Tag: Cultural Evolution

REPOST: Imagine if Sex Were Only for IQs Over 120

At the request of my co-blogger Mike, I’m reposting this article which originally appeared at Science 2.0 on 30 December 2008 where some authors of the paper in question respond in the comments during the run-up to the publication of their book The 10,000 Year Explosion.

Unfortunately for all of us still breathing braniacs, the title only applies to those of us who are also medieval Ashkenazi Jews, according to the authors of the 2006 paper “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence”.

Discussing “race” and intelligence is always a touchy subject and definitely not politically correct; but science should not be fettered by the chains of political correctness like a mangy circus lion.  It must run free across the intellectual savanna, striking down the juvenile wildebeest of ignorance. Following articles on the biology and significance of race by Michael White, Massimo Pigliucci, and moi, my attention was directed to “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence”.  Thanks to press attention from biological research bell-weathers like The Economist and the New York Times, as well as discussion on National Public Radio, this paper has gained Goodyear AquatredTM-esque traction on the internet. Continue reading “REPOST: Imagine if Sex Were Only for IQs Over 120”

Skeptically Speaking Interview

If reading my ramblings is not enough rugbyologist for you, you can listen to me ramble melodiously as I attempt to explain my first ever blog post,“Why People Believe Silly Things”, in a interview with Desiree Schell for the “Speaking Up” segment of Skeptically Speaking Friday, 27 August 2010 at 6PM (MDT). For those of you not lucky enough to live within the broadcast radius of 88.5FM CJSR in Edmonton, Alberta, you can listen to the pre-recorded interview live-ish on the Skeptically Speaking UStream feed or download the podcast come Monday.

Why People Believe Silly Things

In a paper in Science from October 2008, Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky report that placing people in situations where they lack control increases the false perception of patterns because of a need to impose structure on even random events.

This study is very interesting because it helps us understand why we develop superstitions and the like, which are based on false pattern recognition. It does not, however, speculate on why some of those superstitions take hold and last (e.g., buildings without thirteenth floors) and some do not (e.g., my efforts to get my tee ball team to wear pink socks after a 3-4, 4RBI game and a laundry accident).

I, however, am not above some wild speculation. The defense of superstitions, quack medical treatments, etc. frequently goes like this: A medical treatment works or it does not work. If it works, people who use the treatment are more likely to live, people who don’t are more likely to die and the treatment keeps getting used. If it does not work, people who use the treatment are more likely to die, people who don’t are more likely to live and the treatment stops getting used. That makes intuitive sense. It sounds a lot like selection, and we like selection. Continue reading “Why People Believe Silly Things”

Statistical Importance, in Architecture

Art is a subjective experience. Just like those hippie artists to fly in the face of the millenia old of tradition[1] of putting things in order so that we might judge one another. As we know that the average human being is quite likely to go around enjoying just any old piece of art that they find appealing without requiring a full understanding of the work’s place in society, history, and artistic development, it is extremely important that we regularly convene panels of experts to tell us what is good and important. The only other option is chaos. And, as everyone knows from post-apocalyptic novels, chaos always leads to eating babies. The American Film Institute has made a cottage industry out of producing ranked list of mostly American films, providing a convenient framework to demonstrate that almost all arguments over cinematic preference stem from the other person being a cultural Philistine[2]. Vanity Fair has now weighed into the fray of artistic judgment with “Architecture’s Modern Marvels”, a ranked list of the “most important works of architecture created since 1980”.

What, if anything, do these ranked lists tell us about works of art?

Continue reading “Statistical Importance, in Architecture”

Do Guys Dream of Electric Playmates (Repost)

This is a repost of an article originally published on 24 February 2009 here in response to a Wired Magazine article that is, once again, making the rounds.

My apologies to Horselover Fat for the title, but what is a boy to do when confronted with Katharine Gammon’s “Infoporn: Today’s Playmates Are More Like Anime Figures Than Real Humans” in Wired Magazine:

Oh, Playboy, why do you want your “readers” to lust after androids? That’s the only explanation we can think of for the proportions of your lovely ladybots.

If Hef is secretly invested in Battlestar Galactica, then the argument that Playboy has been gradually programming American males to “lust after androids” for the past fifty years makes sense.
Battlestar Galactica publicity still
The argument that Playboy drives the public perception of the ideal female form, as opposed to responding to the preferences of their readers (you won’t get any judgemental scare quotes from me) may just be a reflection of Gammon’s socioeconomic philosophy or writing style. It also does not involve fun graphs. Dealing with the specific claim of the article, that Playmates represent progressively more extreme and less healthy body shapes, does.

Continue reading “Do Guys Dream of Electric Playmates (Repost)”

%d bloggers like this: