Kanazawa has been frequently attacked for being a cartoon villain. This post rounds up links from Cosma Shalizi and PZ Myers. At least Andrew Gelman got a whole article out of Kanazawa's errors.
He is really so over-the-top that it's hard to actually feel outraged.
Ha! This guy was invented to troll Unfogged*. From Wikipedia: Kanazawa uses the term Savanna principle[9]: the theory that societal difficulties are because the human brain evolved in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, a drastically different environment from today's urban, industrial society.
"Back on the veldt" is snappier, but "back on the savanna" does have a bit of rhythm.
3: This guy was invented to troll Unfogged
Unsuccessfully.
6,4: Or maybe not unsuccessfully.
Here's another well-thought-out and thoughtful system of thought.
The link in 8 is possesses a near-optimal density of gibberish.
The Gelman article (which I've seen before, but didn't realize this was the same jackass) is quite worth the time.
The thread linked in 5 makes me miss ogged and his particular mix of charm, provocation, and earnestness (despite the fact that the last is deprecated).
3: I have to confess that I believe most psychological problems and antisocial behaviors are probably due to our brain being designed for life in communities of 100 or less.
12: Also antisocial behavior and/or psychological problems are not necessarily an obstacle to reproduction. I think a lot is explained by human behavioral tendencies being optimized for small groups, but there's nothing that requires we be happy or nice in order to pass on our genes.
What is the audience for Psychology Today? Morons?
People interested in why people behave the way they do.
Who can't tell from a casual examination that Psychology Today is not a useful source of enlightenment on that front.
I didn't intend to call you all morons. I realize thatwas ambiguous.
Also antisocial behavior and/or psychological problems are not necessarily an obstacle to reproduction.
Laydeez.
Following 5, I learned that Debra Dickerson, who writes well, is still blogging but isn't doing so well.
Most genetic variation between individuals which people understand biochemically is adaptively neutral. The assumption that a biological basis for some behavioral trait has any adaptive value at all should not be a default. It's a hypothesis worth pulling on to see if there's anything testable at the end of the thread, but testing behavior is pretty hard.
The most plausible recent testable idea about human behavior that I know of was the idea that higher intelligence among Ashkenazi was a product of positive selection, testable by looking for links with heritable diseases. The most recent test that I know about can't distinguish this possibility from genetic drift.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20798349
So for productive thinking along these lines, rodents or canines would be the place to look, I think.
I'm imagining a scenario in which the conservative movement consists largely of furries who started watching Fox News because they thought it would tell them where the yiffing was, and then got sucked into the right-wing whirlpool. I'm glad it isn't true, because it'd be sad if that happened to innocent furries.
Kanazawa is the kind of shithead who make a great deal about how we must respect their scientific authority, while being comically incompetent as scientists. I can't decide whether I find this sort of linked moral and intellectual failure hilarious or profoundly enraging. — I see that Walt has already indirectly linked to my post, but what the hell. Do read Gelman's piece!
I'll give heebie an assist and post a working link to the article in the OP. (That's google cache; the article appears to have been pulled.)
For the record, it's even worse than the title would suggest. E.g.:
What accounts for the markedly lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women? Black women are on average much heavier than nonblack women. The mean body-mass index (BMI) at Wave III is 28.5 among black women and 26.1 among nonblack women. (Black and nonblack men do not differ in BMI: 27.0 vs. 26.9.) However, this is not the reason black women are less physically attractive than nonblack women. Black women have lower average level of physical attractiveness net of BMI. Nor can the race difference in intelligence (and the positive association between intelligence and physical attractiveness) account for the race difference in physical attractiveness among women. Black women are still less physically attractive than nonblack women net of BMI and intelligence. Net of intelligence, black men are significantly more physically attractive than nonblack men.
For those who just want the conclusion, here's what this Scientist has determined:
The only thing I can think of that might potentially explain the lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women is testosterone.
21: I appreciate the voluntary pwnage. You must have gotten like fifteen copies of the altruism gene.
For example, because they have existed much longer in human evolutionary history, Africans have more mutations in their genomes than other races. And the mutation loads significantly decrease physical attractiveness (because physical attractiveness is a measure of genetic and developmental health).
I am stunned by the weirdness here. He's characterizing the greater genetic diversity among Africans as more 'mutations' and thus less genetic 'health'?
