themetrician

Thanks for bringing Dummont up. All the Wright Brothers built was a glider that could fall from a pillar.

Dummont created the first motorized airplane, which is a look more like a real airplane than an ultra-light that can't launch itself.

And 100 years earlier there was an Italian that came up with a model airplane that would have flown if built to human scale.

I really don't understand why people care so much about the Wright Brothers. I can't see what they invented originally at all.

More information about Dummont vs Wright here: http://web.archive.org/web/20030820050506/http://www.thefirs...

> For that matter, something can taste fragrant (eg rose lemonade).

Or any whisky younger than 12 years whose name starts with "Glen".

In your "conspiracy theory", who is Amazon conspiring with? Themselves?

Do you know what "conspiracy" means? Do you think a "conspiracy" can be achieved by fewer than two different parties?

> I try very hard, everyday, to practice my pronunciation, and I still fail.

You're missing some realization. Get a pronunciation trainer to help you. Anyone can overcome their accents - actors do it all the time. The tongue is a muscle that can learn new tricks, but you need a mirror and an expert guiding you. It should take you no time with help if you are an intelligent person.

I'm not a native speaker but I have native-level speaking skills that I acquired through practice. Having an accent while possessing an IQ above 110 is laziness.

It doesn't really matter that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, seeing as the vast majority of people will believe a witness' testimony over contradicting evidence.

Look up Dario Gabbai and what he says the color of cyanide-poisoned bodies was (blue), then look up the real color cyanide-poisoned bodies turn into (red).

Cash has existed for a lot longer time than cash-with-a-serial-number.

I'm the next person and to me you don't seem such a big fan of freedom as I am.

The reason I am for anonymous money is that it is of no one else's business what I do with my money. It's really that simple.

EDIT: David Friedman wrote a good piece on the misuse of "externality" arguments that every Freedom-loving person should know (and I'd be surprised if lisper did not know of it): http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Machinery_3d_Edition/The%20Mis...

The reliability of Psychology throughout the 20th century is covered in depth in the book The Culture of Critique, where the exact persons responsible for fostering in Psychology an anti-Science environment are discussed.

I knew a guy that grew his own opium to manage his pain. He went to work every day, was never late, did his job, was good to his family. He managed his doses well. Was he addicted?

What do you mean exactly when you say "the actual substance is addictive"? Does it contain addictaniolol? What you are saying makes no sense. People are either prone to be addicted to a substance or they aren't. Blaming the substance doesn't help anyone and it means nothing.

If "the actual substance" were actually addictive, as you seem to believe, then every person without exception would be addicted to it after one try. Clearly that isn't the case, therefore there is nothing inherent in opium, nor any other drug, that makes itself addictive.

The majority of citizens in a democracy are fooled into thinking they have any influence in their government's decisions:

"Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism."

http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fil...

In other news:

Top 1% singers better than the remaining 99%.

Top 1% sprinters better than the remaining 99%.

Top 1% producers better than the remaining 99%.

Where's the surprise here? It's a variation of Sturgeon's Law.

EDIT: the top 1% of wealthy americans are better producers than everyone else, yes. They are not better people than everyone else, no. How is this so hard to understand to HN-level people?

Similar levels of intelligence have been seen even in switched-at-birth twin cases where one twin is raised by one family and another by another. The IQ between the twins was in every case more correlated than the IQ of each twin and their family-siblings. Look up the interview with Nancy Segal on YouTube about Twin Studies and IQ.

Yes, it's called a button, many pharmacies have it beside the electric shaver or other expensive items. Just put buttons next to items that call for staff.

What is the name of the IQ test you took?

Intelligence really isn't "multi-faceted" (read Gardner's own admission that his theory never panned out) and it isn't ill-understood (refer to the Nature or Nurture interview with Nancy Segal on YouTube).

There's two reasons people say that. One is, they fared badly on a test and want to dismiss it, and the other is, they fared well on a test and are bashful about it.

Also, IQ tests are meant to measure a person's intelligence, not to convince them that IQ tests are "a good idea" - for that you would have to study Psychometrics.