What I feel strongly about is that there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that the genetic component of race (to the extent that it exists) affects IQ. I did give you several examples of evidence that supports this skepticism (nutrition accounts for brain size difference, a popular IQ test is biased in at least one question, etc.).
Yes, you are right that there might be something to it. No amount of evidence would ever change that. But even in this post you seem to be leaning toward believing that evidence (correct me if I'm wrong here), and I do feel that that is irresponsible.
And FWIW, I don't think I'm being ideological as much as I'm being a pompous ass. But Slashdot gets under my skin sometimes because people talk about very important topics and rarely go into any depth about them.
What a clear example of the harm of using non-scholarly sourcing (for the record, I love Wikipedia for getting a general idea of a topic, but I would never use it as an authoritative source on a complicated topic such as this one).
I went to read the Wikipedia entry, and I have many issues with its wording:
"The findings of this field are often thought to conflict with fundamental social philosophies, and have thus engendered a large controversy" -- this phrase is worded in such a way to suggest that the "scientific" findings about race and IQ are socially unpalatable, and that's the reason why there is controversy. First of all, this comment is unsourced, which is a problem because I don't know what "fundamental social philosophies" this person is talking about and what in the data disputes them. Secondly, the scientific findings themselves are merely data collected. They are facts in the context of the study. However, there are myriad issues with the relationship between the findings in the context of the study and the reality of why the IQ disparity exists. One great place to look for more information on these flaws is The Mismeasure of Man.
"It is clear, however, that performance in these tests accurately predicts performance in similar life tasks (typical college courses, for example)" -- this comment needs to be sourced and disambiguated. As it is there is an implication of causation imo. I know there's a correlation, but there are many, many factors that correlate to race in addition to IQ, such as nutrition, education level, socioeconomic status, culture, etc. Any one of these could be the true reason for the "prediction" that race makes for IQ. As an example of how hidden variables can compromise "predictions" of this sort, take this comment: "race predicts chopstick-using ability." It's technically true, but the causation is caused by cultural factors external to the variables we were looking at.
"Some scientists, such as Stephen Jay Gould, criticize the IQ test as a measure of intelligence" -- in my opinion, this aspect of the article should be given more billing. For example (and this isn't based on Gould's work, just an anecdote), did you know that one of the questions on the WAIS (one of the most popular IQ tests) is "if you're stuck in the forest, how can you get out?" (a gross paraphrase) Acceptable answers include following a stream, the sun, where the moss is on trees, etc. Now, would a black inner city kid have an unfair disadvantage to a rich suburban white kid who's in the Boy Scouts? The answer is clearly yes.
"IQ has a low to moderate correlation with various measures of brain size" -- there is no mention (other than a link to the Flynn effect) that nutrition is an important hidden variable in this correlation.
Even worse than these flaws, though, is your conclusion that "there may be some truth to it." Did you see the pretty graph and conclude that black people are genetically stupider than whites? Unless you've read through a good chunk of the literature on the subject, then you shouldn't be making snap judgments like you are. And for the record, I have read through a lot more of them than you have, albeit about 5 years ago.
I'm currently in the middle of a 14-day trial that cost $9 (the cost of the PCMag the DVD came bundled with). Maybe you should try picking one up.
I should add that despite the trial period I very much share your concern about the high subscription fees. As it is I'm considering not even extending my trial since it just isn't worth it to either a) waste money on a service I don't use much, or b) ruin my life by playing enough to make it worth it.
Translation, "I couldn't hack it in the real world of software development, so I decided to run back to college and make my parents pay my living expenses and tuition for another 5 years."
I was actually double-promoted in my first year, which is rather rare. And my parents haven't paid me a dime since freshman year (other than birthday presents and what not).
I somehow doubt that. Unless you were hired by a legal division to do patent filing guidance, you may have had time to file one patent in a year. Going through the process of filing a patent is time consuming (I know, I've filed two patent applications in ~3 years).
All of the patents were filed after I left. I met with lawyers regarding two of them before I left, however.
