Things mimicking other things - <AUTHOR> http://csvoss.mit.edu/thingsmimickingotherthings/

<comment><USER2> Cool info to see interrelated like this, but the constantly shifting arrangement makes it really hard to make any kind of sense out of it, if there are any higher-level patterns to see.

Having stuff move is fine, but if it must, it should move in relation to input from the user - enlarging objects related to the selected one, or making the relation lines more rigidly spaced, that kind of thing. Different shapes for animals and habitats or objects would be good too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Things that remember us other things would be a better description probably. This is pretty random sometimes and can lead scholars to mistakes. To say that Haliotis mimick a rock because iridiscence is like to say that people pretend to be beans because they have kidneys. Iridiscence in living Haliotis is always hidden. This is not a correct example of camouflage in nature.

Moth-mimicking fly is also an incorrect example. They are very different animals that can not be confused with moths because they are minute. As a lot of minute insects they have long hairs in their microscopic wings for a physical reason: to be able to fly/float. Not camouflage intended here.

"Send us suggestions":

Gravel mimicking plants: entire gravel: Lithops, fracturated gravel: Pleiospilus

Rock mimicking plants: Ariocarpus

Coarse Sand mimicking plants: Titanopsis

And the cetaceans that mimick white sharks are also very cool. Very impressive if you are next to them. See Kogia.

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't get me wrong, this is kinda fun. But... I don't think a Blue Moropho butterfly is mimicking a chunk of bismuth.

</comment><comment><USER5> Kind of cool. I imagine the author is around here somewhere - have you seen cola.js? [[http://marvl.infotech.monash.edu/webcola/](http://marvl.infotech.monash.edu/webcola/)]

[http://marvl.infotech.monash.edu/webcola/examples/browsemovi...](http://marvl.infotech.monash.edu/webcola/examples/browsemovies.html) [http://marvl.infotech.monash.edu/webcola/examples/sucrosebre...](http://marvl.infotech.monash.edu/webcola/examples/sucrosebreakdown.html)

interesting to think of what kind of interfaces can be created out of stuff like this.

<comment><USER6> Holy cow, that is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the purpose of the springy graph layout?

</comment><comment><USER8> I would have liked to see "source" link to more information rather than a link to the photo. And the snapping-back amorphous blob is pretty annoying, I keep wanting to make the whole thing flat with no crossed lines :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool, but some of these are a bit of a stretch. I don't think a slug is actually mimicking a cow.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow, what a crappy interface. Close.

<comment><USER10> Judging by the lack of support for this post, I'll have to stand by my comment. The interface poorly displays a great amount of information; the creators need to play more videogames to understand why.

We see the limits of an upvote/downvote system. My comment is correct, but costs me "points" to say so because I didn't type three paragraphs justifying the obvious.

<comment><USER11> You were downvoted for two reasons. One, it's not civil. Two, it does not contribute anything to any discussion; it's conversational noise. Explaining what you mean is not "justifying the obvious". It's starting a conversation.

<comment><USER10> True, I'm being cranky. Genuine feedback usually looks pretty cranky, I figure. Most people will close things that aren't immediately understandable.

But you see the problem in the other comments as well: it's "cool". Which, in the real world, usually translates to "unusable".

<comment><USER7> The author of the website isn't reading HN comments for feedback. Your feedback is better placed elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> might want to space these csvoss submissions out a bit</comment>


Watch an AI Learn How to Play Super Mario World - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/gizmodo/posts/10154186923833967 <comment><USER2> lol keeps running into first 2 things and dyin', artificial idiot? :P fun experiment tho lol</comment>


Aadhaar: India top court upholds world's largest biometric scheme - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44777787 <comment><AUTHOR> It's sad that the poor, who have faced the brunt of this scheme and have died or starved because of exclusion through this ill conceived and ill executed scheme, have been excluded once again by the majority verdict of the top court. Those who are digitally illiterate have also suffered because of fraud (made easier by the linkage of this identifier with many other things). Fortunately, some provisions such as linkage with bank accounts and telephone numbers have been struck down.

The court said: 'For the exclusion of a "minimal" three per cent, 97 per cent cannot be denied the benefits of Aadhaar'

Unfortunately, Aadhaar has done nothing but make life more difficult to the already excluded and ignored in the society. Except for one judge who wrote a scathing dissenting opinion on this, the rest have sided with the government instead of siding with the people.

Additionally, the majority upheld the linkage of Aadhaar with PAN (the tax identification number), thus indirectly making Aadhaar mandatory for almost everyone in the country. Surprisingly, it struck down linkage with bank accounts saying that the PMLA concerns were not proportionate.

My view is that the judgements were biased (didn't value the facts presented by the petitioners), twisted and also illogical.

One can only hope that this is not the end of the road, and that citizen's rights get another chance.</comment>


Show HN: For Artists and their customers - <AUTHOR> https://artgig.in/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my first web app. I would love to get your feedback on this.</comment>


Why It's Harder Than Ever for Religions to Con Their Followers: The Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.alternet.org/print/belief/why-its-harder-ever-religions-con-their-followers <comment><USER2> I think, in general, the internet makes it harder to con people who have the savvy to seek after any sort of informational truth - not just facts relating to various religious people.

Of course, the internet brings new sorts of cons - think phishing and various malware schemes that could actually be used by various people to increase followers.

</comment><comment> art-of-code The website [http://controversyextraordinary.blogspot.com](http://controversyextraordinary.blogspot.com) is one of the more intelligent site that keeps both atheists and so-called religions on their heels.</comment>


Who Uses Forth? - <AUTHOR> https://www.forth.com/resources/who-uses-forth/ <comment><USER2> I don't use Forth, but I do use dc on the Mac/Unix command line, which is also RPN.

I believe Forth was originally used by astronomers more than anyone else, but for that use I suspect lua has made inroads.

<comment><USER2> As far as astronomy goes, it appears that lua is not much of a player

[https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/10513/what- are...](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/10513/what-are-the-most- popular-computer-programming-languages-in-observational-astron)</comment></comment>


Shweeb: Monorail Technology - <AUTHOR> http://shweeb.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Google just invested $1M in this New Zealand company.

</comment><comment><USER2> I would rather see real bike paths, elevated. (It might be even cheaper to put a ~3 lane surface and guardrails atop the 'monorail', allowing BYO-bikes, instead of hanging these plexiglass-pedaling-coffins below.)</comment>


Face value - Take two - Michael Dell - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11290840&subjectID=348909&fsrc=nwl <comment><USER2> yup, big changes: create a company blog, mimic your competitors.</comment>


Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-for-the-highly-intelligent/ <comment><USER3> I went through a battery of IQ tests as a kid and got a _high_ score (139). But that was when I was seven years old. I'm 30 now, have a master's degree (which was pretty pointless) and make 25 bucks an hour as a temp (more money than I've ever made in my life). I think my life and prospects have dimmed because I haven't been able to get over the anxiety and the depression that impact me every day. Interviewed for jobs for 14 months and didn't get a single offer. Haven't had a girlfriend in 3 years, lazy as shit, can't even look at myself in the mirror. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is IQ is bullshit, and discipline, social skills, and connections are priceless.

But we grew up in the world told we could do anything we wanted! I think it's that sort of expectation that is screwing with us (at least those of us that didn't become comfy SWEs).

<comment><USER4> This may seem like an insensitive question and I don't mean it in that way but why can't you "think your way out of those problems". For example when I noticed myself being quiet as a teen I applied for a job in a shop to shore up my social skills. I had the keen awareness that ultimately no one cares about me having depression and only me alone can make efforts to treat it. How did your analysis compare?

<comment><USER5> That's usually how smart people get depressed in the first place, by thinking too much. You realize that there's no point to anything you do. You will die. Humanity will die. The universe will die.

<comment><USER6> This is why people have religion. Regardless of your personal views on the fact, it's a darn good way to avoid getting depressed by this sort of nihilism. You believe the universe will go on; you'll see your family one day and spend eternity in paradise. You may think it's BS, but have to admit it doesn't really matter for most people, it still does the job.

<comment><USER7> Another way to deal with nihilism is to embrace it. Once you accept that nothing matters, you can stop beating yourself up for mistakes and failures. You can strip the urgency from your goals. It allows you to proceed with outcome independence. This needs to be paired with some form of motivation too, but I think that's more up to the individual.

<comment><USER6> > strip the urgency from your goals

Exactly. I personally know people who have become despondent and given up on life. Maybe a few people will take advantage of total freedom to learn and do, but if we're being honest here, most will watch net flicks and eat potato chips. It is still a net positive for _most_ people.

<comment><USER8> This is me, up to certain a point. I workout regularly, get slowly better at my job, participate in social activities. Just focus on enjoying life and I do. Still, it's all utterly meaningless. Funny thing is, I'm quit sure that the lack of meaning is holding me back. Holding me back in the sense that my satisfaction with life and success within it could be better with the feeling of meaning in life.

There are people who proclaim that death gives everything meaning. Nonsense, death neither gives nor takes meaning, it's as meaningless as eternal life. I'm an atheist to every religion I've ever encountered and couldn't imagine the existence of a god providing meaning, either. (I actually perceive that idea, meaning by higher power, to be even more absurd).

