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quantumofmaliceon Java is Pass-by-Value

This comes up once every few years. The confusion comes from the fact that java syntactically hides the pointer for objects, which feel kind of like structs.

It doesn't matter too much IMO. Most people intuitively understand how object references work in modern programming languages, and these discussions don't add a lot to their knowledge.

quantumofmaliceon Moving for good

This may be reasonable advice for extreme extroverts, but many humans value stability and predictability over new experience, particularly when forming families.

The majority of lifestyle-oriented media is produced with an extrovert bias and we tend to define happiness in extrovert terms, but for those of us inclined towards introversion much of this advice would make us miserable.

quantumofmaliceon The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

Your original thesis just got completely destroyed and now you are bring up unrelated speculative issues not explored in the article.

Just admit that the marxist analysis doesn't hold much water in this case. That doesn't mean it is never useful, just that you might need to think a bit before applying it.

quantumofmaliceon The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

> It’d be cool if your and the other poster’s ideological spat could try to not use science as the battleground, or at least eliminate more likely issues before going there.

I don't disagree. A big part of the problem is the social sciences claiming the mantel of science (often just statistics layered over tiny samples, as you point out), in order to imply some sort of impartiality and precision on par with the hard (i.e. real) sciences.

Unfortunately, and I say this sincerely, I believe the ideological nature of the social sciences since the 60s has been responsible for a huge amount of uncritical acceptance of bad (false) work as well as preventing a lot of unpopular good (true) work. I don't know how to deal with that fact other than stating so forthrightly, which, unfortunately from the perspective of science, carries necessary ideological freight with it.

quantumofmaliceon The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science

The reproducibility crisis is most severe in the social sciences. Hard sciences like physics are on much firmer ground, and conflating the two is clownish. Social science research is funded almost entirely by the government[1].

It's a nice story you've got there, but the reason there is a replication crisis in the softer sciences is not due to the evil capitalists of the marxist imagination. In fact, much of it is due to cultural marxist insistence on outcomes conforming to political correctness, as well as uncritical acceptance of politically conforming work. See the ongoing fight against the idea of a high genetic basis for adult IQ.

All of this is obvious enough: capitalists aren't interested in non-reproducable results unless it is obviating them from blame for a given externality. But that sort of research is a small fraction of overall research (and should absolutely be done by impartial third parties.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science

quantumofmaliceon Assumptions about how children learn to read have been disproven by research

> pretty high 100 years ago

irrelevant: there are no hard numbers for that and that's not the timeframe the article is discussing (since the 90s)

quantumofmaliceon Two Decades of War Have Eroded the Morale of America’s Troops

Yes, I mean the people. The center doesn't want war right now either, despite the best efforts of the media to whip up a war frenzy.

Our foreign policy is directed by people who do not care what the american people think.

quantumofmaliceon Two Decades of War Have Eroded the Morale of America’s Troops

The american left and right (and the maligned center) do agree on it, you can look at the polls on the syrian intervention. That's the insanity. Our foreign policy is controlled by people who do not care what we think.

quantumofmaliceon Assumptions about how children learn to read have been disproven by research

The article is the usual more-effort-is-needed pablum one expects from articles on education.

Any analysis of American children that ignores demographics is silly. 44% of California children don't speak english at home. What on earth do you expect from these children if you test them in english proficiency?

quantumofmaliceon Two Decades of War Have Eroded the Morale of America’s Troops

The founders were against a standing army, preferring citizen-based militias. Looking at the behavior of Imperial America, one sees the wisdom.

I suppose one bright spot in this otherwise dismal time is that both the left and the right mostly agree that we shouldn't be dropping bombs on people.

quantumofmaliceon Brutalist Design Is the Bad Influence We All Need

Archived link since the site has been, ahem, brutalized:

https://archive.fo/3W7yY

There isn't really an argument for brutalism except laziness and the usual contempt the design community has for its end users. Minimalism has its place, as does maximalism, depending on the context within the application. But that requires actual thinking and then both taste and skill, respectively. Much easier to just wallow in contempt with occasional outbursts of sarcastic novelty, as architecture has done for the last sixty years.

quantumofmaliceon Google can be forced to pull results globally, Canada supreme court rules

"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it" -- Andrew Jackson (apocryphal)

quantumofmaliceon 'I’m not having children because I want to save the planet'

Intelligence and conscientiousness are > 50% heritable. Political attitudes, including environmentalism, are also highly heritable. Adult intelligence is between 70-80% based on genetic factors.

Articles like this are encouraging the most intelligent and highly conscientious of us not to have children and, in the long run, will destroy the planet rather than save it.

The right attitude is one of stewardship: we have a sacred duty to preserve the planet and a sacred duty to produce intelligent, thoughtful children to enjoy that planet and to carry on our work.

quantumofmaliceon Asian-Americans Suing Harvard Say Admissions Files Show Discrimination

The success of asians disproves a general bias towards whites in the US or any sort of "compounding interest" associated with it.

The consensus amongst neurobiologists is that adult IQ is somewhere between 70-80% based on genetic factors. I invite you to read "The Neuroscience of Intelligence" by Richard Haier, and the many studies cited therein.