PT pays this guy to blog?
24: Never mind that, every surviving lineage goes back exactly as far as every other. Someone needs to sit this idiot down with the diagram from the Origin, and walk him through it in words of one syllable.
22: And if you're wondering where these attractiveness measurements are coming from in the first place:
Add Health measures the physical attractiveness of its respondents both objectively and subjectively. At the end of each interview, the interviewer rates the physical attractiveness of the respondent objectively on the following five-point scale: 1 = very unattractive, 2 = unattractive, 3 = about average, 4 = attractive, 5 = very attractive. The physical attractiveness of each Add Health respondent is measured three times by three different interviewers over seven years.
24.last: Why oh why can't we have a better media ecology?
"The only thing I can think of that might potentially explain." Not "the best explantion, all things considered." Not even "my hypothesis". No, he's clear it's "[t]he only thing I can think of that might potentially explain". And the funny thing is, I believe him.
PT pays this guy to blog?
I'm at least as concerned that LSE apparently pays him to teach.
26: Similarly, the studies which show that general intelligence tests predict how well people do in various jobs typically use as their omeasures of performance (1) salary or (2) ratings by supervisors. What could possibly be more objective?
PT pays this guy to blog?
I'm at least as concerned that LSE apparently pays him to teach.
More evidence for the "The World is Not a Meritocracy" file.
I suppose I'm more shocked by antisocial behavior among publishers of general interest magazines than among economics faculties.
29: IIRC, he first got tenure as an apostle of rational choice theory in sociology, before his conversion to the gospel of the veldt.
30: Don't worry about objectivity:
Factor analysis has the added advantage of eliminating all random measurement errors that are inherent in any scientific measurement.
32: I suppose I'm more shocked by antisocial behavior among publishers of general interest magazines than among economics faculties.
Well, they do appear to have pulled the article. So maybe they won't pay him much longer.
Re teaching at LSE, I suspect teo was less concerned with the antisocial behavior and more concerned with the stupidity.
34: Dear God, my undergrads know better.
The relationship between the media and science is completely pathological. The only things that are ever printed are things that are "provocative". For the social sciences, "provocative" means "your unexamined prejudices are true, after all."
The interesting thing is that, based on a random sample I've just conducted, I'm able to conclude with a high degree of confidence that something approaching every single column he's ever written is almost exactly this stupid. I mean, just look at this gem of a quote from a 2008 column (which is the last link in the OP):
Here's a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost.
Yes, we need a woman in the White House, but not the one who's running.
This doesn't appear to be parody.
Re teaching at LSE, I suspect teo was less concerned with the antisocial behavior and more concerned with the stupidity.
Pretty much, yeah, although recalling the recent controversy over LSE's ties to the Qaddafi regime perhaps it is not totally surprising to see evidence of questionable judgment on the institution's part here as well.
Comparing this guy to any of Breitbart's victims is an especially good way to feel frustrated.
Aaaargh! Aaarrgghhh! Holy fucking shit; I not only want this guy fired from everything he's currently involved in, I want Psychology Today to go DOWN.
Just a tad more soberly: wouldn't you like to find yourself at a party with this guy, encouraging him to explain his work, and then laugh and laugh and laugh? And point.
I wonder how hard it would be to provoke him into writing an evolutionary pseudo-explanation of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
On the veldt, fake it til you make it worked.
Just a tad more soberly: wouldn't you like to find yourself at a party with this guy, encouraging him to explain his work, and then laugh and laugh and laugh? And point.
Unfortunately I'd be worried that if I encountered this asshole at a party and he was spouting the sort of stuff quoted here, I'd end up screaming curses at him rather than laughing.
Not having to fake it because you don't even know what "it" is works even better
45: Then he'd be more likely to get laid than you. Evolution sucks.
True story: a good-looking friend of mine is talking to him and he asks her if she has a boyfriend. She says "No, I'm gay". He looks at her blankly and says, "But you're attractive".
I wonder how hard it would be to provoke him into writing an evolutionary pseudo-explanation of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
He's pretty clearly an example of the effect himself, so I suspect it would not be hard.
This guy gets to blog at Psychology Today, and John Steigerwald's blog hasn't been snapped up by a major media outlet yet?
