10 ms·

Questions you can't ask

32 points by quoderat 18y ago

speek 18y ago
8. If AI can be created, should it be? What rights would it have? What's wrong with this one? Maybe I live in my own mind, but this question seems to be asked a lot in my group of people.
- Philosophaster 18y ago
  That one struck me as well. I don't know anyone who considers that "off-limits." The eugenics and race ones are the touchiest in my experience.
  - Alex3917 18y ago
    I don't see why eugenics should be a touchy issue. It's no different than any other argument between science and religion. The idea that the human race can be improved through eugenics is a purely religious belief, and I see no reason why any rational person would support it.
    - _h4xr 18y ago
      The idea that the human race can be improved through eugenics is a purely religious belief, and I see no reason why any rational person would support it. The idea that unlike all species, humans cannot be selectively bred for various traits, is a purely religious belief, and I see no reason why any rational person would support it.
      - Alex3917 18y ago
        In almost every case, animals bred for specific traits end up with severe physical, mental, and emotional problems. The idea that humans are the one species that won't encounter these problems is a purely religious belief.
        _h4xr 18y ago
        Humans often test for those traits. Couples from populations that have a high incidence of the same recessive disorders will frequently abort kids who test positive for those disorders. And anyway, eugenics doesn't have to go that far -- what about policies that just reverse the dysgenic effects of low-education, low-accomlishment, high-crime types breeding more: http://www.projectprevention.org/ http://www.projectprevention.org/
        hugh 18y ago
        OK, everybody: stop calling views you disagree with "a purely religious belief". None of the ideas mentioned above is a "purely religious belief", even though several of them are half-wrong and the others are half-right. Animals bred for specific traits don't almost-always wind up with severe problems, unless said breeding is done over-zealously (trying to do too much in too few generations) or deliberately for traits which aren't necessarily beneficial to the animal. All modern-day farm animals are the product of a lot of selective breeding over the past few thousand years, and they don't have "severe" problems.
        Alex3917 18y ago
        "OK, everybody: stop calling views you disagree with 'a purely religious belief'." If you take the position that the human race can be improved through eugenics and call it a scientific belief then the burden is on you to produce the science. I'm not taking the position that eugenics absolutely can't work, rather I'm taking the position that the science to support eugenics just isn't there so people who do support it support it on other grounds. If you can produce some books or journal articles making the case that eliminating intra-species biodiversity can make that species as a whole more resilient then I'd gladly recant.
        hugh 18y ago
        I'm not saying that it's a scientific belief, I'm saying that it isn't a religious belief. There are many other types of belief, including: * belief based on incomplete experience (The traffic on I-80 is going to be terrible on Friday) * belief based on wild-assed guess (oil is going to be under $100 a barrel by the end of the year) * belief based on the fact that somebody told you it was true and you haven't bothered to check (The Nissan GT-R produces 480 horsepower) * belief based on not having thought it out very well (We should invade China!) * belief based on wanting to have that belief purely to annoy others (I think we should kill poor people!) * belief based on personal prejudice (McCain sucks!) * belief based on wanting to conform with the beliefs of your peer group (Lisp is awesome!) "Purely religious beliefs" are characterised by things other than just being unsupported. A necessary but not sufficient condition is that they should be both unsupported and strongly held.
      - zeraholladay 18y ago
        Human beings can be selectively bred for various traits, but I don't think this is the issue for any intelligent, educated person since science is pretty clear on the matter. I take issue with the idea that human being can be improved, specifically with the word "improved" or any other such term used instead. Improved is subjective at best and totally repulsive when one considers what "improved" might actually mean to those defining an improvement (Nazi eugenics program). Human nature is such that any human designed program to selectively breed human beings will ultimately become a gross perversion, since the program would require institutionalization, planned breeding, castration and outright murder. We humans tend to be somewhat ethical and decent on an individual level but on a social or national level we're repulsive, greedy, disgusting monsters. Frankly, we can't trust ourselves.
    - yummyfajitas 18y ago
      I support eugenics because it has been successfully used to reduce incidence of a really horrible disease in humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay-Sachs_disease#Prevention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay-Sachs_disease#Prevention
      - Alex3917 18y ago
        To quote Wikipedia: "The effort is not aimed at eradicating the hereditary traits, but rather at the occurrence of homozygosity. The actual impact of this program on allele frequencies is unknown, but little impact would be expected because the program does not impose genetic selection." The word eugenics really describes two different things. Trying to reduce homozygosity, and long term breeding to select specific traits. While what you are describing is called eugenics, I think it's a little disingenuous since it's not the type of eugenics the original author was talking about. (The list was a list of taboo subjects, and there is clearly no taboo surrounding talking about blood testing for Tay-Sachs.)
