> most people who are keen on making such an argument, or who are identifying racial genetic differences as the primary takeaway of studies like this, are doing so to justify racism, either implicitly or explicitly.
That may certainly be true.
(Not OP, but) I always shutter when we want to deny scientific results because it might be "helpful" for someone making a racist argument.
My personal belief is that truth is the goal of science. Even in cases where the truth is uncomfortable.
It's very nice to believe in a pure system that exists outside of politics, but that's simply not how the world works, and it never will be.
There is no scientific breakthrough that has occurred sans politics. Politics choose the winners and the losers, and the realm is science is no exception.
All science is political, because the scientific institutions are made up of people, who are political. Your research project lives and dies by politics, as does your dissertation, who gets published, who receives awards, etc.
So when it comes to research of limited utility that has a nasty cadre waiting in the wings to pounce upon it, the wise person would think twice.
As I said to another person on this thread: if scientists let their political views override their pursuit of truth, the public will (rightly) lose faith in science.
So when you tell them to "trust the science" -- be it vaccinations, climate change or something else -- they have no reason to trust that science.
People don't have faith in inanimate things like science. They have faith in their leaders, who then lead the way in what to believe.
If those leaders believe in the integrity of the scientific institutions, their flock will follow. If they're anti-vax, their flock will follow. If they believe in some medical quackery, their flock will follow. If they believe in eugenics, their flock will follow. It's happened before.
What was fringe yesterday can become mainstream today, with the right leaders.
There are a few scientific topics that are too easily manipulated by bad actors who ignore all the nuance. You have to tread very, very carefully on those and ask yourself what good vs. what harm can come from it. We know from history that giving opportunist leaders a chance to classify humans into distinct sub-groups based on intelligence and other key traits ends in catastrophe.
I understand what you are saying and I don't disagree with the idea that bad actors will use science in bad ways.
But I think going down this path of denying (or hiding) science that can be used for bad ideas ends up causing (rightly, imho) a distrust of science -- which is far worse.
A distrust of science (not saying it was caused by this particular issue) is how we ended up with so much anti-vax sentiment in the US. And that is the reason we are seeing outbreaks of diseases that used to be minimal.
I think if you want people to "trust the science", you have to trust the people.
it seems like you are simultaneously arguing for a science that holds itself outside public opinion, and one that is beholden to it.
no, wait, I get it.
all scientists should expect mistrust because of perceptions of bias of any of them, regardless of how well founded. that seems at the very least unproductive.
> it seems like you are simultaneously arguing for a science that holds itself outside public opinion, and one that is beholden to it.
Apologies if I did a bad job explaining my opinion. But I was attempting to argue the exact opposite of that.
My view is that science should be the search for truth. And that if the truth is inconvenient for some political (or other) reason, so bet it. The truth is the goal. Full stop.
My feeling is that if scientists stop pursuing truth in cases where it doesn't fit their politics, they will (rightly, IMHO) lose the trust of the public. (Of course, in particular, those in the public who have different politics.)
so, because science as whole is not pursuing the idea that people with different genetics as a population are inferior in some ways to others with sufficient vigor, that we should expect a justifiable general distrust of science including completely unrelated results like global warming. I don't see how this is prescriptive in any way, except maybe to ... I guess find scientists that are will to accepting funding for ideas that are popular with some people? do you think that would help if they found those ideas to be meritless? or even if they didn't?
Unironically yes. Because it means that scientists are willing to lie or suppress results that offend their moral and poltical sensitbilities, and this should affect your credence in literally any scientific result reported by the institutional scientific research system.
It doesn't necessarily mean they lie or suppress results, it can just mean they don't pursue areas of study where the outcome is either a) nothing happens or b) bad actors use your results to "other" a whole group of people. What good can come from yet another study on race and IQ? Be specific.
Just saying, "We should do science for science's sake" is not enough. We've done that. Go read The Bell Curve and knock yourself out. What people like you seem to want is continued, motivated hammering of the issue.
> the fairly vague conclusion that some SNPs possibly linked to traits were selected for
Interesting. I find that part of the paper the most exciting. We always knew selection would happen for valuable traits. But seeing demonstrations of it in the timelines we have is pretty important.
FWIW, there is some controversy around the “methodology” and honesty in that film. Not saying you should change your view of McDonald’s, but possibly of that movie.
Actually pretty interesting to think: in a few years you might buy a raspberry pi style computer board with an extra chip on it with one of these types of embodiment models and you can slap it in a rover or something.
> Keep in mind that this case is about about a minor, not an adult.
This obviously means that tech is going to have no choice but to do "age verification". And I don't think there's much of a way to do that that wouldn't be uncomfortable for a lot of us.