48: No way. Way?
I don't think I'd be screaming curses at him at a party, just because my jaw drops so incredibly far that the only response I can come up with is a sort of hysterical giggle, soon becoming a chortle, then a guffaw.
49: On the veldt, making things explicit led to reproductive success.
52, 53: That's just the tip of the veldtberg. You have no idea.
55: Well, maybe we can find him a nice accountant's job somewhere. I mean, I do think it's time to shuffle him away to a corner desk in the sub-basement.
I believe most psychological problems and antisocial behaviors are probably due to our brain being designed for life in communities of 100 or less.
Sure. The big problem with evolutionary psychology as it is actually practiced is the slide between common sense assertions like "the human mind evolved to deal with small scale society" to "women are genetically determined to be uncontrollably attracted to middle aged intellectuals who write for a mass audience, and any woman who deviates from that is a weird outlier that needs to be explained."
Professor Shalizi, speaking of the new kind of science this fellow practices, some recent internet search program-related activities brought me back to this gem which I had stumbled upon and admired years ago, before I knew that you were you, and which I subsequently linked at CT but sort of forgot about in the meantime. It not only has one of the best titles ever, "A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity", but also one of the best attention conservation notices*:
Attention conservation notice: Once, I was one of the authors of a paper on cellular automata. Lawyers for W|ol\\//fra{}m Res//earch Inc. threatened to sue me, my co-authors and our employer, because one of our citations referred to a certain mathematical proof, and they claimed the existence of this proof was a trade secret of W---ram Research. I am sorry to say that our employer knuckled under, and so did we, and we replaced that version of the paper with another, without the offending citation. I think my judgments on W---ram and his works are accurate, but they're not disinterested.Why I felt compelled to googleproof when you did not, I do not know.
Attention conservation notice: The following was written by a person who apparently feels the need to place attention conservation notices in front of everything he posts on the web.
I once spent way too much time trying to get Wolfram/Alpha to give me a useful answer or an entertaining one. I suppose it is possible that the fault may be my lack of patience.
"Science never ends with an anecdote; otherwise, it would be sociology", Satoshi Kanazawa dunning-krugered.
If they had three or four anecdotes from separate nations, they could do comparative politics.
Someone in academia is incompetent! Film at 11.
Cameraman is incompetent! No film at 11.
New dish soap is great! No film at 11.
Japanese theatre, on screen and cranked to the max! Noh film at 11.
Mats one through ten are full! Fill mat eleven!
58: Wolfram himself actually sent me e-mail after that. It didn't quite say either "Fools! I'll show you all!" or "The lurkers support me in e-mail", but I treasure it nonetheless.
63-66: Sometimes I love this place. </Pauly>
I have no doubt that I, at some point, mentioned here the time I was stuck waiting at a gate at Midway Airport where Wolfram was sitting idly while his children threw French fries at everyone.
Which is my second favorite Wolfram-encounter story.
71: Your saving the other one for your memoirs.
Your saving the other one for your memoirs is kind of selfish.
Aaah Kanazawa, proof positive that it's still possible in the twentyfirst century to make a living spinning racist, sexist bullshit by putting a scientific gloss on things like Asians can't do science.
Would it surprise y'all to know that he had been masturbating about what would happen if president Coulter had been in charge of the War on Terror?
It might surprise comments 1 through 37.
74.2: Or that he has his Erdős Number on his personal web page.
Or that he is apparently a Malcolm Gladwell-wannabe, Kanazawa, Satoshi. 2012. The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn't Always the Smart One. New York: Wiley.
Or that he has Talcott "fat on the inner side of the thigh" Parsons in his direct intellectual lineage. (Actually I have no brief against Parsons, just amused to come across him twice in one day in dubious circumstances--do I need to rethink him?)
74: no it wouldn't because you didn't read the thread again before you stuck your big yap in Martin...
76.1: And it's 5? I think that's, like, almost everyone who has ever published anything.
I have at least a 4.
78: I know. Sort of like if you're a 5 from Kevin Bacon you're probably in porn.
Hrm, looks like I probably don't have a 3.
I'd actually doubt that 5s are all that common outside of the mathematical sciences (math, CS, statistics, theoretical physics). There seem to be a lot of well-known mathematicians who only have 4s, so it seems that you'd need a little luck to get a 5. But there are some age factors here and some people just don't colaborate that much.
