TheVat

Out here in the fields, we fight for such meals.

Heh. Ah yes, the old minor triad major seventh matchup. I play that when the spouse walks in the door while I'm practicing. If she then pokes me in the ribs, I offer a lower register tritone. Hadn't heard "berserker" applied to C11, but it is pretty dissonant if you don't take the third out. It's the Cadd9 (CEGD) that's more bright and open and nicknamed a heaven chord. If you leave the Bb in there, straight C9, it's bluesier. More Leonard Coheny. Too complex for Heaven I'd imagine. 😉

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.24216 American Journal of Physical AnthropologyVolume 175, Issue 2 pp. 465-476 AbstractObjectivesDebate about the cause of IQ score gaps between Black and White populations has persisted within genetics, anthropology, and psychology. Recently, authors claimed polygenic scores provide evidence that a significant portion of differences in cognitive performance between Black and White populations are caused by genetic differences due to natural selection, the “hereditarian hypothesis.” This study aims to show conceptual and methodological flaws of past studies supporting the hereditarian hypothesis. Materials and methodsPolygenic scores for educational attainment were constructed for African and European samples of the 1000 Genomes Project. Evidence for selection was evaluated using an excess variance test. Education associated variants were further evaluated for signals of selection by testing for excess genetic differentiation (Fst). Expected mean difference in IQ for populations was calculated under a neutral evolutionary scenario and contrasted to hereditarian claims. ResultsTests for selection using polygenic scores failed to find evidence of natural selection when the less biased within-family GWAS effect sizes were used. Tests for selection using Fst values did not find evidence of natural selection. Expected mean difference in IQ was substantially smaller than postulated by hereditarians, even under unrealistic assumptions that overestimate genetic contribution. ConclusionGiven these results, hereditarian claims are not supported in the least. Cognitive performance does not appear to have been under diversifying selection in Europeans and Africans. In the absence of diversifying selection, the best case estimate for genetic contributions to group differences in cognitive performance is substantially smaller than hereditarians claim and is consistent with genetic differences contributing little to the Black–White gap. A couple points: One, please provide citations rather than "what I recall reading," as our forum rules require you to do when requested. We need to see the data you're seeing and how it's being interpreted. Two, twin studies are prone to sloppiness in isolating causal factors. Adopted children generally, for example, receive somewhat differential treatment from biological children in a given family no matter how good the parental intentions or the degree of wealth. There can also be overseas effects for children adopted into richer Western families, where a shift in various environment features in the first year or two of life (ambient allergens or pathogens, for one) can affect the child's development. This is shifting the goal posts. No one has argued that environment is the sole determining factor. G comes from an interaction between many gene variants and the environment. The issue is whether genes are significant in differences in G between human groups. DNA analysis has found hundreds of genetic variants that each have a very tiny association with intelligence, but even if you add them all together they predict only a small fraction of someone’s IQ score. And heritability, whether low or high, implies nothing about modifiability. The classic example is height, which is strongly heritable (80 to 90 percent), yet the average height of 11-year-old boys in Japan has increased by more than 5 inches in the past 50 years. A similar historical change occurs for intelligence.

I knew a psych professor who liked to say "halo effects are everywhere." People frequently observe traits they like and make dubious correlations with general intelligence. And video culture can promote such halo effects, causing (often unconscious ) mental associations between certain phenotypes and cognitive skills.

Relating back to solipsism, I find that great music offers a profound rebuttal to solipsism (not like it needs one, but having that on a deep emotional level is something). Funny how you scratch the surface of a science forumite and so often find a poet and/or musician. (Jazz improviser here) A poet like Shelley can use words that are about certain feelings and intuitions, but where we go from that is beyond those words. Music can also be about something but it can also just be something. In that case, the art IS the experience rather than about or reflecting experience. Is a C9 chord "heavenly," as some say, i.e. is it about heaven? No it just is - the experience is what it is. You're not reproducing some other experience, you're just having one. (Ok, wildly off topic and I'm ready for my manacles, moderator)

Posts atop a subforum list are pinned. Especially relevant/important threads are thus kept maximally visible to visitors.

Ok, there's the vagueness again. What precisely is meant by education? Generally, when the wealthy in Nigeria are, thanks to wealth, now providing childhood nurture at what are norms in the Western middle class, there is a broad palette of educational advantages beyond just larger vocabulary and better reading skills. The best schools that wealthy families afford would offer student projects and problem-solving tasks which would impact fluid intelligence as well as crystallized intelligence. And students, not having to go to dull repetitive laboring jobs or similar after school would better integrate those cognitive skills. Again, when these Nigerian women were raised with Western norms of access and education and nurture, their scores rose to parity. If there is ambition to emigrate, that's not a selective effect for IQ but for personality traits that may not relate to IQ at all. After all, if ambition and drive correlated closely with IQ, the current US government would look vastly different.

An assumption can still be correct even if some policies derived from that assumption are ineffective. And the assumption you mention is robustly supported by social science studies that look at how outcomes and disparities change when discrimination is lessened for minorities and outreach programs support childhood nurture. You haven't produced a shred of evidence that programs supporting things like nutrition, literacy, stable family life, healthy housing, arts after school, etc are "wrong-headed." And resorting to vague phrases like "social justice style" doesn't advance your position. It's just hand-waving. LOL.