I have the believe though, that the question for meaning is a side effect of having a modern life. Did ancient tribes people think about meaning or did they simply hunt, socialize and view the world as connected in everything (the natural view of the world, as children have it) and never ever even thing about the concept of meaning of life? There are still somewhat "natural" living tribes out there, did someone ask them that question? I'm really curious about their reaction and answer.

Really, to me it seems, that the answer to the question about the meaning of life is to never ask it in the first place.

<comment><USER7> If there is an answer, it is that you get to define your own meaning.

<comment><USER8> I read that often, also in this thread. But it isn't working for me. Meaning is not a rational concept, I guess it is a feeling. I say guess, because I've never experienced it. I only know, that the lack of meaning is a feeling.

One day, I might stumble into a life where everything clicks together and the lack of meaning withers away. But that's not going to be a rational decision. "I conclude that this way of life is meaningful. 5 minutes later, I feel meaningful". Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ugh, this study selected its "superior iq" group by surveying Mensa members. Study ([https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028961...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616303324#!)) makes no mention of this selection bias, though even the _article_ does.

<comment><USER10> any sampling method is 'biased', thats why its a 'sample'

<comment><USER11> This study not only selected for people who go out of their way to join a society based on high IQ, it also selected for people who open & complete email surveys.

Yes, many practical sampling methods are biased, but it is not difficult for me to imagine that any result here is caused entirely by these biases.

<comment><USER10> i agree with your criticism in general -- actually it applies to virtually _all_ psychological and medical studies.

but if you think the physical disabilities are better explained by something else to do with this population sample than their iq, you could very clearly publish this theory

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > It turns out that the people who join Mensa and attend meetings are, on > average, not successful titans of industry. They are instead – and I say > this with great affection – huge losers. I was making $735 per month and I > was like frickin' Goldfinger in this crowd. We had a guy who was some sort > of poet who hoped to one day start "writing some of them down." We had > people who were literally too smart to hold a job. The rest of the group > dressed too much like street people to ever get past security for a job > interview. And everyone was always available for meetings on weekend nights.

[https://woodrow.typepad.com/the_ponderings_of_woodrow/2006/1...](https://woodrow.typepad.com/the_ponderings_of_woodrow/2006/11/scott_adams_on_.html)

<comment><USER13> So, I'm fairly sure I'm reasonably smart, and I am reasonably successful at life.

But I am somewhat hesitant to take an actual proper IQ test. Partly because I'm afraid I won't get a "good" score (given my expectations) and partly because I'm worried I'll let my score (whatever it is) distract me from actually achieving more things in life.

<comment><USER14> The highest score obtainable on an IQ test is achieved by realising it's complete nonsense to project the entirety of human intelligence onto a one dimensional value, and refusing to waste time on it.

<comment><USER15> no, the iq test is used by some groups as a diagnostic to rank order large groups of people for research and other purposes.

IQ is itself a basically fluid intelligence - how quickly you learn something compared to the average. In jobs were problems are novel this is an indicator of success. In jobs where tasks are repetitive, it is not an indicator of success.

Overall, it one of the strongest if not the strongest statistically backed concept in modern psychology, so if you don't believe IQ means something you should also dismiss all of psychology as unscientific nonsense.

<comment><USER14> IQ is a model. Models never perfectly match the thing they are modelling. In the case of IQ people seem to have forgotten whatever it was that they were trying to model in the first place and it has been promoted way beyond its station to the very definition of intelligence. The result of this is organisations such as Mensa.

To me, _intelligence_ means one's capability to contribute to human endeavour, whether it be in mathematics, music, art, writing, or anything else that you can apply your mind to.

For example, most people agree that Mozart was a very intelligent individual by virtue of his contributions to music.

Sure, IQ means _something_ , it's just that the thing it means is not intelligence. It doesn't capture the amazing breadth of human capability, and intelligence is not an objective measurable property.

<comment><USER16> I agree with your contempt for IQ. On this matter:

> In the case of IQ people seem to have forgotten whatever it was that they > were trying to model in the first place

IQ was originally designed to determine mental development issues, i.e. sub- intelligence, so that those people could be helped. This is flagged by scores below 80. Ranking intelligence by scores above 80 is bunk. Nassim Taleb has written well on this subject [1], if you are interested.

[1] [https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a- pseudoscientific-...](https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a- pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39)

<comment><USER17> ...so he's claiming people conducting statistical analysis for IQ tests don't account for people dying or suffering traumatic brain injury?

<comment><USER13> No. Taleb is saying that IQ is only useful for detecting mental deficiencies. He claims that the while having a low IQ is generally predictive of low life success (income, etc.) having a high IQ is not very predictive of having high life success.

As others have pointed out, the same can be said of height and success in professional basketball. If you come across a short person, you can practically guarantee they cannot make it in the NBA (i.e. height is a strong predictor). For someone who is very tall, You can't really know from that whether they are a successful pro basketball player (i.e. it is not a strong predictor).

This issue here, in both height and IQ, is that people who have more of some capacity have more options. Someone who is smart enough to be a brain surgeon still has the option to be a dish washer. Someone who is only smart enough to be a dish washer does not have the option to be a brain surgeon.

<comment><USER16> I understand the point you're making but you risk giving IQ credibility by comparing it to height. Height is a real, physical uni-dimensional measure that has a Gaussian distribution. IQ is a made-up measure that pretends to fit a multi-dimensional, non-physical 'thing' (intelligence) that we have a lot of trouble actually defining, onto a uni-dimensional scale with a modeled Gaussian distribution. It's a fraud. Or at least, in this grossly extended use it became a fraud. Testing people for falling _below_ a certain threshold on a test was an ok diagnostic for mental deficiency. But even there it should have just been one tool among many, not a final arbiter of "general intelligence".

<comment><USER13> > IQ is a made-up measure that pretends to fit a multi-dimensional, non- > physical 'thing' (intelligence) that we have a lot of trouble actually > defining, onto a uni-dimensional scale with a modeled Gaussian distribution.

I think one of the points of intelligence research is that it seems to confirm intelligence (whatever it is) is largely a unified by a single dimension, even when that wasn't necessarily what was expected by the researchers.

> It's a fraud. Or at least, in this grossly extended use it became a fraud.

Hardly. IQ testing has been vigorously resisted for decades, and yet continues because of it's utility.

But if you're going to take that stance, let me ask you: are you willing to throw out the rest of the social sciences? Because that's the only logical result. IQ research is the gold standard of the social sciences. IQ is fraudulent, then so is the rest.

> Testing people for falling below a certain threshold on a test was an ok > diagnostic for mental deficiency.

It is also useful at the higher end. Not all high IQ people are successfully working in complex jobs, but I expect all people who are successfully working in complex jobs are high IQ.

<comment><USER16> > But if you're going to take that stance, let me ask you: are you willing to > throw out the rest of the social sciences? Because that's the only logical > result. IQ research is the gold standard of the social sciences. IQ is > fraudulent, then so is the rest.

No, the 'logical result' is throwing out psychology, which I'm more than happy to do. Would also throw out 90% of economics. Happy to keep descriptive sociology, descriptive anthropology, descriptive human geography, descriptive linguistics, etc.

<comment><USER13> The parts you are keeping from sociology, anthropology, etc. aren't really what I would call science.

I mean yes, it is knowledge about our world, and useful knowledge at that, but it really doesn't fit into a Baconian framework.

I will admit that I'm bearish overall on the social sciences. In science you want to be able to make statements that are both a) general, and b) predictive. In the social sciences, generally what is predictive is not general (i.e. "market research") and what is general is usually not in fact predictive (i.e. "hogwash").

I guess I'm just curious why you think IQ is bunk. IQ researchers, perhaps more than any other discipline, have had to endure a considerable degree of scrutiny. Many objections have been raised, and over the decades they've put a lot of work into empirically addressing those objections.

<comment><USER16> > I guess I'm just curious why you think IQ is bunk.

I could not put it better or more rigorously than Nassim Taleb, so if you are curious I really do recommend a good read of the piece I linked above (and the technical paper he links at the top of that piece).

<comment><USER13> > and the technical paper he links at the top of that piece

I haven't read that yet because the hosting entity wanted to download my google contacts for the privilege of reading it. How despicable.

<comment><USER16> Agree about the obnoxiousness of academia.edu. I used the 'download with email' option with a throwaway email account from mailinator.

<comment><USER13> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Edit: Joining Mensa is associated with mental and physical disorders.

<comment><USER19> I was skimming for a response like this... in my head it was more like

"People who join Mensa are more likely to be part of socio-economic groups that self select to have doctors diagnose physical and mental issues no matter how minor"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Using Mensa members as the study group seems fatally flawed.

Mensa seems to attract people who define themselves by their intelligence, instead of by their success. It wouldn't surprise me that they would be more anxious and depressed than average.

Higher rates of allergies could be explained by socioeconomic, racial and cultural biases in those who gravitate towards Mensa.

<comment><USER21> I am a recruiting manager for a start-up.

I remember we received an application from a person whose resume promiscuously explained that he was a Mensa members, "an association for superior IQ people".

Their resume overall was not bad (not top-notch either for the position), but the mention alone of Mensa drove me away from ever wanting to work with such kind of persons that look so full of themselves.

