people, deaf people, people with diabetes, etc. While removing people with bad genes from the gene pool would fix many genetic defects for generations to come (obviously), most people would agree it may not be the right thing to do.
> The derogation of women's and minorities' cognition does continue, however, but expressed in newer terms: instead of saying that women and negroes experience "henids" instead of "thinking in ideas," people today say that women or African-Americans on average have lower IQ than white men, and that IQ is subject to significant inheritance (see Lawrence Summers or The Bell Curve)
Let's be honest, the IQ thing is true. But the differences between men and women are rather small (3-4 points according to wikipedia) but they are REAL. What does this mean? That about 40% of women are smarter than the average male. Nobody with a functioning brain would use IQ scores as proof that women are retards. While IQ appears to be related to race (which may or may not be strongly influenced by culture), if you really want to go that way you would probably have to admit you are inferior to Asians (unless you are Asian, kudos to you). But even if you are an asian male, it can't be that hard to find a black woman who scores higher than you.
Short lifetimes are mostly the result of respawning. Some time ago I used to play MBII (a mod for JKA (a starwars 'fps')) where you have two teams, one of which has to accomplish an objective, and most classes do not respawn after death. IIRC, a round took about 10 minutes. People would be relatively cautious, because playing is more fun that spectating. The soldier class was pretty scary because they could get 2 respawns, meaning they would at times run forward guns blazing, not caring about death.
In games where there is no significant penalty for death, people will take greater risks.
> Starting with Wolfenstein on my 386, and the usual collection of shooters from then on. I've never even broken my own nose before, let alone performed any act of aggression against any person.
Same for me, but that is irrelevant. Maybe you feel the need to speak up because the link videogames-violence does not apply to you (thus making you think it is bullshit), and the 1000 people who turned into crazy murderers after playing tetris are to embarrassed to speak up.
> Actually, there is a direct causal relationship between sea pirates and global warming. Sea piracy was made significantly less feasible by steam and later oil powered ships. A wind-driven pirate vessel made from wood could be beached anywhere with trees for repair and only had food as a requirement. Any small island could be a base of operations for pirates as long as they could send a boat ashore for food.
That is not a direct causal relationship. There may be a direct causal relationship between the use of faster ships using fuel that is relatively hard to obtain and the decrease of piracy, but global warming in itself has no effect on piracy (may not be entirely true: with higher temperatures, the north pole will melt and sea levels will rise, making the sea bigger, which could have an effect on piracy).
> Seriously, have you ever had a phone ring, and decided to just not answer? People start going crazy around you- the programmed response is so overwhelming they might actually pick it up for you.
Probably because your ringtone is annoying, and they want it to stop. Why can't people just stick to normal ringtones? Every time I hear the 'laughing baby' thing I feel like strangling someone.
> Google can probably give me answers, but I can't remember how to use it. I haven't had my milk today:)
Adults drinking milk is a neat trick that has only been with us for about 10000 years. Milk is not required in the diet of adults (people from some parts of the world can't even digest it properly). Unless you have a diet-related disorder, such as diabetes, you don't usually have to worry about your food if you have at least some variety* in your diet. If you eat enough different stuff, your body will usually be able to get what it needs.
* Eating two different brands of fries != variety:p
> 20, 50, 100 years of happenings, memories.. All erased, with none ever being recoverable.
Let's be honest, there are a lot of memories that are not important to anyone but the one who remembers them. When I die nobody will know which pair of socks I liked best, but the loss of this knowledge is hardly a loss for the human race. Even if I were write down the things about my life that I consider to be the most important in an autobiography, how many people would read it? Humanity is not interested in the thoughts and memories of random people.
Write down the few happenings and memories that were relevant for (a large part of) the human race. The rest can be forgotten.
> That is a horrible thing that needs to be stopped at all costs, unless the person willfully chooses to do so.
I don't like people who are willing to accomplish some goal 'at all costs'.
It appears actin is part of filaments which are a rather important part of the contractile system, which is the system that gets your muscle cells to contract (which makes you muscles move). I have not a clue what an M line is. ATP is an important chemical that your cells internally use for energy. Why one would force feed someone ATP is beyond me (AFAIK it does not do anything special when ingested).
It appears MillionthMonkey is boosting his strength while Anonymous Coward is boosting his memory -> MM kicks AC's ass. (or something like that)
> "They built a city under sea level, and were surprised when it flooded".
