Curt Doolittle

Theme: Science

  • Bruno. Nope

    http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/89-CRITICAL-INQUIRY-GB.pdfSorry Bruno. Nope.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-26 05:11:00 UTC

  • THE WAR ON SOCIAL SCIENCE Left off the cover was: 1. Human differences don’t exi

    THE WAR ON SOCIAL SCIENCE

    Left off the cover was:

    1. Human differences don’t exist

    2. IQ isn’t real

    3. There’s no such thing as human nature

    4. Capitalism doesn’t work

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-22 09:29:00 UTC

  • a couple of centuries or so. Is that really enough time to effect that much gene

    http://pic.twitter.com/EUQafiYnlX—“…just a couple of centuries or so. Is that really enough time to effect that much genetic change according to your theory?”—

    “Yes:

    “One of the simplest models of directional selection, truncation selection, where the bottom (or top) x% for a trait fail to reproduce is easy to model and produces something that closely fits observed situations.

    “Say those 1 standard deviation below average for a trait fail to reproduce – roughly the bottom 16%. (In terms of numbers, this isn’t far off from the fraction of people that fail to reproduce in modern America.)

    “The breeder’s equation gives us the selective effect:

    “[R = h^2 * S]

    “R = response to selection (mean of trait in following generation. S = selection differential (mean of trait of parental population). h^2 = additive heritability of trait.

    “If we assume those 1 s.d. below average fail to reproduce, then the mean of the parental population (assuming trait in question is normally distributed) is the mean of truncated bell curve cut at -1 s.d. which you can find (with some…fancy math) to be +0.29 sd.

    “Since the additive heritability of most traits is 0.5, the response to selection in that case is 0.29 * 0.5 = 0.145 sd/generation. If this were IQ, that would correspond to a ~2.2 point gain per generation. Assuming sustained selection, the population mean would move one whole standard deviation in just 7 generations (or about 200 years)! I mentioned IQ, but this will work just as well for any quantitative trait with a similar additive heritability, including the personality traits associated with a fine manorial serf – which you [could] model collectively as a ‘manorial quotient’ (MQ).”

    …and here…

    “The World Values Survey gives us a neat way to quantify overall mean clannishness around the world:

    Based on #WVS data: Welzel-Inglehart Cultural Map 2015. pic.twitter.com/EUQafiYnlX

    — World Values Survey (@ValuesStudies) January 26, 2015

    “It’s even mapped in standard deviations.

    “Outbreeding has produced an evolutionary shift to the right (maybe to the upper right) for NW Euros on this map. If we assume they started about where the Slavs are now, that means they moved +2 or +3 s.d. over the course of the relevant evolutionary time. Such a change (given the case of strong, sustained directional selection) could take as little as 400-600 years, given the formula above.”

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-21 07:26:00 UTC

  • We just dunno yet

    http://judithcurry.com/2015/02/19/the-intermittent-little-ice-age/#more-17805ie: We just dunno yet.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-20 07:58:00 UTC

  • by law professor Dan Kahan at Yale show that even highly numerate people are pro

    http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/12/12/the-value-of-civic-science-literacy.html–“Studies by law professor Dan Kahan at Yale show that even highly numerate people are prone to cognitive traps when the data contradicts the conclusion most congenial to their political values.”–

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-17 15:54:00 UTC

  • used to be thought that the Black Death originated in China, but new research sh

    http://www.historytoday.com/ole-j-benedictow/black-death-greatest-catastrophe-ever#sthash.hVY6px39.dpuf”—-“It used to be thought that the Black Death originated in China, but new research shows that it began in the spring of 1346 in the steppe region, where a plague reservoir stretches from the north-western shores of the Caspian Sea into southern Russia.”–

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-17 15:19:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/tea-party-science-98488.html

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-16 05:12:00 UTC

  • Untitled

    http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021015-738779-climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism.htm#ixzz3RgruLhup

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-15 08:19:00 UTC

  • “This article requires a Controversy section. I came here looking for it. Surpri

    –“This article requires a Controversy section. I came here looking for it. Surprised it wasn’t included. Particularly in reference to pseudoscience in the social sciences, and on Boas as one of the most influential pseudoscientists produced by the Cosmopolitan movement. And I’m kind of surprised at the ‘heaping of unworthy praise’, and the total abandonment of the NPOV in the article. We all love our heroes, but many of our heroes turn out to be largely wrong. Marx, Freud, Boas, Cantor, Mises, Rothbard and Gould were wrong – and the consequences will be the subject of study for centuries, just as Hayek had suggested (“…the century of mysticism”) . That doesn’t mean Boas didn’t positively influence culture, but it doesn’t forgive the fact that despite his claims of empiricism, he was engaging in not just bad science, but pseudoscience (and there is a difference). And it’s only been since the beginning of the Pinker era that he’s been incrementally corrected, and at this point largely discredited. Darwin, Weber, Pareto, Durkheim each with their flaws, but producing better work. Now, I am perhaps part of a new generation of thinkers, and I am perhaps more sensitive to pseudoscience because debunking it and preventing it is one of my areas of research, but facts are facts, history is history, and Boas requires a Controversy section.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-14 18:43:00 UTC

  • Pinker started it the revolution. We have momentum. But like Aristotle, we are l

    Pinker started it the revolution.

    We have momentum.

    But like Aristotle, we are looking backward at a lost opportunity.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-02-11 03:27:00 UTC