The Nobel prize winners list at http://www.oakland.edu/enp/erdpaths/ has a lot of surprisingly large numbers.
76: I don't think Parsons, or at least his functionalism, is all that well-respected anymore. I may be over- or understating, as it's not my field and I haven't read him, but most references I've come across have not been positive.
Though I don't really trust that list. They have a mathematician listed as a 7, which is just implausible. I mean, I can get from me to him in 3 and from me to Erdos in 4. How likely is it that there's no faster route than going through me?
Just figured out how to get that 7 down to a 5. So yeah, that list sucks.
For example, because they have existed much longer in human evolutionary history, Africans have more mutations in their genomes than other races.
Bleuugh. And so the rest of us came into being later how, exactly? Who are we descended from now?
re: 86
There is actually some truth in that. Descendants of ancestral populations tend to have more genetic variation than people descended from sub-groups that have migrated away during expansion, due to the founder effect. This holds true for humans -- there's a more or less direct correlation between distance from Africa and the amount of genetic variation in a native population -- it's one of the pieces of evidence that supports a largely* African origin for modern humans.
* but not exclusively, since they started finding evidence of admixture with Neanderthals and other non-African archaic human species.
87. I know there's more genetic variation within Africa than outside, but unless the mutation rate slowed down as people crossed the Suez Canal (to be), I still don't see how this wazzock's point makes any sense.
If, for the sake of round numbers, we assume a founding population of H. sapiens sapiens at 200Kyr BP and a mutation rate of n base pairs per Kyr, then I will have approx. 200n mutations and so will a randomly chosen Somali and a randomly chosen Igbo and a randomly selected !Kung. Now it's very likely true that ancestors of those last three populations separated before my ancestors and Geronimo's accidentally tracked an Ibex into Sinai, so it follows that Geronimo and I are separated by fewer mutations than we are from most modern Africans, but surely we have the same 'number of mutations in our genomes', to the limited extent that this means anything.
Unless the wazzock is arguing that the gene for hott wimmin evolved in non-Africans after they left Africa, in which case the only remaining question is how the fuck he gets published.
I forget: is the Erdos number citation chain, or co-author chain?
re: 88
Well, yeah. I was reading 'number of mutations' as some clumsy locution for 'amount of genetic variation', when of course they aren't the same thing.
89: It's only interesting because Erdos had some absurd number of co-authors. He was homeless, so he would show up at your house and write a paper with you while he slept on your couch.
90: damn. If it was citation I might have a chance, but I've never co-authored, so it's infinity. Bacon number 3 though.
Also, it depends how strictly you want to interpret the rules. If you have a Bacon number of 3, you have by definition a Hershlag number of at most 4 and a McKellar number of 5. By a loose interpretation either of these would give you an Erdős number of 9, since McKellar has an Erdős number of 4 and Hershlag of 5.
94: Come on. If I give you the chain then I risk betraying that "ajay" is merely an alias used by the unquiet spirit of the late Denholm Elliott.
84: There's a weaselly disclaimer on the site that the numbers are meant to be upper bounds.
Retraction Watch is saying that the article has been pulled.
I thought about posting a link to this yesterday while twitter was going wild about it, but then the post got yanked. (Though PT's first move was to change the title to "perceived attractiveness" or something like that rather than just "attractiveness," as if that was what was upsetting people.)
This is also probably pretty obvious, but I have several black friends who had their feelings hurt over this because they feel like they deal with sexist, racist bullshit every day and here it was getting play and huge hits at this supposedly legit site. I also have friends who thought that they dealt with sexist, racist shit every day and this was no different and not worth bothing to be upet and hurt.
My Bacon number is 4. No Erdos number, though, as I have a single publication and it's not co-authored (except via chris's suggested Hershlag/McKellar route).
I have a black co-author number of one.
Further to 102, the original title was "Why Are Black Women Less Attractive[...]" rather than "Why Are Black Women Rated Less Attractive."
Further to 102, the original title was "Why Are Black Women Less Attractive[...]" rather than "Why Are Black Women Rated Less Attractive."
103/4. This. Aside from the politics of the thing, part of my reaction was, "Speak for yourself, mate."