Input indicating a first position or designation of content on a page of an electronic document and an amount of white space to be inserted in the page is received. Responsive to the received input, at least some of the content of the page of the electronic document is moved to insert white space. The moving starts from a point based on the first position. The portion of the content being moved is moved a distance based on the amount of white space indicated in the received input. The page is grown by an amount based on the amount of the white space indicated in the received input.
Did the Koreans have electronically-processed user input that affected an electronic document?
No?
Look, I worked for Microsoft for a year and disliked it enough that I quit to go back to academia, so I'm not some huge fanboy. But you guys get entirely too carried away with the "Micro$oft is teh evil patent hax0r!!" bullshit. I filed a few patents when I was there. Do I feel ashamed? No. And why should I? It's not a business's responsibility to audit patent policy.
And let's try comparing the number of patent lawsuits filed against Microsoft to the number of patent lawsuits filed by Microsoft. How does this translate to Microsoft abusing the system?
I've had to reboot XP way less than 98. To be honest, I kind of like Windows Update these days. The UI is decent, it lets me download only the updates I want, the updates have always worked for me, and it rarely requires a reboot.
Or are you in the camp that still claims BSODs are as common now as they were in 98?
It zooms in like a digital camera zoom a few steps before replacing the pictures with the higher-res versions. Which is fine, but as it's doing that it stutters, which bothers the hell out of me. Maybe I'll try it at my home computer (much more powerful) and see if it's as annoying.
One example across the entire United States makes this "abundantly clear"?
Personally, the reason I'll stick to Google is because zooming in the MSN version is retarded (try it and you'll see what I mean). Nothing beats a Google UI imo.
The only reason Microsoft cares about a top executive at their premier research outpost in their most important emerging market leaving for their hottest competitor is...to prevent him from making a living? If the tables were turned, would you still be saying this?
For the record, once I found the official patch on mozdev.org, I applied it rather than uninstall.
But fear, uncertainty, and doubt can occassionally be completely justified. As is the case for all of those random plugins I have installed. Who's to say that one of their authors won't read the GM security notice, get a bright idea, and invade my system's privacy for some money?
Nothing. The fix you mention is voluntary by the GM devs, and doesn't do anything to the underlying security issues in Firefox itself. In other words, now that I know what's possible in a Firefox extension, I'm going to treat it just like I treat ActiveX: with a lot of skepticism.
But I appreciate your attempt at painting me as irrational.
Hrmm...so I take back the bit about the XPI being "random-ass" since it's linked from mozdev. I originally only read the first link in the article, not the second (and the link provided by the parent post didn't work for me).
As far as any normal user is concerned, there is no GM update, since going to the Extensions manager and clicking update for GM yields "Firefox was not able to find any available updates" (this is the case for me at least).
In fact, as far as anybody should be concerned there is no installable update. I'm not about to install some random-ass XPI just because it claims to be a GM "fix".
As much as I like using it, I'm uninstalling. And this gives me the willies about all those semi-random but cool extensions that have made the Firefox experience so great for me. This is very bad.
I'm glad to have been enlightened on a topic I took for granted. But I do have one more question for you...would having open journals really contribute to circulation in the way that it can for fiction, as in the case of Ya Ya Sisterhood? If a book is available for free, people can still buy it for the convenience of reading it on the train to work, on the beach, etc.
On the other hand, if a journal is available for free on the web, why would an institution spend the money to pay for it? I know that it would support a service that's being used etc., but do you realistically think institutions would pay?
Personally, I'm more of a fan of journals that are open by choice, not as dictated by Google. The BMC series, for example, makes authors pay more upfront to handle the costs of publication.
The market for fiction and the market for academic journals aren't exactly comparable, especially in this context. Have you ever heard somebody say, "Dude, you must read Am. J. Chem. Bio. pages 133-137!!!"? I doubt it. But even if you have, that doesn't result in a purchase. It results in a print-out or a copy from an institutional subscription that already existed.
Personally, I've never heard of word of mouth (based on content) resulting in an institutional subscription.
Unlike many here, I believe the NYT opinion page is worth money (unfortunately, I'd put the price point at $20 rather than $50).
