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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

Well, it always strikes me how well educated people with a lot of Knowledge in their domain (assuming that point is valid for the majority on Hacker News) have the tendency to totaly over-simplify other scientific fields. In this case evolution, biology and statistics. So what actually happened to humility, scientific literacy and honest curiosity?

Not sure if it was intended, but your second post comes across as Sexist and trying to reason this with bad science.

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It's not a question of science. It's a question of math. Math is a model which allows you to over-simplify other scientific fields in the first place, and then devise solutions which turn out to be useful even in their over-simplified form.

This is the reason for the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences. However, here I'm not pushing any direct resemblance between model and any society anywhere. You're doing that, not me.

Basing your "top half of females" behaviour on un-specified asumptions, failing to even hinting on what is "desirable" and then subjugating this model of society to some sort of statistical model was not my idea. nAgain not sure whether this was intentional or not or if I got your point wrong, after all we do not know each other.

But again, that is to much oversimplyfication for my taste. Especially when mathematics are applied without any relevant domain knowledge.

Don't see why the math should be serving your taste.

Nowhere in my message I am applying mathematics to a domain. I'm just stating that such math exists. Applying, or not applying, them to any real society is left as an exercise for a reader.

Without application to any domain (which, it seems to me, you actually do by using concrete labels rather than abstract categories), it remains unclear what makes this example "a real eye opener". In what way is it relevant?

The second post's primary fault is that it assumes that desirability does not vary with the individual. What one person considers "prime mate material" another could consider garbage. Until this is established, the entire point is moot.

We know that it is false though. Some people favor partners from a specific ethnic group, for example.

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