This week, Robert Plomin, professor of behavioral genetics at King’s College London, published a paper showing that a child’s educational success can be predicted by their genes. Genetic data from 20,000 DNA variants across several genes collectively account for 10% of the differences in children’s educational achievement age 16. At the most extreme ends of this genetic variation is an entire exam grade difference—from A to B grade for those with the highest polygenic score, to B to C grade for those with the lowest.
Month: July 2016
Wonky Thoughts: On Human Opportunity
Against odds of a hundred billion to one, we stand today as perhaps the only technological civilization in the galaxy. After three and a half billion years of evolution, we are alive at the very moment when we have the intellect and capability to do something remarkable – to remake the galaxy into a home for earthly life and mankind. We stand on the brink of colonizing the stars. Whether we succeed or fail depends on us.
Instead of asking, “are robots becoming more human?” we need to ask “are humans becoming more robotic?” — Quartz
Brett Frischmann, professor at Cardozo law school, and Evan Selinger, philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, argue that we need an inverse Turing Test to determine to what extent humans are becoming indistinguishable from machines.
sometimes being human is costly
— Brett Frischmann, professor at Cardozo law school
Hillary Clinton as Presidential Nominee
The Left’s enthusiastic embrace of these tropes and rhetoric props up the narrative that, for a woman to have reached the upper echelons of power in her field, she could only have done so through depravity and deception.
Source: Your Gleeful Liberal Takedown of Hillary Clinton Is Affirming Institutional Sexism
This aura of avoidance adds to a perception that she’s dishonest and secretive. Whether or not she’s hiding something, avoiding the press provides another reason to think that she is hiding something.
Source: The Deeper Reason Many Intelligent Progressives and Independents Will Not Support Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton is a generationally talented politician — albeit across a different set of dimensions than men tend to be talented politicians.
Source: It’s time to admit Hillary Clinton is an extraordinarily talented politician
As sewbots threaten Asia’s sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit from automation
As sewbots threaten Asia’s sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit from automation
This isn’t an entirely bad news story: the South Asian garment industry is dangerous and underpaid, and replacing humans with robots will reduce the labor inputs (and hence the price) of things that we all need — clothes and shoes.
But obviously, that will leave a hell of a lot of people in the region without any jobs. This presents two problems: first, how will they live; and second, who will buy the things that robots make if all the benefits of automation accrue to an ever-dwindling group of people who own robots?
Source: As sewbots threaten Asia’s sweatshops, we need to decide who will benefit from automation
The time saved through automation must be granted to the people.
— Bernard Stiegler, French philosopher