Just the other day I went to a talk at MIT by Thomas Friedman where he talked about his book on globalization. It's all stuff we're pretty familiar with, but I don't think your average person spends time thinking about the impact the developing world and countries like India, China, and Russia are going to have on our economy. In fact, even I learned a considerable amount about the topic, like a fascinating set of details about the fact that companies are turning more and more into marketing shells and sourcing their supply chains to companies like UPS and others overseas. Overall I came away blown away by the insights I gained about such a complex problem.
The thing to note about this is that even the best bloggers aren't going to have access like this guy. He spent months in India, China, and Russia researching his book. He talked to leaders of countries and companies (he talked about Fiorina specifically). And his analysis was all the deeper for it.
In the end, I'd say blogs are a great resource for your latest infohit and some cheap (and very occassionally deep) commentary. But I believe the NYT op-ed page will remain relevant, and I'm going to miss it.
So we are seeing hypersexuality, earlier and earlier puberty, obesity, and a lot of neurosis.
I don't have anything better to do than argue with a eugenist on a Sunday morning, so here goes:
You are overstating the inevitability of very vague negative effects in order to support your beliefs. It sounds very Chicken Little-ish. For example, hypersexuality and neurosis? Do you have any real evidence that these are increasing? If you take an anthropology class you'll see plenty of people who don't "fit in" and get branded as a witch in tribal societies. It may be true that anxiety and depression levels are rising, but it could also very well not be true.
I also just read a very interesting article about Genghis Khan and how up to.5% of currently living men may be directly descended from him, due to his massive number of offspring. It's not like modern humans are the only ones to be into sex. Have you ever studied Bonobo apes? They're extremely sexual, even engaging in homosexual play. So I fail to see how this is new.
As for obesity and a lowering age of puberty, you are correct about these. FYI, the lowering age of puberty may be an effect of better nutrition (see here). Our bodies are not used to eating as much and as well as they do. More on that later, though.
The only way out of this situation is to start applying deliberate selective pressure. Given that this would essentially mean giving up the right of individuals to reproduce at will, I don't see it happening any time soon. Plus, I would imagine that a lot of effort would be thrown at hot-button traits like homosexuality or intelligence which probably aren't even heritable. (I know there are a lot of people who say otherwise; there are good reasons for doubting them, starting with their very eagerness.)
Here's the real meat of where you're on the wrong track.
Let's start easy. Is a person who weighs 1000 pounds going to procreate less than, at an equal rate to, or more than, a normal weight individual? The reasonable answer is "less than." This is selective pressure. It only needs to exert itself at the extremes to have a gradual effect. Remember that evolution is a long process.
The same argument can be said for neurosis, even though I've disputed whether or not this is a new problem. Are people who are very anxious and depressed going to procreate less than, at an equal rate to, or more than a normal person? I'd argue that they are less likely to procreate than a normal person. Hence, selective pressure.
As for homosexuality and intelligence, you're simply off-base. Read this Science article to see that heritability of intelligence is pegged somewhere "below 50%". They say it this way because previous studies have found very large heritabilities for IQ, and it is significant that they found heritability to be "so low" as to be under 50%. Here's from the full text:
Our results suggest far smaller heritabilities: broad-sense heritability, which measures the total effect of genes on IQ, is perhaps 48%; narrow-sense heritability, the relevant quantity for evolutionary arguments because it measures the additive effects of genes, is about 34%. Herrnstein and Murray's evolutionary conclusions are tenuous in light of these heritabilities.
Aside from this evidence, it's simple folly to think that genetics plays no role in intelligence. The number of NMDA receptors in your brain have recently been shown to play a role in memory, which has an obvious relation to intelligence. Does it not make sense that people with higher numbers of NMDA receptors would have better memories and be more intelligent? The number of NMDA receptors in your brain is definitely partially controlled by genetics. The degree to which it is malleable is the real question.
Q. What does the word NT (in "Windows NT") stand for? Is it just a name that Microsoft conjured up from thin air or does it actually have a full name like "Networked Terminal"? Souvik Das, Ithaca, NY (souvik@oracorp.com)
A. When we first released Windows NT in 1993, Sun said it stood for "Not There" and IBM said it stood for "Nice Try."
Actually, the letters stood for "New Technology."
