9 ms·

A List of Open Questions

106 points by wrinkl3 8y ago

vidanay 8y ago
"Why do so few people in the United States exercise their right and privilege to vote?"
- craftyguy 8y ago
  "Why does nearly every political race for office in the United States come down to only two choices: turd sandwich or giant douche?"
  - vidanay 8y ago
    Also a good question, but not exclusive of the other one.
    - craftyguy 8y ago
      True, but it may help explain some of the motivation behind the other one (e.g. if folks feel like the two options are terrible, they may be apathetic towards participating). For example, in this round I did not cast a vote for governor in my state because I felt the two candidates with any chance of winning were terrrible (though I did vote on ballot measures, and other local offices).
  - ninkendo 8y ago
    Because not enough people vote in the primaries? I get that you only really have a choice between two parties come the general election, but you get lots and lots of choices in the primary.
    - dahart 8y ago
      Voting in the primaries would help. IMO, a ranked choice ballot would help even more. I don’t need to choose between people who will make essentially the same policy decisions as much as I want to be able to vote for a third party without throwing away my vote.
  - mmirate 8y ago
    That's easy, and the answer even has a googleable name: "first past the post".
  - sverige 8y ago
    This one is actually easy: Those are the personality types who are drawn to running for office.
- egypturnash 8y ago
  Turn it around: "Why are so many people in the United States denied their right to vote?" * prisoners and former criminals can't vote in many places - https://www.sentencingproject.org/issues/felony-disenfranchisement/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/issues/felony-disenfranchi... * (this just got a little better - Florida just passed an amendment that will give the vote back to 1.4mil former felons, which is a full 1/10 of the state's population and 1/5 of its African-American population, that should make their next elections a ton of fun) * slashing funds to the part of government that buys/maintains/runs the voting system means you have to go further to vote, which is much easier if you have a white-collar job that gives you paid time off and can afford a car (vote-by-mail helps fix this one a LOT, I live in Seattle and it only took me like a half hour sitting at home skimming election guides, plus putting it in the mail a couple days later) * aggressive campaigns of preventing "voter fraud" can make having sufficient ID expensive in both time and money, which are hard to come by when you're working two part-time jobs with erratic hours
  - vidanay 8y ago
    The apathy far outweighs the fraud.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    As with everything, there's a false positive rate and a false negative rate. The less voter fraud you allow, the more voter suppression, and vice versa. And you don't even have to think illegals vote, ever, to still be concerned about voter fraud. Dead people definitely vote, even if illegals never do.
- rprenger 8y ago
  The more interesting question from an economics point of view is why does anyone bother voting. Since races almost never come down to one vote, your vote almost certainly doesn't matter. Nevermind the fact that more people voted for democrats for the senate and the presidency and still lost both. The latest theory I've heard for why people vote is that being seen as a team player has social value. https://eml.berkeley.edu//~sdellavi/wp/turnout13-11-13.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu//~sdellavi/wp/turnout13-11-13.pdf The Freakonomics guys bring this up every so often. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/magazine/why-vote.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/magazine/why-vote.html Also I just wanted to let everyone know that I voted ;)
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    From a mathematical perspective it's pretty silly to claim your vote doesn't matter just because it's not the tie breaking vote. You should give this a read: https://www.skishore.me/voting.html https://www.skishore.me/voting.html. Frankly this viewpoint has always puzzled me. Your specific claim that a vote almost certainly doesn't matter because elections don't come down to a single vote seems...unsupported, to put it politely. It might be more intuitively attractive to say your vote doesn't matter if you're not in a swing election, but it's not rigorously defensible. It's incorrect. It's like saying 4 and 5 are the same thing because they're both significantly smaller than 100,000. No, they're materially different quantities. If more people accepted this straightforward and uncontroversial truth - and acted on it - then more change might actually be effected. Instead this becomes a self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecy with no rational basis. It's lazy cynicism, to put it bluntly.
    - matt-attack 8y ago
      Bit logically where was he wrong? It seems like a bit of a paradox to me. You keep say it’s wrong but can you point out exactly where his reasoning is wrong? My vote yesterday simply didn’t change any of the outcomes. That is a fact. None of the races were won by a single vote.
      - glastra 8y ago
ArchTypical 8y ago