I finally declined to interview this person. The question "Is it discrimination?" was always popping into my mind and I felt uneasy about it for about a week or so.

<comment><USER22> It is legal to discriminate on IQ as long as you apply it to everyone equally.

[https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-court-ruled-you-can-be- too-...](https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-court-ruled-you-can-be-too-smart-to- be-a-cop/5420630)

<comment><USER19> Years ago I saw versions of this kind of test at retailers where one of the going concerns is that people above a certain level of intelligence are eliminated not because they are likely to steal but because if they decided to steal from the company they would do so in a way that might not be as easily detected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have managed many people in industries that attract low IQ (70-90) workers. I also know a lot of high IQ people since I went to a gifted high school.

I'm not a psychiatrist, but I believe the low IQ have WAY higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental disorders, but almost none of them are diagnosed. Their lives run without much thought or planning so they often end up in very stressful situations. Sometimes they don't even realize that something is wrong or not normal. Or even if they do manage to figure that out, they cannot describe what they are feeling or communicate effectively which can be stressful in itself.

I still think high IQ people have mild to moderately higher rates of mental disorders than normal IQ people, but with low IQ I think it's massively higher.

<comment><USER24> If one does not realize it and thinks it's normal, is that better or worse? Maybe working a deadend job your whole life is easier when you don't realize there's better stuff out there even for you.

"Ignorance is bliss" comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've had this little pet theory about high achievers and depression for some time. It boils down to:

They apply the same thinking patterns that make them excel at work (= very controlled environments with binary answers, requiring perfectionism and attention to detail - e.g. programming, maths, fact-checking, engineering, arts) to every area in their far less binary lives.

If you have very high standards at work you likely apply very high standards to yourself. How you view yourself is frequently how you view others, which can be destructive for relationships.

If your job is searching for bugs 8h a day you likely develop the thinking pattern to take even the smallest issue very seriously.

<comment><USER26> I agree, but I think sneaking the word "high achievers" into the conversation is part of the problem.

"High achievers" shouldn't be people who scored well on tests (IQ tests, the SATs, etc.)

They should be people who _achieved_ things in real life! For example, building something people use (e.g. not "playing house" for investors), reforming our legal system or government, excelling at sports, music, etc.

There's a certain part of the population that I'm familiar with where achievement means "performs well on metrics that somebody else designed".

But I also think there is a large part of the population who "calls bullshit" on that value system. And I would call that "common sense" more than anti- intellectualism.

The former kind of "achiever" lacks agency in the world, and that's probably a major reason why they're depressed (speaking from past experience). It's human nature to be depressed when you're being judged and have to jump through hoops set up by others. It's also natural to be depressed if everyone's telling you that you achieved something, but yet nothing in your life is actually better.

I guess it goes back to the comment about passing the IQ test but failing the intelligence test ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have a theory about high IQ and anxiety:

The more intelligent and creative a person, the more sensitive to negative emotion they're going to be, simply because their subconscious mind will see more connections between their negative emotions and the things, people and places the person has, sees or frequents. In other words, they'll naturally realize the world is more inhospitable than the average intellect, so their subconscious will have more negative data points to track. When something bad happens, they'll need to work harder to convince their subconscious that it won't happen again.

Anxiety itself is therefore because the subconscious currently sees familiar patterns it saw before, during painful experiences, and it throws out feelings of anxiety to slow down the conscious mind to force caution, as if the person is looking at a minefield and may not know it.

Edit: And the key to living anxiety-free, at least for my own personal experience, is understanding every negative emotion in my past, why it happened (whether my fault or not), how I reacted, and how I would react today In a way that would avoid the same terrible outcome. Usually it requires forgiveness, either for something someone did to me or to forgive myself because I was ignorant but no longer am and most importantly I/my subconscious knows if my forgiveness is genuine, namely when I'm ready to sympathize with someone else in the same situation. It's incredibly liberating.

<comment><USER28> I would guess it has something to do with not experiencing certain kinds of difficulty and the reactions that come with it until a development window has passed. Everyone expects good things from you and congratulates you for achieving them without any effort during the years you are supposed to be learning about things like difficulty and success and failure and life doesn't ramp up in difficulty until well after some things are fairly set. Afterwords when things go beyond "effortless" difficulty you start to get negative feedback from people around you and yourself and this is a novel experience outside of the period where negative novel experiences are internalized as normal.

(Related: fairy tales and scary stories told to young children help them cope with a dangerous and difficult world, "too scary for kids" attitudes build adults who have trouble with the real world.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> When I was involved with The TAG Project, this was common knowledge in gifted circles online. This is not limited to Mensa at all. Some fairly well-known names in the gifted community referred to issues like OCD and ADHD as "co- morbidities" for lack of a better word.

The higher the IQ, the more likely there are to be other issues and the more likely they are to be severe.

Similarly, Ashkenazi Jews win some inordinately high number of Nobel Prizes and happen to be a population with a high risk for genetic disorders, some of which have been proven to have impact on cognition.

[https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Jews-constitute-20-of-all- Nobel...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Jews-constitute-20-of-all-Nobel- laureates-despite-being-0-19-of-the-worlds-population-What-specific- sociocultural-elements-are-the-root-cause-of-this-phenomenon)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligenc...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence)

<comment><USER30> > some of which have been proven to have impact on cognition.

No, they haven't been. There are (still) no confirmed links between Tay-Sachs etc and intelligence. (The most recent study on the genetics of Jewish intelligence, in fact, suggests that any genetic advantage is purely on common variants present in non-Jewish Caucasians as well.) For that matter, there are zero confirmed genetic mutations, common or rare, which increase intelligence by even a few points, and this is despite sample sizes now approaching millions and use of exome sequencing to hunt for rare variants in extremely intelligent cohorts.

<comment><USER29> If they are known to cause retardation, then they are known to _have impact on cognition._ That statement was intentionally framed as neutrally as possible.

Are you telling me that brain differences can only ever lower IQ and never, ever raise it (or, more accurately, raise the potential ceiling -- because nutrition and a million other things will impact this)? There is a lot of research out that says, basically, "genius" is, by its very nature, a brain that thinks _differently_ from the norm. It isn't simply "more" of something. It is _different_ and this is often a two-edged sword.

I'm currently failing to find the source I know I saw not terribly long ago linking some genetic disorder to higher IQs and to altered brain stuff of some sort. I don't have the time to keep digging for it.

But, here's a study of people with CF -- a common genetic disorder in the Jewish community -- that says, in essence "Lower IQ scores in this population can be linked to negative health impacts and other negative factors," yet seems to list the average IQ for this group of 89 very, very, deathly ill patients as 102.5. Which sort of implies to me that if they weren't basically dying from their disorder, they would be far above average intelligence.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15173473](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15173473)

<comment><USER30> > If they are known to cause retardation, then they are known to have impact > on cognition. That statement was intentionally framed as neutrally as > possible.

And there is a difference between an allele present in the majority of the population which lowers the IQ and one which is present in a minority and raises IQ. A Mendelian mutation in <1% of the population which lowers your IQ by 10 points is not the same thing as a mutation which raises your IQ by 10 points. The former certainly do exist. The latter currently do not.

> I'm currently failing to find the source I know I saw not terribly long ago > linking some genetic disorder to higher IQs and to altered brain stuff of > some sort. I don't have the time to keep digging for it.

I'll give you a hint, you won't find it, and if you do, it'll be a candidate- gene paper from the '00s where the p-values are just barely south of 0.05, not remotely close to genome-wide statistical-significance, and has never been validated since _even in the exome GWASes which should have found it_.

> But, here's a study of people with CF -- a common genetic disorder in the > Jewish community -- that says, in essence "Lower IQ scores in this > population can be linked to negative health impacts and other negative > factors," yet seems to list the average IQ for this group of 89 very, very, > deathly ill patients as 102.5. Which sort of implies to me that if they > weren't basically dying from their disorder, they would be far above average > intelligence.

You know who else has above average intelligence? Ashkenazi Jews. Including the ones without CF. And it's higher than 102.5.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This study shows that being in Mensa is associated with mental and physical disorders - based on self-reporting.

I appreciate the irony of this study having been done by people who were being very very dumb.

</comment><comment><USER32> Saw an interesting talk on youtube about high IQ and underachievement, shame it is in Belgian dutch ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFCLdJVoHVg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFCLdJVoHVg)).

She states that an high IQ is most likely going to be an impediment to a succesful career rather than an advantage if unmanaged, because education is set up for the average kid. She makes an interesting car analogy: it doesn't matter whether you are too long or too short, if you deviate too much from the average length your seating is going to suck. Likewise, high IQ kids placed in the average education environment are going to get bored quickly, which if not overcome compounds over the years resulting in unsatisfying academic achievement.

Another interesting analogy she makes is regarding athletes. When a recruiter finds a kid with high athletic potential, they get special training to transform that talent into superior skill. But children with a high IQ people are stuck in the school system designed for the average IQ kid, because in education they tend to think that "everything is so easy for them" instead of "they require special attention to let that talent bloom".

So she claims that a high IQ warrants special attention to turn it into an advantage, otherwise there is an considarable risk of an unsuccesful life, which i personally can attest to.

