Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo Naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story is a “deal” on Kindle. Recommended. Also, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa.
Greece’s Bailout Is Ending. The Pain Is Far From Over. Seems to me that Greece is stuck in an unfortunate equilibrium (see the employment laws).
The Big Sort: Selective Migration and the Decline of Northern England, 1780-2018.
On Twitter, I implicitly defended Steven Pinker a bit. I think The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined will be noted as one of his most important books because many people were not, and are not, aware of positive trends in the aggregate. My personal experience is that many academic biologists, especially those with ecological backgrounds, are highly pessimistic. Basically, they are stuck in the 1970s.
There are reasons to be pessimistic, and I’m not as optimistic about the future as Pinker, but we first need to accept the facts as they are.
One of the strange things over the past five years or so has been the hatred I’ve seen directed at Steven Pinker by some academics. Consider this from the classicist in the thread above: “I’ve yet to come across *any* respective expert that doesn’t think Pinker’s popular books are garbage….” Or earlier this year I saw a German researcher on my Twitter timeline declare Pinker was pro-Nazi (based on a highly edited clip)!
Most interesting chart from Pew, How Millennials today compare with their grandparents 50 years ago.
“I will die here”: Death toll rises in southern India’s worst flooding in a century.
The importance of fine-scale studies for integrating paleogenomics and archaeology.
Forager-farmer transitions from East Asia to Sahul: Regional and Global Perspectives.
The Ginkgo Model of Societal Crisis.
The perils of intralocus recombination for inferences of molecular convergence.
The Insight is taking a break for a few weeks. Just want to note that I’m proud we have 32 episodes now! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or listen on the web.
I’ve asked people what podcasts they listen to before, but what blogs do you read? Honestly, I don’t read many anymore.
The only other blogs I read are In The Pipeline and Jazz Profiles. Everything else is news aggregators followed by RSS, but I rely heavily on the “The Browser” for online reading material.
The Insight is the only podcast I ever listen to.
Obviously I read this blog and Brownpundits. Also TetZoo, Eurogenes, Bell Beaker Blogger, West Hunter (though Cochran usually pisses me off more than enlightening me) Laelaps, Instapundit, James Lileks, Dienekes, TwilightBeasts, Life in the Cenozoic Era, Tom Bjorklund, Prehistoric Beast of the Week, The Volkh Conspiracy, and then a bunch I might only visit once or twice a year.
I never use RSS.
Marginal Revolution, Andrew Gelman, Slate Star Codex, Sailer, Cochran, Hanson.
lileks is still around???
Ann Althouse wide-ranging former law professor, writes well, noticer of bs. In 1970s New York, the joke was, “A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.” Althouse is a feminist who was appalled when just about everyone who claimed to be a feminist defended Bill Clinton AND trashed the women who he had taken advantage of.
Neuroskeptic culture/process of science, good and bad neuroscience; he was an early proponent of pre-registration.
Evolving Economics and Darwinian Conservatism Both attempt to apply evolutionary knowledge, both have generally long posts at relatively long intervals. Some times fascinating, some times …
educationrealist doesn’t post nearly enough, can’t stop writing when he does, hard truths (and sometimes idiosyncratic ideas) about American education from an actual teacher. As a former teacher, I love it. The Encyclopedia of Ed on the sidebar gathers previous posts in several categories.
Yes, and bigger than ever. Each posts comments section sees well over 300 posts a day.
educational realist is a woman.
educationrealist doesn’t post nearly enough, can’t stop writing when he does, hard truths (and sometimes idiosyncratic ideas) about American education from an actual teacher
She has a bizarre, almost pathological hatred of Asians that colors and distorts her other, useful observations. She made some wild assertions about Asian academics on Unz, so I called her out on them. She posted several links as “evidence” in response – except I think she didn’t expect anyone to actually read the contents.
I read all the studies she linked and when I pointed out that her links actually contained some results that were contrary to her assertions, she launched a string of very juvenile invectives at me and then went radio silent for a while, only to reappear with the same shtick later. Rinse and repeat.
