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Darwin Day is a celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday, the theory of evolution and science in general. This year marks his 210th birthday and 160 years since the publication of The Origin of Species. Those looking to celebrate or learn more about Darwin and evolution will find a wealth of events going on, or if you'd rather not leave the house, try a Darwin Day card with designs generated by simulated evolution.
Recently, an important finding in man's evolution was announced; the so-called Missing Link was confirmed. Australopithecus Sediba fossils were found in 2010 but it took a decade of research and debate for scientists to confirm that this was indeed the missing link that connects man's evolution in an unbroken chain back to primate ancestors.
Not everyone is down with Darwin. The Pew Research Center reports, "In spite of the fact that evolutionary theory is accepted by all but a small number of scientists, it continues to be rejected by many Americans. In fact, about one-in-five U.S. adults reject the basic idea that life on Earth has evolved at all." In Indiana, senator Dennis Kruse introduced a bill that would, among other things, "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science."
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday February 11 2019, @04:59PM (7 children)
There's admittedly very little solid argument to support that all races/genders/etc. are, on average, "equal" by any objective measure.
HOWEVER: the important thing to keep in mind is that standard deviation is generally much larger than the difference between the mean. As an example: Group X may average 5 IQ points more than Group Y (a fairly huge difference according to actual statistics), but since 1/3rd of each population lies at least 15 IQ points away from the average, that doesn't really tell you anything useful about how the intelligence compares between two randomly selected individuals from X and Y.
Without racism, you'd expect an intelligence-based job to be occupied by slightly more X's than Y's, and all of them outliers among the general population. With racism you'd expect to see mostly X's, despite the fact that many Y's are much more intelligent than many of the X's employed.
Basically - people should be judged as individuals rather than by population traits, because population traits generally aren't particularly relevant to anything except population-based statistics. And nobody ever employs, befriends, etc. a population.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 11 2019, @05:28PM (6 children)
Oh boy, that one again.
Global warming doesn't exist because the temperature difference between night and day is vastly larger than the average temperature in 1979 and 2019.
Actually, no, thats not how the math works, the more extreme the job the more extreme the ratio. So you'd expect like 501/499 for dog catcher or bartender jobs, but the ratio goes nuts at the extremes where you'd mathematically expect like 99/1 ratios for compiler optimizer troubleshooters or rocket scientists or whatever.
If the average IQ (or whatever) for jobs were boring middle numbers, sure. The subpopulation of real estate saleswomen should theoretically match the overall population much closer than some exotic extremes.
Fun fact about income inequality and permanent destruction of jobs by automation; when IQ 80 people could get "good jobs" in the factories that meant plenty of racial equality of outcome, but when all sub-130 IQ jobs are moved to China / India that means the only people with jobs will be the weird ratio at the extremes of the overlapping curves... not anything like overall population stats at all.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @05:56PM (5 children)
Fuck off racist twat
**Do not engage VLM on race topics, he is a racist hiding behind a halfway open closet door**
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 11 2019, @06:17PM (4 children)
"hiding" ... ok then, AC.
You have to remember its the current year; in 2019 "being racist" merely means being well educated in biology or statistics. Or being relatively immune to logical fallacies in arguments. Or merely being white. Under 2019 definitions, sure, that's me alright. Its not exactly the old days of the Klan where being racist meant something a little more extreme.
You know you're on the correct side of the argument when all the logical arguments are finished and there's nothing left but shouting obscenities. I mean, sure most people of a civilized scientific bent traditionally said something more like "OK sure you convinced me of this plate tectonics thingie, we're all good now" but a good solid "FO" is apparently the modern translation.
Think for a bit about who benefits by comparing normal people, and normal centrist or slightly right wing opinions, to Jim Crow era lynch mobs. Who's getting legitimized here and who's getting delegitimized... Just saying, as a kinda right wing guy, this sorta thing is great PR for the right. Every time a leftist calls a Modern Mainstream Republican a Nazi or Racist or whatevs, another ten Trump voters appear, I love it. If someone would MAGA by calling me a Nazi, that would be great, thanks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday February 11 2019, @07:53PM (2 children)
Oh, really? What exactly are your credentials? What degrees do you have? What are your published academic works on the subject? How long have you been using your knowledge in the fields of biology and statistics professionally?
Or, as I suspect is far more likely, is it that you spent your time reading a bunch of racist recruitment material somewhere on the Internet and have now decided that anything that disagrees with that must be wrong, never mind the facts?
I do agree there's no closet here, though. Except, of course, that VLM doesn't have the guts to identify himself and thus find out if his employer(s), friends, family, etc find his arguments compelling.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 12 2019, @02:26PM (1 child)
If your side of the argument has nothing beyond logical fallacies like appeal to authority, citation needed, namecalling, and threats of doxing, that means my side has already won, thanks!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:44PM
Believe that all you want, "your side" is a bunch of whiny entitled white boys who make up a small percentage of the population. No amount if "winning" on the internet will change that, and you should realize by now that every time you think you've "won" and gotten your "yummy liberal tears" it is just making someone angry that such idiots like you exist. Not exactly a real win just pissing people off, but it is better than your genocidal tendencies.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @07:56PM
haha no, I know I'm on the correct side of the argument because SCIENCE and because I pay attention to the racist shit you post. You've toned it down a lot recently, but as long as you keep engaging the topic I will be pointing out that your somewhat more reasonable arguments these days are still coming from a racist twat.
Maybe you're not racist and just an idiot who believes bad "science" from actual racist twats trying to confirm their discrimination.
Why just tell you to fuck off then instead of engaging your arguments? Cause it is tiresome, we've been over this many times before, and you just want a platform to spew your shitty arguments!! So "fuck off" is the most efficient reply.