I was tested with an IQ of 140, almost dropped out of college, still managed to finish it at the age of 30, way too late. And while I have a decent job, chances of promotion are low because employers tend prefer the candidates who did finish their education in the avarage timespan. So now I am stuck in a dead-end and that is very frustrating because I know I can do better than most, and have gained the required displicine but get passed over because in my professional area they prefer the kids who did everything the way society set it up for them. My parents where even told that I needed special attention, but they couldn't afford it, so now I have to deal with it. Sucks but thats life for me I guess.

<comment> yoz-y I think it is quite hard to separate the brats from the more intelligent kids as from what I heard the "symptoms" are basically the same. I also think that there is a big problem with special education since the differences tend to either taper off or increase, and you can not really know if this is thanks to the child or the program they are following.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Isn't it a likely explanation that society is generally structured (consciously and unconsciously) for the average person and therefore the further you get away from the average, the less ability to have to connect with the broad group/culture identity, ergo leading to isolation and thus more social and psychological issues?

For example - imagine that you have an IQ of 150 in a society where the average is 100. If suddenly everyone else's IQ jumped 50 points, the society would then change to reflect this new increase in intelligence - jobs, social roles, and other aspects of culture would be different than those from the 100 IQ culture.

<comment><USER34> > If suddenly everyone else's IQ jumped 50 points, the society would then > change to reflect this new increase in intelligence...

Nah, pretty sure you'd see a complete collapse of civilization if that were to happen.

<comment><USER33> Well, that's sort of my point. The current civilization is built upon the average person's intelligence. If suddenly everyone became as intelligent as a 5-year old, current civilization would probably collapse. Ditto if everyone became drastically smarter. The interesting part, however, is what would come next.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I always thought that high IQ is correlated with high anxiety, because the smarter a person is, the better he can imagine all possible things to go wrong. On the other end of spectrum are people with IQ comparable to children, who presumably don't worry about too many things - ignorance is bliss.

<comment><USER36> High IQ is also associated with higher executive function. This means higher IQ people should be better able to control those worries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Anecdote:

My Dad was a MENSA member for a couple of years, but he was mostly taking the piss - he put down his "special interest" as "carved Dravidian lapis lazuli", which is not as far as I know a thing. He was an RAF V-bomber captain and never as far as I could see suffered from depression or other mental health issues (which would have affected his security clearance) - much the reverse.

Edit: The lapis lazuli thing is (per Google) actually a thing, but in the early 1960s I don't see how my Dad could have come across it, but obviously he did.

I could have joined MENSA (had the IQ) but thought it was all too silly and didn't. I've suffered a lot from depression.

Go figure.

</comment><comment><USER38> Advice to parents: Don't tell your kids their IQ. There are good reasons not to whether it is low or high, plus it doesnt mean that much. My parents offered to tell me my first year of high school after a big science fair win, but I didn't want to know. At the time I think I needed to believe I had the hardware needed to keep chewing what I had bitten off. A few years later, I had the luxury of still feeling like my achievements were born out of patience and passion rather than talent. I didn't finally ask until I was in grad school and knew myself well. Im grateful to have been given that choice.

</comment><comment><USER39> When I was 18 I tested 135 on a FRT based on Raven Matrices. I briefly joined Mensa and what I saw was quite depressing. Dysfunction upon dysfunction and wasted potential. Except for the dysfunction it reminded me too much of myself and I had to quit. This is of course a limited data set so take it with a grain of salt.

I would recommend [http://prometheussociety.org/wp/articles/the- outsiders/](http://prometheussociety.org/wp/articles/the-outsiders/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Even for those with a normal IQ range and properly more so for those with better ability to recognize patterns - the world is a scary place sometimes.

Being able to predict mind games, deception, passive aggressiveness without those at fault will admit to it can make you question your own sanity easily - now what if you had sharpened senses that picked up on these things.

How I see it, the bottom line is this. If you are surrounded by a good and suppprting tribe it can be a gift, but at the other end it can seem like a mean curse.

</comment><comment> a-dub when i was in grade school, i was tested and put into the "gifted and talented" program which was mostly just a one hour session once a week with about eight kids. it was mostly just brain teasers but then they literally spent an entire year explaining and stressing the importance of charisma. they also told us that "this is easy for you now, and you may not have to work hard, but you need to learn how to work hard because one day you'll be taking classes that you can't just breeze through and if you don't know how to study you will fail."

they were right on both counts. many times later in college and in working life i've thought back to these moments.

also, "overexcitability", yup.

<comment><USER41> I was in a similar situation... Though, really didn't get that type of advice, we did spend a year when I was in 3rd grade learning German (of which I've completely forgotten). In some ways it was interesting, in others it sucked. I seem to be very lopsided in both how I learn, and what kinds of things I can handle in abstract and concrete concepts.

I do really well with math, and can carry concepts well from reading... but man, I hate reading fiction, I have way too much trouble remembering names vs. events. For comparison 760 math, 580 verbal for my SAT scores, not bad, just lopsided.

I can relate to the social issues many in this discussion have eluded to though. Depression, anxiety, OCD and work really hard to not let myself fall into my own traps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I hate when IQ comes up on Hacker News because it's a topic that everyone feels like they have something to contribute on, and there's so many misconceptions floating around it's hard to know what's "orthodox" so to speak.

Does anyone have a good reference about what the current, academic general understanding with regard to intelligence is? Are there any surveys of practicing psychologists, etc?

The best I've found is the "Intelligence Knowns and Unknowns"[0] task force report published by the American Psychological Association in 1995, but I'm not aware of any such report since then.

My takeaways from that report, are that IQ does capture the concept of "intelligence" that most people understand exists, that the tests aren't biased or flawed anymore, that IQ can't really be changed with any known interventions, and that it correlates well with success in school, jobs, and life.

I'd love to know if that's still the academic consensus. You'd never know from these threads where people chime in with their own anecdotes _what 's_ real.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unkno...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unknowns)

<comment><USER43> Those are still accurate. There's a short book by Stuart Ritchie called "Intelligence: All That Matters" that is a good summary of contemporary psychological understanding of IQ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The old trope is that there is a "fine line between genius and insanity". I was testing with above average IQ at a young age (6th grade, 11yrs old) of 160 or in that range many times since. But I have noticed that many of my family members, friends, associates and coworkers seem to look at my behavior with skew towards that bias. In my view, I think this idea that genius and insanity or abnormal behavior has been so ingrained in peoples minds that when they meet someone with elevated IQ they look for indicators to support their bias (bias confirmation). I think I am no weirder than other people, I know several people who clearly do not have elevated IQ's and they seem to "get away with" various strange behaviors but because they are "normal" it goes without notice. In my experience, once you are labeled with the big brain you come under more scrutiny than norms. Also, I don't think Mensa is a good sample, my experience is that people who seek the big brain recognition through things like Mensa may also have personality traits that trend towards those types of disorders. A true double blind study would need to be peer reviewed before I would lend any credence to this hypothesis.

</comment><comment><USER45> As a "gifted child" of the 80's, this is obvious to anyone who was identified as one or had friends who were. Depression, OCD, anxiety, etc. are all very common in that crowd.

</comment><comment><USER46> I scored 166 when they gave us an IQ test in the 8th grade. Two years later I gave myself an IQ test from a book in the local library, and I scored 149. Following that trend line, my IQ is now approximately minus 300, but the headline gives me some hope that my various disorders have slowed my rate of IQ decline.

</comment><comment><USER47> The kind of people that join a club to prove they are high IQ are likely insecure and feel the need to peacock. No wonder there's a higher incidence.

Most high IQ people I know think Mensa is stupid and just want to have normal lives and hate talking about intelligence and think it's irrelevant and a cringe-worthy topic.

<comment><USER48> And yet here we are, on HN, keep coming back to talk about IQ.

<comment><USER47> Well regression to the mean is a thing. Even on Hacker News.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> " example, people preoccupied with intellectual pursuits may spend less time than the average person on physical exercise and social interaction"

...or Mensa members are more interested in analyzing themselves as a whole, and will seek diagnosis more often than the general population.

</comment><comment><USER50> Sampling the set of Mensa members is not the same as sampling "superior IQs".

digression: My personal preference is to call IQ a testing quotient and not intelligence quotient--it's more specific and less qualitative, for "intelligence" is overloaded.

</comment><comment><USER51> Late Dr. Oliver Sacks, a famous neurologist, became a neurologist because his brother had schizophrenia. Many of his books contains cases of people with extraordinary abilities, but with mental disorders.

</comment><comment><USER52> "Mensa membership associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests" would be both a more accurate description of the results, as well as perhaps a more believable correlation.

</comment><comment><USER53> Perhaps people with superior IQs think and stress a lot.

I recently came across the work of Dr. Robert Sapolsky and his research highlights the long term effects of chronic stress.

It is possible that higher IQs lead to a lot of thinking and stressing out.

I can safely consider myself in the above average IQ bracket and I tend to stress a lot about things as obscure as the world's oceans, climate, politics, science, the Arctic ice, etc.

My brother is less inclined academically, is of a very easy going nature and always seems to be happy, with the exception being during difficult times in his business.

</comment><comment><USER54> Is it possible that the study shows that high IQ people who bother to join a "high IQ society" tend towards higher mental and physical disorders, rather than high IQ people in general?