Did you know about 60% of the Dutch population lives under the sea level? How about "They built a city under sea level in an area where hurricanes are common, and were surprised when it flooded"?
Sure there is. The rest of the group can get a doctor to take a look, and when the doctor says the wagon-guy is healed, the rest of the groups tells him he can either go back to pulling the wagon or get left behind.
> I've yet to hear anyone waffling on having a kid, and then go "Hey, I'll get a tax break...throw out the condom babe..we're gonna make a tax brea....er...baby". People fuck, and will continue to fuck...and have kids. So, let's quit giving them a subsidy.
How about the other way round? "We want a baby but we can't afford it"? Suppose we don't want poor people to have children. Then what happens when middle class parents lose all their money for some reason. Should children suffer for the mistakes of their parents?
> This trend of reward those in our society that provide the least benefit and punishing those who provide the most must stop. If there are 10 people pulling a wagon, and every day some decides to sit down in the wagon and rest, there will come a time when the people pulling will stop trying.
No, they'll kick the guy out and leave him behind, and rightly so. But if 10 people are pulling a wagon, and a random one among them temporarily becomes unable to pull the wagon by circumstances beyond his control (such as falling and hurting a leg, or becomming ill), it would be in everyones interest to let the guy sit in the wagon until he recovers instead of leaving him behind, or they'd have to pull the wagon with 9 people forever* (until another guy hurts a leg, then they're down to 8 people pulling the wagon, then 7, then 6, and so on...).
* Assuming there is no unlimited supply of workers. If there are unlimited workers everyone who becomes unable to pull the wagon can get shot and replaced. I doubt many people would want a wagon-pulling job in that situation though.
> Can anyone point me to research on how much and what kinds of hurt tend to lead to good education? That would be a very hard study, since "good education" is so hard to measure, but surely someone has made at least an initial stab at it?
I tried the stabbing thing but my children didn't become any smarter. It would appear stabbing is not the right kind of hurt.
> The big problem with this database is that one has to be a member of a law enforcement agency to gain access to it, so there is no way of knowing what else is being classified as "bad", nor is there anyway that a reputable provider can create an application that can protect the user from accidentally downloading something illegal.
Assuming have a large number of 'evil' hashes, then what are the odds that none of these hashes match one or more legal files, given the size of the intertubes? Also, the provider would have to download the complete file themselves to calculate the hash, and you would have to wait until their download was ready before they could tell you wether you should download that particular file. Especially for larger files the delay would be unacceptable.
You could run an application locally, but that would be useless because, like the provider, you'd have to download the file to be able to check its hash.
> So, go out and make a program that will automatically change a few bits in each file in a directory. Make it a TSR, and watch for all files in a directory. Sell it, profit.
Might I suggest you check the filetype before changing a few bits? For many files such as executables, encrypted files, and compressed files, changing a few bits is going to be rather annoying.
How about a searching for image/video files and using knowledge of the file format to make small changes (change a few pixels by 1 bit or something like that)?
Okay, so maybe they are a little wrong and the actual age of brainy awesomeness is some other number between 35-45. That doesn't make the whole study wrong. What is interesting is that the age they found was 39 instead of, say, 23. We shouldn't start publishing their results in schoolbooks all over the world yet, but the results are interesting and invite further research on the subject.
Don't expect EVERY study to involve thousands of people, that would be way too expensive. Instead you check interesting hypotheses with small groups of people and when you find something interesting you repeat the experiment with a larger group.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because Hitler did something doesn't make it bad. I'm sure Hitler ate and drank, but does that make you a nazi when you have breakfast?
> Because this trait appears to be genetically inheritable, unless well-meaning doctors interfere by transplanting bone marrow, the donors will be replicated. Natural selection will favour those resistant to HIV infections, and within a few generations, people with this survival trait will have produced noticeably more offspring. Of course, this is of little value to those who would develop AIDS or other HIV-related diseases in the mean time...
I don't think so. Selection for the HIV-immunity gene is very weak, since very few people have HIV. Now if we were to stop using drugs against HIV and all have unprotected sex, then natural selection would kick in properly and the gene would spread. Then again, having this gene may not be that great. Maybe having it increases chances of getting some other, even more vicious disease (although it wouldn't be the first time useless genes/organs/bones/whatever are found, so maybe there are no downsides to having the HIV-immunity gene).