2nd that. Seems to be a persistent ignoring of culture/nurture in this malodorous sidebar. LMAO. Ah, but those women are an elite group which means... oh wait...they experienced better nutrition and care and a richer stimulating learning environment in childhood and particular cultural emphasis on diligence and task persistence. You realize you are supporting the nurture side of the argument with these observations, right? These elites are getting the nurture environments which seem to bring them up to the functional levels common in wealthy nations. How are you missing this?

TIL why the Who song is called Baba O'Riley. Released October 1971, so it only took me 54 years to make the connection to the father of minimalist composition, Terry Riley. Once you hear A Rainbow in Curved Air, you realize the Who hommage in their most misreferenced song ( I've even heard a DJ misname the track as "Teenage Wasteland.")

Jesting about the "baby angels," as I'm sure you realized. Americans are notorious for their cultural tendencies towards sleep deprivation. The bit about biphasic sleep is interesting, and something my historian partner has delved into. I am inclined that direction myself, and will often split my sleep cycles now that I'm retired. One pleasure of the biphase night is remembering dreams better. Well, who doesn't enjoy watching the battleships as they glide into their docks?

On road today, can't type much on this device, so my thanks for your post cutting to the heart of this tiresome race mythology. And to @CharonY too for reminders of the pitfalls of the statistical data.

Dim's comments sometimes tend to be more poetic than well-researched. Where are these homes with people sleeping 8-10 hours that you speak of? Do such homes offer adoption programs? Are these residents like baby angels raised by puppies in a beachfront palace with no right angles? Light teasing aside, it seems like routines make considerable difference in the overnight fasting period. Breakfast, as a zeitgeber, seems malleable. Though most people who try shifting to a brunch, moving the fast from twelve hours to sixteen, say, will hit a fairly hard wall at some point. While I benefit from my 16 hour hiatus, it didn't come easily, and I really need to find some food by 10-11 am.

We don't, actually, because this is a science forum not a Far Right garbage conspiracy theories forum. White males who get demoralized because brown people and women turned out to be smart at science too are responsible for their own biases and mood disorders. If that causes them to stomp their feet and blow off study sessions, then maybe they're too fragile to do science. Best leave it to people who know how to work hard.

That's funny, I used the same phrase, mixed bag, on the SFC thread. Watson basically stole a Nobel from her, imo. Then slandered her after she died. It's pretty reprehensible and goes way beyond poaching from grad students.

When the light shuts off on Io, the photons from the previous 11 minutes are still traveling and will keep hitting Earth for 11 more minutes. So it still looks like a 30 minute ON period to the observer. Let's say you were blind and could only know my position on a football field by me throwing a tennis ball and you feeling which direction it came from. I'm always fifty yards away and the ball always takes five seconds to reach you. So, from due north, I throw the ball, while I'm running a circle around you every sixty seconds. Ok. So after five seconds you are struck by the ball and determine, "That came from due north." But I am traveling around you at a rate of 6°/sec. So I am actually (5x6=) 30° off due north, when you register my position as due north. IOW, information always has a finite speed in reaching you.

Apparently pendulums don't work well on a boat. 🤪

Well, the drumming thing apparently relates to red corpuscles in the hand splitting and then the iron-rich contents passing through the kidneys and excreted. Heh. Or men, if they're forced to admit they used it to open a jar. 😄

Yep. Also there's the easy-peasy, doesn't even need installation or hot water or ice picks, jar wrench,... BTW, is it true that drumming with your hands (vs sticks) can cause pink in the urine? This is a question for @pinball1970

Well the screwdrivers are fond of screwing, which is why they also proliferate inside of toolboxes. Best not have more than one in any given drawer or box - they are not parthenogenetic, thankfully. My default method. On both jars and cats mating noisily in the yard. Not obvious to me, mein Kapitan. Makes complete sense once called to my attention, though. Har! I mean, I laugh but I've actually done this with an old jar of electrical parts which had rusted shut over a couple decades. The top of the jar separated, with the neck remaining bonded to the lid. The parts inside were immaculate, so well worth it.

Also, avoid putting an unopened jar in the fridge; the metal lid will contract > the jar. This was so effective at further tightening that I had to run hot water on the top over a minute before it would yield. I had stupidly put peanut butter in the fridge directly from the grocery sack. @geordief 's stabbing trick might have helped for that, given that PB is pretty mold resistant. This problem reminds me of the now iconic comedy sketch called White People Problems. My God, man, there are people in this world who would LOVE to struggle with foie gras jars! Related to this - in the US, foie gras started to be viewed as evil in the seventies, as there was all this publicity on how the geese were abused. Did that improve, or did everyone just stop caring? Sorry, a bit OT, perhaps I can do a separate thread if that's not too much of a _____ _______ _____.

Good one! LOL. Alas, our younger and stronger selves didn't quite believe they would get older and weaker. I remember when young how many sort of imagined (quite irrationally) that they would be amazing and exceptional old folks, outliers who would get up every day and go water skiing or rock climbing. It's part of that whole Off the Bell Curve delusion where people imagine themselves exceptional and (as a US radio show guy used to say "all the children are above-average"). It's a cousin of Dunning Krueger.

UV on nylon, yes that would go to powder by now. Great, now we've spread microplastics on the moon as well. 🤪

Interesting. Which is the more significant effect, coefficient of expansion of metal threads, or raising pressure in the airspace? The hole method has a downside if it's a jam jar and your fridge is not the cleanest. Those wee spores find their way in there.

Improving the rez does greatly reduce the crater-dome illusion that can manifest on grainier old images. You can dispel the illusion by concentrating for a moment, or just rotating inage, but it is an odd experience. Greater detail seems to reduce the effect.