        yummyfajitas 18y ago
        I get that disease prevention is a non-controversial use for eugenics. I'm just pointing out there is nothing "religious" about a belief that eugenics works. Eugenics is just a straightforward application of basic genetics, and has been demonstrated to work in humans and other animals exactly as the theory describes. There may be some engineering issues, but many human traits can be modified by eugenics.
jules 18y ago
> Why is there a deep-seated, cross-cultural tendency to be de facto anti-sex, even among the “liberal” left? What is the genetic or social basis of this tendency? Who is anti-sex? I don't know any people who are against sex. Does this question mean something else? Or is this US specific?
- dgabriel 18y ago
  This, like many of the other questions in the list, is a very leading question. It appears to coyly approach the topic of legalized prostitution, possibly legal age of consent laws.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  Being opposed to sex is common on the American left. If you want names, Hillary and Joe Lieberman are two prominent ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_mod http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_mod
  - jules 18y ago
    Wow. They rerated GTA to 18+ because it contains a sex minigame? Violence is ok, sex is bad!?
  - dehowell 18y ago
    Nonsense. You're talking about politicians jumping on a bandwagon that earned them cheap family values points, which is neither surprising, nor indicative of the attitudes of liberals in general.
  - hugh 18y ago
    I don't know of anyone who's actually opposed to sex. Plenty of people are opposed to sex at certain places and times, between certain pairs or groups of people, or in certain styles or orifices, or as part of a commercial transaction, or in front of other people, but I'm pretty sure that being opposed to sex in general is a fairly rare position. (Insert your own "fairly rare position" joke here.)
pjackson 18y ago
Touchy topics, to be sure. I think they all can and should be asked. Whether each is really worth of much debate is a different question. Most are worth debating, some aren't: depending on your audience. I think most people think these are things you "can't ask" because many folks lack an intelligent, informed opinion on the topic, and therefore resort to emotional closed-minded positions that result in little exchange of ideas. So, intelligent people think: "Maybe I can't ask that question."
nazgulnarsil 18y ago
all of these focus on what the government "should" do. The government is broken. good luck getting it to do anything.
- hugh 18y ago
  The government is like wikipedia. Some people focus on all the things it gets wrong, but personally I'm amazed that it works at all. It makes glaring errors from time to time, and plenty of things it does non-optimally, but the fact is that almost every day I get up and find that the garbage gets collected, the streets get swept, the electricity is coming through the wires, the police aren't demanding bribes, foreign countries aren't invading, mobs aren't rampaging, and the little pieces of paper in my wallet can still be reliably exchanged for physical goods. How awesome is that? I believe in small government, and I don't think the government should do many things, but you can't say that the government is incapable of doing anything.
  - hectorhector 18y ago
    i agree, as many problems as it may have today, one only has to look at some 3rd world countries to see how radically good governance can change things and how important it is. i'm not saying that just because we have it better than somwhere in africa or the middle east, we shouldn't complain or try to improve, but government, especially at the local levels, does a decent job.
  - nazgulnarsil 18y ago
    most of what is associated with government, utilities, police, paved roads, schools etc. are all organized by the state government. I have no problem with state government, they are efficient (compare your state taxes to federal taxes, then compare what you get in return from each) in fact they should have a lot more power. federal power is the problem.
gm 18y ago
Just a bunch of nutcase, leading questions. "If IQ doesn’t matter or doesn’t exist, then why is it the single largest statistical predictor of life trajectory?" Who says it's the largest predictor? Who says IQ does not exist or does not matter? All of these "questions" were made to fit this guy's pre-conceived answers and arguments. And why can't you ask these questions in "modern political debate and polite society"? Then you see the guy's blog subtitle: "Driving my truck through the flaws in capitalism" and you realize you've wasted your time reading gibberish from a guy people usually describe as "nutcase." Creating questions to fit your pre-conceived answers is a cheap mental trick, nothing even close to the Jedi mind trick :-). I figure since nobody was asking him, he chose to ask himself the questions.
- quoderat 18y ago
  What does my blog subtitle, which I merely found amusing, have to do with the content of my musings and/or ideas? You're right, some of the questions are leading -- though I really doubt you can predict my views from them, even though I am sure you think that you can. And, yep, it's my blog and that's the way it goes. However, they are questions that people shy away from, even though they matter. But, if you require peer-reviewed evidence that IQ is a pretty good predictor of life trajectory, there's plenty of that for the IQ question you cited: http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intellig... http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/322/7290/819 http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/322/7290/819 http://ijo.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/45/5/574 http://ijo.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/45/5/574 And then, anecdotally, there's people like Feynman who didn't have a particularly large IQ who still excelled. Make of that what you will. I asked the questions not to satisfy my notions of their answers, but to get them out there. If the evidence is against me, then so be it. When the evidence changes, I change my mind. What do you do? And, you're the first to call me a nutcase. Congrats! From you, it's a badge of honor.