</comment><comment><USER55> This paper made some news before and was also debunked back then. Note that (2017) should be added.

Here is a quote from Neuroskeptic:

"The 'national average' data in the mood disorders category, for instance, are taken from the NCS-R survey (data collected 2001-2003.) The NCS-R survey did not ask people whether they'd been diagnosed with a mood disorder. Instead, trained interviewers asked participants a series of questions about their mood, emotions, sleep, and other symptoms, and made diagnoses based on strict criteria.

Doctors in the real world don't diagnose depression the NCS-R way, so we can't compare the NCS-R estimate of mood disorder prevalence to the estimate of diagnosed prevalence from Karpinski et al.'s survey. It's comparing Malus and Citrus.

Secondly, I have concerns about the sample. This wasn't a study of high-IQ people. It was a study of Mensans, a self-selected subgroup of high-IQ people. 6.5 million Americans fall in the top 2% of IQ, and only 55,000 of them are members of American Mensa.

In other words, Mensans make up about 0.8% of high-IQs, and Karpinski et al. have data from less than 10% of Mensans, so the sample is seriously unrepresentative."

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2017/10/22/in...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2017/10/22/intelligence- risk-illness/#.XaU5MowxVvI)

</comment><comment><USER56> It's unclear to me that they've controlled for "people who join Mensa."

To be clear, I'm not throwing shade, and I was a member for awhile before I got sick of paying dues, getting spammed, and not going to meetings. They're a fine organization, spam aside.

But in general, people who join clubs based on personal qualities do so because they put some level of value and identity in that quality. _Some_ people who tend that way do so because they have an emotional hole to fill, and _some_ people who tend that way do so because it's their dominant positive quality (in their own perception).

So, neither of those speak to Mensa's core message of joining so you have people as smart as you to converse with. But both of those suggest a higher potential for Mensa members in general to have life issues they're compensating for by joining intelligence clubs.

I do believe the basic trend that very smart people have more mental disorders, at least. I think our knowledge of twice-exceptional people has grown a lot over time, and I think there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that quirks come with the intelligence territory. Get quirky enough and a quirk is a diagnosis. But I'm not convinced that particular skew starts at the 95% percentile.

</comment><comment><USER57> Could this be caused by people with higher IQ being more honest and knowledgeable about things?

The average person has undiagnosed issues. They may have a mood disorder, but either deny that they have something wrong with them or have never bothered to have it checked out?

Compared to people who care enough to officially test their IQ. I argue that more people in a group like Mensa are more aware of their diagnosis' than the average person.

</comment><comment><USER58> While this is a neat surface level study, there's a few issues I see with it.

>No separation of Full Intellectual Assessment or another re-test, simply self reporting the averaged figure. We lack resolution in results.(ex: were people with high verbal IQ more prone to schizophrenia?)

>Subjects were those concerned with their own mental status. All respondents were MENSA members. While I could test into MENSA, I simply don't care. I have a friend who is in MENSA, they are quite proud of this over dinner conversation, but they are also quite neurotic. This observation is anecdotal, but I'd think you're going to get more people who live a lot of time "in their heads" in MENSA. I would love to have another control group to compare results over.

>They understand that self reporting is ripe for error. An online survey is difficult to accurately administer, people will misrepresent things about them, especially if they think it is a reflection of their own personal value.

It's neat, but I don't think it's reliable enough to make any declarative statements about a linear progression of IQ and health disorders.

</comment><comment><USER59> There's a quote I have and that is that smart people have a harder time being happy, because they worry too much.

I've never put it to test with others though.

The reasoning is that you see some sort of pattern always and you believe it's the end of the world.

Eg. China, climate change, ...

So you believe you need to earn as much as possible, so your odds for survival are better ( as an example).

Narcissists don't have this problem, as they are focused on themselves.

</comment><comment><USER60> Anecdotally, I know a lot of very smart people and many of them have combinations of anxiety/depression/chronic pain/etc.

</comment><comment><USER61> I think a flaw in this study is looking at people who joined a club for smart people rather than just smart people.

</comment><comment><USER62> There's an interesting if not politically correct theory that

>Jews as a group inherit significantly higher verbal and mathematical intelligence and somewhat lower spatial intelligence than other ethnic groups, on the basis of inherited diseases and the peculiar economic situation of Ashkenazi Jews in the Middle Ages.

as

>During the [...] period, laws barred Ashkenazi Jews from most jobs, including farming and crafts, and forced them into finance, management, and international trade. Wealthy Jews had several more children per family than poor Jews.

I'm half jewish genetically myself and there do seem to be differences between the jewish and non jewish relatives kind of along those lines. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence))

</comment><comment><USER63> So to be clear, this wasn't a study of people with high IQs, it was a study of people who signed up for a high IQ club that wasn't, say, academic research. Sounds like you're looking at people where the biggest thing going for them is not their accomplishments, but their IQ score.

</comment><comment><USER64> Reading the study, it's more like, people whose identity is tied up with being smart, (members of Mensa) spend a lot of time thinking about their mental health and are likely to think that they are not normal and are also like to respond to questionnaires about their mental health.

</comment><comment><USER7> >> This theory holds that, for all of its advantages, being highly intelligent is associated with psychological and physiological "overexcitabilities," or OEs.

On a speculative note, maybe those OEs are a result of maltreatment of some sort (there are many).

</comment><comment><USER65> The study was only done on members of American Mensa, I wonder if there would be any difference across countries.

I'm from a poor European country; in high school (~15 years ago) I measured 156 in a Mensa IQ test, a friend had 168, and a third friend 172. We were top students in the generation, going to programming and math competitions. Definitely not in the popular kids club, but otherwise perfectly normal as far as I can tell. In the couple of Mensa meetings I've been to back then I have not really seen any of the mental or physical disorders considered in the study either.

</comment><comment><USER66> I suspect a form of survivorship bias is contributing to these results.

Less-high-IQ people with the same disorders may never be diagnosed with these sorts of (often subtle & subjective) mood/anxiety/learning/chronic-immune disorders.

Perhaps, even, less-high-IQ people are more likely to literally perish before such diagnoses show up in national averages.

(And that's before considering the filter that many others have already mentioned: that only some, potentially-unrepresentative high-IQ people find the idea of joining MENSA appealing.)

</comment><comment><USER67> IQ is bullshit. Children surrounded by adults who believe that bullshit correlate highly with adults who maybe aren't doing the best job caring - <USER2> possibly nobody is at fault there. IQ is literally another example of the abject failure of psychology as an intellectual discipline. May it one day be rectified because the subject matter is fascinating and obviously deeply important.

Choosing to not let children in your care do IQ tests is correlated with sensible, caring, intelligent adulting. No really. Really.

</comment><comment><USER68> Unsurprised that most of the comments on this post are just people number dropping their IQ and anecdotes about their mental health problems and minimal discussion of the article itself.

<comment><USER69> Not reading the article is somewhat common. Some people come here just to socialize I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Mensa members are an extremely biased sample of high IQ individuals.

</comment><comment><USER71> This article sort-of falls in line with my theories on non-local consciousness. Intelligence could be just a particular manner in which that person's brain is accessing the consciousness dimension, and these mental disorders are just side-effects of this access. For example, I feel that the autistic can be more 'in-tune' with the non-local consciousness, which is why they have (generally) a different thought process. (I have ASD)

</comment><comment><USER72> Look at it like this: If high intelligence didn't come with some pretty serious drawbacks, evolution would have made short work of dumb people long ago.

<comment><USER73> The hilarious (and somewhat scary) introduction to _Idiocracy_ comes to mind:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzbWXgM0ygU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzbWXgM0ygU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> >From a practical standpoint, this research may ultimately lead to insights about how to improve people's psychological and physical well-being. If overexcitabilities turn out to be the mechanism underlying the IQ-health relationship, then interventions aimed at curbing these sometimes maladaptive responses may help people lead happier, healthier lives.

Reading between the lines, in these cooling months, sent a chill up my spine.

</comment><comment><USER75> Reading some of the other comments got me wondering, it seems most people had their IQ test when young, and were told their scores by their parents. I wonder two things, what would happen if they took that test again, would they score similarly now? And what if their parents told them a higher score then they actually did, I can imagine most parents don't want to have the you scored low conversation...

</comment><comment><USER76> They compared it to the national average but they didn't actually give the same survey to people who weren't in Mensa at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER77> Since disorders were self-reported, I wonder if capacity or willingness to understand complex disorders was controlled.

For instance, a low intelligence person might consider autism to be "bad" and avoid considering it, or unable to afford doctors to tell him.

While a high intelligence person would recognize that the autistic spectrum has advantages and disadvantages, and would be more likely to accept it.

</comment><comment><USER78> This article should be more accurately titled "Mensa membership associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests"

</comment><comment><USER79> I think Mensa is not a good frame of reference for intelligent people: You have to actively work towards getting into Mensa, which limits the target group to people who are willing to do that work, pay membership and possibly desire the prestige associated with it. Therefore it is very possible that some people with mental issues use it as a gateway to self-validation.

</comment><comment><USER80> Startups and continually "trying to improve the world" are where my mental health was severely impacted. That can be toxic ...

