An informational note, if you’re on Twitter, you might want to follow me at http://twitter.com/razibkhan. Second, I haven’t had the time to contribute much content to the net besides this blog recently, but in general it is optimal to follow my total content feed, at http://feeds.feedburner.com/RazibKhansTotalFeed, rather than various blogs and publications which I contribute to (I’m going to branch out a bit more into more traditional writing again this year, time permitting). I automatically push author archives at other sites to that location, though I’d probably put a note into an open thread in a given week here.
I can’t say enough how much I’m enjoying Stanislas Dehaene’s Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. This the third book by this author I’ve read. The Number Sense 15 years ago, and Reading in the Brain earlier this year. Dehaene can write, and, he’s a practicing cognitive neuroscience, and it shows. I’d recommend both.
I think I’m going to push Dan Ariely’s The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone–Especially Ourselves up in my stack. Around ~2008 and for a few years later Ariely seemed to be everywhere. I read Predictably Irrational during that time, and immediately bought Ariely’s The Honest Truth About Dishonesty when it came out. But it strikes me that the interest in bounded rationality and behavioral economics has waned a bit. Also, I recall that The Honest Truth About Dishonesty had a blurb from Jonah Lehrer, right about at the time that his career and life was in the early stages of meltdown. Really bad timing.
@razibkhan Interesting trivia, but is there a larger point here?
— infovoy (@infovoy) December 20, 2015
The fact that someone could state that this fact is “trivia“, at a time when women are being integrated more fully into combat positions which might require physical strength, is interesting. Sex differences in morphology, physiology, and psychology, have huge implications. But there are certain sectors who deny them, or, barring that simply claim that the differences are trivial. I don’t think they are.
The American Heart Association seems totally corrupt. Their recommendations seem to exhibit an extreme stickiness, refusing to be updated to the present.
This piece in The Atlantic about incorrect or misleading results due to genetic testing is interesting. But, it needs to be kept in perspective. Consider the past 50 years of nutritional “science,” which have shaped the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Or educational and policy fads, such as whole language learning and massive freeways which cut through the heart of cities, that have wrought havoc on untold millions. Genetics isn’t special, and, nor particularly worrisome.
It seems likely in the near future Facebook and Google will be implementing massive genome-wide association studies, simply by intersecting their customer data with genomes.
I am aware that many of you have a high self-regard for your intelligence. Since you are intelligent you are probably aware that I don’t share your opinion in relation to yourself. When I ran Gene Expression as a group blog we used to have a word for people who left comments: we called them “animals.” Obviously this was simply the median commenter. Not all of them. If some of you are surprised or annoyed that I’m dismissive and insulting to you on Twitter or in the comments do understand that my prior expectation is that you probably don’t have much to say that I’d be interested in, and I may be annoyed that you think you are worth expending my time on. You could have the same prior about me, but if that’s the case I invite you not to read me, as I’m not reading you (it is notable that over the years I’m noticed that the people who have their own blogs are the least annoying and obnoxious in their self-regard, and stick to talking about what they know).
The number of people who read this blog regularly and who follow me on Twitter is simply well beyond Dunbar’s number by any definition, so I’m not able to “put a face” on many or most. Additionally, despite the current populist and demotic dispensation I think humans differ a great deal in their characteristics. I’m not interested in watching average looking leading ladies in my films (sorry Maggie Gyllenhaal), nor am I interested in having intellectual exchanges with average intelligence people (in “real life” I am very open to talking about sports, weather, and sex, with normals). Also, I have a long memory. If you talk shit about me on other blogs (like you dearieme) and continue to comment here, I’ll probably ban you because you’re just being a shady dick. Or, if you psychoanalyze me when you don’t know much about me (like you Ikram, if you don’t remember email me and I’ll tell you the incident that I remember) or my motivations (like you aeolius) I’m going to remember your presumption and be keen to delete/ban you in the future.
N of Everyone has posted my commentary in Genome Biology from last year, Dragging scientific publishing into the 21st century. I’m exciting that they’re moving along with their project. Preprints are great, but we need more tools and platforms for post-publication review. Except to hear more from them in the coming year.
I’m am not following politics too closely. Definitely out of sync with my Twitter feed. But really nothing matters until the nominations.
Alice Dreger has balls writing Gender Mad, which is going to invite accusations of her being a TERF. By balls, I don’t mean in the literal sense. For the record, I am confused by the arguments of the modern mainstream trans movement, as they seem to flip between radical social construction (i.e., we all get to choose our gender in a very conscious manner conditional on cultural norms) and implicit biological essentialism (e.g., “I was always a female brain in a male body”). Hopefully we will hit a happy medium were trans people can be physically safe and given some tolerance and accommodation, without accepting the idea that cis-heternomativity and trans identities are totally equivalent (there will always be many more of us than them!).
I had a short exchange on Twitter with Rosalind Arden about statistical education. Would it benefit people? My own sentiment is to say yes. But, I’m also deeply cynical at this point. It strikes me that many people use statistics or knowledge about specific topics to obfuscate as much as to illuminate.
ISIS is steadily gaining strength in another Middle Eastern country while everyone looks the other way. This is going to sound weird, but this reminds me of 2006, and the rivalry between Facebook and MySpace. Yes, al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula is dominant in Yemen today. But the long term trajectory seems pretty clear. ISIS is going to win this competition, just like Nintendo edged out Atari, or the iPhone destroyed the BlackBerry.
CDS Appropriates Asian Dishes, Students Say. You should read the Oberlin story on cultural appropriation of cuisine just for fun. The weirdest quote is from a Chinese student who doesn’t understand that General Tso’s chicken wasn’t “appropriated” from China, but invented in the United States, suggesting that she was familiar with a dish that was imported (“appropriated” and modified) back to parts of China from the United States.
I watched the new Star Wars film. It was good.
Very excited to spend Christmas with my kids. They’re getting old enough to look forward to holidays and appreciate presents.
Excited by all the science which is being published in 2016. Papers in review that I’ll blog, and papers I’ve heard long rumored to finally hit the presses. I should be analyzing some very interesting data for my Ph.D. project.
The Scholars Stage blog is very good. Check it out if you haven’t.
A Hominin Femur with Archaic Affinities from the Late Pleistocene of Southwest China. A very weird paper. Not definitive.But the history of our species looks curious indeed.
One Direction is so young, and been around so long, that some of these teen idols are hard to recognize, as they’re changed styles and gone from being in their middle teens to early 20s. I find it really strange.
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