slphil

I also play chess at a competitive level (>2000, Expert in the US) and play Melee at a low competitive level (playing in local meetups, winning a few matches). I've had many arguments about ranking systems, ELO, etc with my fellow Smashers, and I reached similar conclusions. This is a great writeup.

There are huge differences between the Swiss system used in chess (which works great for ELO, since seeding is done by rating and players are not eliminated) and the double elimination system used in Melee tournaments. I don't think it's possible to have an objective ranking system in Melee because of the intricacies of this issue (seeding influences final placement, low-seeded players will hit a wall where they lose to high-seeded players earlier, etc).

I use multiple devices, will it be possible to have two installs synced together? For some reason I had some difficulty with this on Status.

I have had only a single problem with my Nexus 6, as far as hardware goes: the USB port on the bottom sucks. On the other hand, there is an obviously superior way to charge the phone, since it supports Qi charging, which I have stations for at my office and home. I only need to use the port when flashing a new ROM (it works, but only in precise alignment).

You should provide some actual claims about the problems you had with the hardware rather than just complaining.

I also use Keepass, with a complex master password that I've memorized. I keep the file in my Nextcloud instance so that it's synced between my two Android devices and four Linux machines.

This is true, but building from source isn't very hard. (I also don't care for the Pixel -- I have no desire to upgrade from my Nexus 6 and recommend it to others seeking a de-Googled phone.)

Same with Discord. I don't get any notifications from Discord on my de-Googled LineageOS devices, but the application works just fine (although I had to silence its constant notifications about Play Services).

You don't need to pay them for a phone. You can install it on the device yourself for free.

It's a somewhat competent chess player too.

Of course. We should keep in mind that we are evolutionary creatures and that drastically changing our diet or environment probably has negative effects (sitting down too long, eating refined sugars, etc).

Do keep in mind that evolution hasn't stopped recently, either. There are plenty of civilization-era evolutionary adaptations in the human genome as well. [1]

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/000-Year-Explosion-Civilization-Accel...

Don't understand why I'm being downvoted. Don't put your coins on an exchange, ever, unless you want to risk them being lost. This is cryptocurrency 101.

Did you finish reading the article? It gets far worse than numbers of hours worked (and the !Kung score quite well on many metrics compared to other hunter-gatherers).

Humans stopped being hunter-gatherers for a reason.

While nothing you said is inaccurate, be careful of falling for the "original affluent society" canard. Hunter gatherers do not work less than we do, and they do not get enough food. (Quillette recently did a good write-up on this.)

Yes, this is not a Bitcoin vulnerability. Getting access to your wallet is not the same as cracking it.

Waterfox has been around for a while. What fate are you talking about? Pale Moon is still in active development and use as well. I use it on some older machines for performance reasons.

Yes, this is a legitimate problem because there are both genetic and environmental contributions to intelligence. We must be wary of eugenic arguments. After all, the easiest way to raise the average IQ of a society would be to kill everyone who doesn't meet a specified minimum IQ. A more politically palatable way would be to allocate resources away from those groups.

This isn't a matter of biasing results, though, because the metric validity of intelligence testing doesn't require that we play nice with making sure everyone has equal access. These are separate problems. Intelligence research is a scientific problem, and resource allocation is a political one.

We already know that environmental contributions to IQ are important, and a reasonable and moral person who is literate on intelligence research thinks that resource allocation to lower-performing people is critically important.

Pale Moon is a 3.5 fork, it's ancient, although it's gotten a lot of independent development.

Because it's factually wrong. Biology matters, and I'm not trying to bring in concepts like race (which is a total intellectual disaster, since the term refers to multiple concepts that mean radically different things). Many studies do not account for simple heredity, when adoption studies have already shown that traits like IQ and even personality are heritable to some degree (1). There are genetic correlations with intelligence, aggression, etc that are difficult to untangle but undeniably real.

Humans are incredibly unique animals, but you are still a biological machine and your brain is not a piece of magic pixie dust. Without getting into the free will debate, biology does not determine behavior but does influence it heavily.

Edit: I'm not denying the existence of culture or social norms. These matter, but are also undoubtedly linked to the biological machinery of the human animal. Human society is an evolutionary result (2).

Second edit: It's very easy to find evidence that the social evolution of humans is a biological process. Here is one of my favorite papers on the self-domestication of the human species (3).

1: https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0...

2: https://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancest...

3: http://resources.seattlecentral.edu/faculty/jwhorley/Gracili...

You've heard nonsense. Please read some of the literature on intelligence research (1). Steven Pinker has also written a great book on why the ideas of the blank slate and social constructivism are purely ideological and do not hold up to analysis (2).

IQ is a very strong metric predictor of pretty much every aspect of personal success, from successful marriages to income to academic achievement to interpersonal skills. By no means is the relationship deterministic, but that isn't what we mean by predictors. (Many other psychological metrics, like the nonsensical "emotional intelligence", predict nothing when IQ is included in the mix.)

1: https://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Intelligence-Cambridge-F...

2: https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0...

IQ tests are not culturally biased. This is a decades out of date canard. Some tests, like Raven's Progressive Matrices, don't even require the test giver and taker to share a language. IQ, as a statistic, washes out almost every other psychometric in predictive validity -- there are a staggering number of psychology papers which pointedly do not include IQ because whatever predictive power their metric purports to have is totally overridden by IQ. There are many subfields of intelligence and two major categories (fluid and crystal) so it's true that intelligence can't be defined as a single number, but this is a strawman since intelligence researchers have never said this.

Intellectualism isn't predicated on being correct. There are communist intellectuals, radfem intellectuals, etc. The major alt right intellectuals of note are people like KANTBOT, Frame Game Radio, and the bleedovers from the manosphere like Illimitable Man. I've debated with them multiple times on Twitter as a means of reaching out. They take it seriously and aren't pure ideologues.

Edit: It should also be noted that even the widely-hated Richard Spencer is not a moron. He has a Masters in Humanities from the University of Chicago, and was a PhD student in European intellectual history at Duke until he left after 2-3 years to pursue activism.

Because a good propagandist does two things:

1. Ground the argument in some vestige of reality (the reliance on statistics is very strong). 2. Point out the opposing denial of reality (magical thinking, social constructionism, blank slate lunacy) in order to push the radically opposite perspective without nuance.

This is inherently isolating but also makes the adherents feel very powerful. Think pieces like this do not oppose but rather support the cause they purport to be against, since the ideological leanings of the writer are plainly obvious and their own denials of reality stick out like a sore thumb.

As long as the political left is dominated by social constructionism and other lunacy, the alt-right will never be exterminated. The task ahead of us is not trivial.

> IQ is a pseudoscience

This is how people trying to oppose the alt right shoot themselves in the foot. Alt right intellectuals and propagandists immediately capitalize on this kind of nonsense. (The fact that the author identifies as a communist before denying the strongest predictor in psychology is somewhat telling as well and acts as free fuel.)

Yes, and I've already reported him to chess.com. :)

This isn't true, though. There are a lot of openings where the humans turn out to be right anyway, even though the computer thinks it's found a marginally better move. Humans have a better intuitive understanding of how certain openings create endgame possibilities, and if I remember correctly the combination of a Super GM and an engine is still markedly stronger than an engine alone.

Engines have contributed substantially to modern opening books but they haven't supplanted the existing knowledge. Humans turned out to be wrong about many sharp lines (which were refuted by computer) and the computer can find really interesting ideas in many positions (which would be nearly impossible for a human to find) but the old human-approved Best Openings are still standing tall after the engine revolution.

This is true although nobody likes to admit this. Intelligence, including specific subfields of intelligence, is highly heritable, explaining about 70% of variance.