What are you people talking about. Have you even looked at the article?
The names of the Asian/Indian people GP is referring to, are explicitly stated to be hallucinations in the article. So, high vs low trust society questions aside, the entire assertion here is explicitly wrong. These are not authors submitting hallucinated content, these are fictitious authors who are themselves hallucinations.
The side comment is right, it's about low versus high trust societies. Even if GP made a mistake on which names are relevant, they're not being racist about it.
That's one opinion. Here's another - they were waiting with their commentary locked and loaded, and failed to even read the source material in any detail before unloading it.
They're making broad assertions about specific societies, when those assertions are in this instance in no way related to TFA.
In that case, the edit button exists. It seems rather late in the day to be erring on the side of the benefit of the doubt in every case, for things like this. Much of the population is unabashedly, vociferously, aggressively racist and proud of it, these days.
> In that case, the edit button exists. It seems rather late in the day to be erring on the side of the benefit of the doubt
The edit button exists for 2 hours and this is not a person that frequently comments.
> That's one opinion. Here's another - they were waiting with their commentary locked and loaded, and failed to even read the source material in any detail before unloading it.
Well almost a day later they replied "you can google the papers and find the arxiv articles where the authors are listed". Unless that is a blatant lie, it seems like a pretty good reason to think they're using good-faith and non-racist reasoning here.
Having been bullish on NFTs, which were never more than hype in the primary use case promulgated for them, is absolutely a strong argument against having good intuition of breakthrough innovation. It demonstrates an inability to differentiate between hype and utility.
NFT's for real estate ownership, container tracking etc. could still have some form of utility. But what people think of when they hear NFT's isn't that, it's shitty monkey jpg's.
NFT's were never the next big thing, except for a very specific subset of very gullible idiots.
> Having been bullish on NFTs, which were never more than hype in the primary use case promulgated for them, is absolutely a strong argument against having good intuition of breakthrough innovation.
I always thought that NFTs were completely ridiculous and essentially nothing but hype. But then again, I thought that amazon wasn't going to work either, when I was there building it, so I'm not sure that even in a given individual "good intuition for breakthrough innovation" is a unitary thing.
That's a good point. I've had the same: I lost a bet on HN for a hundred bucks that Facebook would never break a billion in revenues. I - mistakenly - thought people would not be so stupid as to hand over their private lives to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg. But they did.
NFTs are just as stupid, if not more so and this time at least it looks like sanity prevailed. But the problem is more complex than just boolean 'made' or 'fail', and I think that's where the investment angle comes in. Investors bet on 'the next wave' all the time. And NFTs looked to the clueless as much as 'the next wave' as mobile phones or the transistor did at some point in time. The big differentiator to me is whether or not a thing like that requires a belief system or not. If it does then I don't give it much chance. But then we have all of crypto as a counterexample and quite a few people got stupidly rich peddling that.
NFTs followed the exact same path as crypto, which many predicted would happen. Crypto became a speculative asset traded on exchanges because it was too volatile and transaction-cost heavy to ever be used as a medium of exchange. NFTs being crypto-based were soon descended upon by finance bros and scammers who saw the opportunity for a quick buck, eliminating any possibility to develop it for utilitarian things like house deeds and concert tickets or whatever.
Im saying its a normal, predictable use of flock. Not that it's OK. Many readers might not know that abortions for the most part aren't legal in Texas. You should expect flock to assist law enforcement in catching people doing something illegal.
These specific abortion laws and systems of surveillance are new and unprecedented, as is the use of them together. So we should very much like to be aware of when they are being used.
The amount of people you know who understand Flock can be counted with your right hand, and most likely can be counted without. This is not common knowledge.
See sibling comment. It's not at all shown that the person did something illegal, in fact they did something quite legal, have an abortion in Washington state in a manner that was within the parameters of Washington's abortion laws.
They don't catch people doing something illegal. They might record someone's car being near some place where maybe something illegal happened. That's not the standard of "reasonable doubt" required for a criminal conviction, and at best is (weak) circumstantial evidence.
Just to be clear you believe it is normal and predictable for law enforcement officers in one state to follow your movements in another state to see if you violated state law in a state where it does not apply? That kind of normal?
Shouldn't be, yes. Isn't? Have you seen the rhetoric around tariffs? A lot of people thought they wanted the government run like a business, so welcome to the for-profit government society.
How can you prove that empirically? What is your methodology for controlling for environmental factors in making that assertion, including factors associated with access to resources, tutors, having a full belly every morning, and not being constantly flooded with stress hormones as a result of grappling with the daily reality of living in poverty?
I don't want to come off as supporting the grandparent comment, but ultimately there is at least some degree of heritability of IQ [0]. US IQ also seemed to have peaked in the 1990s [1].
It's quite a leap to claim that immigration is the cause of the US IQ decline. The best explanations seem to be that it's environmental [2]. The general decline in IQ is impacting several countries.
I’m not implying immigration leads to US decline. The pool I refer to is international. China.
Environmental factors
Of China have been changing in the past 3 decades leading to extraordinary gain in IQ. This re normalizes the IQ every year which leads to what appears to be a decline in IQ in the US.
Genetics plays a part because with the economic infrastructure of China supporting students to their maximum potential it brings the playing field on par with US. China no longer has to deal with poverty effecting IQ scores.
This with environment in parity the only thing left is really genetics.
