Patrick Julius's Blog, page 8
February 3, 2013
Ahead of their time: A review of "Are We Getting Smarter?" by James R. Flynn
JDN 2456327 EDT 19:20.
We often say that a genius such as Leonardo or Newton is "ahead of their time"; I doubt most people realize just how accurate this is. In what is called "the Flynn effect", IQ scores have been increasing steadily at a rate of about 0.3 IQ points per year since we have been keeping track of them. This means that in the past century we have risen an average of 30 IQ points, which is the difference between average and the top 2.5%, or the difference between the bott...
February 2, 2013
What is freedom?
JDN 2456326 EDT 12:55.
"Freedom" is a word we use all the time in America, to the point where it begins to lose its meaning. There is actually a group on the University of Michigan campus called "Young Americans for Freedom", because apparently other people don't believe in freedom (they were also the ones who staged "Catch an Immigrant Day" a few years back, which should tell you what sort of 'freedom' they believe in).
There are really two different kinds of freedom, and sadly the mo...
January 30, 2013
The problem with "objectification"
The Onion does a pretty good job of satirizing things, and here they satirize sexual objectification.
While I see the point they're making, and it isn't completely wrong...
I think part of what is wrong with our society is the very fact that we think "sex object" is a coherent notion, that sexuality makes you into an object, a thing, a piece of meat. I can't deny that many people think that way, but honestly I think it completely understands what sexuality is (or should be) about.
For me,...
January 26, 2013
Things I'm tired of hearing about rape
JDN 2456319 EDT 15:29.
This post will probably offend a lot of people, because I have nuanced opinions that ideologues of all stripes are bound to dislike. While I mostly agree with feminist principles, I am really a classical rationalist egalitarian of the Enlightenment tradition, and sometimes I don't toe the line of feminist ideology. So I'm probably going to make people on both extremes mad, and I'm okay with that.
1. It's not really rape.
January 17, 2013
The least SF book of SF I've ever read
JDN 2456310 EDT 20:13.
Frameshift was set Twenty Minutes into the Future when it was written in 1997, so by now it is actually set in the recent past. This is not as weird as it sounds, because actually most of the events in the story could actually have happened. If there were a little girl who was a cloned Neanderthal growing up in secret somewhere in California, we might not actually know that. Also, it's almost certainly possible. Honestly, it's the action scene at the end that cul...
January 12, 2013
We could have post-scarcity any day now
JDN 2456305 EDT 15:30
Within a few years, a decade or two at most, we could easily have a fundamentally new economy, built not around the allocation of limited resources or the maximization of profit, but the satisfaction of human needs. And yet, we may not... for our cultural norms are standing in the way.
Norms, that, on their own, seem reasonable enough: "Everyone should receive in proportion to what they produce." "The best person to make something should be the one who makes it."...
January 11, 2013
Lotteries and regret minimization
JDN 2456304 EDT 18:20
It's long been a mystery in economic decision theory: Why do people play the lottery? Aren't they risk-averse? They seem risk-averse when they buy insurance, but then when they play the lottery they seem massively risk-seeking. So what's going on?
Well, I asked my mother why she plays the lottery, and she explained it thus: "I'd feel terrible if my numbers came up and I hadn't played." This reminded me of a principle in decision theory that doesn't get a lot of at...
January 9, 2013
What is love?
JDN 2456302 EDT 12:19.
Is it a magical spark from the gods?
The dust of fairies on our eyes at night?
Touching a higher plane of existence beyond this world?
Immaterial souls ethereally entwined?
Is it the knight in shining armor who sweeps the damsel off her feet?
A white stallion galloping down the plain?
The heroine upon her balcony, singing of forbidden love?
The hero who saves the day and gets the girl?
Is it the triggering of oxytocin receptors?
The clockwork reupta...
January 4, 2013
"Avoid triggers" is not treatment.
JDN 2456297 EDT 10:13.
When dealing with my chronic migraines, the advice I most hate getting from neurologists is "avoid triggers". Well, first of all, I don't know what all the triggers are, so sometimes I just get headaches for no apparent reason.
But even when I can avoid triggers, here's a list of things that I know trigger me:
1. Less than 10 hours of sleep
2. Sleep on an unusual schedule
3. Waking up before 9 AM
4. Going to bed after 11 PM
5. Sleep in an unfamiliar enviro...
January 3, 2013
What defines "porn"?
JDN 2456296 EDT 12:01.
"I know it when I see it," went the famous ruling, by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. Well, that's great... shall we show you every possible example? You'll be the arbiter? The backlog shall be astronomical.
Clearly if we are to make rules about "porn", we need a better definition than that.
One option, I suppose, would be to not regulate at all, just let people use the word "porn" to mean whatever they want and leave the government out of it. That does rai...