But the letters have long since lost any specific meaning. Today, "NT" is just a designation for our high-end version of Windows.
This is already standard practice for both Google and Overture. It's called "conversion tracking", since in industry parlance a "conversion" is a sale/subscription/any other concrete action taken as a result of an ad impression. Currently both services' "pay for performance" model prices based on click count, not conversion count (AFAIK), however.
Here's a little bit more info on Google/Overture conversion tracking: link.
Great, now the gene splicers have the equivalent of a hex editor, but still have no clue what they are editing. It's like hacking binary code out of one program and inserting into another program and somehow getting it to work.
This isn't entirely true. We can figure out where a gene starts in DNA, and we know how to read the DNA into a protein. We know that from the start point, DNA is broken up into 3's such that each set of three DNA bases code for one amino acid. To use the case of sickle cell anemia, the DNA sequence GAG is replaced by GTG. This causes a glutamine amino acid to be incorporated into the Hemoglobin beta chain instead of a valine (this can be predicted since we know the entire triplicate-to-amino acid dictionary). Partly because glutamine is a charged amino acid and valine isn't, this causes Hemoglobin with this mutated beta chain to clump together when deoxygenated -- hence the sickle cell phenotype.
So in this case it isn't true that we're hacking binary code. We're hacking a DNA code that we know enough about to fix simple point mutations like the one found in sickle cell anemia. As for other, more complicated, diseases, we are indeed still poking in the dark. But that doesn't mean progress isn't being made...
The acquisition of Urchin doesn't necessarily mean that Google is moving into the traffic analysis market in a big way. My guess is that this will simply be used for improved reporting to adwords and adsense users.
Your explanation is fairly on the mark, and I'd mod it up except that I want to participate in the discussion.
The thing that's so remarkable about this case is as you said: BOTH alleles of the gene of the plant were defective as inherited from their parents, and yet they somehow reverted to an allele from the grandparents, across the entire organism. According to current theory, sexual replication causes a kid to inherit one allele of each gene from each parent (and by "theory", I mean you can watch this happen under a microscope). If both alleles received are "faulty" (which is a sticky term to use in many cases), there's no known way for a newly fertilized cell to know this. There's no information about what the correct gene should look like except the two copies of the gene it has. In cancer, as you point out to address the parent post, there is always a source of information used to correct the mutation.
In the case of UV damage, information exists in the form of two fused thimidine molecules (two T's). If a cell sees two fused T's, it has a repair mechanism for correcting them. But, importantly, if this mistake is not corrected before DNA duplication occurs, then random bases are paired with the T's, because they're damaged. Once this happens, each daughter cell has lost the information required to correct the problem, and the mutation persists. If this happens in an unlucky spot, you can get melanoma.
In the case of other more serious damage, like double-stranded breaks, your cell pulls in the other copy of your genes and edits against that. The information needed for repair is the "good" copy of the allele in the sister chromosome.
So you can see why this is so confusing -- in the case in the article the daughter cells, with two bad alleles for the gene they studied, are supposed to have no information pointing them to the gene from the grandparents. And yet they did, since they were able to fix it. The article postulates that this could be because a THIRD copy of the gene exists as RNA that's passed down from the grandparents (third since there are two chromosomes, each with a copy of the gene). If this were true, then the RNA would be the source of information required to fix the problem. Alternatively, there could be a specific protein that hunts down mutations in this gene and somehow fixes it, since it somehow bonds only to the correct version of the gene. But that's just my wild speculation.
Unless you have a court case where an image thumbnail was equated with a short text quotation for the purpose of deciding "fair use", then this is by no means "established."
Fair use is vaguely defined and depends on many factors. Just because an example fits an analogy to quoting text doesn't mean a judge would agree with you.