</comment><comment><USER81> All this study says is that there's a correlation of Mensa membership to a higher likelihood of certain disorders. It does _NOT_ establish any causal links, or even that Mensa membership is representative of the much much larger population of people who can get a 98th percentile score on an IQ test. Perhaps disorders cause people to join Mensa? Who knows.

<comment><USER82> Just because correlation doesn't imply causation doesn't mean you should negate it causation. You need correlation to exist to even have causation so correlation is evidence for causation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> We are living in a more and more defined, secure, safe world ( and part of the world where this is not the case, they are getting there sooner or later ). In defined world, characteristics other than intelligence play a much heavier role and since intelligence doesn't rewarded enough becomes secondary. I hope it's cycle that comes and goes.

</comment><comment><USER84> What's more interesting to me is the fact that people are still sticking to this idea of expressing one's intelligence with one number. Just one. Using IQ as the degree of intelligence is like using one's weight or blood pressure as the degree of healthiness. It may be an important metrics, but only one of million variables.

<comment><USER85> It's not one of a million metrics, it's the best possible summary of all the metrics:

* There is very high correlation between different cognitive tests (people who are good at one test tend to be good at others)

* If you perform factor anaylsis, you can compute a common factor that can be regarded as a summary variable for the correlations between all the different tests.

* This is the g-factor, or the single number produced from IQ tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> As I've gotten older, my desire to be more intelligent has gone down while my desire to be more charismatic has gone up. It seems to me the ability to create and grow the social connections I desire is the key to happiness. With that ability comes to the necessary intelligence(s) to navigate through other parts of life as well.

</comment><comment><USER87> Have a look at this IQ critic: [https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a- pseudoscientific-...](https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a- pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39)

Nassim Taleb has got some very valid points. Forget about IQ, it is not worth the time you focus on it.

</comment><comment><USER88> Highly intelligent people should be pushed to physical exercise and forced to avoid sugary/processed food. I knew one girl with BPD and PhD and those two things helped her tremendously; every time she slipped her state rapidly deteriorated and it was hell for everyone around.

<comment><USER89> Did you mean a PhD, like a doctorate?

And by BPD, do you mean Bipolor, or Borderline personality Disorder?

<comment><USER88> PhD = doctorate, BPD = borderline according to older DSM-IV. PhD was in cognitive neurosciences, likely with silent goal for her to figure out what was wrong with her.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Be careful gleaning anything with email surveys like one. There could be confounders. E.g.

High IQ -> More $ -> More likely to see Dr for diagnosis

I didn't read the whole thing though--did anyone w/ the time decide to do a deep dive on the study and see how they controlled?

</comment><comment><USER91> If the study is based on a comparisons between mensans and the general population, I can think of confounding factors that should make it impossible to draw these conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER92> the thing about an IQ is that all it measures is the ability to take an IQ test, and ability to take an IQ test is thought to correlate with some sort of thing called intelligence, but nobody is quite sure how it relates to intelligence, what intelligence even is, or if intelligence is a single thing.

Which is why the vast majority of the people who talk about IQ tests and IQ scores are people that scored highly on it and very much want it to mean something important.

</comment><comment><USER93> Maybe people who feel the need to be in an exclusive group based on arbitrary test data are associated with mental and physical disorders, logic suggests.

</comment><comment><USER94> I have often wondered if there's any correlation between higher IQs and addiction rates, whether a positive correlation or a negative one.

</comment><comment><USER73> (2017)

Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886128)

</comment><comment><USER95> The result here is from a survey of Mensa members. I'm skeptical Mensa members are representative of the high IQ population as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER96> The study did not add income as a control variable, so the article is basically about how rich people go to the therapist more often.

</comment><comment><USER97> I'm as dumb as a rock, but perfectly happy, healthy, athletic, and gainfully employed as a PHP programmer.

</comment><comment><USER98> Recommended book: The Curse of the High IQ

Its points are debatable, but at the very least it offers some comfortable thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER99> I'm clearly retarded since I'm happy all the time and I have no physical disorder!

</comment><comment><USER100> What if mensa members seek more healthcare than an average person?

</comment><comment><USER101> Give it ~ nine months before it 's refuted.

</comment><comment><USER102> Sounds true to me (though based on a sample of one), My daughter of 16 with an IQ of 152 was diagnosed with autism and social anxiety.

</comment><comment><USER103> Mutation-selection balance.

<comment><USER30> Mutation-selection balance predicts the _opposite_ , that more intelligent people would be healthier and saner due to a lower mutation load. (Which, as it happens, is the correct prediction, and why most researchers now think intelligence is under mutation-selection balance.)

<comment><USER103> How does it predict the opposite for extreme intelligence, or any other extreme trait? It's not always the case; but sometimes what we think of as a single quality is actually the result of several genetic factors.

When you say intelligence is "under mutation-selection balance", how does that relate to extreme intelligence?

<comment><USER30> To be under mutation- _selection_ balance, mutations affecting a trait must be selected at a sufficient rate to maintain the trait, because it affects fitness. Those with the highest number of mutations affecting the trait must be selected against. The easiest way to affect fitness is to damage health. As it happens, mental illnesses damage fitness enormously. So, for a mutation- selection balance trait, those with the least mutations damaging health and fitness will have the highest trait values ie. extreme intelligence.

<comment><USER103> In the long run, yes. But it doesn't mean that on a case-by-case basis we won't see people with trait enhancing mutations that are maladaptive in other ways — like high intelligence in combination with mental illness.

<comment><USER30> But the theory does not predict those should be common, and predicts they should be rare or nonexistent. So you can't invoke it as support for these findings: it is in fact a bullet which must be bitten (similar to the bullet they must bite when they admit that yes, IQ does correlate with mental health up to the Mensa level in ordinary samples like Swedish population registry or the Scottish population sample, but then postulate that it magically mysteriously reverses abruptly and mental illness rates shoot up orders of magnitude somewhere within the top percentile where conveniently those ordinary samples just can't spot any reversal).

<comment><USER103> It does predict they should be rare but extremes are rare.

What is your theory for how to understand these results?

<comment><USER30> Mensa-level extremes are not rare at all. They're something like 2% of the population (probably even more when you consider they allow multiple retests and other non-IQ tests).

> What is your theory for how to understand these results?

There is nothing to understand. It is purely an artifact of their sampling process. There is no reversal and no mystery. IQ simply correlates with better performance and health as far up as we can measure it into samples like TIP or SMPY, period, and 100% consistent with mutation-selection balance. Mensa attracts losers, and those losers self-select even further into a survey asking about self-diagnosed problems, and these researchers were too lazy to do a good study and too dishonest to discuss forthrightly all the reasons why one knows a priori their results only demonstrate that sampling from Mensa is a really bad idea (I say 'dishonest' because they do not mention any of the very well known contrary results and I am also told these points were all brought up to them before publication and they refused to address any of them).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> And low IQ is consistent with right-wing barbarians.

<comment><USER105> Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait, so we don't have to ban you? I don't want to ban you, but you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly, and we've asked you multiple times already (e.g. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20900523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20900523)).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> Can confirm.

<comment><USER107> This comment traditionally gets down-voted, however, I think it would be poetic as the top comment in this case, since I'd imagine most people who consume HN have above average intelligence. Personal problems lurk in every corner of the world, and no one is immune to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> I request everyone to read Nissim Nicholas Taleb's criticism of this IQ BS. Now, I do not buy all his arguments but I do think his broader point is pretty much valid. At their core IQ tests measure how to answer exams designed by people like them.

I was born dirt poor in a remote godforesaken village in India. Today I work for one of the FANG in bay area.

The most depressing thing about working for this employer is howe dimwitted majority of their tech employees are beyond the core tech skills. Many of them can write complex code with ease and yet they do not understand simple sarcasm or hyperbole.

<comment><USER109>
      *** | Company  | Employees
      ----|</comment></comment><comment>----|</comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      [F] | Facebook |   39,651 (2019)
      [A] | Amazon   |  647,500 (2018)
      [A] | Apple    |  132,000 (2018)
      [N] | Netflix  |    5,400 (2017)
      [G] | Google   |  103,459 (2019)
      </comment><comment></comment><comment>---|</comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      Total          | ±928,010 (2019)

With all due respect, you are only one in ±1M people working in this group of companies, not very representative.

I also work at a FAANG and many of my colleagues have excellent interpersonal skills, you cannot disregard that.

<comment><USER110> Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook has huge number of non corporate employees - if you exclude them the FANG club is more exclusive. Nobody boasts that they work as a picker at Amazon or content reviewer at FB.</comment></comment>


The World of Teletype Computer Games (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcmag.com/feature/352798/the-forgotten-world-of-teletype-computer-games <comment><USER2> My good friend was obsessed with a MUD while we were in college. Our friend group came to know it as Text Wars. A few years back, I remember him telling me that the server was going down. He thought about taking it over but just couldn't find the time.

It was a shame, really. He got so much enjoyment out of that.</comment>


The Growth of Berlin into Europe's Start-Up Hub - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,795949,00.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting, have been looking for a startup scene in Hamburg in vain since I am working on my startup from here until December- looks like I need to start making regular trips to Berlin ASAP</comment>


Got API, an API documentation aggregator  - b-man http://www.gotapi.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I use this everyday. <http://beta.gotapi.com/> is the slightly nicer, newer version.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is an "API _documentation_ aggregator" not an "API aggregator"

<comment><USER3> An API aggregator would be very welcome!