98, 102: Cue the usual idiots whining about how racist, sexist idiots can't catch a break political correctness gone mad in 3, 2, 1...
I came across an interesting article from a black women's beauty magazine, which I clicked on because, unlike the Cosmo schtick, which is that you are ugly and you have bad sex and that's why no one likes you, you stupid lazy whore, this one was really just stating a set of social experiences--things white women can do that black women can't, in dating. The point of the article was that, for example, if a white woman has sex with a guy on the first date, she might come across as fun, sex-positive, spontaneous, etc., but that a black woman has to play hard to get or she's a low-class filthy slut. Most of the comparisons were to the end that if a black woman does something, she is a low-class filthy slut.
While I tend to think that white women also get a full share of being treated like low-class filthy sluts by men, I think it's obvious that, culturally, black women are put in the default position of apologizing for themselves. (Everybody says they like natural hair, but it still amounts to a radical political statement, at least here. Just like everybody says they like no makeup on a woman, but what they mean is they're looking for someone who has "naturally" full black lashes, clear skin, and pink, glistening lips.) A lot of the root problems are ones all women share--being manipulated into feeling bad about being human--but the history of racism and slavery here is still coded into these specific responses to black women. Is there a huge marketing campaign to get black women to say they feel valuable and attractive? Yes, and that's largely because they're also selling fucking shit-tons of beauty supplies, products, and services by making people feel they need more self-esteem.
All this is the most obvious shit in the world. I just can't believe that anyone alive could actually be so stupid as to not recognize that social history has something to do with the perception of race and sexuality.
I just can't believe that anyone alive could actually be so stupid as to not recognize that social history has something to do with the perception of race and sexuality.
I sort of assumed he was just a nasty little racist git. I've worked with people who come out with stuff like that, but they don't teach at the LSE.
I just wanted to return to Riehl World View for a second. Check out the blog roll on the right side. One of the blogs so linked is entirely devoted to anime cheesecake framegrabs and has been for three years or more. We should be able to guess whose blog it is. Is there any way to use this to discredit the Republican Party?
We should be able to guess whose blog it is.
Has he retired from the field of battle?
48:True story: a good-looking friend of mine is talking to him and he asks her if she has a boyfriend. She says "No, I'm gay". He looks at her blankly and says, "But you're attractive".
To which I hope she replied "By that metric I must assume you are as gay as a tree full of parrots."
Not exactly inspired by this, I added two Mara photos to the flickr pool. She is not attractive not because she's black but because she's three.
81.2: Yeah, you're right and I was wrong. A 5 isn't as easy to get as I was thinking.
I've forgotten my login to the Flickr pool, can somebody set me up again.
There's no login for the pool. You just log in to Flickr.
Instructions for how to revive you account are in the Flickr pool.
re: 88
Effective population size affects the amount of variation between individuals. A rapidly expanding population (humans) will have a different spectrum of variation than a steady one.
Who manages the flickr pool?
Relevant to the Erdos number discussion.
lw, I believe Apo and heebie both have admin powers there.
||
The Ogi Ogas / Sai Gaddam Q & A is up and, unsurprisingly, they come across as slightly disingenuous. But there are some interesting answer.
For bonus unfogged relevance, note the point at which they write, "For more, read our Psychology Today blog."
|>
Further to 102, the original title was "Why Are Black Women Less Attractive[...]" rather than "Why Are Black Women Rated Less Attractive."
And, of course, the first title accurately reflected the content of the piece, while the second title would only by appropriate on a piece discussing the raters.
109: One of the blogs so linked is entirely devoted to anime cheesecake framegrabs and has been for three years or more. We should be able to guess whose blog it is
I hold no keys to the Flickr pool, but I think the rest of 120 is true.
I hold keys. Get a new flickr account and let me know what name it's under, and I'll add you.
Armsmasher was the one with the flickr keys. Thorn, do you post as Thorn on flickr?