I don't know if the two have talked about this, but I went to a talk by Ray Kurzweil (the inventor and writer), and he said much the same thing. His claim is that not only has processor speed, storage, etc. followed a logarithmic climb by time, but lifespan has as well. I think he said 2026 is about the time when we'll gain one day of lifespan for every passing day, if the curve keeps up.
In his efforts to reach the point of immortality early, he also said he's taking some ungodly number of nutritional supplements. I guess he's trying to stretch YMMV to its limit:-p
Slashdot Mirror
What I feel strongly about is that there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that the genetic component of race (to the extent that it exists) affects IQ. I did give you several examples of evidence that supports this skepticism (nutrition accounts for brain size difference, a popular IQ test is biased in at least one question, etc.).
Yes, you are right that there might be something to it. No amount of evidence would ever change that. But even in this post you seem to be leaning toward believing that evidence (correct me if I'm wrong here), and I do feel that that is irresponsible.
And FWIW, I don't think I'm being ideological as much as I'm being a pompous ass. But Slashdot gets under my skin sometimes because people talk about very important topics and rarely go into any depth about them.
What a clear example of the harm of using non-scholarly sourcing (for the record, I love Wikipedia for getting a general idea of a topic, but I would never use it as an authoritative source on a complicated topic such as this one).
I went to read the Wikipedia entry, and I have many issues with its wording:
- "The findings of this field are often thought to conflict with fundamental social philosophies, and have thus engendered a large controversy" -- this phrase is worded in such a way to suggest that the "scientific" findings about race and IQ are socially unpalatable, and that's the reason why there is controversy. First of all, this comment is unsourced, which is a problem because I don't know what "fundamental social philosophies" this person is talking about and what in the data disputes them. Secondly, the scientific findings themselves are merely data collected. They are facts in the context of the study. However, there are myriad issues with the relationship between the findings in the context of the study and the reality of why the IQ disparity exists. One great place to look for more information on these flaws is The Mismeasure of Man.
- "It is clear, however, that performance in these tests accurately predicts performance in similar life tasks (typical college courses, for example)" -- this comment needs to be sourced and disambiguated. As it is there is an implication of causation imo. I know there's a correlation, but there are many, many factors that correlate to race in addition to IQ, such as nutrition, education level, socioeconomic status, culture, etc. Any one of these could be the true reason for the "prediction" that race makes for IQ. As an example of how hidden variables can compromise "predictions" of this sort, take this comment: "race predicts chopstick-using ability." It's technically true, but the causation is caused by cultural factors external to the variables we were looking at.
- "Some scientists, such as Stephen Jay Gould, criticize the IQ test as a measure of intelligence" -- in my opinion, this aspect of the article should be given more billing. For example (and this isn't based on Gould's work, just an anecdote), did you know that one of the questions on the WAIS (one of the most popular IQ tests) is "if you're stuck in the forest, how can you get out?" (a gross paraphrase) Acceptable answers include following a stream, the sun, where the moss is on trees, etc. Now, would a black inner city kid have an unfair disadvantage to a rich suburban white kid who's in the Boy Scouts? The answer is clearly yes.
- "IQ has a low to moderate correlation with various measures of brain size" -- there is no mention (other than a link to the Flynn effect) that nutrition is an important hidden variable in this correlation.
Even worse than these flaws, though, is your conclusion that "there may be some truth to it." Did you see the pretty graph and conclude that black people are genetically stupider than whites? Unless you've read through a good chunk of the literature on the subject, then you shouldn't be making snap judgments like you are. And for the record, I have read through a lot more of them than you have, albeit about 5 years ago.Egad, $70 for another month of neglecting the rest of my life? It may be fun, but that's unbelievably expensive. Sorry, Blizzard :(
...and how the hell have 3.5 million people paid that much for the game?
I'm currently in the middle of a 14-day trial that cost $9 (the cost of the PCMag the DVD came bundled with). Maybe you should try picking one up.
:(
I should add that despite the trial period I very much share your concern about the high subscription fees. As it is I'm considering not even extending my trial since it just isn't worth it to either a) waste money on a service I don't use much, or b) ruin my life by playing enough to make it worth it.
