growlix

Robert Sapolsky makes an interesting point about the idea of "a" gene-environment interaction[0]: genes only exist in the context of an environment, and so "The problem with "a gene-environment interaction" is the same as asking what height has to do with the area of a rectangle, and being told that in this particular case, there is a height/length interaction."

His course on Human Behavioral Biology [1] is perhaps the single best science course I've ever encountered. If someone could only take one science course, I'd recommend this one.

[0] https://edge.org/response-detail/25536 [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD7E21BF91F3F9683

Does making teachers easier to fire draw better candidates into the profession?

Whatever this means: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-uni...

blame the algorithm

Finland both pays and respects its teachers. This is not so much the case in the US, where teaching is viewed as overpaid babysitting.

Also, prestige/symbolic capital is a powerful motivator. It seems to me that in the US, wealth is a major contributor to prestige, so they're often not dissociated in professional attainment.

I TA'd a capstone neuroscience seminar at McGill for multiple years, and you'd be amazed at how much difficulty many of the students had at expressing themselves in writing. And I'm talking about those who spoke English as a first language. These are final year university students who got into a very competitive program.

I'm not sure if it's paywalled so here's a link to the author's site that has the full article plus a nice summary: http://gking.harvard.edu/publications/randomized-experimenta...

I would consider your Mendeleev quotation as an example of a different, though also quite fascinating phenomenon. What is being discussed in the above article relates to processing sensory input during sleep. The Mendeleeev anecdote is related to memory consolidation/restructuring that occurs during sleep and can cause insight (ie "a mental restructuring that leads to a sudden gain of explicit knowledge allowing qualitatively changed behaviour"[0]), independent of sensory input during sleep. Your Mendeleev reference reminds of a fascinating study[0] that examines the capability of sleep to yield insight because they also reference the Mendeleev anecdote in their introduction. I highly recommend reading the article. It's short, easy to understand, and demonstrates the importance of sleep for problem solving.

[0] Original paywalled source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v427/n6972/full/nature0...; free-to-access copy: https://www.msu.edu/course/psy/401/Readings/WK9.PresentA.Wag...

Thanks to both of you for your explanations. I think I'm beginning to understand it, though it I find it far more comprehensible when considered in the context of a gold-backed dollar than fiat.

Can you (or someone) explain how black market transactions in USD act as a free loan to the US government? This isn't intuitive to me.

I had a difficult time parsing this. Maybe I still am, because that sentence continues to tell me that using this app will somehow make my most beloved musicians listen to my favorite music.

I think the real kicker here is that they're able to reproduce racial incarceration disparities ONLY by manipulating sentence durations, a known trend in the justice system[0]. [0]http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_sentenc...

I didn't post the original article because it's paywalled, but here it is anyway: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v419/n6905/full/419359a...

FWIW, I submitted this article with the title "Gluten intolerance is likely FODMAP intolerance" because I wanted to avoid the condescending, linkbait title of the original article.

Good job, Tavish