No politics in software, in sports, on HN, at work, at parties, ... it becomes a rare thing, widely 'censored' (socially, not by government), when it is the most important thing.
Yes, he discusses the Platonic aspects of his theory in a paper, “Ingressing Minds: Causal Patterns Beyond Genetics and Environment in Natural, Synthetic, and Hybrid Embodiments”:
> Morphology is determined by the combination of genes, chemical signals, original cell machinery, and apparently electrical signals. But we never believed that genes determined morphology alone, eg, we know that chemical signals can cause anomalies.
For the consistent parts - eyes may be different colors but are overwhelmingly consistent - what else could be the ultimate cause but DNA? For example, if those chemical signals, cell machinary, and electrical signals produce the same results billions of times over 200,000 years, then they must function the same overall. How does that happen if the chemical signals, cell machinary, and electrical signals aren't determined, even if indirectly, by DNA?
Your eyes would be misplaced if the process from cell clump to mat to tubule failed due to chemical signaling failure, but the whole embryo tends to be spontaneously aborted when gestation fails so catastrophically.
And despite genitalia being roughly one of two forms and similarly positioned, chemical signals can disrupt their formation.
> How does that happen if the chemical signals, cell machinary, and electrical signals aren't determined, even if indirectly, by DNA?
They don’t produce the same results with perfect accuracy — 75% of pregnancies are spontaneously aborted, at least in part due to developmental failures.
But the problem with this argument is simple: you have a human cell everywhere you have human DNA, so those correlations with DNA are also correlations with cellular machinery and with particular chemical signals from the mother. There was no point in those 200,000 years where DNA operated independently of those other mechanisms — we can only say the system as a whole reliably creates those features.
Interesting points, especially about the challenge of correlation. I guess we could remove DNA and see what happens ...
Somehow the machinary is passed down: Do we know of another mechanism besides DNA that is self-perpetuating? Is there any living creature without it? Prokaryotes (bacteria) even have DNA.
Or is there a way to do it without self-perpetuating mechanisms? Is that logically possible? Some machinary might be perpetuated by other machinary, e.g. the chemical might recreate the electrical, meaning it's not self-perpetuating. But that's not different than DNA: DNA itself isn't the machinary, but its self-perpetuation is what recreates other parts.
I suppose some parts of the environment are consistent, such as sunlight, air, water, and heat, but the environmental stimuli must trigger something that is already there.
> I guess we could remove DNA and see what happens ...
If I have a stool with three legs, and remove one leg causing it to fall, can I conclude that removed leg is what made it stand?
You’re making the same mistake as before in reverse: DNA would do nothing without a host cell or chemical signals, either.
> Somehow the machinary is passed down: Do we know of another mechanism besides DNA that is self-perpetuating?
The system as a whole is self-perpetuating, but DNA is not self-perpetuating: without a host cell and without ambient chemical signals, it cannot propagate. That’s in contrast to ribozymes which can be self-catalyzing RNA, ie, truly self-propagating chemicals.
In the RNA world hypothesis, such self-catalyzation was the origin of life; and by the time DNA evolved, it did so within a running biological system and as merely one component of cellular replication.
As a whole the system of chemical signals, DNA, and cellular machinery propagates; but just like our stool example, removing any of the factors causes that to fail.
The DNA removal comment was as joke; sorry if that wasn't clear.
No system is self-perpetuating, per the Second Law; all need other inputs. What makes the machinary yield the ~same results ~every time is DNA.
> In the RNA world hypothesis, such self-catalyzation was the origin of life; and by the time DNA evolved, it did so within a running biological system and as merely one component of cellular replication.
Is there evidence of that? Afaik the earliest evidence is prokaryotes ~~3.5 billion years ago, and prokaryotes generally have DNA.
> If not your genes, what else would determine why you have eyes in about the same place in your head as every other human?
Theoretically, it could be second or much higher order effects that result from genes. It could be a combination of complex factors - the environment in the womb, nutrition, behavior by the mother, etc. - that eventually trace back to DNA.
Also, is it literally true that DNA is the only thing that's consistent (in these respects) between all generations of Homo sapiens?