> Is there something qualitatively different about personal meetings, and if so, where is it? Is it eye contact? Body language? Over 50% of our communication is nonverbal language. Body language largely, and no small part olfactory plus auditory (which video conferencing interferes or blocks). This is not an open question. > when humans have engaged in unarmed combat for millions of years and every major country has long lineages of specialized competitive martial arts Because combat wasn't formalized then funded to be inclusive and communicated to the world. This is not an open question. I'm sure there's more on this list, but maybe someone can update it.
craftyguy 8y ago
> Why do humans, pets, and even lab animals of many species kept in controlled lab conditions on standardized diets appear to be increasingly obese over the 20th century? What could possibly explain all of them simultaneously becoming obese? Because diet is only part of the equation. The other major factor being exercise/physical activity (and probably some genetics). If you eat 'well' but sit at a desk all day, calories in != calories out and you'll probably gain weight. Also, since this doesn't cite any sources for the conclusion presented here as a question, do we know that the 'conditions' were held constant? (hint: no, probably not)
- jhallenworld 8y ago
  My pet theory (at least for humans) is that this is due to better dental care.
  - hammock 8y ago
    Care to elaborate?
    - jhallenworld 8y ago
      Oral hygiene has been improving over time, see: https://fluoridefree.org.nz/fuoridation-status-countries/countries-fluoridation-graph/ https://fluoridefree.org.nz/fuoridation-status-countries/cou... Perhaps people with the bad oral hygiene of the past had a different gut biome, had more stomach infections, or just had less pain when eating and this led to less calorie absorption.
      - hammock 8y ago
        It's not obvious to me how more cavities leads to less calorie absorption - this is your pet theory can you explain it? In regard to gut biome and stomach infections, there is a lot of evidence that fluoride actively destroys your gut - disturbing the microbiome, breaking down the gut barrier and promoting inflammation - so I'm not sure that part holds water.
- 8y ago
nthompson 8y ago
The question about Gracie jiu-jitsu is not so interesting anymore: In the early 90’s, there were simply very talented jiu jitsu practitioners who were close to the UFC. Now we’ve witnessed many strategies used successfully in MMA, like American college wrestling (Ben Askren, Matt Hughes), Thai clinches (TJ Dillashaw), kickboxing (Holly Holmes), and Judo (Ronda Rousey). In fact very few fights end with an interesting jiu jitsu submission anymore, the armbar and the tear naked choke are the most common. These techniques were never unique to jiu jitsu.
- nthompson 8y ago
  Awesome list of questions, btw.
- andrewstuart 8y ago
  I feel that jiu jitsu makes UFC / MMA less interesting. I'm more interested in of the stand up combat sports like kickboxing. I reckon UFC is missing out by not having a pure standup division, without the wrestling/bjj. I know a former world champion kickboxer who says "Ground and pound? Where's the honor in that?". I thought about it a bit and realised he is right - where is the honor, sportsmanship in beating the heck out of someone on the ground.
  - ALittleLight 8y ago
    Why is there more honor in beating someone while standing? The reason to include wrestling is that it makes the contest more closely approximate a real fight. In a real fight your opponent does have the option to go to the ground.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      How likely is a real fight to be one-on-one, just you and the guy you're trying to kill?
      - ALittleLight 8y ago
jhallenworld 8y ago
>Why do humans have such a large mutation load.. Modern technology? https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/evolution-is-slow-until-its-fast-genetic-load-and-the-future-of-humanity/ https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/evolution-is-...
hyperpallium 8y ago
>Why did Jean Calment live so many more years than other centenarians, breaking all records and setting a life expectancy record which decades later has not just not been broken, but not even approached? > she requested to be woken at 6:45 am and started the day with a long prayer at her window thanking God for being alive and for the beautiful day which was starting, sometimes loudly asking the reason for her longevity and why she was the only one alive in her family. Seated on her armchair she did gymnastics wearing her stereo headset. Her exercises included flexing and extending the hands ("a distinguished woman must have beautiful hands"), then the legs, https://ewikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Daily_routine_at_ages_111%E2%80%93114 https://ewikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Daily_routine_at_... I don't believe in god, but I believe in prayer: meditation/mindfulness + appreciation + possibilities + supernatural aid (as in the Hero's journey). But perhaps not a blessing to outlive one's grandchildren.
- jmcqk6 8y ago
  I'm sure you probably realize this, but it's hard to believe that she would be the only one to have this type of routine. It seems fairly common...
hyperpallium 8y ago
> [abuse] why does it appear in the biographies of so many people who achieve greatness, often middle/upper-class? Because other people don't write autobiographies?
