Maybe a reference would help - I'm not sure how this is a meaningful statement.
It seems that there could be many somewhat "generic" Western European jokes about despots which date back to Roman times. But without more information I can't think of any jokes at or about Hitler specifically that could possibly date back to the Romans.
> Presumably whatever anti-plagiarism software journals are using today is similarly limited.
Sadly, I am guessing the problem here is the anti-plagiarism software was never run, nor was the article ever even read. Especially given that the issues were found disproportionately in one specific journal, this seems to be outright corruption on both sides of the equation.
> if they do not protect against variants or breakthrough infections?
The vaccines do not provide absolute immunity but they very clearly and obviously provide protection against variants (dramatically reducing the hospitalization and death rate), and against breakthrough infections (dramatically reducing the likelihood of transmission). Your comment is just ignorant misinformation.
The fact that vaccines are not completely bulletproof is known to children and any adult who is interested in a good faith discussion about this: those who have had a flu vaccine are familiar with the very mild form of the flu you can still get. The symptoms are far milder than an unvaccinated flu infection, but vaccines boost your immune system. They do not make you superhumanly immune to disease, and it's preposterous to hold the COVID vaccine to an impossibly high standard.
> The fact that vaccines are not completely bulletproof is known to children and any adult who is interested in a good faith discussion
Ad hominem!
My point is that the vaccine will _not_ make or break this pandemic. We are stuck with this virus and taking part in an activity - regardless of the risk - is futile if the vaccine itself does not stop the spread. I am personally fine bearing a "full strength" COVID-19 infection, or the clot shot itself, but I don't want to because I don't accept the validity of the screeching masses telling me I must.
That doesn't make me uneducated, it makes me slightly anti-social. Deal with it.
If I were the union I would take the opportunity to campaign on this. Say that Amazon’s leadership is so untrustworthy that they tried to rig an election they probably would have won fair and square - and, more importantly, that the federal government under Biden might actually have your back if AMZ tries to retaliate against you.
The problem is that the election was clearly unfair and there was a widespread sense that the people voting in it thought it was unfair. A 70-30 vote in an election where you know the authorities are watching means absolutely nothing.
As for this:
> The evidence seems to be based on the word of a single employee. If that's enough evidence to overturn an election, it will be hard to have one that isn't overturned.
You are reading this very myopically, ignoring crucial context with a sliver of the article (and not being helped by some weak writing). The snippet should be read as this:
> Myers’ recommendation centers on the mailbox [which was unquestionably on Amazon’s headquarters and which Amazon management unquestionably pressured employees to use for voting], according to one of the people familiar with it. During the NLRB hearing, an employee said Amazon security guards used keys to open the mailbox, testimony that former NLRB chair Wilma Liebman said could be reason enough to overturn the result.
So there was plenty of direct evidence suggesting improper behavior, which not even Amazon contested. That was not enough to overturn the result. But just the one piece of deeply serious eyewitness testimony on top of the documentary evidence would be enough. And of course there was far more evidence than just that one employee: Liebman’s comments are obviously a rhetorical device used to illustrate the severity of Amazon’s transgressions and not a literal description of the merits of the case.
I think you misread it. I believe they mean that among the coastal nations, the US ranks 3rd in terms of polluting its own coastline. I also don’t have access to the paper, but the number 2 coastal nation then pollutes its own coastline worse than the US.
For me (as someone formally diagnosed with schizophrenia): as a child I had a lot of flickering lights/shadows and brief whispers/noises, horrible depth perception, frequent dizziness, and bad temperature coordination (sweating or shivering way too much in response to weather).
One particular indication which I thought was universal but is apparently somewhat uncommon: visual “snow” in low light conditions, meaning that dark rooms look like grey TV static to me. (When my eyes are closed in the dark I usually just see black.)
When I close my eyes I see "snow", and yes the same thing with my eyes opened in the dark. But this is normal, no? It seems like seeing pure black is abnormal. There will be some kind of noise on the optic nerve, it's hard to imagine it being hard "off".
Seeing snow when your eyes are closed or in darkness is fairly typical from what I understand. Visual snow as a diagnosis is visible at least in reading-level light and against light backgrounds.
I see snow against all colours in a typical office environment. It’s less noticeable in daylight but still there.
I can both see it and "unsee" it. If I'm actively doing something and using my eyes for things I don't notice. But if I'm just sitting listening to music or whatever I can notice the "fuzz" and noise. In low light it's a very fine grain. In daylight it's a coarser pulsing of white and black.
I've always thought this was normal. I've asked a couple other people and they've said they see it too, :shrug:
I always remember the term 'eidetic' and always think I am misremembering the correct term, but it is "eidetic imagery" I am searching for. To me this refers to the phenomenon of seeing above-threshold-of-perception patterns or motions, such as lava-like swirling. As you say, such things can be interesting for a time.