I think that's a great approach. I've thought about how to handle these issues and wonder how you handle several issues that come to mind:
Competing with LLM software users, 'honest' students would seem strongly incentivized to use LLMs themeselves. Even if you don't grade on a curve, honest students will get worse grades which will look worse to graduate schools, grant and scholarship committees, etc., in addition to the strong emotional component that everyone feels seeing an A or C. You could give deserving 'honest' work an A but then all LLM users will get A's with ease. It seems like you need two scales, and how do you know who to put on which scale?
And how do students collaborate on group projects? Again, it seems you have two different tracks of education, and they can't really work together. Edit: How do class discussions play out with these two tracks?
Also, manually doing things that machines do much better has value but also takes valuable time from learning more advanced skills that machines can't handle, and from learning how to use the machines as tools. I can see learning manual statistics calculations, to understand them fundamentally, but at a certain point it's much better to learn R and use a stats package. Are the 'honest' students being shortchanged?
> Comparing these statistics across countries is useless without demographic adjustment.
Why is it useless? Any aggregate number can be broken down different ways into different groupings - region, age, education, income, wealth, smoking/not, weight, smartphone use, exercise, sleep, etc etc. By your argument, any aggregate number is useless because, no matter what the researcher chooses, it could be broken down differently.
So why choose race? I think the fact that so many in this discussion repeat the partisan trope - long used to oppose taxpayer-funded services such as healthcare, education, housing, food, etc. - of dividing people by race, is very telling.
Statistics show there is a huge difference in life expectancy based on recency of immigration. Most hispanics in the U.S. are immigrants or children of immigrants. They have the second highest life expectancy despite having the lowest access to healthcare. That’s plausibly explained by the fact that immigrants are more likely to be healthier than the average person in their country.
> immigrants are more likely to be healthier than the average person in their country.
That makes sense to me. Unhealthy people are less likely to make the (often) physically gruelling trip and take on the potentially gruelling lifestyle, and all the uncertainty. The same, I expect, applies to motivation - people thoughtlessly call immigrants 'lazy', but the lazy people don't give up their familiar lives and move - many crossing jungles and risking criminals - someplace where they have nothing, not even legal status, often not even the language, and start from scratch - with the goal that after a lifetime of hard work, your children will be comfortable.
I think you have a stereotype in your head that applies to only a subset of immigrants. You're thinking of the H1B that busts his ass to get here. But you're overlooking the nephew who comes over years later under family reunification and is happy to live on subsidized housing and welfare benefits. Because of the way both the US and Canada treat family reunification, what happens is that a highly motivated initial wave of immigrants over time leads to waves of less motivated, less skilled immigrants. I've seen this in my own diaspora community (Bangladeshis)--especially over the last 10 years as migration hubs like NYC have become very generous with welfare benefits for immigrants. (Canada has always been that way. My cousin grew up in subsidized housing. While he was highly motivated and became a professional, tons of people around him were content to live on the welfare benefits.)
I'm not talking about skills at all and wasn't thinking of H1B. I'm talking about low-skilled people who come here with nothing and to build a life. They don't have much to cover indigent nephews, especially if they are undocumented.
I have no reason to think nephews are any different. The 'welfare queen' narrative has long been used by those opposing public benefits (one source dates it to 1974 and says Ronald Reagan used it) but they never substantiate it. IMHO it's blaming the victim - is there any data saying poverty is caused by laziness? The data I remember atm says, 1) (from decades ago) people move in and out of the welfare system; they don't tend to stay in it, and 2) (much more recently) the leading cause of homelessness is medical bills.
> NYC ... Canada
Some of the most economicly dynamic places on earth. New Yorkers credit immigrants for a lot of that, as has much of America (until very recently).
In places like New York, immigrants get lots of public support: https://empirejustice.org/wp-content/uploads/Public-Benefits.... I found out recently that lots of Bangladeshis are in on the program where the city pays you to take care of your elderly immigrant parents.
> I have no reason to think nephews are any different.
They are different. It’s self-selection. It’s much easier to immigrate through family reunification in both the U.S. and Canada. Again, it seems like you have a stereotype in your mind that’s based on the folks who face rigorous selection processes or significant adversity in immigrating. But go wander around Little Bangladesh in Queens or the high rise subsidized housing in Toronto where my aunt and uncle live. More than half of Bangladeshis in America receive government welfare. There is no logical reason why this should be the case, since the only meaningful pathway from there to here is H1B (or these days O visas). It’s not like the U.S. has a land border with Bangladesh and there’s a large influx of illegal immigrants from there.