- mannykannot 8y ago
  There are enough unconfirmed assumptions in this claim that the first open question is "are the author's assumptions justified?"
egypturnash 8y ago
> what and why are furries? You know how some kids like to pretend to be animals? Furries never quit doing that once they grew up. > When did furries become a thing? I have yet to run into a clear reference to them before the 1980s and they may primarily postdate even that If you want to be aggressively inclusive you can go all the way back to the earliest recorded myths about talking animals. If you want to limit yourself to "people who called themselves furries" then it started somewhere in the mid-seventies to early eighties. https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/History https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/History - be sure to check out the external links at the bottom, Patten's history is pretty good, though I advise skimming once the "Burned Furs" come up. > Is this true, why are furries so rich and well-funded, and why tech, specifically? A confluence of the timing of the growth of the Internet and the growth of the furry scene. You needed a certain amount of technical acumen to hang out on Furrymuck and roleplay as an animal person; as the Internet started being an important thing, it was not uncommon for someone whose day job was in tech to pass job opportunities on to their friends who were looking for excuses to get the hell out of Middle America. There are also plenty of broke furries, for what it's worth.
- selimthegrim 8y ago
  Given that I’ve seen 1980s and before published books at used book sales where you yourself are put in the role of a cat (sometimes solving a mystery, sometimes not) I think the publishers knew there was a market out there
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  Yeah furries are not rich. The majority of them are about 18 years old and have as much money as your typical highschool/uni student. I also think its become a much more diversified group. Still a lot of furs working in tech but probably less than 40% of furs work in tech now.
aasasd 8y ago
> Does listening to music while working serve as a distraction, or motivation? There was a study which determined that people do mundane, routine work equally well with music or without it, but if the work required creative thinking, music lost to no music. A possible conclusion is that music engages the regions of the brain which are required for creative thinking. That's just one study, however, and I doubt that I would be able to find a link to it now. Personally I find that if I turn on “Techno Live Sets”[1] when mashing the buttons, I'm risking doing all the work that's to be done, in one day. On the other hand, some neo-prog post-industrial breakbeat doom would regularly steal my attention. But I've already listened to months if not years of techno cumulatively, while I'm very much in the market for some post-industrial breakbeat doom. Also, I have a distinct thing about voice in music: the clearer the words, the less suited the music is for the background. Mumbling to complex hip-hop rhythm ok, clear and loud declamation not ok. Most notably, I can mostly turn off my attention to words in English, which is the second language for me, while my native language gets straight into my brain's speech recognition centers—I've been suffering from this quite a lot when around TV or pop music. Inane lyrics in my language immediately throw me into stupor of trying to find any sort of reason behind them, while I'm comfortable with any random drivel in English until I explicitly try to decipher it. I've also noticed that I can consume text in my native language pretty fast without any conscious effort, while I can't really skim text in English—I have to pay attention or I drift off. It seems like for the second-language English, parts of the brain that transform it into meaning have to be consciously engaged, while the native language gets the treatment on the subconscious low level. [1] recommended! https://www.techno-livesets.com/ https://www.techno-livesets.com/
- aasasd 8y ago
  (Actually, I'm in the market for any breakbeat metal at all that is more than some vague fuzz attempts over the beat―for some reason, the genre is pretty much nonexistent, with Amon Tobin's "Player - Angel of Theft" being the only solid example, outside of Phantomsmasher/Atomsmasher who is great but too far on the grindcore side. You'd think that with decades and dozens of well-known bands of jazzy breakbeat, someone would think of doing that with distorted guitars.)
- virtualized 8y ago
alasdair_ 8y ago
>Why did it take until the late 20th century for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to develop and the Gracie family crush almost all other unarmed martial arts at the start of MMA, when humans have engaged in unarmed combat for millions of years and every major country has long lineages of specialized competitive martial arts and tremendous incentive to find martial arts which worked and quick feedback loops? I suspect the most obvious answer is the same as the issue with other forms of grappling and wrestling - they are very good in structured 1v1 combat where there is a guarantee that a friend of your foe won't come along while you are both on the ground and bash you over the head with a large rock.