<comment><USER4> You mean kind of like YQL? <http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would nice to have the ability to add custom api documentations - it would make interfacing with internal api's much easier</comment>


The Danish Tolstoy - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/09/30/the-danish-tolstoy/ <comment><USER2> Pushkin rules over the province of Russian letters and not Tolstoy. You could have article "The Russian Tolstoy" about him.</comment>


Welcome to my inbox recruiter. Would you like tea? - <AUTHOR> http://gist.io/3747917 <comment><USER2> I upvoted because I agree with the spirit and some of the points involved in the letter. But if you think recruiters have the time to personalize every e-mail they send for a 3-month PHP contract in BFE, you've been smoking too much hashish.

Really good recruiters who are paid well and have a relationship developed with the company they're recruiting for _might_ read your resume or something about you personally. If they're really really good, when they call you they don't use the form introduction of 'hello, i'm <abc> with <xyz>, i have a position in <location> for a <time> <job title>, are you still in the job market?' But those are few and far between.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hahahaha. I've totally posted my response to a recruiter on FB before, because I had to vent about it. He nails every important point, including that we should have some sympathy because they are incentivized, at least in the short term, to shotgun blast. OTOH, it sucks to complain at all about getting recruited when so many are unemployed or underemployed.</comment>


Coursera raises $16M - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/technology/coursera-plans-to-announce-university-partners-for-online-classes.html

<comment><USER2> I don't understand what's the need to constraint these courses in X weeks duration when one of the advantages of this presentation is to allow self paced study. I started the PGM course and found it interesting but cannot spend +10 hours per week on it just to get an email certificate in the end. I can do Kahn academy classes anytime I want right? why in coursera do I have to pretend I'm taking a college class?

<comment><USER3> Psychology. The vast majority of people show significantly better results with specific deadlines. Here's one study showing the difference: [http://www.iew.uzh.ch/study/courses/downloads/ariely_wertenb...](http://www.iew.uzh.ch/study/courses/downloads/ariely_wertenbroch.pdf)

<comment><USER4> There could be other time-based methods to encourage students, rather than hard deadlines. For instance, suppose the class had a bag with unlimited (or large) number of question, and required each student to score 100 points to pass. Students would have unlimited number of attempts at quizzes/assignments, but their score decays with time (think HN submission ranking decay). That is, if you worked hard and scored 70, but then you were busy/away for a month, your score drops to, say, 50. So you are encouraged to finish the questions in a timely manner, but on the other hand, you can also make up for that missed month by putting more work when you are back.

With this method or a something similar, you do not "lose everything" when you miss a deadline. IMHO, "losing everything" for missing a deadline is part of the reason for the (exponential?) decay in the number of students participating in Coursera's PGM class[1,2].

[1] Based on PGM's "quiz's highest score" statistics, the total numbers of participating students are 6950, 3500, 2650 for week1, week2 and week3 respectively (other weeks' stats are not complete as of this writing).

[2] Another interesting stats is the ratio of perfect scores to all other scores: 25.2%, 34.3%, 49%. This could suggest that the deadline system filters out most students but the very top ones (assuming uniform difficulty of quizzes, and uniform quality of lecture videos/slides, etc.). This may not be what you want from an educational perspective. And, yet it may actually be what you want to support a business plan similar to Udacity- discovering talent. (see my comment below)

<comment><USER3> Interesting stats. I would love to see some stats on classes using different deadline models. For example, the Machine Learning course gave you 80% of the grade if you were late, and the NLP course gives 50%, as opposed to losing everything. I wonder how that affects the drop-out rate.

<comment><USER5> This isn't about coursera, but there was some interesting research in presented in Predictably Irrational about deadlines and student performance. Basically, deadlines help a lot, and having many small deadlines to ensure continuous work helps prevent procrastination.

[http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%...](http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%20Irrational)

> Group 3 (imposed deadlines) got the best grades. Group 2 (no deadlines) got > the worst grades, and Group 1 (self-selected deadlines) finished in the > middle.

<comment><USER3> This is wonderfully circular-the study I posted in my original post was by Dan Ariely :)

<comment><USER5> Argh, sorry. One of the grand parent posts was too long, I didn't read the parents above it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Coursera, Udacity, Khan Academy, iTunes U, YouTube University, OpenCourseWare...

Seems like we need a service just to keep a handle on all the content out there.

<comment><USER7> Class Central has a pretty good list.

<http://www.class-central.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Where essays are required, especially in the humanities and social sciences, the system relies on the students themselves to grade their fellow students' work, in effect turning them into teaching assistants. Dr. Koller said that this would actually improve the learning experience."

wonder how that would work

<comment><USER9> > wonder how that would work

one possibility might be to have multiple students grade a students work, and final score then weighted by the 'judging-student's' score on the same topic ?

<comment><USER8> yeah, wonder if you could do something like, here's 3 essays, rank them from best to worst

fancy algorythm

fit all the essays onto some sort of generous curve

grade

seems like essay a > than essay b > than essay c would get you better results than having each grader come up with a number from 1 - 100 or a letter from A to F, as everyone has different norms as to what they think should count as a 90 (or an A) or whatever

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if they're thinking of going to a for-profit model where users pay to take a class and earn a certificate.

On a side note, who owns the course material a professor creates while employed at a university?

<comment><USER11> MITx is planning free courses and pay to get a certificate. Udacity is planning free everything while making money by hooking top students up with recruiters. Coursera doesn't seem to have decided yet.

<comment><USER12> Can you link to the source for that info?

<comment><USER4> Regarding Udacity's business plan: In June Thrun "took the next step: cofounding KnowLabs... He pulled in David Stavens... as CEO… Thrun decides that KnowLabs will build something called Udacity… Stavens is thinking about potential business models. Though Thrun cringes at the notion of charging students, people might eventually pay for add-ons—say, TA services, study aids, or offline materials. He also considers other revenue streams. Near the end of the term, he emails his top 1,000 students, the ones with perfect or near-perfect scores on homework and tests. The subject: Job Placement Program. Thrun solicits résumés and promises to get the best ones into the right hands at tech companies, including Google. A recruiter who places a hire typically earns 10 to 30 percent of an engineer's first-year salary, which might be $100,000. Stavens figures he could charge much less. After all, KnowLabs discovers talent in the course of doing business."[1]

[1] <http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/ff_aiclass/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A year ago I was talking about how cool something like this would be. I knew it had to happen but it happend faster then I thought.</comment>


Tool of the Day: Titanpad: Etherpad Reincarnated  - <AUTHOR> http://www.usefultools.com/2010/04/etherpad-reincarnated/

<comment><USER2> Are there any new features with this incarnation?

I was really hoping people would take the original Etherpad and run with it, but instead there have just been numerous sites running the original code base.

<comment><USER3> No new features, just a stable Etherpad.

About: _TitanPad was launched to provide an EtherPad setup which is unrelated to any commercial and political entities. Its goal is to offer a stable service through proper operating._

</comment></comment><comment> b-man Why not just use gobby[1]?

[1] <http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Will it allow private pads?</comment>


An 1861 illustrated Japanese book on the American revolutionary war - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/9w2v7l/the_fully_scanned_contents_of_an_1861_illustrated <comment><USER2> Direct link to book scans: [http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0380/...](http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0380/bunko11_a0380_0002/bunko11_a0380_0002.html)

Note - the Reddit comment provides some helpful commentary in English, hence OP didn't link directly to the book scans.

</comment><comment><USER3> The same author wrote a short biography of General Grant. I managed to track it down after reading the Japanese wikipedi page for him.

American Flag Kimonos: [http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0470/...](http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0470/bunko11_a0470_0002/bunko11_a0470_0002_p0006.jpg)

"Grant kun" at dinner: [http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0470/...](http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0470/bunko11_a0470_0003/bunko11_a0470_0003_p0030.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER4> The Google Translate version of the summary [https://www.kufs.ac.jp/toshokan/gallery/data22.htm](https://www.kufs.ac.jp/toshokan/gallery/data22.htm) is pretty uhm... odd

 _Read the title of the book as "Farewell Time Letter". Lu Bun is a prominent man who played a role as a playwriter from the end of the Tokugawa period to the beginning of the Meiji era, his real name is Bossi Nozaki, from Edo, and besides this book there are works such as "Western Canal Knee Chest". According to the introduction of this book, based on the "Seikokushiji" etc., which Wei Genji was established, others, based on other "Mr. Satoshi Ichinomiyoshi", this book is played and the contents are clearly understood by women and children It is said that it made it into a pseudonym book and put it in. The outline of this book began with colon (閤 龍) petitioning to Isabela king and discovering the New Continent, eventually the British reigned and rushed to regulate, but Washington appeared and established independence and founding founder Progress has been made interestingly, with some fictional figures and youkai appearing. Therefore, this book is kind of a novel and a novel based on the course of the founding of the United States_

I'm pretty sure my high school history class would have been more fun with youkai appearing.