The family reunification immigrants do not face the same selection pressures. Once there’s an ethnic network already in place in a city and government benefits, it’s very attractive for typical people to immigrate and take advantage of that. And these are typical people from countries that are deeply dysfunctional.
> NYC ... Canada
Some of the most economicly dynamic places on earth.
> New Yorkers credit immigrants for a lot of that
That’s a mythology that was developed to integrate the Ellis Island immigrants. But what’s the foundation of New York’s economy? It’s Wall Street, which dates back to 1703. London, which developed on a parallel course to New York, had few immigrants until the late 20th century. It was finance that powered the economic dynamism, not immigration. And note that there was a huge self-selection effect back then that doesn’t exist today. There was no welfare. Within 5 years. 30-50% of italian immigrants to America went back home: https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/italian/....
> In places like New York, immigrants get lots of public support: https://empirejustice.org/wp-content/uploads/Public-Benefits.... I found out recently that lots of Bangladeshis are in on the program where the city pays you to take care of your elderly immigrant parents.
That's great. I want to support people and I believe in them - it's a great investment in the economy and for humanity - and also giving these elderly people care from their own families, rather than being institutionalized or worse, is a fantastic solution. It's also applied more widely other places, not restricted to immigrants (if that restriction exists in NYC). Biden planned to cover home care more generally with Medicare. If you've seen or heard about the institutions, they are often warehouses for death and treatment can be awful.
> That’s a mythology that was developed to integrate the Ellis Island immigrants.
That 'myth' extends back to 1776 and before: 'All are created equal' is the foundation of America.
The mythology is in your comments: most of what you say has no basis - as I said, the welfare queen narratives are unsubstantiated (afaik) - but the old mythology of race, including its rationalizations based on (questionable) facts. That mythology is what keeps people poor.
As a prominent example, redlining was (and is to an extent) based on the mythology: The myth that black people were unworthy credit risks (along with outright hate) resulted in people being unable to get a loan, and therefore unable to buy a house or to do major repairs or upgrades if they did somehow get a home. Also, the government refused to insure loans in neighborhoods with even one black homeowner (or maybe resident), which motivated white homeowners to resist any black families moving into their neighborhood, and 'restrictive covenants' among real estate agents to not sell to black people. As a result, these people couldn't get credit and even with financing, couldn't find homes to buy, and even then couldn't upgrade or repair them. Then white people would look down on their lack of assets and care for their homes.
Similarly, Wall Street long excluded almost all but white males; to say that success was because of their race (and gender) is obviously absurd. Wall Street also caused the Great Depression, etc.; is that due to white males? World wars? Genocides? Starvation and disease? (Also, NY's economy has been the center of many industries, including trade - not just finance.)
So much is invested in racism, which has produced some of the worst results in human history and the worst in the US, when we could be figuring out solutions to make a better world.
The significance is obvious: People in the US are getting healthier, by a significant metric. That doesn't matter? The US is a relativley well-defined group, sharing many inputs and consuming many of the same resources, including the same national health care resources for research, care, regulation, etc.
> There are many different populations in the USA.
Are you saying only your 'population' matters to you?
What do you mean by it exactly? There are lots of populations everywhere, and every population can be broken down into more populations. Any aggregate number won't describe you as an individual, even if it's a number for your own family.
no, i think you're imagining a lot of things. i'm just saying it is very coarse metric by which to understand anything at all. But, I'm not in any way educated in this metric so i'm open to anyone telling me how it is useful, like I asked initially.
That needs clear causal evidence that race somehow causes health outcomes, otherwise there's nothing distinguishing it from the old racial prejudice - now including blaming the victim:
There is a lot of evidence of a causal relationship between being non-white and having less access to healthcare, nutrition, and other things that affect health outcomes, and that evidence aligns well with being targets of racial discrimination.
When we just repeat baseless claims about race, we risk perpetuating it.
I've never seen evidence of a racial difference in accessing health care that is accessible. It's hard to believe skin color would affect that, while it's easy to believe (and witness) that it affects what you have access to.
You shouldn’t make an assumption in either direction. There’s clearly a racial aspect to life expectancy—east asian countries tend to have higher life expectancy than other countries with similar GDP per capita: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-un-vs-gdp....
