A collection of 152 posts
The British psychologist Cyril Burt had been accused of falsifying the results of twin studies and related research into the heritability of IQ.
For those who believe that gender is a social construct, and there are no differences between men and women’s brains, this paper is something of a reality check.
The idea of bringing traditional ways of knowing together with empirical data and science is important.
Now if a single moral judgment depends on a unit of analysis, then surely a political philosophy that imagines some sort of societal structure that maximizes some moral values (whatever they may be), must also depend on a unit of analysis.
The tech industry more broadly is rarely discussed in terms of friendliness towards those with high functioning autism, such as Gideon.
The possibility that non-life became life over a million or so years, rather than hundreds of millions of years, is astonishing.
Is it possible to see if someone is high in g by their brain activity on a PET scan or fMRI scan – and if so, what does it look like?
GMOs interact with wider global systems that they could potentially undermine, with terrible consequence.
Agriculture brought with it enormous benefits, including a larger trading network, a greater division of labor, and even some genetic changes that we’re better off with than without.
Drugs are able to save lives and ruin them; enhance your mind and numb it; heal your body and destroy it.
Researchers should systematically assess potential side effects when studying mindfulness treatments.
“We’ve successfully banished the notion of punishment in that realm,” Sapolsky writes. “It may take centuries, but we can do the same in all our current arenas of punishment.”
It seems that gaining more knowledge, even on topics where that knowledge could be damaging in the short term, is the preferable approach.
Despite strong genetic influences on IQ (and there are strong genetic influences on IQ), we can’t calculate the proportion of credit for Einstein’s intellect that is owed solely to his genes.
Why? For one, there is very little political and ideological diversity in the social sciences.