  - gm 18y ago
    If the questions were asked honestly, then you would have cited your sources. To be honest, I really don't care about neither the IQ issue nor about the answer. I just thought the questions themselves were very leading. The answers don't matter, the way the question is asked is the whole point. As to the comment about me... Well, ok. If it makes you happy go for it, I'm glad to help make your day better. I'll give you a badge of honor, why not?
hugh 18y ago
There should be a word for the phenomenon whereby people try to make things sound more interesting than they really are by pretending they're disallowed, banned or censored. The phenomenon is common enough and annoying enough that it'd be great to say "Oh, that's just [insert new word here]". In this case, these questions aren't really "questions you can't ask". It's true that people are a little over-touchy on a few of them, but most of them are just fairly dull questions which are rarely asked because either: (a) They're dumb suggestions (active population control, abolishing corporations) (b) They're based on false assumptions (e.g. people are "anti-sex", whatever that means), or (c) We're sick of the question already A couple of the others (rights of AI, why people make decisions subconciously and then make rationalizations) are questions which get asked all the time.
- tocomment 18y ago
  That's an excellent point. We do need a word. How about "romples"? I think that's free.
  - hugh 18y ago
    Let me try: "this post is pure romples". Not bad, but I'd prefer a verb form -- to romple? "Dude, you're rompling. Stop it."
    - unalone 18y ago
      Romping. "Dude, you're on a major romp right now.
      - tocomment 18y ago
        Yay I coined a word! (technically yould coined it)
- dcurtis 18y ago
  I have never heard anyone ask about AI rights or free will/rationalizations to a politician. What makes you think they get asked all the time?
andreyf 18y ago
1. No. First, because we don't know how genetics really works. Second, because it violates an individual's freedom. 2. Genetic and social aren't separate things, but parts of an evolutionary continuum. Google the Baldwin Effect. Yes, there are many theories. Read any book about evolutionary psychology. 3. No. 4. Citation, please. 5. No. 6. Yes, but not what you're thinking. No. 7. Stupid question. 8. Yes. None. 9. Nothing. 10. Nothing, none. 11. No. Market economics. 12. Evolution. That they aren't what they at first seem. What a load of crap.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Agreed. A cursory examination of EP would answer a lot of these questions, and most of the rest are just kinda dumb. For instance, does anyone think IQ does not exist? IQ is just a test score. That's like saying 1600 doesn't exist.
- jonny_noog 18y ago
  And here I was thinking that the Baldwin effect was some kind of theory possibly resembling or in some way modelling the interactions between Alec Baldwin and his brothers.
- willchang 18y ago
  On 11: Population Control. I'd argue that this is a specific instance in which market economics by themselves do not suffice to solve the problem -- unless you regard it as acceptable that miscalculations on the part of parents, such as having one too many kids, should result in one of the kids being allowed to starve to death years down the road. Probably the best solutions are going to involve lots of market incentives, and what they are going to be is what the question is asking.
DanielBMarkham 18y ago
Assuming for a minute that this is a person who honestly feels these questions are off-limits (as opposed to just trying to crank up the old hit machine) I think the questions say more about the questioner than the questions themselves. In certain circles all of these questions are on the table -- including a lot more obnoxious questions than he thought about. In certain circles a lot more questions are off limits (I'm thinking of the former dean of Harvard and his simple suggestion that "Do the sexes learn differently?" would be a provocative question. Poor schmuck) I liked #1 the best, about evolving the human genome. The reason why is that it seems so logical at the surface -- if people can be "bred" like cats and dogs, why not breed them for qualities we all hold dear? The coolest part of that question is that we immediately hit Godwin's law and end up where all internet discussions lead -- Nazis. And for good reason! They had the same ideas. (I won't go into trashing the entire notion. Too easy to do. I would add that most attacks on it are a lot more emotional than rational though)
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
biohacker42 18y ago
1. No. You try to breed for egg laying chickens and you end up with super aggressive chickens. You select for Malaria resistance you end up with rickets. Life is not something you can linearly improve on and there is no goal to reach for. 2. Uh, what? 3. No. George Bush is a socialist. 4. Are you sure it is, what if your dad is Prescott Bush? I'd think who your parents are is an even better predictor then IQ. 5. No. But you sure should stop government subsidies. 6. All of humanity is more similar then just one tribe of chips. We are all descendant of a handful of people (5 women) who lived ~ 80000 years ago. 7. Maybe they have kids? 8. Yes. None. 9. Nothing. 10. Difference between individuals are HUGE, difference between large groups tiny. 11. China. 12. Nothing. Most people are simply more emotional then us rational geeks.