...why do I feel like b) is my inevitable path
Translation, "I couldn't hack it in the real world of software development, so I decided to run back to college and make my parents pay my living expenses and tuition for another 5 years."
I was actually double-promoted in my first year, which is rather rare. And my parents haven't paid me a dime since freshman year (other than birthday presents and what not).
I somehow doubt that. Unless you were hired by a legal division to do patent filing guidance, you may have had time to file one patent in a year. Going through the process of filing a patent is time consuming (I know, I've filed two patent applications in ~3 years).
All of the patents were filed after I left. I met with lawyers regarding two of them before I left, however.
...want to try again?
Input indicating a first position or designation of content on a page of an electronic document and an amount of white space to be inserted in the page is received. Responsive to the received input, at least some of the content of the page of the electronic document is moved to insert white space. The moving starts from a point based on the first position. The portion of the content being moved is moved a distance based on the amount of white space indicated in the received input. The page is grown by an amount based on the amount of the white space indicated in the received input.
Did the Koreans have electronically-processed user input that affected an electronic document?
No?
Look, I worked for Microsoft for a year and disliked it enough that I quit to go back to academia, so I'm not some huge fanboy. But you guys get entirely too carried away with the "Micro$oft is teh evil patent hax0r!!" bullshit. I filed a few patents when I was there. Do I feel ashamed? No. And why should I? It's not a business's responsibility to audit patent policy.
And let's try comparing the number of patent lawsuits filed against Microsoft to the number of patent lawsuits filed by Microsoft. How does this translate to Microsoft abusing the system?
I've had to reboot XP way less than 98. To be honest, I kind of like Windows Update these days. The UI is decent, it lets me download only the updates I want, the updates have always worked for me, and it rarely requires a reboot.
Or are you in the camp that still claims BSODs are as common now as they were in 98?
It zooms in like a digital camera zoom a few steps before replacing the pictures with the higher-res versions. Which is fine, but as it's doing that it stutters, which bothers the hell out of me. Maybe I'll try it at my home computer (much more powerful) and see if it's as annoying.
One example across the entire United States makes this "abundantly clear"?
Personally, the reason I'll stick to Google is because zooming in the MSN version is retarded (try it and you'll see what I mean). Nothing beats a Google UI imo.
The only reason Microsoft cares about a top executive at their premier research outpost in their most important emerging market leaving for their hottest competitor is...to prevent him from making a living? If the tables were turned, would you still be saying this?
For the record, once I found the official patch on mozdev.org, I applied it rather than uninstall.
But fear, uncertainty, and doubt can occassionally be completely justified. As is the case for all of those random plugins I have installed. Who's to say that one of their authors won't read the GM security notice, get a bright idea, and invade my system's privacy for some money?
Nothing. The fix you mention is voluntary by the GM devs, and doesn't do anything to the underlying security issues in Firefox itself. In other words, now that I know what's possible in a Firefox extension, I'm going to treat it just like I treat ActiveX: with a lot of skepticism.
But I appreciate your attempt at painting me as irrational.
Hrmm...so I take back the bit about the XPI being "random-ass" since it's linked from mozdev. I originally only read the first link in the article, not the second (and the link provided by the parent post didn't work for me).
As far as any normal user is concerned, there is no GM update, since going to the Extensions manager and clicking update for GM yields "Firefox was not able to find any available updates" (this is the case for me at least).
In fact, as far as anybody should be concerned there is no installable update. I'm not about to install some random-ass XPI just because it claims to be a GM "fix".
As much as I like using it, I'm uninstalling. And this gives me the willies about all those semi-random but cool extensions that have made the Firefox experience so great for me. This is very bad.
I'm glad to have been enlightened on a topic I took for granted. But I do have one more question for you...would having open journals really contribute to circulation in the way that it can for fiction, as in the case of Ya Ya Sisterhood? If a book is available for free, people can still buy it for the convenience of reading it on the train to work, on the beach, etc.
On the other hand, if a journal is available for free on the web, why would an institution spend the money to pay for it? I know that it would support a service that's being used etc., but do you realistically think institutions would pay?