This following link discusses the phenomenon in terms of phosphenes:
Arguably, there have been spiritual movements fueled by relative ignorace around these things, with gurus allegedly claiming that they enable these unexpected experiences for their disciples.
> with gurus allegedly claiming that they enable these unexpected experiences for their disciples
I can voluntarily cause a burst of those color patterns by, after closing my eyes, relaxing all my facial muscles and letting my eyes go unfocused. Works best when trying to fall asleep, so I can imagine people unintentionally doing the same during, say, meditation and correlating it with their spiritual leader.
I think I get phosphenes and never had the word for it. I can more or less elicit them on demand by closing my eyes, relax and let them cross slightly. A stroby concentric circle set ensues for a few seconds. Always the same pattern. Red.
I guess the optic nerve should see the same in complete dark vs in darkness with eyes closed - if noisy then noise in both cases. But here we are talking about a significant difference between eyes closed and low light.
Same thing here. Male/mid-30s and no psychotic symptoms, so unlikely to get them now, hopefully. I have always noticed audiovisual "brain glitches" every once in a while, but I think that's because I find it interesting to look for them...
I do feel the focus on lobbyists and corruption distracts from the more serious problem: part of the solution will have to involve reducing certain luxuries for many upper-middle-class people: less real meat, less AC in the summer, less driving, much more expensive clothing and furniture, etc. ExxonMobil isn’t the problem here, it’s ordinary citizens who don’t want to make the sacrifice. And the problem isn’t “corrupt politicians” so much as “politicians who want to win elections,” aka all politicians. And “we simply have to elect liars who are guaranteed to lose their election after betraying their voters” isn’t an option.
The process will certainly involve some pain and serious injustices, even if it’s necessary for the long term.
Reducing meat consumption in particular is one that won’t be solved by electric generation technology, and lies directly on powerful cultural fault points in the US/Canada (“it’s the hippies and college professors who took your pork chops and bankrupted our hard working farmers!”). And eventually we will simply have to ban beef and pork.
People are focusing on the pettiness and timing but the US government had very good reasons to do this (and other countries should follow suit):
1) The increasing commercialization of spaceflight provides many opportunities for unscrupulous grifters seeking to con scientifically illiterate millionaires, potentially at great risk to human life. Governments really should clamp down on who is and isn’t qualified to call themselves an astronaut.
2) As someone who supports companies like SpaceX being involved in space exploration: it is extremely gross for the focus to the on the personal feelings and childish fantasies of three billionaires, one of whom is notorious for blatantly abusing his employees, the other notorious for blatantly lying to his customers[1]. Branson seems by comparison to be an ok person... but he’s not an astronaut, and it’s disrespectful to real astronauts to suggest otherwise.
[1] While Bezos at least seems to acknowledge that he bought his ticket, the fact that Elon Musk still calls himself “Chief Engineer” at SpaceX is an embarrassment, and a slap in the face to all the engineers who actually show up to do work at SpaceX.
Elon: Yes, it's a good question. I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on businessy things. But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design. Engineering and design, so it's developing next-generation product. That's 80% of it.
The idea that Elon Musk is spending 35 hours a week (or even 20) engineering at SpaceX is preposterous. He is blatantly lying here, or pretending a few hours of doodling each week constitutes “chief engineering” work.
While Bezos at least seems to acknowledge that he bought his ticket, the fact that Elon Musk still calls himself “Chief Engineer” at SpaceX is an embarrassment, and a slap in the face to all the engineers who actually show up to do work at SpaceX.
Funny, those engineers don't seem to have any problem working for him under the title "Chief Engineer." Maybe we should ask some of them for their opinions, since theirs are the only ones that matter.
In 2005 then-Harvard president started a firestorm when he suggested that women were underrepresented in STEM fields because of genetic differences in academic ability. Pinker argued that people were being too politically correct, and suggested that the (true) fact of genetic differences between men implies that there could be a genetic difference in cognitive ability.
But the assumed “fact” that women were statistically less skilled than men in STEM fields was already starting to disintegrate in 2005, as boys were falling behind academically and girls were accelerating, a trend continuing in to 2021. It is ridiculous to think that women somehow got better STEM genes in the space of 40 years. Sociological and political/economic factors are clearly responsible for the change and current discrepancy.
So the idea that the difference is “genetic” is horseshit and has been horseshit since long before 2005. Specifically, it is a bold scientific claim that contradicted current and 2005-era understanding of human biology, and requires far more evidence than some economist’s musing. Summers was wrong (factually and morally) to suggest otherwise and Pinker was wrong to defend it.