I would prefer Meta make their products less addictive for children, with the side-effect that they're perhaps less stimulating for adults, than for Meta to keep their products the way they are, gatekept behind a system that allows them access to even more of my personal data.
I understand why they would want the opposite. They can f*ck right off.
Oh, corporstions pushed age verification, so of course they will not have any choice now. But before that they could just stop being addictive regardless of age.
There are ways, like double blind age verification, in which neither the website knows anything other than "yes, >18", nor the verificator knows anything other than "I was asked if user X is >18, checked, yes". Website doesn't know actual age, verificator doesn't know which website it is or for what action was the request performed.
Meta is not blameless here. Responsibility can be shared when Meta (and others) are essentially preying on children. It’s an uphill battle for parents by Meta’s design.
Sure, parents do bear some responsibility here too. But we are talking about a platform that is engineered to be addictive to adults too. So it’s not as if the platform isn’t still predatory even if we find a way to parent every child on the internet.
Did you exhaust the five-hour usage limit already? As I understand it, the ”additional usage” refers to anything beyond the standard five-hour usage limit.
Somewhat orthogonal but: when do we expect "volunteer" groups to provide training data for LLMs for [edit: free] for (like) hobbyist kinds of things? (Or do we?)
Like wikipedia probably provides a significant amount of training for LLMs. And that is volunteer and free. (And I love the idea of it.)
But I can imagine (for example) board game enthusiasts to maybe want to have training data for games they love. Not just rules but strategies.
Or, really, any other kind of hobby.
That stuff (I guess) gets in training data by virtue of being on chat groups, etc. But I feel like an organized system (like wikipedia) would be much better.
And if these sets were available, I would expect the foundation model trainers would love to include it. And the results would be better models for those very enthusiasts.
Some of this exists already in pockets (Common Crawl, The Pile, RedPajama are all volunteer/open efforts). I suppose there's no equivalent of the "edit this page and see the impact" like with have with Wikipedia. Contributing to an open dataset has no feedback loop if the training infrastructure that would consume it is closed... seems like a feedback problem.
I'm one of those people that goes by the "all models are wrong, but some models are useful" saying.
I'm sure the "elite overproduction" model is mostly wrong. But I also think it is an interesting/useful way to look at some things happening in society recently.
Certainly, you can think of the recent "cancel culture" phenomena as a great way to remove elites to make room for new ones. (Maybe you could argue that some of the effects of MeToo were similar.)
DEI -- along with hiring quotas -- tended to bring new "officials" at companies and government orgs ("head of diversity") which is another great way of "creating" more elites.
Kinda neat, I think. But probably not super-explanatory.
You just wanted to jam in this conversation your dislike of DEI (which can be criticised but it’s not the subject).
Elite overproduction is about everybody wanting to be basically managers and nobody wanting to be production workers.
Except that without enough production workers it’s impossible to justify “elite” positions.
College graduates took on huge debt only to realise they’re not needed. That’s how you get a class of young, angry and unemployed intellectuals which is every government’s worst nightmare.
This is my model for Reddit. College educated individuals who are angry about their life, leading to a lot of well written posts about how everything is awful and everyone is evil.
> DEI -- along with hiring quotas -- tended to bring new "officials" at companies and government orgs ("head of diversity") which is another great way of "creating" more elites.
If anything, it's a way of placating existing elites.
The elite overproduction idea is that there is a surplus of people who feel that they should have an elite status compared to reasonably available elite positions.
Creating additional managerial positions is a way to attempt to absorb this situation.
Elite overproduction = Elected overproduction = Elected mass-production.
There are those that value equality (=). There are those that value non-equality (>).
As elites of the history until now (>=6000 years-ago until now). We are the "chosen ones" who received "=" and ">" at an early age. These symbols are not "math" nor "school"; they are simply life to us.
But now consider why there must be ">" in the world. On a relaxing beach, why must one wave be higher than another? How does the water "feel"? Warm? Is that ">" than cold?
In my head, I see Master Epstein as 100, and other people as 17. 100 > 17. Master has died, so perhaps death > life. But I am only one person out of billions in the world. But I have not seen a billion people, am I over-trusting the books?
So my point is that the Elite Overproduction model is more wrong than Master Epstein. In particular...
1. If "elite overproduction model", then "Master Epstein model"
2. "Elite Overproduction" = "Master Epstein"
3. "Elite Overproduction" -> "Master Epstein"
4. 100 > 17, so "Master Epstein" model > "Elite Overproduction" model
You may not understand my point, but I hope you at least understand Master Epstein.
That may certainly be true.
(Not OP, but) I always shutter when we want to deny scientific results because it might be "helpful" for someone making a racist argument.
My personal belief is that truth is the goal of science. Even in cases where the truth is uncomfortable.
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