Even though she claims to “love” her Asian students, she also let it slip that she tries to make their lives miserable and that they can only do math automaton-like and don’t actually understand it “unlike whites or blacks.”
She’ll also make strange counter-factual arguments – claims that blacks over-perform in real life compared to standardized tests (the last study on that I read had blacks slightly under-perform).
Her extremely touchy and acerbic attitude toward anyone who gets recognition (she recently launched a tirade about Heather Mac Donald as an unoriginal hack when someone praised her) and her constant refrain that “people who had lives in high school should get into Harvard” suggest to me that she has a giant chip on her shoulder about her lot in life and thinks she is a neglected genius.
Theses days, when challenged, she’ll retreat to “I’m not making claims – I’m just questioning” line of defense, but will go right back to making exaggerated claims about Asian cheating, underperformance, inability to innovate or understand math conceptually, etc.
The few people who continue to defend her on Unz seriously seem to be those with strong anti-Asian biases.
Agree that chart from Pew is interesting. Shame no control for sex+ethnicity; I’d bet the decline in marriage is starker within only the intersection (“intersectionality”) of male sex and non-Hispanic ethnicity. Age of marriage and sex has always been age structured (and female education probably a main driver of decreased marriage rates, above and beyond education in general), but increases in divorce putting older men back on market has got to have some effect…
i have good relations with ER, so not going to hate. but re: asians. i will say that i taught students in the UC system for 3 years. her claim she once made that asians underperform their standardized test scores totally did not align with what i saw and when i graded. and yes, the scholarly lit. does not support the idea that standardized tests underpredict for asian americans.
(ps heather mac donald is a friend. don’t know why ER has the hate. heather has courage to say stuff that a lot of the mainstream attacks her for)
Hell hath no fury like genius unappreciated.
her claim she once made that asians underperform their standardized test scores
Oh, that’s pretty mild and reasonable compared to other assertions she makes that are quite outlandish. She claims that East Asians can do math robotically, but don’t really understand them and that their higher quantitative performance is due to cheating and “gaming the system” (test-prep). She’ll tell you that whites and blacks who score the same comprehend the principles behind the math, but East Asians don’t and that East Asian brains work completely differently so much so that they are not capable of true (white) science.
She’s considerably kinder to blacks and South Asians.
There was once a discussion about shooting (guns) on Unz and I pointed out that East Asians tend to do well (as demonstrated by Olympic shooting results, etc.). I speculated that the higher visuo-spatial ability of East Asians probably helps and joked that “Of course, Education Realist would say that they can game and hit the target, but do they understand what it is?” Somehow she spotted that comment among hundreds and replied something like “Yes, it’s the same visuo-spatial ability that allows them to ape things, but not understand them” or some such nonsense.
I had to point out, where shooting was concerned, that high visuo-spatial ability helps with constructing a good mental model of the parabolic curve that projectiles make in contrast to the straight line of the sight plane (two intersections), but I think that went right over her “intellect.”
She’s not a neglected genius. She just seems to be resentful toward those more accomplished and successful than she is. I think that also explains the vitriolic comments aimed at Heathe Mac Donald, which were totally uncalled for and, frankly, unhinged.
She’ll tell you that whites and blacks who score the same comprehend the principles behind the math, but East Asians don’t and that East Asian brains work completely differently so much so that they are not capable of true (white) science.
east asians do underperform in basic science in *east asia* (in relation to their average cognitive test scores)…i think it’s pretty good evidence for the importance of cultural context. similarly, jews were not a major intellectual force in europe before the 19th century.
Blogs
Adam Tooze is great
https://adamtooze.com/blog/
Traditions of Conflict:Buckner’s blog on anthro
https://traditionsofconflict.com/blog/
The Chris Blattman experience
https://chrisblattman.com/
For sparse/random math fun
http://datagenetics.com/blog.html
Start with this:http://datagenetics.com/blog/october12013/index.html
east asians do underperform in basic science in *east asia* (in relation to their average cognitive test scores)…i think it’s pretty good evidence for the importance of cultural context.