> Transplanting bone marrow to a HIV-infected individual should, IMO, be followed by a mandatory sterilisation. Else, we will be working against natural selection, and will in the long run assist HIV in surviving by increasing the number of non-resistant individuals in future populations.
Ah, but where to stop? I guess we should also sterilise blind people, deaf people, people with diabetes, etc. While removing people with bad genes from the gene pool would fix many genetic defects for generations to come (obviously), most people would agree it may not be the right thing to do.
> The derogation of women's and minorities' cognition does continue, however, but expressed in newer terms: instead of saying that women and negroes experience "henids" instead of "thinking in ideas," people today say that women or African-Americans on average have lower IQ than white men, and that IQ is subject to significant inheritance (see Lawrence Summers or The Bell Curve)
Let's be honest, the IQ thing is true. But the differences between men and women are rather small (3-4 points according to wikipedia) but they are REAL. What does this mean? That about 40% of women are smarter than the average male. Nobody with a functioning brain would use IQ scores as proof that women are retards. While IQ appears to be related to race (which may or may not be strongly influenced by culture), if you really want to go that way you would probably have to admit you are inferior to Asians (unless you are Asian, kudos to you). But even if you are an asian male, it can't be that hard to find a black woman who scores higher than you.
Short lifetimes are mostly the result of respawning. Some time ago I used to play MBII (a mod for JKA (a starwars 'fps')) where you have two teams, one of which has to accomplish an objective, and most classes do not respawn after death. IIRC, a round took about 10 minutes. People would be relatively cautious, because playing is more fun that spectating. The soldier class was pretty scary because they could get 2 respawns, meaning they would at times run forward guns blazing, not caring about death.
In games where there is no significant penalty for death, people will take greater risks.
> Starting with Wolfenstein on my 386, and the usual collection of shooters from then on. I've never even broken my own nose before, let alone performed any act of aggression against any person.
Same for me, but that is irrelevant. Maybe you feel the need to speak up because the link videogames-violence does not apply to you (thus making you think it is bullshit), and the 1000 people who turned into crazy murderers after playing tetris are to embarrassed to speak up.
We're all biased :(
> Actually, there is a direct causal relationship between sea pirates and global warming. Sea piracy was made significantly less feasible by steam and later oil powered ships. A wind-driven pirate vessel made from wood could be beached anywhere with trees for repair and only had food as a requirement. Any small island could be a base of operations for pirates as long as they could send a boat ashore for food.
That is not a direct causal relationship. There may be a direct causal relationship between the use of faster ships using fuel that is relatively hard to obtain and the decrease of piracy, but global warming in itself has no effect on piracy (may not be entirely true: with higher temperatures, the north pole will melt and sea levels will rise, making the sea bigger, which could have an effect on piracy).
You're trying too hard.
How about the dodo.
Admit it you want to know how it tastes!
Mom?
> (Europe is big into banning Nazi stuff, etc.)
That is mostly limited to Germany.
Help & Preferences -> Your preferences -> Index -> Authors -> uncheck kdawson.
> It's called freedom of choice and expression. Two of the things the American settlers left the old world for.
I was under the impression those settlers left the Netherlands because the Dutchies were too liberal?
> Seriously, have you ever had a phone ring, and decided to just not answer? People start going crazy around you- the programmed response is so overwhelming they might actually pick it up for you.
Probably because your ringtone is annoying, and they want it to stop. Why can't people just stick to normal ringtones? Every time I hear the 'laughing baby' thing I feel like strangling someone.
> Google can probably give me answers, but I can't remember how to use it. I haven't had my milk today :)
Adults drinking milk is a neat trick that has only been with us for about 10000 years. Milk is not required in the diet of adults (people from some parts of the world can't even digest it properly). Unless you have a diet-related disorder, such as diabetes, you don't usually have to worry about your food if you have at least some variety* in your diet. If you eat enough different stuff, your body will usually be able to get what it needs.
* Eating two different brands of fries != variety :p
> 20, 50, 100 years of happenings, memories.. All erased, with none ever being recoverable.
Let's be honest, there are a lot of memories that are not important to anyone but the one who remembers them. When I die nobody will know which pair of socks I liked best, but the loss of this knowledge is hardly a loss for the human race. Even if I were write down the things about my life that I consider to be the most important in an autobiography, how many people would read it? Humanity is not interested in the thoughts and memories of random people.