32 points by quoderat 18y ago

speek 18y ago

8. If AI can be created, should it be? What rights would it have? What's wrong with this one? Maybe I live in my own mind, but this question seems to be asked a lot in my group of people.

Philosophaster 18y ago
That one struck me as well. I don't know anyone who considers that "off-limits." The eugenics and race ones are the touchiest in my experience.
- Alex3917 18y ago
  I don't see why eugenics should be a touchy issue. It's no different than any other argument between science and religion. The idea that the human race can be improved through eugenics is a purely religious belief, and I see no reason why any rational person would support it.
  - _h4xr 18y ago
    The idea that the human race can be improved through eugenics is a purely religious belief, and I see no reason why any rational person would support it. The idea that unlike all species, humans cannot be selectively bred for various traits, is a purely religious belief, and I see no reason why any rational person would support it.
    - Alex3917 18y ago
      In almost every case, animals bred for specific traits end up with severe physical, mental, and emotional problems. The idea that humans are the one species that won't encounter these problems is a purely religious belief.
      - _h4xr 18y ago
        Humans often test for those traits. Couples from populations that have a high incidence of the same recessive disorders will frequently abort kids who test positive for those disorders. And anyway, eugenics doesn't have to go that far -- what about policies that just reverse the dysgenic effects of low-education, low-accomlishment, high-crime types breeding more: http://www.projectprevention.org/ http://www.projectprevention.org/
      - hugh 18y ago
        OK, everybody: stop calling views you disagree with "a purely religious belief". None of the ideas mentioned above is a "purely religious belief", even though several of them are half-wrong and the others are half-right. Animals bred for specific traits don't almost-always wind up with severe problems, unless said breeding is done over-zealously (trying to do too much in too few generations) or deliberately for traits which aren't necessarily beneficial to the animal. All modern-day farm animals are the product of a lot of selective breeding over the past few thousand years, and they don't have "severe" problems.
        Alex3917 18y ago
        "OK, everybody: stop calling views you disagree with 'a purely religious belief'." If you take the position that the human race can be improved through eugenics and call it a scientific belief then the burden is on you to produce the science. I'm not taking the position that eugenics absolutely can't work, rather I'm taking the position that the science to support eugenics just isn't there so people who do support it support it on other grounds. If you can produce some books or journal articles making the case that eliminating intra-species biodiversity can make that species as a whole more resilient then I'd gladly recant.
        hugh 18y ago
        I'm not saying that it's a scientific belief, I'm saying that it isn't a religious belief. There are many other types of belief, including: * belief based on incomplete experience (The traffic on I-80 is going to be terrible on Friday) * belief based on wild-assed guess (oil is going to be under $100 a barrel by the end of the year) * belief based on the fact that somebody told you it was true and you haven't bothered to check (The Nissan GT-R produces 480 horsepower) * belief based on not having thought it out very well (We should invade China!) * belief based on wanting to have that belief purely to annoy others (I think we should kill poor people!) * belief based on personal prejudice (McCain sucks!) * belief based on wanting to conform with the beliefs of your peer group (Lisp is awesome!) "Purely religious beliefs" are characterised by things other than just being unsupported. A necessary but not sufficient condition is that they should be both unsupported and strongly held.