Absolutely. But, 1) that is changing and 2) that is a cultural argument. ED seems to think it’s biological, hence the different brain assertion.
By the way, I do suspect that there are both cultural and genetic components to East Asian adversion to risk/conformity, which likely have some bearing on basic science research, innovation, etc.
@Matt
“Agree that chart from Pew is interesting. Shame no control for sex+ethnicity; I’d bet the decline in marriage is starker within only the intersection (“intersectionality”) of male sex and non-Hispanic ethnicity. Age of marriage and sex has always been age structured (and female education probably a main driver of decreased marriage rates, above and beyond education in general), but increases in divorce putting older men back on market has got to have some effect…”
Gender differences in marriage rates are, for obvious reasons, pretty modest. You have two similar sized pools of people and taking someone out of play on one side has an equal impact on the other side, except for same sex couples marrying which is a tiny percentage of the total and partially gender balanced anyway although my sense is that more women are marrying other women than the other way around.
It is not the case that “female education probably a main driver of decreased marriage rates” as college educated women are much more likely to marry. It is women with less education who are not marrying.
And “increases in divorce putting older men back on market has got to have some effect” is also inaccurate. Divorce rates have fallen in recent years overall and for the college educated, although they have held steady or increased for blue collar couples. Sometimes couples who were previously divorce just cohabit, but the economic, personal and social pressure to be connected with a significant other remains high.
The big and really powerful marriage divide is by class as much as it is ethnicity. Four year degree college educated couples get married at much higher rates, have children an average of two years after they marry, and divorce a rates that are low and falling.
High school only (or less) couples who do marry, on average had kids two years before they marry, marry at much lower rates and get divorced at very high rates. “Some college” (including Associate’s Degree) folks are in between but closer to the HS only than the four year college degree couples.
In a nutshell, the cause is declining economic opportunities for blue collar men, rising economic opportunities for white collar men, rising economic opportunities for blue collar women (and fewer economic penalties for them if they leave the work force for a while to have kids), very stiff economic penalties for women managers and professionals who leave the work force for a while to have kids, and increasingly assortive marriage. The drive to get married and to not get divorced largely flows from the extent to which women are economic dependent upon (or at least are economically better off with) their male partners.
Now that blue collar men are increasingly unreliable and feeble providers (a trend that has progressed since the 1970s), while blue collar women are increasingly able to find work rivaling or exceeding that of their husbands (due to the prohibition on sex discrimination in employment) and aren’t able to marry white collar men (due to the rise of coeducation and assortive marriage generally), the prospect of gaining anything for a divorce property division or alimony award from a blue collar husband is dim and indeed they might be required to economically support their ex’s. In contrast, college educated women in managerial and professional jobs pay an immense penalty upon returning to the workforce if they take a few years off to have kids that their husbands do not (this is the single biggest cause of male-female earnings disparities), making them benefit economically from being married and their husbands are not economically unreliable or poor providers; so they have an economic advantage to being married. Black men who have the highest proportion who are blue collar, are unemployed or earn low wages were the first to experience this, but other blue collar men are increasingly in the same position.
The number of blogs I read regularly has shrunk a lot with time over the time span that I have been haunting GNXP (which has been essentially from the beginning). I haunt Martin Rundkvist’s archaeology blog and have helped to proof-read/edit three of his books on Scandinavian archaeology (about which I know nothing, but I know how to proof-read). I still check in occasionally with Eurogenes, Bell Beaker Blogger, West Hunter (ditto to what Jason said) and Dienekes (although he seems to have become almost completely inactive), and occasionally read Brown Pundits as an innocent bystander – I enjoy reading Omar Ali’s pieces, and your pieces obviously.