Write down the few happenings and memories that were relevant for (a large part of) the human race. The rest can be forgotten.
> That is a horrible thing that needs to be stopped at all costs, unless the person willfully chooses to do so.
I don't like people who are willing to accomplish some goal 'at all costs'.
Wikipedia is your friend :)
It appears actin is part of filaments which are a rather important part of the contractile system, which is the system that gets your muscle cells to contract (which makes you muscles move). I have not a clue what an M line is. ATP is an important chemical that your cells internally use for energy. Why one would force feed someone ATP is beyond me (AFAIK it does not do anything special when ingested).
It appears MillionthMonkey is boosting his strength while Anonymous Coward is boosting his memory -> MM kicks AC's ass. (or something like that)
I used to be good at biology :(
> "They built a city under sea level, and were surprised when it flooded".
Did you know about 60% of the Dutch population lives under the sea level? How about "They built a city under sea level in an area where hurricanes are common, and were surprised when it flooded"?
Sure there is. The rest of the group can get a doctor to take a look, and when the doctor says the wagon-guy is healed, the rest of the groups tells him he can either go back to pulling the wagon or get left behind.
> Docter, what must we do?
> Dunno, but it's not lupus!
> I've yet to hear anyone waffling on having a kid, and then go "Hey, I'll get a tax break...throw out the condom babe..we're gonna make a tax brea....er...baby". People fuck, and will continue to fuck...and have kids. So, let's quit giving them a subsidy.
How about the other way round? "We want a baby but we can't afford it"? Suppose we don't want poor people to have children. Then what happens when middle class parents lose all their money for some reason. Should children suffer for the mistakes of their parents?
> This trend of reward those in our society that provide the least benefit and punishing those who provide the most must stop. If there are 10 people pulling a wagon, and every day some decides to sit down in the wagon and rest, there will come a time when the people pulling will stop trying.
No, they'll kick the guy out and leave him behind, and rightly so. But if 10 people are pulling a wagon, and a random one among them temporarily becomes unable to pull the wagon by circumstances beyond his control (such as falling and hurting a leg, or becomming ill), it would be in everyones interest to let the guy sit in the wagon until he recovers instead of leaving him behind, or they'd have to pull the wagon with 9 people forever* (until another guy hurts a leg, then they're down to 8 people pulling the wagon, then 7, then 6, and so on...).
* Assuming there is no unlimited supply of workers. If there are unlimited workers everyone who becomes unable to pull the wagon can get shot and replaced. I doubt many people would want a wagon-pulling job in that situation though.
> Can anyone point me to research on how much and what kinds of hurt tend to lead to good education? That would be a very hard study, since "good education" is so hard to measure, but surely someone has made at least an initial stab at it?
I tried the stabbing thing but my children didn't become any smarter. It would appear stabbing is not the right kind of hurt.
> The big problem with this database is that one has to be a member of a law enforcement agency to gain access to it, so there is no way of knowing what else is being classified as "bad", nor is there anyway that a reputable provider can create an application that can protect the user from accidentally downloading something illegal.
Assuming have a large number of 'evil' hashes, then what are the odds that none of these hashes match one or more legal files, given the size of the intertubes? Also, the provider would have to download the complete file themselves to calculate the hash, and you would have to wait until their download was ready before they could tell you wether you should download that particular file. Especially for larger files the delay would be unacceptable.
You could run an application locally, but that would be useless because, like the provider, you'd have to download the file to be able to check its hash.
> So, go out and make a program that will automatically change a few bits in each file in a directory. Make it a TSR, and watch for all files in a directory. Sell it, profit.
Might I suggest you check the filetype before changing a few bits? For many files such as executables, encrypted files, and compressed files, changing a few bits is going to be rather annoying.
How about a searching for image/video files and using knowledge of the file format to make small changes (change a few pixels by 1 bit or something like that)?
Okay, so maybe they are a little wrong and the actual age of brainy awesomeness is some other number between 35-45. That doesn't make the whole study wrong. What is interesting is that the age they found was 39 instead of, say, 23. We shouldn't start publishing their results in schoolbooks all over the world yet, but the results are interesting and invite further research on the subject.
Don't expect EVERY study to involve thousands of people, that would be way too expensive. Instead you check interesting hypotheses with small groups of people and when you find something interesting you repeat the experiment with a larger group.
Science at its best indeed.