Comparing this scientific work with astrology is clownish, on par with young earth creationism.

quantumofmaliceon The Agile Fluency Model

Agile methods are solidly in the mainstream, but that popularity hasn't been without its problems. Organizational leaders are complaining that they’re not getting the benefits they expected. This article presents a fluency model that will help you get the most out of agile ideas.

Perhaps, rather than a fluency model and the associated billable consulting hours, there are simpler and less expensive explanations of the failure of Agile Inc.'s advice to software developers.

quantumofmaliceon Asian-Americans Suing Harvard Say Admissions Files Show Discrimination

Asians have higher incomes, higher educational achievement and longer expected lives than whites in the U.S.

The problem is not "compounding returns", it is genetics and, to a lesser extent, culture.

Until this fact, which most educated people know but are terrified to say aloud, is admitted and reckoned with, no progress will be made. This will hurt non-asian minorities the most.

quantumofmaliceon 1.1.1.1: Fast, privacy-first consumer DNS service

Will they allow sites with unpopular but legal content, like The Daily Stormer, to resolve?

Or will this DNS service, like their DDoS service, be at the whim of their CEO?

quantumofmaliceon Ask HN: What Social Media are you using outside HN?

gab.ai

the chans

quantumofmaliceon The defiance of an 'untouchable' New York subway worker

Unlike most of her lot, her family was "middle class", thanks to the help of Canadian missionaries in her region who aided in education and offered them religion. Her family was thus Christian and benefited with education. Her parents held jobs as college teachers.

Gidla says that proselytization didn't help her lot. "Christians, untouchables - it came to the same thing. All Christians in India were untouchable. I knew no Christian who did not turn servile in the presence of a Hindu."

Proselytization did help her a lot: it was the reason the christians were there in the first place.

quantumofmaliceon SCL – A Very British Coup

I'm relatively indifferent towards the matter, social media is cancer, but compare and contrast narratives:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/harper-reed-oba...

quantumofmaliceon Utah governor signs law legalizing 'free-range parenting'

You can look up Putnam and the controversy around his work easily enough.

quantumofmaliceon Utah governor signs law legalizing 'free-range parenting'

Social trust is falling in the west. I appreciate Utah making an effort here, but the problem is systemic.

There are specific reasons that this is the case, but most people will not discuss it openly. Putnam sat on his results for years because it is simply not acceptable to discuss in polite society.

quantumofmaliceon Money creation in the modern economy (2014) [pdf]

> whether bail-outs exist or not

lol

quantumofmaliceon Money creation in the modern economy (2014) [pdf]

Exactly. There is no reserve limit: any pretense of that was washed away once sweep accounts became standard.

Banks lend as much as they possibly can, and then a bit more, and then expect the taxpayers to pick up the pieces when it all falls apart.

The irony is that there need not be a reserve ratio: if we just adopted duration-matched banking, where a bank had to demonstrate it had ownership of a given dollar it was lending for the duration it loaned that dollar (e.g. via a CD) it would be fine.

This is the fundamental problem with banking, and I don't understand why no one talks about it. Banks are lying about having money they don't have (i.e. they are promising the same dollar to more than one person at the same time). If we forced them to just stop lying it would all work out, and there wouldn't be any need for a reserve ratio.

quantumofmaliceon For a baby’s brain to benefit, read the right books at the right time

I think we are not as far apart as you might imagine: I am concerned with both problems and, particularly, how the former might interact with the latter, as well as the potential of future people who will exist (who, after all, are far more numerous than the people who currently happen to be walking around.)

I would bet that we could agree on many social programs to help the poor. Where we probably disagree is on the amount that we think these programs would help fix the long term problem of poverty, and I might be more inclined to look to see if the program has dysgenic effects that would compound that long-term problem.

quantumofmaliceon For a baby’s brain to benefit, read the right books at the right time

"Very often" is too vague a statement to respond profitably to. I will say that, broadly, I am against poisoning children.

But, if we are serious about the problem, we need to be honest about the large genetic basis of adult intelligence and then figure out how to humanely encourage eugenic reproductive patterns (or at least discourage dysgenic ones) in the poor.

quantumofmaliceon For a baby’s brain to benefit, read the right books at the right time

Yes, if you poison a child it will have an effect on them.

Contra what you say, people (really, the liberal elite consensi) seem very attached to the "anyone can do anything" approach, but, once you avoid the obvious stuff and give kids enough food, it is simply not the case: raw genetics is responsible for 50-80% of adult intelligence. This is not a popular position, despite the ample evidence, and will get you thrown out of most sociology departments today.

Educational institutions are, generally, an effect of high societal intelligence, rather than a cause.

quantumofmaliceon For a baby’s brain to benefit, read the right books at the right time

Yes, avoiding death and horrible diseases in childhood appears to have major effects on adult outcomes. When we speak about these things we are assuming a non-disastrous environment and discussing incremental changes, such as spending more on education.

quantumofmaliceon [dead]

If russian interference in our elections bothers you, AIPAC should bother you much, much more.

quantumofmaliceon For a baby’s brain to benefit, read the right books at the right time

The research is very good that, beyond basic nutrition, very little by way of environment has a significant effect on adult intelligence. Outcomes, as you say, are a different thing and you can teach people to have lower time preferences, increase conscientiousness, etc. but, unfortunately, these are typically not what we focus on in todays social interventions.