FD4280
4mo ago
I’m down with Magnus being included. Anand too. OTOH, there’s a case to be made for e-sports. Flash and maybe Jaedong should be up there.
FD4280
4mo ago
Joe Abercrombie (at least his first five books. I would argue for #2, Before They Are Hanged, as his absolute best) is a pretty reasonable contender for top fantasy author in this timeframe. The worldbuilding is kinda thin next to Martin, but the characterization is some of the best in the genre.
Storm of Swords would still make my top ten though.
FD4280
4mo ago
Could you paste the list or give an archive link? Would rather not sign up for such a site.
FD4280
4mo ago
-The book started and presents as an adventure yarn, but becomes a withering critique of capitalism.
I don’t think Clavell saw it that way himself. He was a fan of Ayn Rand.
OT, not having read Les Mis: is Javert nearly as well written as Grey?
FD4280
4mo ago
As the author of the alleged bait post: might it be that we observed nearly disjoint chunks of society? IIRC you went through a professional/verbal education at elite institutions on or near the East Coast. I did pure math at thoroughly non-elite ones in the West. The elite vs non-elite selection effects would account for a lot of the difference.
FD4280
4mo ago
For single player:
The Geneforge Saga is deeply discounted. Phenomenal writing, ok gameplay. You may want the remakes of the first two games for QoL purposes; I think the first three had graphical lag issues on 64-bit Windows, but this was a decade ago and is likely patched.
Arcanum (again, awesome game with a very dated interface) is $1.49.
FD4280
5mo ago
If your roommate is barely mobile, who’s walking the chihuahua? Seems like it might be the most miserable of you three in this situation.
FD4280
5mo ago
Blah. Thanks for the correction. I stopped at two when grad school got really busy, planned to get back to it... guess that's out.
FD4280
5mo ago
The novels behind LoGH were quite good too. I think the English translations were released a few years ago.
FD4280
5mo ago
May I remind you that the VP and the most recent Supreme Court justice were explicitly chosen on the basis of race?
FD4280
5mo ago
That’s a completely fair request. I’m at (8,6,?), where my gut and more conscious intuition are in conflict on the last coordinate.
The best people I know in person are a local religious congregation, who span quite a ways in intelligence.
OTOH, I’m can’t help but look up to people significantly sharper than myself (in math, or Ilforte and selfmadehuman here, for example).
FD4280
5mo ago
What would you consider to be sufficient factual evidence to shift your views on HBD in various directions?
In order for the question to make sense, it is probably helpful to think of one's position on HBD along two axes, as in the Political Compass test, and one discrete parameter that would make less sense on an axis. You're also welcome to point out omitted positions.
x-axis, ranging from 0 to 10, where moving right indicates agreement with the statement: Human populations have significantly different average levels of intelligence, and this becomes far more pronounced in the right tails of the distributions.
y-axis, same range as the x-axis, but measured as 10 * perceived percentage of genetic contribution to the difference above. If you attribute some of the difference to the interaction of genetic and environmental influences, give that half the weight for simplicity.
Parameter z: How does intelligence correlate with the moral worth of a person? This can take on one of a few values:
(-1) Negatively
(0) Not at all
(1) Positively
(i) The moral worth of a person is dependent on their actions or beliefs, and intelligence only provides bounds on their culpability or merit.
FD4280
5mo ago
Picked up Wolfe’s A Man in Full again after 15+ years, with a lot more cultural knowledge and stronger English. A hundred pages in. It’s phenomenal.
FD4280
5mo ago
My first thought was a difference in educational attainment rates between the countries, but according to Wiki, this difference is tiny.
FD4280
6mo ago
No, from a hard major perspective, a B+ average sounds like severe grade inflation rather than the reverse.
FD4280
6mo ago
Academic standards vanished with the Covid response - at least in the US - and have not recovered since. If I have to be treated by an otherwise unknown doctor, a top criterion would be completion of medical training by 2019. I suspect that this outweighs the racial preferences given, though the effect is probably cumulative.
Except the alleged Pupienus was weeks before the debate.
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