- cetico 8y ago
  MMA is new, historically speaking. BJJ is the best fighting style that fits the rules of MMA. Change the rules a bit and a different style will work better.
  - nafey 8y ago
    Whats the minimal change in the rules that will bring a striking based martial art to the top?
    - lostdog 8y ago
      Allow kicking or kneeing someone in the face when they're down?
      - abdullahkhalids 8y ago
        I am not sure if such is allowed in another martial arts league. But from my experience in fighting, kicking someone anywhere on the body while they are on the ground will quickly and inevitably result in serious injuries. Standing up, you can "elastically catch" the kick and reduce the damage it does. On the floor, you will absorb the full force.
        8y ago
aasasd 8y ago
> Why does writing in the morning (anecdotally so far) seem to be so effective for writers, even ones who are not morning persons? While programmers, which seems like a similar occupation, are invariably owls? I frankly didn't read the whole linked article, but do the writers, by any chance, do the writing in the morning, but not editing? Because personally, I regularly have a sorta-confused rush of ideas and notions early after sleep, that subsides after a couple hours―after which I may find the morning ideas stupid, or sometimes discover a gem among them, but almost always I find that calm logic of the day doesn't produce such wild reaches. It's pretty much how creativity on drugs is usually imagined. I would also guess that if I have a solid sleep and then a sharp cutoff instead of lingering in bed, the effect is more pronounced―and this behavior is more of a larkish thing, I think. Meanwhile, I can't code in that state until I wear it off with articles from HN and such stuff. But I can code when I should've been in bed many hours ago and may keel over at any minute. (BTW, dunno if it's just me, but: I don't ever remember dreams from the deep phase, however I have vivid and lucid dreams if I briefly wake up and then drift off again, i.e. after an optimistic alarm. Notably, if I'm imagining music in this state, it's best stuff I've heard, way off usual patterns and genre clichés, and it comes effortlessly, while in the day I have trouble coming up with anything like that.)
- techstrategist 8y ago
  >Because personally, I regularly have a sorta-confused rush of ideas and notions early after sleep, that subsides after a couple hours―after which I may find the morning ideas stupid, or sometimes discover a gem among them, but almost always I find that calm logic of the day doesn't produce such wild reaches. I think sleep clears out working memory, and starting the day writing lets your brain express some things that had been cached previously. I find that writing in the evening after reading / web surfing / normal daily activities results in output that is derivative or responsive to what I've read that day.
laurent123456 8y ago
That's "Jeanne Calment".
- zzzyfa 8y ago
  cool
garmaine 8y ago
> Why did it take until the late 20th century for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to develop and the Gracie family crush almost all other unarmed martial arts at the start of MMA, when humans have engaged in unarmed combat for millions of years and every major country has long lineages of specialized competitive martial arts and tremendous incentive to find martial arts which worked and quick feedback loops? This one is easy. Because Gracie jujutsu (spell it right please) with its emphasis on ground technique is only effective when you are unarmored and your opponent is unwilling to use lethal force. In military and/or life and death situations it is a good way to get yourself killed by a trained opponent. It’s not surprising at all that Gracie/Brazilian jujutsu only developed after the popularization of MMA like sporting competitions with rules that the Gracie brothers learned to exploit.
danieltillett 8y ago
> Why do humans have such a large mutation load on common genetic variants? This one is answerable. Two reasons. 1. The human population is not in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium since it has expanded so much in the recent human past (agricultural revolution and all that). 2. The human population over the last 10,000 years has experienced very strong natural selection that has carried a lot of deleterious mutations along for the ride. What is more interesting is why we have so many chromosomal abnormalities - humans have something like 100x the rate of chromosomal abnormalities as other species.
Xophmeister 8y ago
> What happened to the famous genome sequencing cost curve after late 2012, which stopped price decreases, damaged genetics, and delayed the advent of whole-genome sequencing by perhaps a decade? Was it really just the Illuminati’s fault? Note that the Y-axis is logarithmic; so this is simply a matter of diminishing returns. The massive fall in 2007-2008 was due to the invention of so-called "next generation sequencing", but this is bound by technical constraints -- not least the sheer deluge of data -- that have basically been hit. Newer methods of sequencing, which are now starting to come online in anger, ought to start pushing the price down again; although note that the data/processing constraints haven't really gone away and this is now the principal bottleneck for analysis.
zzzyfa 8y ago
hi

