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req2on The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English

Language reflects cultural views, not the other way around. (Note how master and mistress were gendered but equivalent terms, and how many similar divergences occur, as with sir and madam.) Using "sir" in English can serve some of the same respectful roles as an usted in Spanish, but there are many other things as well.

Sapir-Whorf is a long discussed issue [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity] and John McWhorter [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorter] is well versed in the background.

req2on Zombies

Eliezer Yudkowsky lays out the Bayesian reductionist argument in his Zombies sequence: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Zombies_(sequence)

It's a good accessible read, mentions a few of the interesting questions zombies can shed light on, and has a fair number of reader comments and responses.

req2on Dismantling the calculus pyramid

Your argument follows the same form as the one that says a world without a god is full of evil.

You overextrapolate from an overstated initial cause, and offer no evidence whatsoever for any of your bald assertions.

req2on I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

Rome wasn't much worse off- a 20 year old would expect to hit 54.

Here's hoping for the hockey stick.

http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/Life.html

req2on I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

A 23 year old in the 17th century would expect to live nearly as long as a 23 year old today- the depressed life expectancy statistics are largely due to the fact that 3 out of 4 children died before they hit the age of five.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

req2on Being a Man in the 21st Century (Part 1)

I'll note that, at least in business, some research indicates that women do not earn less than men: "Women executives who do not have children follow career paths that closely replicate those of their male peers. Successful M.B.A. couples have similar work patterns, said Dr. Bertrand. Women without children married to high-earning spouses are just as likely to work and accumulate post-M.B.A. work experience at an almost identical rate, she said. Call a woman without a child a man."

Rather, they work less than men: "When women executives return to the office, after several months of absence, they typically start to work shorter hours, the study shows: 52 hours per week, compared with an average 58 hours for their male peers, as they adapt to their new double task."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/business/global/29iht-ried...

This is not brushing away the problem, but pointing out that wages are a symptom of an underlying cause.

req2on Ask HN: What have you changed your mind about recently?

The furor over creationism vs. evolution indicates that even if the ideas themselves are not well exposed to uneducated people, some of the basic building materials and one of the frameworks of the discussion is there.

req2on Ask HN: What have you changed your mind about recently?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence

A modicum of research reveals that 'The authors reported a correlation of 0.60 between atheism rates and level of intelligence, which is “highly statistically significant.”'

req2on Are Humans Still Evolving?

Can someone hook edw519 up with searchyc.com?

It seems all he does is post dups: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=891137

req2on Gladwell: "Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs..."

Compare to engineers becoming marketers: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=890110

req2on The Zimbu programming language, by vim author Bram Moolenaar

Though true, a 2 space indent visually 'breaks' whenever there's (conservatively speaking) more than 8 lines of code on a single level followed by several further indented lines. After that, the indentation level of the immediately following less indented lines is not available to the average skimmer.

req2on The Zimbu programming language, by vim author Bram Moolenaar

A 2 space indent loses at 'visual overview' of larger (and more representative) expanses of code. A 4 space indent maintains clarity at the level of a skim or casual glance, even if it "fails" at the contrived (but simple) example shown here.

req2on World of Goo Pay-What-You-Want Sale Results

The presently available materials on Red Ryder are unclear, but Toady definitely survives solely on donations [http://www.kwanzoo.com/social-trivia/tarn-adams-interview-pa...]

Randy Mulholland of the webcomic Something Positive quit his job when he received in a month donations that exceeded his yearly salary.

Most webcomics that are 'full time jobs' for the artist also sell t-shirts, taking them a slight step outside of 'pure' donationware, but including these artists, the numbers of successful donationware vendors go up.

req2on College Tuition Cost Rising Again This Fall

Before advocating any countermeasures, you need to control for the self-selection of university vs. college students.

req2on World of Goo Pay-What-You-Want Sale Results

This is why you can't make a business out of donation-ware.

What about Red Ryder, way back when, or Toady, of Dwarf Fortress, or the relative legions of successful webcomic artists that live on donations?

req2on Meet future woman: shorter, plumper, more fertile

Sounds good to me. Thanks.

req2on Meet future woman: shorter, plumper, more fertile

Please note that average height a mere hundred fifty years ago was a few centimetres shorter. The reversal of a trend (admittedly spurred by different causes) is notable. If you do wish to call a development a "non-story", please refute it with something more substantial than "the numbers don't look right to my programmer brain".

req2on Meet future woman: shorter, plumper, more fertile

Human women have around 400000 oocytes; their consumption is not a limiting factor.

req2on Error-riddled ‘Superfreakonomics’, Part 2: With takedown of Nathan Myhrvold

This is similar to the view advanced by Freeman Dyson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Global_warming

req2on Puzzle Websites to Sharpen Your Programming Skills

Does working on your serve improve your tennis game?

req2on Python vs Clojure

As with most language comparisons, the author is clearly established on one side of the fence and unwilling to investigate in any meaningful sense.

He begins with a somewhat spurious statement on how code must be arranged, continues with a complete misunderstanding of what most people mean by scope, and then accuses Python of innumerable memory leaks and associated bugs before he even gets through his first set of comparisons. He claims Python dictionaries abuse the term 'immutable', but they most decidedly never make any such claim. You might learn something about Clojure, but take everything he says about Python with a grain of salt.

(Anyone who is interested in concurrent Python should check out multiprocessing, not threading.)

req2on Applause For Finland: First Country To Make Broadband Access A Legal Right

Where do you place rights like access to clean water?

req2on Youth 'cannot live' without web

It's the difference between a 18 year old French speaker that learned French from the cradle, and a 43 year old French speaker that learned French to fluency in college.

req2on Release Late, Release Rarely (2006)

"When it's done" doesn't tell the whole story for Blizzard. They continue to patch and support Starcraft, and they are currently working on a sizable content patch for Diablo II. WoW has been constantly receiving additional content and balance updates. Blizzard goes a little bit beyond all that, a remarkable trait in such a 'now' focused games industry.

req2on Chicago HN'ers: I made an iPhone/Android version of Metra's train schedules

I'm interested.

req2on There’s nowhere to hide if your name trends on Twitter. Is there, Trafigura?

So what's the problem with the link that shows up in the google search? itpints is giving me twitter, boston.com, and the guardian, among others. The feature you seem to like is the ability and lack of self-consciousness for people to say 'something' that Twitter allows, rather than the live search it has. I think if mibbit searched conversations, that would do the same thing and have the possibility to be more valuable.

req2on There’s nowhere to hide if your name trends on Twitter. Is there, Trafigura?

Though you say google doesn't do live search, it took less than 18 minutes for it to get this post.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&...

req2on Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

I think in your search for a contrary example, you're looking at it in the wrong way. The focus of the unlucky pessimist will lead them unerringly to the stairs, whether or not that's the best option. The lucky optimist won't foolishly do what no one should ever do, but instead notice that the open elevator shaft has a ladder that someone else just safely used to escape. Being lucky doesn't mean you have to be stupid.

The unlucky pessimist will stand in line while the lucky optimist will notice that what she needs is easily obtained out of the line.

req2on The Complete History of Lemmings

Those who don't indiscriminately click links may like to know that this is a DHTML clone of the original Lemmings.

req2on The Moral Sense Test

Joshua Greene's thesis provides us with some ways to think about how we think about these problems. There's some nice excerpting, and ensuing discussion, at lesswrong: http://lesswrong.com/lw/10f/the_terrible_horrible_no_good_ve...