goodside

52 ms·

511.
by goodside 16y ago
Even in an ideal situation where a mutation has a "pure" benefit to the group, with no other drawbacks to the mutated gene, it will not be selected for. Selection pressure is a scarce resource. It protects existing adaptations from the ever
512.
by goodside 16y ago
"If you view a human as a population of cells, then cancer cells will tend to be group selected out." Organism selection isn't a counterexample to the non-existence of group selection, because organism selection doesn't exist either. Select
513.
by goodside 16y ago
"I've always enjoyed contemplating the inverse of this theory; what if we gained appreciation for music and other collective rituals because by acting out these rituals (as individuals), our collective tribe benefited. These rituals cause u
514.
by goodside 16y ago
It doesn't follow that fat people incur more medical expense just because they're less healthy. Most healthcare expense is incurred while elderly, and the younger you are when you die the less it costs to treat you throughout your life. Wit
515.
by goodside 16y ago
The results are interesting, but there's a methodological limitation the article isn't emphasizing as strongly as it should. An illustrative analogy: Suppose you organize a group of people who often take painkillers for headaches, and a gro
516.
by goodside 16y ago
As several others have pointed out, the study in this article, as described, is methodologically flawed. Regardless, what they were attempting to show has been established extensively by R. F. Baumeister of Florida State. A good review of t
517.
by goodside 16y ago
TLDR: "Zuck is a cool guy. He's rich, too. Some people don't like him, but they're being silly. You should go read about him on Wikipedia."
518.
by goodside 16y ago
"[The App Store is] a platform that can change at any time cutting you off and kicking you out, with no course of action but to whine on some no-name blog. There is no alternative platform, despite what others may say about Android, it’s im
519.
by goodside 16y ago
See also Greg Egan's short story "Beyond the Whistle Test", in which a team of neuroscientists invent a song that, when heard once, remains stuck in your head for the remainder of your life.
520.
by goodside 16y ago
Jokes aside, writing this fanfic is certainly a curious use of time for someone charged with the task of saving the world from an apocalypse.
521.
by goodside 16y ago
Mass isn't conserved. The sun operates by destroying matter, as do atom bombs. Energy, which matter is a form of, is conserved. The violation isn't the turning into a cat, it's the lack of a subsequent mushroom cloud.
522.
by goodside 16y ago
You don't need pain if you can't learn from it. If your environment is stable enough that you can operate entirely by innate reflex, there's no reason to waste genetic selection pressure on crafting sensations for the benefit of some passiv
523.
by goodside 16y ago
The fact that this is still sometimes the most practical solution is amazing to me. I was trying to get an IRC client for my Droid so I could talk to my friends during a road trip I was on, but the connectivity was poor enough that any loca
524.
by goodside 16y ago
I was being sarcastic. The intended message was empiricist, not libertarian. I've been getting absurdly wild karma swings from this comment, and I'm worried now that the upvotes are all coming from people who think smoking is safe.
525.
by goodside 16y ago
I hold the same philosophy with regard to cigarettes. I'll decide for myself what's carcinogenic, thank you very much.
526.
by goodside 16y ago
What gave you the idea that evolution designs optimal solutions? This is like saying a Boeing 747 can't fly because eagles are the upper bound on flight speed.
527.
by goodside 16y ago
A more distilled version: Which of the following is the answer to this question? A) B B) A
528.
by goodside 16y ago
The Mac appears to always be fine. Here's a screenshot of it across Chrome 6.0.401.0, Safari 4.0.5, and Firefox 3.5.7 on Mac OS X 10.6.3: http://cl.ly/0c25eafae046c1be74bb
529.
by goodside 16y ago
If enough people search for it, Google picks up on it and adds in some sort of override to the no-punctuation rule. This is why "C#" and "F#" return different results from "C" and "F", but "Z#" gets no such benefit. Other times the exceptio
530.
by goodside 16y ago
I'm confused. The article says that creativity is associated with low thalamic D2 receptor density, and that the thalamus "filters" signals to the rest of the brain, so they speculate that diminished activity therein results in less filteri
531.
The Nature of Procrastination (scholarly article, 2007)(my.ilstu.edu)
3 points by goodside 16y ago|0 comments
532.
by goodside 16y ago
You didn't. Shermer did. That's what I was complaining about initially. If you meant your comment as an interesting side note rather than a rebuttal, that's fine and I misread you. Maybe I should be less defensive.
533.
by goodside 16y ago
There's a difference between being able to conjure up a few examples of things you think are immoral in any situation, and the conviction that evidence cannot, in principle, have any impact on what policies one should enact.
534.
by goodside 16y ago
"Either evolution and the big bang happened or they did not; both matters can, in principle, be solved with more data and better theory. But the right form of taxation or government cannot be answered with more data and better theory. They
535.
by goodside 16y ago
"Sufferers are no more dangerous than anyone else. Don't believe me? Then look in the paper and you'll see most crimes are committed by the sane." This is a fallacious argument. Non-schizophrenics outnumber schizophrenics by a huge margin.
536.
by goodside 16y ago
There's an alternative that does the same job but with no dubious legality, less personal expense, and more flexible hours: write something awesome on your own and include a link to the github repo on your resume.
537.
by goodside 16y ago
The government should start regulating MySpace. Social networks are only useful in proportion to how many of your friends are on them, so there's no possibility of MySpace ever being dethroned from the dominant market share it's held in the
538.
by goodside 16y ago
For $15.11, you can have the same book on a nicely bound hardback printed on acid-free paper. The production, storage, and delivery of this medium increases the cost of the book by 12 cents. If that 12 cents reflects the actual marginal exp
539.
by goodside 16y ago
"Who (or what) would you suggest as an intermediary between the public and the scientists?" It's not a matter of having an intermediary, it's a matter of listening to scientists who are trying to educate rather than promote their own theori
540.
by goodside 16y ago
Fixed link: https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=rectal%20surgery&typ...

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