Personally, I'm more of a fan of journals that are open by choice, not as dictated by Google. The BMC series, for example, makes authors pay more upfront to handle the costs of publication.
The market for fiction and the market for academic journals aren't exactly comparable, especially in this context. Have you ever heard somebody say, "Dude, you must read Am. J. Chem. Bio. pages 133-137!!!"? I doubt it. But even if you have, that doesn't result in a purchase. It results in a print-out or a copy from an institutional subscription that already existed.
Personally, I've never heard of word of mouth (based on content) resulting in an institutional subscription.
Unlike many here, I believe the NYT opinion page is worth money (unfortunately, I'd put the price point at $20 rather than $50).
Just the other day I went to a talk at MIT by Thomas Friedman where he talked about his book on globalization. It's all stuff we're pretty familiar with, but I don't think your average person spends time thinking about the impact the developing world and countries like India, China, and Russia are going to have on our economy. In fact, even I learned a considerable amount about the topic, like a fascinating set of details about the fact that companies are turning more and more into marketing shells and sourcing their supply chains to companies like UPS and others overseas. Overall I came away blown away by the insights I gained about such a complex problem.
The thing to note about this is that even the best bloggers aren't going to have access like this guy. He spent months in India, China, and Russia researching his book. He talked to leaders of countries and companies (he talked about Fiorina specifically). And his analysis was all the deeper for it.
In the end, I'd say blogs are a great resource for your latest infohit and some cheap (and very occassionally deep) commentary. But I believe the NYT op-ed page will remain relevant, and I'm going to miss it.
I don't have anything better to do than argue with a eugenist on a Sunday morning, so here goes:
You are overstating the inevitability of very vague negative effects in order to support your beliefs. It sounds very Chicken Little-ish. For example, hypersexuality and neurosis? Do you have any real evidence that these are increasing? If you take an anthropology class you'll see plenty of people who don't "fit in" and get branded as a witch in tribal societies. It may be true that anxiety and depression levels are rising, but it could also very well not be true.
I also just read a very interesting article about Genghis Khan and how up to
As for obesity and a lowering age of puberty, you are correct about these. FYI, the lowering age of puberty may be an effect of better nutrition (see here). Our bodies are not used to eating as much and as well as they do. More on that later, though.
The only way out of this situation is to start applying deliberate selective pressure. Given that this would essentially mean giving up the right of individuals to reproduce at will, I don't see it happening any time soon. Plus, I would imagine that a lot of effort would be thrown at hot-button traits like homosexuality or intelligence which probably aren't even heritable. (I know there are a lot of people who say otherwise; there are good reasons for doubting them, starting with their very eagerness.)
Here's the real meat of where you're on the wrong track.
Let's start easy. Is a person who weighs 1000 pounds going to procreate less than, at an equal rate to, or more than, a normal weight individual? The reasonable answer is "less than." This is selective pressure. It only needs to exert itself at the extremes to have a gradual effect. Remember that evolution is a long process.
The same argument can be said for neurosis, even though I've disputed whether or not this is a new problem. Are people who are very anxious and depressed going to procreate less than, at an equal rate to, or more than a normal person? I'd argue that they are less likely to procreate than a normal person. Hence, selective pressure.
As for homosexuality and intelligence, you're simply off-base. Read this Science article to see that heritability of intelligence is pegged somewhere "below 50%". They say it this way because previous studies have found very large heritabilities for IQ, and it is significant that they found heritability to be "so low" as to be under 50%. Here's from the full text:
Aside from this evidence, it's simple folly to think that genetics plays no role in intelligence. The number of NMDA receptors in your brain have recently been shown to play a role in memory, which has an obvious relation to intelligence. Does it not make sense that people with higher numbers of NMDA receptors would have better memories and be more intelligent? The number of NMDA receptors in your brain is definitely partially controlled by genetics. The degree to which it is malleable is the real question.
As for homosexuality,
It's not?
This is already standard practice for both Google and Overture. It's called "conversion tracking", since in industry parlance a "conversion" is a sale/subscription/any other concrete action taken as a result of an ad impression. Currently both services' "pay for performance" model prices based on click count, not conversion count (AFAIK), however.