122: To follow up on the previous thread that (briefly) discussed them, they received their PhDs from the BU CNS department, and specifically were probably in the lab of Stephen Grossberg, who is famous for having created a series of models in the late '70s that he believes explain everything about the brain, but which are completely impenetrable to everybody else. He keeps a tight rein on his grad students, who learn a lot about differential equations, a lot about his model (adaptive resonance theory, and the algorithm ARTMAP), and very, very little about how the brain actually works. He is very much in his own world (although he's constantly bitching at people for not citing him more), and it's enough of a thing that there is a term for getting sucked into a poster at a conference that turns out to be based on one of his useless models: "you've been Grossberged!" He's also virulently sexist. Most scientists have figured out that it's a dead end working with him (and don't even try if you're a woman), and in fact BU blew up the department in order to wrest it from his control, so now he mostly attracts uninformed students from overseas who don't know his reputation and don't mind the sexism. I assume this is the category into which Ogas and Gaddam fall.
It looks like they were in the lab of fellow ARTMAP fan Gail Carpenter, not that I know anything about this field.
I think it's basically the same difference. It might actually be the same physical lab.
It's possible! If she's managed to deal with Grossberg for forty years she must have developed some kind of coping strategies.
I was delighted today to have a chance to explain the fMRI-of-a-dead-salmon result in context at lunch.
131
It is just too perfect that he is the Wang Professor.
Has anyone come up with a decent in-story explanation for why zombies want to eat brains, in particular?
138: I thought it was pretty obvious. The brain is the most soul-dense part of the body. Everyone likes to eat souls, right? (except vegetarians, who are weak because they don't replenish their soul-stuff.)
Also because if they didn't want brains, we could reach a reasonable accomodation.
Brains are a good texture if you're missing teeth and/or your jaw. Easy to gum.
Brains are, nutritionally, about as close as you can get to pure cholesterol. I don't know if that matters or not.
I'm pretty sure there's a plausible and interesting in-story explanation of the brains (specifically) eating in the zombie mythos, but I'm damned if I can remember where I encountered it.
Doctor Slack? Snarkout? I know there are others here as well who tend to be up to speed on these things.
I brought this article up with my American lit class, and immediately felt it was the wrong decision. Do my students really need to know that people like Kanazawa exist? Do black women in my class need to know just how much some people hate them? We discussed it extensively, but I still think it just made everyone sad.
What was the ostensible topic of the class?
As far as I'm concerned, if brains aren't preferred in any Romero movies, and Romero doesn't even know where the idea came from*, then its not cannon, and it ain't true. You might as well say zombies can run and talk like in 28 Days Later.
*I think, though, that the interviewer in d^2's link is right that it comes from the Return of the Living Dead knock offs.
145: We were summing up the semester with a discussion of how race and gender are dealt with by early American texts, and how that sets up certain conceptualizations of current ideas of femininity. It wasn't irrelevant, but still saddening to talk about.
(partially because my students seem to deal with discussions of historical race and gender by saying, "Well, at least it's not that way now that everything is so much better!")
my students seem to deal with discussions of historical race and gender by saying, "Well, at least it's not that way now that everything is so much better!"
In that case, discussing this article may have been a good idea, painful though it was.
Zombies don't really "eat" anything, including brains, they simply attack with their mouths. The reasons for the attack will vary, but will never involve consumption. Zombies attacking brains has nothing to do with nutrition, or a zombie's want to live again, or taste preference, and it certainly isn't an invention of Return of the Living Dead. It has everything to do with the type of zombie and the attack motivator.
Viral Zombie (most common): This zombie "eats" brains merely to spread the infection in the fastest possible manner. The dead body is being controlled by a virus that infects through contact and lives in the brain. And it utilizes the most primal and basal functions of the brain to disperse itself through infinite hosts. Simply put, the zombie's bite is the most efficient way for the virus to initiate an attack, and the brain is the intended target if it is to control the new host. Attacks to other body parts are intended to debilitate the victim and ensure secondary transmission, but the brain will always be the primary goal.
Viral Zombie Explanation is obviously true.
140.1: Surely vegetarians consume the vegetative souls of plants? Which is why, as common observation teaches, their powers of movement atrophy, but they remain alive. Perhaps zombies want to eat brains to replenish their rational souls?
146: Every revelation is ultimately greater than its prophet, so I do not regard this as dispositive.
Wow I really don't want to give this talk tomorrow.
Wow I really don't want to give this talk tomorrow.
Academia's loss is, as ever, unfogged's gain.