106 points by wrinkl3 8y ago

vidanay 8y ago

"Why do so few people in the United States exercise their right and privilege to vote?"

craftyguy 8y ago
"Why does nearly every political race for office in the United States come down to only two choices: turd sandwich or giant douche?"
- vidanay 8y ago
  Also a good question, but not exclusive of the other one.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    True, but it may help explain some of the motivation behind the other one (e.g. if folks feel like the two options are terrible, they may be apathetic towards participating). For example, in this round I did not cast a vote for governor in my state because I felt the two candidates with any chance of winning were terrrible (though I did vote on ballot measures, and other local offices).
- ninkendo 8y ago
  Because not enough people vote in the primaries? I get that you only really have a choice between two parties come the general election, but you get lots and lots of choices in the primary.
  - dahart 8y ago
    Voting in the primaries would help. IMO, a ranked choice ballot would help even more. I don’t need to choose between people who will make essentially the same policy decisions as much as I want to be able to vote for a third party without throwing away my vote.
- mmirate 8y ago
  That's easy, and the answer even has a googleable name: "first past the post".
- sverige 8y ago
  This one is actually easy: Those are the personality types who are drawn to running for office.
egypturnash 8y ago
Turn it around: "Why are so many people in the United States denied their right to vote?" * prisoners and former criminals can't vote in many places - https://www.sentencingproject.org/issues/felony-disenfranchisement/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/issues/felony-disenfranchi... * (this just got a little better - Florida just passed an amendment that will give the vote back to 1.4mil former felons, which is a full 1/10 of the state's population and 1/5 of its African-American population, that should make their next elections a ton of fun) * slashing funds to the part of government that buys/maintains/runs the voting system means you have to go further to vote, which is much easier if you have a white-collar job that gives you paid time off and can afford a car (vote-by-mail helps fix this one a LOT, I live in Seattle and it only took me like a half hour sitting at home skimming election guides, plus putting it in the mail a couple days later) * aggressive campaigns of preventing "voter fraud" can make having sufficient ID expensive in both time and money, which are hard to come by when you're working two part-time jobs with erratic hours
- vidanay 8y ago
  The apathy far outweighs the fraud.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  As with everything, there's a false positive rate and a false negative rate. The less voter fraud you allow, the more voter suppression, and vice versa. And you don't even have to think illegals vote, ever, to still be concerned about voter fraud. Dead people definitely vote, even if illegals never do.
rprenger 8y ago
The more interesting question from an economics point of view is why does anyone bother voting. Since races almost never come down to one vote, your vote almost certainly doesn't matter. Nevermind the fact that more people voted for democrats for the senate and the presidency and still lost both. The latest theory I've heard for why people vote is that being seen as a team player has social value. https://eml.berkeley.edu//~sdellavi/wp/turnout13-11-13.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu//~sdellavi/wp/turnout13-11-13.pdf The Freakonomics guys bring this up every so often. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/magazine/why-vote.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/magazine/why-vote.html Also I just wanted to let everyone know that I voted ;)
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  From a mathematical perspective it's pretty silly to claim your vote doesn't matter just because it's not the tie breaking vote. You should give this a read: https://www.skishore.me/voting.html https://www.skishore.me/voting.html. Frankly this viewpoint has always puzzled me. Your specific claim that a vote almost certainly doesn't matter because elections don't come down to a single vote seems...unsupported, to put it politely. It might be more intuitively attractive to say your vote doesn't matter if you're not in a swing election, but it's not rigorously defensible. It's incorrect. It's like saying 4 and 5 are the same thing because they're both significantly smaller than 100,000. No, they're materially different quantities. If more people accepted this straightforward and uncontroversial truth - and acted on it - then more change might actually be effected. Instead this becomes a self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecy with no rational basis. It's lazy cynicism, to put it bluntly.
  - matt-attack 8y ago
    Bit logically where was he wrong? It seems like a bit of a paradox to me. You keep say it’s wrong but can you point out exactly where his reasoning is wrong? My vote yesterday simply didn’t change any of the outcomes. That is a fact. None of the races were won by a single vote.
    - glastra 8y ago