Here's a little bit more info on Google/Overture conversion tracking: link.
Great, now the gene splicers have the equivalent of a hex editor, but still have no clue what they are editing. It's like hacking binary code out of one program and inserting into another program and somehow getting it to work.
This isn't entirely true. We can figure out where a gene starts in DNA, and we know how to read the DNA into a protein. We know that from the start point, DNA is broken up into 3's such that each set of three DNA bases code for one amino acid. To use the case of sickle cell anemia, the DNA sequence GAG is replaced by GTG. This causes a glutamine amino acid to be incorporated into the Hemoglobin beta chain instead of a valine (this can be predicted since we know the entire triplicate-to-amino acid dictionary). Partly because glutamine is a charged amino acid and valine isn't, this causes Hemoglobin with this mutated beta chain to clump together when deoxygenated -- hence the sickle cell phenotype.
So in this case it isn't true that we're hacking binary code. We're hacking a DNA code that we know enough about to fix simple point mutations like the one found in sickle cell anemia. As for other, more complicated, diseases, we are indeed still poking in the dark. But that doesn't mean progress isn't being made...
The acquisition of Urchin doesn't necessarily mean that Google is moving into the traffic analysis market in a big way. My guess is that this will simply be used for improved reporting to adwords and adsense users.
If these conditions applied to us, we wouldn't have cancer.
We also wouldn't have the genetic variation required for evolution. So this obviously isn't something that can happen ALL the time.
Your explanation is fairly on the mark, and I'd mod it up except that I want to participate in the discussion.
The thing that's so remarkable about this case is as you said: BOTH alleles of the gene of the plant were defective as inherited from their parents, and yet they somehow reverted to an allele from the grandparents, across the entire organism. According to current theory, sexual replication causes a kid to inherit one allele of each gene from each parent (and by "theory", I mean you can watch this happen under a microscope). If both alleles received are "faulty" (which is a sticky term to use in many cases), there's no known way for a newly fertilized cell to know this. There's no information about what the correct gene should look like except the two copies of the gene it has. In cancer, as you point out to address the parent post, there is always a source of information used to correct the mutation.
In the case of UV damage, information exists in the form of two fused thimidine molecules (two T's). If a cell sees two fused T's, it has a repair mechanism for correcting them. But, importantly, if this mistake is not corrected before DNA duplication occurs, then random bases are paired with the T's, because they're damaged. Once this happens, each daughter cell has lost the information required to correct the problem, and the mutation persists. If this happens in an unlucky spot, you can get melanoma.
In the case of other more serious damage, like double-stranded breaks, your cell pulls in the other copy of your genes and edits against that. The information needed for repair is the "good" copy of the allele in the sister chromosome.
So you can see why this is so confusing -- in the case in the article the daughter cells, with two bad alleles for the gene they studied, are supposed to have no information pointing them to the gene from the grandparents. And yet they did, since they were able to fix it. The article postulates that this could be because a THIRD copy of the gene exists as RNA that's passed down from the grandparents (third since there are two chromosomes, each with a copy of the gene). If this were true, then the RNA would be the source of information required to fix the problem. Alternatively, there could be a specific protein that hunts down mutations in this gene and somehow fixes it, since it somehow bonds only to the correct version of the gene. But that's just my wild speculation.
Unless you have a court case where an image thumbnail was equated with a short text quotation for the purpose of deciding "fair use", then this is by no means "established."
Fair use is vaguely defined and depends on many factors. Just because an example fits an analogy to quoting text doesn't mean a judge would agree with you.
I don't know if the two have talked about this, but I went to a talk by Ray Kurzweil (the inventor and writer), and he said much the same thing. His claim is that not only has processor speed, storage, etc. followed a logarithmic climb by time, but lifespan has as well. I think he said 2026 is about the time when we'll gain one day of lifespan for every passing day, if the curve keeps up.
:-p
In his efforts to reach the point of immortality early, he also said he's taking some ungodly number of nutritional supplements. I guess he's trying to stretch YMMV to its limit