Your argument about access to healthcare based on race doesn’t make sense either. Hispanics in the U.S. live longer than white people, despite having the highest rate of lacking health insurance.
> You shouldn’t make an assumption in either direction.
The null hypothesis is usually that there is no effect. Otherwise we'd say 'do life forms from the Andromeda galaxy affect climate change? We have no data, so shouldn't make an assumption either way.'
Correlations aren't perfect, but you'd need data correlating it with race. East Asia has many other differences such as diet. Why the drive to find an intellectual basis for discrimination based on race? It generally has only reflected biases and has had very bad consequences.
We already know the null hypothesis (that there will be no change) is false. So the question here is about finding the cause of why the null hypothesis is false. Ruling out one category of explanations, and, in practice, assuming a different category of explanations, is bad science.
It’s also harmful. We know, for example, that south asians develop cardiac problems at lower BMIs than other groups. We know biology is a dominant factor in longevity: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/health/longevity-lifespan.... We need to follow these leads so we can give people the best medical advice. The possibility of bias isn’t an excuse. Doctors have an obligation to address medical differences that are real and exist while not succumbing to bias. You gotta walk and chew gum at the same time.
A blanket dimsissal is a simple way to avoid dealing with complexity, here both in understanding the problem and forming solutions. Obviously not all newspapers are propaganda and at the same time not all can be trusted; not everything in the same newspaper or any other news source is of the same accuracy; nothing is completely trustworthy or completely untrustworthy.
I think accepting that gets us to the starting line. Then we need to apply a lot of critical thought to sometimes difficult judgments.
IMHO quality newspapers do an excellent job - generally better than any other category of source on current affairs, but far from perfect. I remember a recent article for which they intervied over 100 people, got ahold of secret documents, read thousands of pages, consulted experts .... That's not a blog post or Twitter take, or even a HN comment :), but we still need to examine it critically to find the value and the flaws.
When I've checked Wikipedia citations I've found so much brazen deception - citations that obviously don't support the claim - that I don't have confidence in Wikipedia.
> Applying correct citations is actually really hard work, even when you know the material thoroughly.
Why do you find it hard? Scholarly references can be sources for fundamental claims, review articles are a big help too.
Also, I tend to add things to Wikipedia or other wikis when I come across something valuable rather than writing something and then trying to find a source (which also is problematic for other reasons). A good thing about crowd-sourcing is that you don't have to write the article all yourself or all at once; it can be very iterative and therefore efficient.
It's more like, a lot of stuff in Wikipedia articles is somewhat "general" knowledge in a given field, where it's not always exactly obvious how to cite it, because it's not something any specific person gets credit for "inventing". Like, if there's a particular theorem then sure you cite who came up with it, or the main graduate-level textbook it's taught in. But often it's just a particular technique or fact that just kind of "exists" in tons of places but there's no obvious single place to cite it from.
So it actually takes some work to find a good reference. Like you say, review articles can be a good source, survey articles or books. But it can take a surprising amount of effort to track down a place that actually says the exact thing. I literally just last week was helping a professor (leader in their field!) try to find a citation during peer review for their paper for an "obvious fact" in the field, that was in their introduction section. It was actually really challenging, like trying to produce a citation for "the sky is blue".
I remember, years ago, creating a Wikipedia article for a particular type of food in a particular country. You can buy it at literally every supermarket there. How the heck do you cite the food and facts about it? It just... is. Like... websites for manufacturers of the food aren't really citations. But nobody's describing the food in academic survey articles either. You're not going to link to Allrecipes. What do you do? It's not always obvious.
If you can buy the food at a supermarket, can't you cite a product page? Presumably that would include a description of the product. Or is that not good enough of a citation?
Retail product listing URLs change constantly. They're not great.
And then you usually want to describe how the food is used. E.g. suppose it's a dessert that's mainly popular at children's birthday parties. Everybody in the country knows that. But where are you going to find something written that says that? Something that's not just a random personal blog, but an actual published valid source?
Ideally you can find some kind of travel guide or book for expats or something with a food section that happens to list it, but if it's not a "top" food highly visible to tourists, then good luck.
I found several that were contradicting the claim they were supposed to support (in popular articles). I will never regain faith in wikipedia. Being an editor or just verifying information from wikipedia makes you hate it
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