ArchTypical 8y ago

> Is there something qualitatively different about personal meetings, and if so, where is it? Is it eye contact? Body language? Over 50% of our communication is nonverbal language. Body language largely, and no small part olfactory plus auditory (which video conferencing interferes or blocks). This is not an open question. > when humans have engaged in unarmed combat for millions of years and every major country has long lineages of specialized competitive martial arts Because combat wasn't formalized then funded to be inclusive and communicated to the world. This is not an open question. I'm sure there's more on this list, but maybe someone can update it.

craftyguy 8y ago

> Why do humans, pets, and even lab animals of many species kept in controlled lab conditions on standardized diets appear to be increasingly obese over the 20th century? What could possibly explain all of them simultaneously becoming obese? Because diet is only part of the equation. The other major factor being exercise/physical activity (and probably some genetics). If you eat 'well' but sit at a desk all day, calories in != calories out and you'll probably gain weight. Also, since this doesn't cite any sources for the conclusion presented here as a question, do we know that the 'conditions' were held constant? (hint: no, probably not)

jhallenworld 8y ago
My pet theory (at least for humans) is that this is due to better dental care.
- hammock 8y ago
  Care to elaborate?
  - jhallenworld 8y ago
    Oral hygiene has been improving over time, see: https://fluoridefree.org.nz/fuoridation-status-countries/countries-fluoridation-graph/ https://fluoridefree.org.nz/fuoridation-status-countries/cou... Perhaps people with the bad oral hygiene of the past had a different gut biome, had more stomach infections, or just had less pain when eating and this led to less calorie absorption.
    - hammock 8y ago
      It's not obvious to me how more cavities leads to less calorie absorption - this is your pet theory can you explain it? In regard to gut biome and stomach infections, there is a lot of evidence that fluoride actively destroys your gut - disturbing the microbiome, breaking down the gut barrier and promoting inflammation - so I'm not sure that part holds water.
8y ago

nthompson 8y ago

The question about Gracie jiu-jitsu is not so interesting anymore: In the early 90’s, there were simply very talented jiu jitsu practitioners who were close to the UFC. Now we’ve witnessed many strategies used successfully in MMA, like American college wrestling (Ben Askren, Matt Hughes), Thai clinches (TJ Dillashaw), kickboxing (Holly Holmes), and Judo (Ronda Rousey). In fact very few fights end with an interesting jiu jitsu submission anymore, the armbar and the tear naked choke are the most common. These techniques were never unique to jiu jitsu.

nthompson 8y ago
Awesome list of questions, btw.
andrewstuart 8y ago
I feel that jiu jitsu makes UFC / MMA less interesting. I'm more interested in of the stand up combat sports like kickboxing. I reckon UFC is missing out by not having a pure standup division, without the wrestling/bjj. I know a former world champion kickboxer who says "Ground and pound? Where's the honor in that?". I thought about it a bit and realised he is right - where is the honor, sportsmanship in beating the heck out of someone on the ground.
- ALittleLight 8y ago
  Why is there more honor in beating someone while standing? The reason to include wrestling is that it makes the contest more closely approximate a real fight. In a real fight your opponent does have the option to go to the ground.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    How likely is a real fight to be one-on-one, just you and the guy you're trying to kill?
    - ALittleLight 8y ago

jhallenworld 8y ago

>Why do humans have such a large mutation load.. Modern technology? https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/evolution-is-slow-until-its-fast-genetic-load-and-the-future-of-humanity/ https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/evolution-is-...

hyperpallium 8y ago

>Why did Jean Calment live so many more years than other centenarians, breaking all records and setting a life expectancy record which decades later has not just not been broken, but not even approached? > she requested to be woken at 6:45 am and started the day with a long prayer at her window thanking God for being alive and for the beautiful day which was starting, sometimes loudly asking the reason for her longevity and why she was the only one alive in her family. Seated on her armchair she did gymnastics wearing her stereo headset. Her exercises included flexing and extending the hands ("a distinguished woman must have beautiful hands"), then the legs, https://ewikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Daily_routine_at_ages_111%E2%80%93114 https://ewikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Daily_routine_at_... I don't believe in god, but I believe in prayer: meditation/mindfulness + appreciation + possibilities + supernatural aid (as in the Hero's journey). But perhaps not a blessing to outlive one's grandchildren.

jmcqk6 8y ago
I'm sure you probably realize this, but it's hard to believe that she would be the only one to have this type of routine. It seems fairly common...