    - zeraholladay 18y ago
      Human beings can be selectively bred for various traits, but I don't think this is the issue for any intelligent, educated person since science is pretty clear on the matter. I take issue with the idea that human being can be improved, specifically with the word "improved" or any other such term used instead. Improved is subjective at best and totally repulsive when one considers what "improved" might actually mean to those defining an improvement (Nazi eugenics program). Human nature is such that any human designed program to selectively breed human beings will ultimately become a gross perversion, since the program would require institutionalization, planned breeding, castration and outright murder. We humans tend to be somewhat ethical and decent on an individual level but on a social or national level we're repulsive, greedy, disgusting monsters. Frankly, we can't trust ourselves.
  - yummyfajitas 18y ago
    I support eugenics because it has been successfully used to reduce incidence of a really horrible disease in humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay-Sachs_disease#Prevention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay-Sachs_disease#Prevention
    - Alex3917 18y ago
      To quote Wikipedia: "The effort is not aimed at eradicating the hereditary traits, but rather at the occurrence of homozygosity. The actual impact of this program on allele frequencies is unknown, but little impact would be expected because the program does not impose genetic selection." The word eugenics really describes two different things. Trying to reduce homozygosity, and long term breeding to select specific traits. While what you are describing is called eugenics, I think it's a little disingenuous since it's not the type of eugenics the original author was talking about. (The list was a list of taboo subjects, and there is clearly no taboo surrounding talking about blood testing for Tay-Sachs.)
      - yummyfajitas 18y ago
        I get that disease prevention is a non-controversial use for eugenics. I'm just pointing out there is nothing "religious" about a belief that eugenics works. Eugenics is just a straightforward application of basic genetics, and has been demonstrated to work in humans and other animals exactly as the theory describes. There may be some engineering issues, but many human traits can be modified by eugenics.

jules 18y ago

> Why is there a deep-seated, cross-cultural tendency to be de facto anti-sex, even among the “liberal” left? What is the genetic or social basis of this tendency? Who is anti-sex? I don't know any people who are against sex. Does this question mean something else? Or is this US specific?

dgabriel 18y ago
This, like many of the other questions in the list, is a very leading question. It appears to coyly approach the topic of legalized prostitution, possibly legal age of consent laws.
yummyfajitas 18y ago
Being opposed to sex is common on the American left. If you want names, Hillary and Joe Lieberman are two prominent ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_mod http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_mod
- jules 18y ago
  Wow. They rerated GTA to 18+ because it contains a sex minigame? Violence is ok, sex is bad!?
- dehowell 18y ago
  Nonsense. You're talking about politicians jumping on a bandwagon that earned them cheap family values points, which is neither surprising, nor indicative of the attitudes of liberals in general.
- hugh 18y ago
  I don't know of anyone who's actually opposed to sex. Plenty of people are opposed to sex at certain places and times, between certain pairs or groups of people, or in certain styles or orifices, or as part of a commercial transaction, or in front of other people, but I'm pretty sure that being opposed to sex in general is a fairly rare position. (Insert your own "fairly rare position" joke here.)