For what it’s worth, for once I am 100% on the same page as Twinkie. I have worked for a long time with a lot of Chinese engineers and scientists, plus the occasional Japanese and an assortment of other Asian and other ethnics, and have had involvements in engineering education and (a lot of) recruitment, and I know what I am talking about. I’m talking applied science fields, obviously, but they are an acid test for the ‘Asian stereotype’, because to apply science and mathematics properly you need to understand them properly. There is a range, obviously, and there are definitely people I would put in the lower part of the distribution who over-achieved in education by rote learning and cramming but are pretty useless when it comes to application. But people in the upper part of the distribution really know their shit, and a fair proportion produce some really good innovative ideas, some of them verging on brilliant. And they work like crazy. I have long suspected some brain differences, but can’t tell how much they are environmental – education builds neural networks (which is why education can actually increase IQ), and learning to read and write a non-alphabetical language must do something different from learning an alphabetic language; it must do something to the brains of kids who learn both. Plus there is the known difference from psychometric testing that Twinkie has referred to. And I should add that I have known only a few cheaters and people who game the system – it’s not zero, but it’s nowhere near normative. People who are a product of the People’s Republic might on average be somewhat more inclined to because they have learned that they needed to do it to survive and prosper in that system, but I predict that will now diminish with time.
People who are a product of the People’s Republic might on average be somewhat more inclined to because they have learned that they needed to do it to survive and prosper in that system, but I predict that will now diminish with time.
Look at Japan and South Korea’s Corruption Perception Index over time (I don’t think I even have to bring up Singapore’s in detail). I’ve always argued that the Index is a good proxy for cheating in tests (modified by the importance of such tests for career trajectory).
Funny enough, I’m having a somewhat unpleasant debate with a Chinese supremacist on Unz right now (it started as a discussion about Chinese tourists). I made the argument that Chinese civil norms are still quite backward, but that I speculated they will rise with higher living standards, greater transparency, accountability, etc. He then started to drone on about how the Chinese shouldn’t follow the “globo homo Amero” norms and should just act like “alpha” assholes, only hard power and fear (in others) matter, it works for Arabs and Israelis, etc… all capped with some enthnic insults toward me as well as accusations of lying, etc.
I wrote back that being an inconsiderate bully was a weak and helpless teenager’s idea of being strong and confident, and it was off to the races from there (I did also write, “Although it helped them none, the Melians were right about what might happen to Athens,” but I think he didn’t understand the reference).
which is why education can actually increase IQ
I’m skeptical about this. I think good hygiene and nutrition maximize IQ potential, but the boundary of that aptitude is genetic and can only be improved over time through selection.
A request for help. Recently I read an article about rice domestication, arguing that recent genetic testing indicated multiple origins independently in India, separate from the Chinese domestication. I have tried every Google string I can think of and can’t find it again. Has anyone seen this article and can point me to it? My daughter is getting into rice genomics and wants to see it.
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/34/4/969/2897272
@ohwilleke, It is not the case that “female education probably a main driver of decreased marriage rates” as college educated women are much more likely to marry. It is women with less education who are not marrying.
Use the context dood: Marriage rates at 21-36 is the topic. Early marriage. Not marriage rates overall. Still hold? You seem to have taken your opportunity to launch into your normal spiel about class and economic incentives to marriage (as more important than cultural incentives) and divorce and to be looking at the all ages picture overall, but we’re not actually talking about that topic here.
Further, if we were talking about overall incentives to marriage, Pew Social trends tends to suggest that never married women, among those over 25, are slightly more frequent among highly educated women, though data only goes up to 2012: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09/24/record-share-of-americans-have-never-married/st-2014-09-24-never-married-05/. The ratio have narrowed as more women enter into high education, though. Among men, only the postgrads are truly different and only since 1980.
And “increases in divorce putting older men back on market has got to have some effect” is also inaccurate. Divorce rates have fallen in recent years overall and for the college educated, although they have held steady or increased for blue collar couples.
Er…. why your focus on “recent years” when the timescale covers Silent -> Millennial? I’m well aware of the picture of rate of divorce over time – generally they were higher just after marriage was higher; ratio of divorce:marriage stable since 1980s on a declining marriage level overall.