hyperpallium 8y ago

> [abuse] why does it appear in the biographies of so many people who achieve greatness, often middle/upper-class? Because other people don't write autobiographies?

mannykannot 8y ago
There are enough unconfirmed assumptions in this claim that the first open question is "are the author's assumptions justified?"

egypturnash 8y ago

> what and why are furries? You know how some kids like to pretend to be animals? Furries never quit doing that once they grew up. > When did furries become a thing? I have yet to run into a clear reference to them before the 1980s and they may primarily postdate even that If you want to be aggressively inclusive you can go all the way back to the earliest recorded myths about talking animals. If you want to limit yourself to "people who called themselves furries" then it started somewhere in the mid-seventies to early eighties. https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/History https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/History - be sure to check out the external links at the bottom, Patten's history is pretty good, though I advise skimming once the "Burned Furs" come up. > Is this true, why are furries so rich and well-funded, and why tech, specifically? A confluence of the timing of the growth of the Internet and the growth of the furry scene. You needed a certain amount of technical acumen to hang out on Furrymuck and roleplay as an animal person; as the Internet started being an important thing, it was not uncommon for someone whose day job was in tech to pass job opportunities on to their friends who were looking for excuses to get the hell out of Middle America. There are also plenty of broke furries, for what it's worth.

selimthegrim 8y ago
Given that I’ve seen 1980s and before published books at used book sales where you yourself are put in the role of a cat (sometimes solving a mystery, sometimes not) I think the publishers knew there was a market out there
ndnxhs 8y ago
Yeah furries are not rich. The majority of them are about 18 years old and have as much money as your typical highschool/uni student. I also think its become a much more diversified group. Still a lot of furs working in tech but probably less than 40% of furs work in tech now.

aasasd 8y ago

> Does listening to music while working serve as a distraction, or motivation? There was a study which determined that people do mundane, routine work equally well with music or without it, but if the work required creative thinking, music lost to no music. A possible conclusion is that music engages the regions of the brain which are required for creative thinking. That's just one study, however, and I doubt that I would be able to find a link to it now. Personally I find that if I turn on “Techno Live Sets”[1] when mashing the buttons, I'm risking doing all the work that's to be done, in one day. On the other hand, some neo-prog post-industrial breakbeat doom would regularly steal my attention. But I've already listened to months if not years of techno cumulatively, while I'm very much in the market for some post-industrial breakbeat doom. Also, I have a distinct thing about voice in music: the clearer the words, the less suited the music is for the background. Mumbling to complex hip-hop rhythm ok, clear and loud declamation not ok. Most notably, I can mostly turn off my attention to words in English, which is the second language for me, while my native language gets straight into my brain's speech recognition centers—I've been suffering from this quite a lot when around TV or pop music. Inane lyrics in my language immediately throw me into stupor of trying to find any sort of reason behind them, while I'm comfortable with any random drivel in English until I explicitly try to decipher it. I've also noticed that I can consume text in my native language pretty fast without any conscious effort, while I can't really skim text in English—I have to pay attention or I drift off. It seems like for the second-language English, parts of the brain that transform it into meaning have to be consciously engaged, while the native language gets the treatment on the subconscious low level. [1] recommended! https://www.techno-livesets.com/ https://www.techno-livesets.com/

aasasd 8y ago
(Actually, I'm in the market for any breakbeat metal at all that is more than some vague fuzz attempts over the beat―for some reason, the genre is pretty much nonexistent, with Amon Tobin's "Player - Angel of Theft" being the only solid example, outside of Phantomsmasher/Atomsmasher who is great but too far on the grindcore side. You'd think that with decades and dozens of well-known bands of jazzy breakbeat, someone would think of doing that with distorted guitars.)
virtualized 8y ago

alasdair_ 8y ago

>Why did it take until the late 20th century for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to develop and the Gracie family crush almost all other unarmed martial arts at the start of MMA, when humans have engaged in unarmed combat for millions of years and every major country has long lineages of specialized competitive martial arts and tremendous incentive to find martial arts which worked and quick feedback loops? I suspect the most obvious answer is the same as the issue with other forms of grappling and wrestling - they are very good in structured 1v1 combat where there is a guarantee that a friend of your foe won't come along while you are both on the ground and bash you over the head with a large rock.