140.1: Surely vegetarians consume the vegetative souls of plants? Which is why, as common observation teaches, their powers of movement atrophy, but they remain alive.
xoxox, sessilely.
So you went to grad school to restore balance.
Today I had a nice experience: being present when a collaborator gave a really compelling talk about our work. No preparation needed on my part, but I got to be there and talk to people afterwards and pretend I had something to do with how good the talk was. So I guess what I'm saying is, find someone else to give your talk, Cosma.
I got a tetanus shot, so now my arm hurts. As near as I can tell I got all the benefits of lifting weights plus I can eat raw pork safely.
156: Would've made more sense if I hadn't traveled 600 miles to do it first thing tomorrow.
I guess what I'm saying is, find someone else to give your talk, Cosma.
Ah, an opportunity! My rates are quite reasonable. References available on request.
This would actually be basically the perfect career for me, which is why it's a shame it's unlikely I can make it work.
In Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marías, there's a character who writes speeches for various important people, but whose appearance is so unsavory (he "looks like someone who should wear polo shirts or bathrobes," I think is how it is put) that he hires another writer to pretend to be him and handle all of his in-person interviews and negotiations and whatnot.
Maybe there's an untapped market for being the public presence of people who are unable or unwilling to present themselves.
I guess that's sort of what a press secretary/spokesperson does, but that's mostly just a reactive role.
Creative Academic Services Inc. For the discriminating yet self-aware academic.
-- Charismatic and well-spoken co-authors.
-- Premium low Erdös number plan.
-- Citation-matic: discreet and guaranteed to be indistinguishable from existing practices in your field.
-- Academic brand management. You get tenure or you don't pay! some complicated stuff that you can read about in the fine print of our Terms & Conditions.
Back on the zombie front, the Centers for Disease Control has released guidelines on surviving a zombie apocalypse, but their servers appear unable to handle the resulting traffic load.
164: Think how much traffic they would get in the early stages of a zombie apocalypse. Later, not so much.
163: The guy who auctioned off his Erdos number is a good friend of mine; we're having dinner tomorrow.
I survived the talk, I think.
166: I survived the talk, I think.
Do you crave brains right now?
A follow-up post from Psychology Today. It contains some fairly strong statements:
We agree that scientists should not be sacked for making impolite statements that may offend people. However academic freedom does not entail the right (1) to misinterpret data and (2) to ignore empirical findings that go against stated claims.
Still doesn't explain why that study had interviewers rating subjects' attractiveness in the first place, which I thought was one of the weirder aspects of the whole deal.
Why? Add Heath is a "longitudinal survey data on respondents' social, economic, psychological and physical well-being". I suspect attractiveness may be a causal factor for social, economic, and psychological well-being.
[I]n a paper on race differences in IQ he not only commits several theoretical errors, but also failed to consider alternative explanations. Incidentally, in that particular paper he also assumed that the earth was flat!
Well, as the post in 168 shows, there was little to no consistency in the attractiveness ratings, which is presumably about what you'd expect for total subjective ordinal ratings like this. Given that, whatever data came out of the ratings is going to be pretty useless to explain anything else.
You can't really fault someone for collecting useless data if you learned it was useless from analyzing the data they collected. They were clearly worried about the subjectivity issue, and collected multiple evaluations to check for subjectivity. It's their data collection that allows us to conclude that in fact the evaluations are subjective.
Well, as the post in 168 shows, there was little to no consistency in the attractiveness ratings, which is presumably about what you'd expect for total subjective ordinal ratings like this.
I am actually pretty surprised by this. I'd have expected that the interviewers would have had at least some consistency in standards of attractiveness - they're all from the same country after all,
The post notes that the interviewers seemed to have different tolerances - one rated all 18 subjects "unattractive", for example - but I wonder how a numerical ranking would have looked?
I wonder what divergence you'd get between the two questions:
i) Rate the people according to how attractive you think other people would consider this person. And
ii) Rate the person according to how attractive you personally find this person.
176. I'd be surprised if the divergence was as great as you might think. If you exclude people with a specific kink, who are usually aware of the fact and make allowances for it, most people assume without thinking that their idea of attractive is everybody's. The relationship between this assumption, the input from the advertising media, the ethnic makeup of their neighbourhood, etc. could be somebody's thesis, but it sure as hell isn't going to be mine.