I think embryo selection companies, to the extent they don't actually result in people selecting for embryos with autism, are brilliant products. They're "magician's choice" setups: embryo selection promises single-to-low-double-digit improvements in metrics that aren't fully evaluable for over a decade after the product is paid for, on metrics with huge variability and low test-test reliability. The people paying for the products are generally upper-income and already predisposed to invest in educational achievement, which is the actual outcome the customers care about to begin with. It's a can't-lose proposition for the vendors.
So, no, of course I'm not going to take you up on that bet. It's like betting against Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is a farce but I'm not dumb enough to short it.
I'm not an "anti-heriditarian". I think there's probably a lot of value, long term, in embryo selection for things like disease avoidance. I also believe there's natural variability in cognitive ability; I don't believe all people are "blank slates"; that's a caricature (or, if you like, a deliberate wrong-footing of people who reflexively reject psychometrics and genetics for ideological reasons) of the actual concern I have.
Finally, I don't know what anything you said has to do with what I said. I said, very simply, "heritability != DNA". That's an objective, positive claim. Was this bet your attempt at rebutting it?
It's interesting: to the extent the orthodox position acknowledges that genetically mediated trait inheritance exists, it cases it in terms of "disease" and "treatment". It's morally wrong to select an embryo for height, but acceptable, even imperative, to use genetics to screen for "shortism".
I'm sure you've read Gwern's essay on polygenic trait inheritance. I'm not sure repeating the literature would be productive here. We have every reason to believe that embryo selection and genetic engineering more generally won't just "cure disease" but make us taller, smarter, more beautiful, and longer lived -- and there's nothing wrong with that.
Of course there's a lot of variability. At some point technology will improve to the point that denying the effect exists will seem ridiculous, although I'm sure plenty will try.
I will say, though, that downplaying trait inheritance and the way genetics is the mechanism for this inheritance produces models that don't predict reality nearly as well as models that incorporate hereditary via genetics, and especially when it comes to education, we're throwing public money down the toilet as long as we make policy using inaccurate models.
I have no idea what the first paragraph you wrote means. I don't have a moral issue with embryo selection. Select them for eye color for all I care.
I don't know what any of the rest of this has to do with what I said. I ask again: are you writing all this by way of declaring that "heritability == DNA"? That's a straightforward discussion we can have. Why avoid it?
IQ is one of the most heavily studied constructs in psychology. Modern IQ tests have over a century of development behind them, starting with Binet and refined through versions like the WAIS-IV and Stanford–Binet. They have high test–retest reliability, meaning a person’s score tends to be stable unless there’s brain injury, illness, or some major change. Scores correlate strongly with academic performance, job performance in cognitively demanding roles, and even certain life outcomes like income, health behaviors, and longevity. There’s also a body of neuroscience work showing links between IQ and measures like processing speed, working memory, and brain connectivity.
The “IQ is BS” meme mostly comes from misunderstandings and misuse. People often assume IQ is meant to measure all kinds of intelligence when it really focuses on certain reasoning and problem-solving skills. Early tests had cultural biases, and while modern versions address this better, that history sticks. It’s also been used for discriminatory purposes, which has left a bad taste even when the measurement itself is valid. Critics are right that IQ doesn’t capture creativity, emotional intelligence, or practical skills—but psychologists never claimed it did.
In short, IQ is a valid and reliable measure for a specific set of cognitive abilities. It’s not the whole story of intelligence, but dismissing it outright ignores a large and consistent body of evidence.
It wasn't written by chatGPT — I myself like to use dashes. There are no contradictions and I never mentioned anything personal. Going to personal insults and remarks is a strategy for people who have no logical argument so they resort to alternatives.
The replication crisis doesn't apply. IQ is one of the most studied and replicated statistics in psychology. IQ IS in fact the exception to the replication crisis. Your beliefs are a myth.
Wealthier parents tend to be smarter (that's how they got wealthy or managed to keep inherited wealth) and tend to have smarter kids... who then tend to up on the wealthier side of the spectrum.
It's very unfair. It's also very real. Your fantasy is not real.
Whether its genetic or environmental doesn't matter here.
Existence of a correlation is enough reason to break down any analyses by demographic data to have a clearer picture of what's going on. That's just basic data science.
Bro. Genetics determines intelligence between a mouse and a human. It’s definitive.
Yet through some black magic that same genetics that allows a person to be taller then another person and that makes a human more intelligent then a fish, this same genetics doesn’t touch intelligence between different humans.
The thing to do when this happens is to flag the comment, and, if you think it's really bad, mail hn@ycombinator.com. Writing about how the author is a "dumb asshole" is actually counterproductive; please don't do that!
I probably would have just flagged and moved on, but I don't have an enough karma and at the time of my reply I didn't see anyone pushing back against the parent effectively. The parent got flagged and is now dead so the point is moot, but thank you for your level-headed response to me and to others elsewhere in the thread!
No I'm just voted down. Not flagged. You were voted down as well because your response is against the rules and rude.
What I said got you angry. But I am stating a factual truth and opinion. You need to learn how to respect other peoples opinion, because your anger and disillusionment is what causes the same thing as censorship.
The truth hurts, but you can't restrict it just because it hurts.
The names of the Asian/Indian people GP is referring to, are explicitly stated to be hallucinations in the article. So, high vs low trust society questions aside, the entire assertion here is explicitly wrong. These are not authors submitting hallucinated content, these are fictitious authors who are themselves hallucinations.
You are making up a guy to get mad at
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