cetico 8y ago
MMA is new, historically speaking. BJJ is the best fighting style that fits the rules of MMA. Change the rules a bit and a different style will work better.
- nafey 8y ago
  Whats the minimal change in the rules that will bring a striking based martial art to the top?
  - lostdog 8y ago
    Allow kicking or kneeing someone in the face when they're down?
    - abdullahkhalids 8y ago
      I am not sure if such is allowed in another martial arts league. But from my experience in fighting, kicking someone anywhere on the body while they are on the ground will quickly and inevitably result in serious injuries. Standing up, you can "elastically catch" the kick and reduce the damage it does. On the floor, you will absorb the full force.
      - 8y ago

aasasd 8y ago

> Why does writing in the morning (anecdotally so far) seem to be so effective for writers, even ones who are not morning persons? While programmers, which seems like a similar occupation, are invariably owls? I frankly didn't read the whole linked article, but do the writers, by any chance, do the writing in the morning, but not editing? Because personally, I regularly have a sorta-confused rush of ideas and notions early after sleep, that subsides after a couple hours―after which I may find the morning ideas stupid, or sometimes discover a gem among them, but almost always I find that calm logic of the day doesn't produce such wild reaches. It's pretty much how creativity on drugs is usually imagined. I would also guess that if I have a solid sleep and then a sharp cutoff instead of lingering in bed, the effect is more pronounced―and this behavior is more of a larkish thing, I think. Meanwhile, I can't code in that state until I wear it off with articles from HN and such stuff. But I can code when I should've been in bed many hours ago and may keel over at any minute. (BTW, dunno if it's just me, but: I don't ever remember dreams from the deep phase, however I have vivid and lucid dreams if I briefly wake up and then drift off again, i.e. after an optimistic alarm. Notably, if I'm imagining music in this state, it's best stuff I've heard, way off usual patterns and genre clichés, and it comes effortlessly, while in the day I have trouble coming up with anything like that.)

techstrategist 8y ago
>Because personally, I regularly have a sorta-confused rush of ideas and notions early after sleep, that subsides after a couple hours―after which I may find the morning ideas stupid, or sometimes discover a gem among them, but almost always I find that calm logic of the day doesn't produce such wild reaches. I think sleep clears out working memory, and starting the day writing lets your brain express some things that had been cached previously. I find that writing in the evening after reading / web surfing / normal daily activities results in output that is derivative or responsive to what I've read that day.

laurent123456 8y ago

That's "Jeanne Calment".

zzzyfa 8y ago
cool

garmaine 8y ago

> Why did it take until the late 20th century for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to develop and the Gracie family crush almost all other unarmed martial arts at the start of MMA, when humans have engaged in unarmed combat for millions of years and every major country has long lineages of specialized competitive martial arts and tremendous incentive to find martial arts which worked and quick feedback loops? This one is easy. Because Gracie jujutsu (spell it right please) with its emphasis on ground technique is only effective when you are unarmored and your opponent is unwilling to use lethal force. In military and/or life and death situations it is a good way to get yourself killed by a trained opponent. It’s not surprising at all that Gracie/Brazilian jujutsu only developed after the popularization of MMA like sporting competitions with rules that the Gracie brothers learned to exploit.

danieltillett 8y ago

> Why do humans have such a large mutation load on common genetic variants? This one is answerable. Two reasons. 1. The human population is not in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium since it has expanded so much in the recent human past (agricultural revolution and all that). 2. The human population over the last 10,000 years has experienced very strong natural selection that has carried a lot of deleterious mutations along for the ride. What is more interesting is why we have so many chromosomal abnormalities - humans have something like 100x the rate of chromosomal abnormalities as other species.

Xophmeister 8y ago

> What happened to the famous genome sequencing cost curve after late 2012, which stopped price decreases, damaged genetics, and delayed the advent of whole-genome sequencing by perhaps a decade? Was it really just the Illuminati’s fault? Note that the Y-axis is logarithmic; so this is simply a matter of diminishing returns. The massive fall in 2007-2008 was due to the invention of so-called "next generation sequencing", but this is bound by technical constraints -- not least the sheer deluge of data -- that have basically been hit. Newer methods of sequencing, which are now starting to come online in anger, ought to start pushing the price down again; although note that the data/processing constraints haven't really gone away and this is now the principal bottleneck for analysis.

zzzyfa 8y ago