@Twinkie – The Chinese supremacist concerned needs to get in touch with Xi Jinping and get with the agenda.
I don’t have a strong opinion on the extinction hypothesis, but that article ought to give succor to the Out-of-India theorists 🙂
A revolution in the science “business” is long overdue; we need more incentives for (thoughtful) naysaying than exist today.
Twinkie, I went to the educationrealist website and did a search for Heather MacDonald. Nothing came up for that or Heather or MacDonald, and only the fast food place for McDonald. Where did you see the “tirade about Heather Mac Donald as an unoriginal hack”?
@Twinkie
“Look at Japan and South Korea’s Corruption Perception Index over time (I don’t think I even have to bring up Singapore’s in detail). I’ve always argued that the Index is a good proxy for cheating in tests (modified by the importance of such tests for career trajectory).”
They are definitely improving over time.
Interestingly though:
“Sato’s fraudulent work has propelled him to No. 6 on Retraction Watch’s list of researchers who have racked up the most retractions. At the top is Japanese anesthesiologist Yoshitaka Fujii, with 183 retractions; his frequent co-author Yuhji Saitoh, also from Japan, is at 10th place, while Japanese endocrinologist Shigeaki Kato is No. 8. Iwamoto is at No. 9. That means half of the top 10 are Japanese researchers. Yet only about 5% of published research comes from Japan. What explains the number of prolific Japanese fraudsters?”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/researcher-center-epic-fraud-remains-enigma-those-who-exposed-him
I think it’s the combination of several cultural factors including high emphasis on reputation/family honor, deferment to older/senior officials and specifically in China incredible amounts of competition not only market based/material but also on the mating market.
There’s a reason why Chinese universities aren’t seen as prestigious enough yet and why many Chinese students even after graduating from top universities in China decide to also pick up a degree from the US. Long live the signaling model!
http://www.unz.com/isteve/heather-mac-donald-on-sarah-jeong/#comment-2458946
http://www.unz.com/isteve/heather-mac-donald-on-sarah-jeong/#comment-2459463
Roger Sweeny, I replied with the links to the thread on Unz, but the site ate it again.
One more: http://www.unz.com/isteve/heather-mac-donald-on-sarah-jeong/#comment-2462348
Heather MacDonald is a dull hack without an original thought
Btw, ER criticizes Mac Donald’s alleged “sneering tone” – all this from someone who constantly calls those who disagree with her as idiots, fools, and liars. She (ER, not Mac Donald) is really unhinged.
The only reasons she gets any readers seem to be 1) her criticism of the current education system (which are reasonable, but hardly unique – oh, the irony!) and 2) her popularity with the “whites smarter than blacks = science, Asians smarter than whites = it’s just cheating and aping” crowd.
twinkie, moving it on from ER, i would say that the objection is not limited to east asians. some net/frog-nazi types say same stuff about me as being a good ‘imitator’ of white intellectual style, whatever that is, but lacking original thought. in fact, when this was a group blog for a while in 2006-2007 and i wasn’t contributing much they claimed it was a much better blog since the contributors were white (due to anons they were unaware that this wasn’t really as true as they thought 😉
My ears were burning. Thanks, Roger!
On gender: I don’t say my gender online. I don’t care if people think I’m a man or a woman.
Nothing Twinkie says about me is true. Even when he uses exact quotes, he’s misrepresenting. And when he doesn’t use exact quotes, he’s just lying. He’s weirdly obsessed, and I don’t fuss with him. You can see him in Steve Sailer’s blog, posting five, six, seven comments in a row. Creepy.
About two years ago, I went through the data I thought proved my point with Razib, he pointed out problems with it, and while I’m still skeptical, I haven’t made that claim since and retracted it in the conversation. In fact, we joked about Twinkie. I’ve said that directly to him on more than one occasion, and I don’t know why he keeps repeating the claim without mentioning that I no longer make the claim. I can’t find the first conversation on Twitter, but we just went through it again recently. Mind you, I still think it’s likely true, because of what I see in high school, but I’ve long since said I can’t find data to prove it and originally made the claim without thinking of the objections Razib said.