pjackson 18y ago

Touchy topics, to be sure. I think they all can and should be asked. Whether each is really worth of much debate is a different question. Most are worth debating, some aren't: depending on your audience. I think most people think these are things you "can't ask" because many folks lack an intelligent, informed opinion on the topic, and therefore resort to emotional closed-minded positions that result in little exchange of ideas. So, intelligent people think: "Maybe I can't ask that question."

nazgulnarsil 18y ago

all of these focus on what the government "should" do. The government is broken. good luck getting it to do anything.

hugh 18y ago
The government is like wikipedia. Some people focus on all the things it gets wrong, but personally I'm amazed that it works at all. It makes glaring errors from time to time, and plenty of things it does non-optimally, but the fact is that almost every day I get up and find that the garbage gets collected, the streets get swept, the electricity is coming through the wires, the police aren't demanding bribes, foreign countries aren't invading, mobs aren't rampaging, and the little pieces of paper in my wallet can still be reliably exchanged for physical goods. How awesome is that? I believe in small government, and I don't think the government should do many things, but you can't say that the government is incapable of doing anything.
- hectorhector 18y ago
  i agree, as many problems as it may have today, one only has to look at some 3rd world countries to see how radically good governance can change things and how important it is. i'm not saying that just because we have it better than somwhere in africa or the middle east, we shouldn't complain or try to improve, but government, especially at the local levels, does a decent job.
- nazgulnarsil 18y ago
  most of what is associated with government, utilities, police, paved roads, schools etc. are all organized by the state government. I have no problem with state government, they are efficient (compare your state taxes to federal taxes, then compare what you get in return from each) in fact they should have a lot more power. federal power is the problem.

gm 18y ago

Just a bunch of nutcase, leading questions. "If IQ doesn’t matter or doesn’t exist, then why is it the single largest statistical predictor of life trajectory?" Who says it's the largest predictor? Who says IQ does not exist or does not matter? All of these "questions" were made to fit this guy's pre-conceived answers and arguments. And why can't you ask these questions in "modern political debate and polite society"? Then you see the guy's blog subtitle: "Driving my truck through the flaws in capitalism" and you realize you've wasted your time reading gibberish from a guy people usually describe as "nutcase." Creating questions to fit your pre-conceived answers is a cheap mental trick, nothing even close to the Jedi mind trick :-). I figure since nobody was asking him, he chose to ask himself the questions.

quoderat 18y ago
What does my blog subtitle, which I merely found amusing, have to do with the content of my musings and/or ideas? You're right, some of the questions are leading -- though I really doubt you can predict my views from them, even though I am sure you think that you can. And, yep, it's my blog and that's the way it goes. However, they are questions that people shy away from, even though they matter. But, if you require peer-reviewed evidence that IQ is a pretty good predictor of life trajectory, there's plenty of that for the IQ question you cited: http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intellig... http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/322/7290/819 http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/322/7290/819 http://ijo.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/45/5/574 http://ijo.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/45/5/574 And then, anecdotally, there's people like Feynman who didn't have a particularly large IQ who still excelled. Make of that what you will. I asked the questions not to satisfy my notions of their answers, but to get them out there. If the evidence is against me, then so be it. When the evidence changes, I change my mind. What do you do? And, you're the first to call me a nutcase. Congrats! From you, it's a badge of honor.
- gm 18y ago
  If the questions were asked honestly, then you would have cited your sources. To be honest, I really don't care about neither the IQ issue nor about the answer. I just thought the questions themselves were very leading. The answers don't matter, the way the question is asked is the whole point. As to the comment about me... Well, ok. If it makes you happy go for it, I'm glad to help make your day better. I'll give you a badge of honor, why not?

