Open Thread, 8/10/2016
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Sorry about the light posting. I’ll get back into gear in a few days. Very busy professionally and personally the past week or so.
I’ve been getting into writing Python code, as opposed to reading it. It’s a different beast altogether, obviously. I’m a lot slower than I would be in Perl, but I’m getting stuff done, so that’s something. I would highly recommend Python for Data Analysis: Data Wrangling with Pandas, NumPy, and IPython, if you have a background in R and another scripting language.
I went to my high school reunion. It was fun and interesting. Apparently people change in a few decades…
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• Tags: Miscellaneous, Open Thread
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Last year I decided that I needed to learn a “modern” programming language (I’m part of the generation that used Turbo Pascal in high-school). I don’t do any programming for a living but felt it would be a useful skill. Python seems to be the recommendation of choice for people in my situation, so that’s what I went with. It seems very readable and intuitive, compared to what I’ve seen of some other languages.
New video from Kurzgesagt.
Genetic Engineering Will Change Everything Forever – CRISPR:
Like my people on this blog I’ve been following the nature/nurture argument over the heritability and malleability of individual/group IQ differences.. I’m guessing CRISPR will cause it to flare up again? In the video the designer baby “futr scientist” is black – impossible not to notice.
Numerical Computing / Statistics seems to be an afterthought in Python when you compare it with R, Matlab and Julia.
Python makes integration and data munging easier, but the vector/matrix math and dataframes syntax is too verbose, unlike Julia.
One major advantage of Julia is that even if you write non-vectorized code, it still will be order of magnitude faster than R, Matlab or Python.
Do you live in California, are over the age of 35 and have $8000? Well then, you could volunteer in an anti-aging study!
It involves multiple transfusions of young blood to reinvigorate you body and mind. It’s based of off old (and recent) parabiotic studies that showed that memory and skeletal muscle functions were improved in old rats when young rat serum was injected.
It does sound a bit crazy, literally the old are using the blood of the young to be healthy, but it has been shown to work in mice and rats, and they may have identified some of the factors in the serum involved, though that research is still controversial.
Also, I recently heard that Google ispartnering with Stanford Medicine in order to sequence and analyze via Google Cloud the genomes of certain patients.
A question about attempts to measure cuckoldry over many generations by comparing genetics, e.g. Y chromosomes within a family name group: I assume this ignores the effect of adoption and so the low estimates of cuckoldry are actually overestimates. Is that right?
While adoption of unrelated children by couples may have been unusual in many cultures, I’d expect that adoption of children from a prior marriage (e.g. man marries a widow and adopts her children) wouldn’t be that unusual.
Another effect that might be missed is de facto divorce from many generations back – a couple separates and the woman has children with another partner but the children keep her married name.
Of course, none of this would matter for peasants, as there was virtually nothing for peasant widows to inherit from their husbands. But given differential mortality rates across the social classes, peasants from 1,000 years ago probably contributed much less to the modern gene pool than you would think.
I've never seen your other suggestion discussed, but it makes sense.
While adoption of unrelated children by couples may have been unusual in many cultures, I'd expect that adoption of children from a prior marriage (e.g. man marries a widow and adopts her children) wouldn't be that unusual.
Another effect that might be missed is de facto divorce from many generations back - a couple separates and the woman has children with another partner but the children keep her married name.Replies: @Karl Zimmerman, @Anonymous
My reading on medieval European culture is limited, but my understanding is remarriage rates for widows were particularly high. Widows in much of Europe were allowed to inherit their dead husband’s property if they had no adult sons, which allowed them to live a life as an independent head of household. Some townswomen were even allowed to join guilds in their dead husband’s place. Remarrying often wouldn’t make them economically more secure, and would result in giving up most of the control over their lives again.
Of course, none of this would matter for peasants, as there was virtually nothing for peasant widows to inherit from their husbands. But given differential mortality rates across the social classes, peasants from 1,000 years ago probably contributed much less to the modern gene pool than you would think.
Anyone know of any peer-reviewed research claiming to show that race is a biological reality?
While adoption of unrelated children by couples may have been unusual in many cultures, I'd expect that adoption of children from a prior marriage (e.g. man marries a widow and adopts her children) wouldn't be that unusual.
Another effect that might be missed is de facto divorce from many generations back - a couple separates and the woman has children with another partner but the children keep her married name.Replies: @Karl Zimmerman, @Anonymous
Your first sentence is correct. They are overestimates, as you explain.
I’ve never seen your other suggestion discussed, but it makes sense.
Seems that the Forward has labeled you a thought-criminal:
But hey, at least you are in good company:
http://forward.com/opinion/national/346533/human-biodiversity-the-pseudoscientific-racism-of-the-alt-right/
A propos of this, I wonder how happy Razib is at Gawker’s legal troubles? I imagine he’s too big to care about them that much, but I also wonder if he’s human enough to be capable of Schadenfreude…
don't hate the player, hate the game.
i’m happy. they fucked me over, and i accepted it. now they’re getting fucked over. they should accept it. pushing for my firing was legal. suing them into bankruptcy is also legal.
don’t hate the player, hate the game.
the article was kind of dumb. control-f “epigenetics”.
Yeah, it was all kinds of dumb. My personal favorites:
How many people in the “HBD”-sphere support the Khazar hypothesis these days, seeing as how the genetic evidence is strongly against it?
When PC equals idiocy. I have plenty of compassion for people with autism, but let’s get real. It’s a disorder, and the world would be better off without it.