That said, I don’t agree that “this isn’t true of the Indian students I’ve seen” is compelling, unless (and I’m genuinely asking) Razib teaches a lot of undergraduates.
I simply don’t find Heather MacDonald very compelling, and have disliked her hysteria for a long time. She uses good data, I rarely disagree with her unsurprising conclusions, but she wraps the data in nasty statements. I don’t see why everyone gets fussed by it. It’s not as if I’m demanding everyone else hate her.
i posted a response which didn’t show up. Will wait a bit to see if there’s a delay.
That said, I don’t agree that “this isn’t true of the Indian students I’ve seen” is compelling, unless (and I’m genuinely asking) Razib teaches a lot of undergraduates.
why are you talking about indians? an example? i was mostly thinking east asians actually. the sample size of indian (south asian) students is harder cuz ou can’t always tell by name (iranians, arabs, etc.).
i graded/taught 500 to 2,000 over the years (depending on whether you count teaching as an instructor or as a grader), of whom ~50% were asian (mostly, but not exclusively, american, but asian). and since i submit grades and do the grading i saw the rank ordering.
also, why don’t you find other’s peoples’ experience compelling? isn’t that what compels you and compels others about your writing? (as opposed to deep-dive data analysis?). is it just that you have such a huge sample size?
i don’t recall the whole exchange…but i remember you specifically talked about the UC system and undergrads. over the years i actually developed my own personal views from personal experience after you made that assertion. so i was wondering where your idea came from and the reason i don’t let it go is that i thought you had a paper or something you must have seen. i assumed your experience was mostly with HS students?
and tbh twinkie does seem correct that you have an issue with east asians, as it’s come up in other contexts (or perhaps asians more generally). it’s not a big deal for me, i don’t have a deep animus about it, i just happen to not agree with you, and the more i looked into it/experience life, the more i disagree with the judgement (i think east asians do have a problem with their personalities not being “big enough” to impress people sometimes, and that’s unfortunate, but reality).
Twinkie, thanks for the links. I’m working my way through the 195 comments there. I think Razib’s spam filter quarantines any comment with more than one link.
ps i’ve heard ppl complain about the quality/character of chinese international students, personally. i will say that it seems clear that that type of student, spoiled, unprepared, since doesn’t major in the natural sciences in the UC system. those chinese students (international) that i had spoke very little, as their spoken english wasn’t good, but their written english was excellent and they did very well actually. i wouldn’t have guessed that from other stuff ppl have said to me, but i think the really spoiled and unprepared students don’t major in rigorous disciplines where failure is ever present as an option.
Ah, there it is.
And I found the conversation on twitter, but only my side is there. Maybe Razib purged his older tweets. But here, here, here are part of the conversation I am referring to. It was almost exactly two years ago.
BTW, I don’t hate Asians at all. Many of the things I’ve said (but not all) Razib has also pointed out.
Twinkletoes, on the other hand, I find extremely unpleasant.
Razib, I don’t know how I read your comment as “indians”. I wasn’t conflating, I genuinely thought you’d said the word. Count me an idiot.
The likes of Pinker and the cheery neoliberalism is coming to be more and more despised, mostly by default as more and more people adopt an eleventh hour extremism. It’s why the notion of “radical centrism” is even a thing. From the perspective of everyone else such centrism appears almost shockingly out of touch.
Good blogs are putanumonit, greyenlightenment, Justin Murphy, and akinokure.blogspot, though that last one is a bit of a dogmatic “storyteller.”
I apologize for multiple comments–I’m having trouble reading them, and my own comments don’t show up right away. Not a complaint, just explanation.
“why don’t you find other’s peoples’ experience compelling?”