hugh 18y ago

There should be a word for the phenomenon whereby people try to make things sound more interesting than they really are by pretending they're disallowed, banned or censored. The phenomenon is common enough and annoying enough that it'd be great to say "Oh, that's just [insert new word here]". In this case, these questions aren't really "questions you can't ask". It's true that people are a little over-touchy on a few of them, but most of them are just fairly dull questions which are rarely asked because either: (a) They're dumb suggestions (active population control, abolishing corporations) (b) They're based on false assumptions (e.g. people are "anti-sex", whatever that means), or (c) We're sick of the question already A couple of the others (rights of AI, why people make decisions subconciously and then make rationalizations) are questions which get asked all the time.

tocomment 18y ago
That's an excellent point. We do need a word. How about "romples"? I think that's free.
- hugh 18y ago
  Let me try: "this post is pure romples". Not bad, but I'd prefer a verb form -- to romple? "Dude, you're rompling. Stop it."
  - unalone 18y ago
    Romping. "Dude, you're on a major romp right now.
    - tocomment 18y ago
      Yay I coined a word! (technically yould coined it)
dcurtis 18y ago
I have never heard anyone ask about AI rights or free will/rationalizations to a politician. What makes you think they get asked all the time?

andreyf 18y ago

1. No. First, because we don't know how genetics really works. Second, because it violates an individual's freedom. 2. Genetic and social aren't separate things, but parts of an evolutionary continuum. Google the Baldwin Effect. Yes, there are many theories. Read any book about evolutionary psychology. 3. No. 4. Citation, please. 5. No. 6. Yes, but not what you're thinking. No. 7. Stupid question. 8. Yes. None. 9. Nothing. 10. Nothing, none. 11. No. Market economics. 12. Evolution. That they aren't what they at first seem. What a load of crap.

mattmaroon 18y ago
Agreed. A cursory examination of EP would answer a lot of these questions, and most of the rest are just kinda dumb. For instance, does anyone think IQ does not exist? IQ is just a test score. That's like saying 1600 doesn't exist.
jonny_noog 18y ago
And here I was thinking that the Baldwin effect was some kind of theory possibly resembling or in some way modelling the interactions between Alec Baldwin and his brothers.
willchang 18y ago
On 11: Population Control. I'd argue that this is a specific instance in which market economics by themselves do not suffice to solve the problem -- unless you regard it as acceptable that miscalculations on the part of parents, such as having one too many kids, should result in one of the kids being allowed to starve to death years down the road. Probably the best solutions are going to involve lots of market incentives, and what they are going to be is what the question is asking.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

Assuming for a minute that this is a person who honestly feels these questions are off-limits (as opposed to just trying to crank up the old hit machine) I think the questions say more about the questioner than the questions themselves. In certain circles all of these questions are on the table -- including a lot more obnoxious questions than he thought about. In certain circles a lot more questions are off limits (I'm thinking of the former dean of Harvard and his simple suggestion that "Do the sexes learn differently?" would be a provocative question. Poor schmuck) I liked #1 the best, about evolving the human genome. The reason why is that it seems so logical at the surface -- if people can be "bred" like cats and dogs, why not breed them for qualities we all hold dear? The coolest part of that question is that we immediately hit Godwin's law and end up where all internet discussions lead -- Nazis. And for good reason! They had the same ideas. (I won't go into trashing the entire notion. Too easy to do. I would add that most attacks on it are a lot more emotional than rational though)

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biohacker42 18y ago

1. No. You try to breed for egg laying chickens and you end up with super aggressive chickens. You select for Malaria resistance you end up with rickets. Life is not something you can linearly improve on and there is no goal to reach for. 2. Uh, what? 3. No. George Bush is a socialist. 4. Are you sure it is, what if your dad is Prescott Bush? I'd think who your parents are is an even better predictor then IQ. 5. No. But you sure should stop government subsidies. 6. All of humanity is more similar then just one tribe of chips. We are all descendant of a handful of people (5 women) who lived ~ 80000 years ago. 7. Maybe they have kids? 8. Yes. None. 9. Nothing. 10. Difference between individuals are HUGE, difference between large groups tiny. 11. China. 12. Nothing. Most people are simply more emotional then us rational geeks.