Note that Pinker didn’t merely defend Summers’s right to make unfactual remarks. Pinker defended Summers on the merits. I think he continued to defend these views as recently as 2014. In my view this (along with Pinker’s general reactionary tendencies) gives people a good reason to suspect that he’s a sexist jerk who can’t be trusted to engage with “cancel culture” issues honestly.
>But the assumed “fact” that women were statistically less skilled than men in STEM fields was already starting to disintegrate in 2005, as boys were falling behind academically and girls were accelerating, a trend continuing in to 2021.
Summers' claim is not incompatible with this observation. Not only disagreeing with Summers/Pinker but questioning their fundamental standing as "good faith actors" on these grounds is sad, but unfortunately pretty common. Your assertions about the grounding or lack thereof of these ideas in 2005 are simply false, and there's a reason why Summers is still remembered as an egregiously noteworthy case of incipient cancel culture.
This seems to be the standard middlebrow recourse for having to deal with uncomfortable ideas - find a shoddy, overconfident "debunking" of the inconvenient expert view from a trusted source (this will often rely on obvious misconstruals of the claims that the expert actually made), then call the experts "bad faith actors" when they continue to espouse said views.
> why Summers is still remembered as an egregiously noteworthy case of incipient cancel culture.
Come on, man. If you’re the president of an organization and you get yourself into a situation where the majority of your women employees think you’re a reactionary bigoted jerk, then it doesn’t really matter if you actually deserved it or if you merely made a PR mistake. It doesn’t even matter if it’s due to an unfair media feeding frenzy! You are the president and you badly failed in your mission to lead that organization.
Summers absolutely deserved to lose his job as president (which was a voluntary resignation). Even if you give him the greatest possible benefit of the doubt, his actions were profoundly irresponsible leadership. And he didn’t lose tenure, he just lost a cushy side gig. Other university/corporate presidents have lost their job for far less.
>If you’re the president of an organization and you get yourself into a situation where the majority of your women employees think you’re a reactionary bigoted jerk
If Summers' comments trigger this sentiment then I think it's fair to label this as "egregiously noteworthy." It's similar to the exaggerated claims we see with regularity nowadays that those with unpopular views must be punished because they're making their peers "feel unsafe" - there was in fact an (undoubtedly less-enlightened) time when this sort of teeth-gnashing was seen as unprofessional.
> Specifically, [the “variability hypothesis”] is a bold scientific claim that contradicted current and 2005-era understanding of human biology, and requires far more evidence than some economist’s musing. Summers was wrong (factually and morally) to suggest otherwise and Pinker was wrong to defend it.
It is very much a Flying Spaghetti Monster problem: at this point the preponderance of evidence is that there is no inherent difference in the reasoning abilities of men and women, and that any measured difference is much more easily explained by societal factors than genetics. The default hypothesis is that there is no difference and I have not seen any convincing evidence otherwise - evidence which purports to show a difference is always tainted beyond usefulness.
Your argument is equivalent to the observation that I haven’t personally mapped out all of Earth’s orbit so how can I prove there’s no Flying Spaghetti Monster? It is not very convincing!
Everyone already agrees that there aren't meaningful mean-level differences between the sexes, aside from in a small handful of personality traits or irrelevant physical traits.
You still haven't addressed why different variances (for which there is a lot of evidence) in one or more of interests/traits/skills are a nonstarter as an explanation for an outcome gap at extreme percentiles.
I'd be the first to agree that the burden of proof is on Pinker and Summers as far as advancing it from hypothesis to theory goes. But that's distinct from claiming the hypothesis itself is a nonstarter.
Summers did, read his exact words. He's not only talking about gender balance in science but about top performers specifically.
Also now that you mention it, there are mean level differences at a young age in interests (people vs things), which is also a plausible explanation for gender disparity in STEM, whether that difference is genetic or cultural or both.
The documented median and variability differences are modest. They're enough to explain 20% women at the +4 SD level if I recall correctly. But there are too many people in STEM fields for them to be so selective.
That seems to be in line with what Summers said. Pinker talked about gender balance specifically though.
> They're enough to explain 20% women at the +4 SD level if I recall correctly
That's right if we're looking at univariable distributions.
> But there are too many people in STEM fields for them to be so selective.
Actually I agree now that the variability hypothesis is insufficient to explain why there's so many more men than women that self-select into STEM.
I think a more plausible explanation is mean differences in interests (which may or may not be genetic).
The variability hypothesis can possibly help to explain things like why most chess champions are men, but it can't explain why most people that play chess in the first place are men.
It seems that there could be many somewhat "generic" Western European jokes about despots which date back to Roman times. But without more information I can't think of any jokes at or about Hitler specifically that could possibly date back to the Romans.