I do, but not on something as huge as whether or not Asians are underperforming in US colleges nationally or even in one large university. Even my own–if my experience flatly contradicts data, I’ll say I don’t see it, but acknowledge the data. (But in this case, as acknowledged, the data wasn’t there to support *me*.)
It’s simply not true that I don’t like East Asians, or South Asians, or that I have a “thing” about them. I’ve written more positive stories about my students than I have data dives into Asian scores. I am deeply concerned about the impact of their cultural behaviors on public schools and college admissions, and this story is completely neglected so I talk about it a lot, particularly on Twitter.
ER, twinkie, can we end this thread? you guys obviously will continue to ‘agree to disagree’ elsewhere 😉
The likes of Pinker and his cheery neoliberalism is coming to be more and more despised, mostly by default as more and more people adopt an eleventh hour extremism. It’s why the notion of “radical centrism” is even a thing. From the perspective of everyone else such centrism appears almost shockingly out of touch.
Good blogs are putanumonit, greyenlightenment, Justin Murphy, and akinokure.blogspot, though that last one is a bit of a dogmatic “storyteller.”
Nothing Twinkie says about me is true. Even when he uses exact quotes, he’s misrepresenting. And when he doesn’t use exact quotes, he’s just lying.
I posted the three links where you discuss Heather Mac Donald. Others can judge for themselves. The rest is your usual predictable ad hominem toward those you dislike, especially those who have proven you wrong. As for “creepy,” you seem to appear magically anytime I write remotely anything related to you.
I don’t know why he keeps repeating the claim without mentioning that I no longer make the claim.
Because you have on several subsequent occasions made similar claims on Unz with nary a mention of your alleged disavowal. Like some frog Nazis, you play a different tune to different crowds. When confronted with hard data, you’ll retreat temporarily, but resume the old routine after a while. It’s like you don’t realize the Internet records things.
ER, twinkie, can we end this thread? you guys obviously will continue to ‘agree to disagree’ elsewhere
I replied to ER’s “you are a liar” routine. That’ll be the last one for me.
Yes Razib. That’s the rice article I wanted. Thank you very much.
i graded/taught 500 to 2,000 over the years (depending on whether you count teaching as an instructor or as a grader), of whom ~50% were asian (mostly, but not exclusively, american, but asian). and since i submit grades and do the grading i saw the rank ordering.
By the way, regarding cheating in colleges, I wrote a long piece about it on Unz years ago. Basically, the group that engaged in it frequently in the classes I taught weren’t Asians or foreigners. It was athletes.* And the admin sometimes tried to pressure me to go easy on the ones I caught, which is one of the major reasons why I became disillusioned about working in academia almost right away.
*The “jock” fraternities also had previous test question banks… which didn’t affect my grading since I made up new tests everytime (one final, I even gave the class blank paper and told the students to write about any major topic covered in class). But I knew other profs weren’t so diligent. (Btw, recently a football player from a franternity in a VA college killed himself and the police discovered a discussion of a test question bank at the fraternity in the texts between him and another student during the investigation).
It’s absolutely true that Asian countries have significant cheating issues – I’ve long maintained that the Corruption Perception Index is a good proxy for grasping the magnitude in each country. But we are not exactly squeaky clean in America. A survey with several thousand high schoolers found 70% admitted to cheating (so the real number is probably higher), which is mind boggling. So I find this fixation with “Asian cheating” of dubious motive.
Thank you for the tip on Almost Human. The book was a quick enjoyable read.
Given Homo naledi remains are thought to be more recent, would ancient DNA extraction techniques be applicable?
Is there a generally accepted threshold for how old remains have to be beyond which ancient DNA extraction is unlikely to work?
naledi, they’ve tried and failed. but i’m optimistic they will succeed some day. lee berger has an announcement on sept 10. who knows. i don’t think it’s DNA…but u never know.
ancient DNA has been extracted to nearly 1 million years BP (from an ancient horse). but that is possibly the biophysical limit. around those parts. i wouldn’t be surprised if freak events preserve older, but most ppl who work in the field seem to think that hundreds of thousands of years is going to be the usual range.