<comment><USER5> The Google Translate translation is mostly gibberish, but in short this book isn't really a history book. It's a book in the "gesaku" genre (Edo era light literature) that the author created by reading other books about Columbus and America and adapting the story to fit the conventions of the genre (thus youkai, etc.).

<comment> crooked-v So, pretty much like modern historical-fantasy books that posit WW2 with Nazi vampires or whatever?

Edit: [http://pbfcomics.com/comics/now- showing/](http://pbfcomics.com/comics/now-showing/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Side-relevance: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6FuHfgF2bc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6FuHfgF2bc)

David Bull talks through how these kinds of books are made, read, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly, the style of art and writing is very similar to that of Hokusai Manga. Which is considered as the one of the predecessors of today's Manga and Anime.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_manga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_manga)

</comment><comment><USER8> Why not link to the original source instead of some reddit post crap?

[http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0380/...](http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0380/bunko11_a0380_0002/bunko11_a0380_0002.html)

<comment><USER9> Because the reddit post gives useful context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Definitive proof that the Japanese had little knowledge of gunpowder. The artists obviously had seen a cannon, more likely a picture of one, but had absolutely no idea how it was actually fired.

[http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0380/...](http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0380/bunko11_a0380_0002/bunko11_a0380_0002_p0038.jpg)

<comment><USER5> > Definitive proof that the Japanese had little knowledge of gunpowder. The > artists obviously had seen a cannon, more likely a picture of one, but had > absolutely no idea how it was actually fired.

This is a very incorrect conclusion.

By 1861 when this book was published, Japan had known about and seen cannons for hundreds of years, and since the 1850s the shogunate had been manufacturing cannons because of the threat from foreign ships.

Judging whether "the Japanese had little knowledge of gunpowder" at this time based on a random low-brow book aimed at a popular audience is like concluding that humans didn't know how electricity worked in the 1990s because you found a technical mistake in Jurassic Park.

<comment><USER10> Japan had the knowledge, not the japanese. The people involved with this print thought a large cannon, one on wheels, was a hand weapon. Nobody involved had any real knowledge of gunpowder beyond stories.

<comment><USER11> John Adams is fighting a giant snake.

[http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0380/...](http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/bunko11/bunko11_a0380/bunko11_a0380_0002/bunko11_a0380_0002_p0003.jpg)

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

I guess you can say that the typical American doesn't know about computers in the `00s: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ)

But no one watches NCIS to get accurate depictions of hackers. People watch NCIS to get entertained. Pop-culture in general doesn't actually CARE how things work, its entertainment value, NOT accuracy.</comment>


No one is telling you the real story behind Uber's latest layoffs - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2015/12/14/no-one-telling-you-real-story-behind-ubers-policycomm/34b6baddd6b65550af58abb6e2822eb8e2be3ead/ <comment><USER2> This seems like sensationalism and conspiracy theory going nowhere. Is this what Pando is all about now? I don't read it much.

Uber and AirBnB face political struggles in upending the establishment. It is wise to have your top comms employees and strategists those who have had some success in the political arena already.

That is only a part of these employees backgrounds though. Let us not forget that they have also worked for Google, Snapchat and likely other tech companies.</comment>


Uber self-driving truck just made history - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2016/10/25/uber-self-driving-truck-just-made-history-with-120.html <comment><USER2> I'll be looking out for the story in two or three months when they attempt this trip over snow/ice covered roads.

Actually, I'd love to hear about ANY autonomous vehicle technology that can safely traverse winter roads.

<comment><USER3> Why should they try to do that on snow/ice covered roads? I mean, if its difficult and dangerous (as you imply) then they can just start with the easier trips and make loads of money. The hard stuff can come later..

This whole self-driving technology is worrying me a bit actually - I fully support this future, but I was thinking the other day that what will happen is that transport in the major hubs will get cheaper, but for rest of us it will get more expensive. For now, I'm ok but I am expecting a massive upheaval in the next 20 years

<comment><USER2> >Why should they try to do that on snow/ice covered roads?

Because, "Over 70 percent of the nation's roads are located in snowy regions, which receive more than five inches (or 13 cm) average snowfall annually. Nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population lives in these snowy regions." ([http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/weather/weather_events/snow_ice....](http://www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/weather/weather_events/snow_ice.htm))

If they're able to nail down "the easy stuff" that's all well and good, but it sounds to me like most of the country is only going to benefit from the current technology indirectly (maybe a third of the supply chain will be automatically driven). But this "in a few years nobody will own a car because we'll just rent from fleets that will come right to your doorstep!" thing I hear a lot still feels like a pipedream to those of us who are currently prepping for 6 months below freezing.

Who knows, maybe global warming will take care of this problem for us?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Summary:

> a human driver accompanied the beer delivery, but his driving services were > only used to get on and off the highway. The driver rode most of the way in > the back of the truck, away from the controls.

> A 120-mile Colorado beer delivery, 45,000 cans of Budweiser beer

> Budweiser paid the market rate of $470 for the historic beer run

</comment><comment><USER5> "The driver rode most of the way in the back of the truck, away from the controls."

Pretty disturbing that the Colorado DoT was so willing to experiment with the lives of other people on the road.

<comment><USER6> What are you basing this on?

According to the DoT, they "took detailed measures to reduce any risks associated with the self-driving delivery project including testing validation, ride alongs and escorting the delivery" (source: [https://www.trucks.com/2016/10/25/ubers-otto-hauls- budweiser...](https://www.trucks.com/2016/10/25/ubers-otto-hauls-budweiser- beer-across-colorado-first-commercial-use-self-driving-truck/) )

<comment><USER5> The article clearly states that no one was in a position to take over if the system failed. They were testing on public roads, and if something had gone wrong, we're talking about a loaded 18-wheeler: having escort vehicles would do nothing to mitigate a serious accident. Other people were on the road as well, none of whom volunteered to be part of the experiment. Short of closing the highway, there was no safe way of doing this. We're not talking about a mature technology here. We have no idea what the real, operational failure rate is. It was an irresponsible decision to put people's lives at risk for a corporate publicity stunt. FTA: "I think real implementation of technology like this is still five years off." Then so should this kind of experiment on public roads.

As a side note, I appreciate that you took the time to articulate your argument, rather than mindlessly downvoting. It makes the site much better when there's actual discussion.

<comment><USER7> FUD. At some point in development you do a public road test. What evidence that it wasn't time for that? Just ranting.

<comment><USER5> Sure. Close down the road, get a bunch of professional drivers to simulate traffic (including poor driving), and have it at for a few hundreds of thousands of miles.

Let's be clear, this was not a "road test". This was a publicity stunt.

And I don't have a problem with you ranting, at least you made an effort to share your view.

<comment><USER7> They (Uber) already had trials in Pittsburgh. Presumably after the closed- track trials. This sound like a careful progression of testing and trials to me.

And every "Technology Demo" is of course a publicity stunt by definition.

<comment><USER5> I think you're badly underestimating the amount and nature of the data required. Think about space travel: after 60 years, the catastrophic failure rate is still about 1 in 200. This is due in part to the very low volume of flights over the decades. The Shuttle underwent what passed for extensive testing before its first "operational" flight, but was retired before it accumulated even as many hours as the average test flight program for a commercial airliner.

Before we run vehicles as potentially destructive as a fully loaded 18-wheeler autonomously on public roads, we should log tens of thousands of test hours under simulated real-world traffic conditions. That's expensive, hence Uber's willingness to roll the dice with other people's lives.

The burden is not on the public to show that an autonomous truck is unsafe; the burden is on the promoters to show that it _is_ safe. That burden is not even close to being met, as the article acknowledges when they say the technology won't be ready for another 5 years. This was a stunt to help Uber maintain its valuation, and the DoT should've been looking out more for the public.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Estimating hosting costs - <AUTHOR>

All,
Does anyone have experience or tips on how to estimate hosting, bandwidth, etc. costs for a web-based business model?
I'm working up a back-of-the-napkin business plan and would like to be able to throw something at the hosting costs column. The margins are somewhat tight at it is, and I know how these sorts of costs, specifically, can completely up end profitability.
I'm figuring about 15-30 MB of images per user, plus whatever it costs to receive those images one at a time (RESTful interface), then batch process them once a month (cron job + sending them off to some other RESTful interface).
Then, of course, there'd be some billing logic in there, maybe Stripe.
I'm thinking this would involve something like AWS, plus, I don't know, dreamhost, perhaps?
Sorry, I know this is vague (and that's part of the problem), but I've never estimated something like this before.
I'd really appreciate any help or suggestions.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Just determine how much the cost per user is, and make sure your business model works for that. Beyond that, I'd say not to worry too much about your total hosting costs as the reality is, it's impossible to predict how much resources you'll need until you're actually using them. Most of the time, people grossly overestimate how much hosting they really need on new projects.

Instead, I'd recommend focusing on being flexible enough so that you can start small, and upgrade your hosting as needed. Document your entire setup so that you can quickly re-create your environment when migrating to a new server. If your business model works when small with something like AWS, it's only going to work better as you scale up, as your costs will go down considerably as you get larger. You'll see a dramatic drop in costs once you outgrow cloud/VPS solutions and get big enough for your own, entire dedicated servers if you don't limit yourself to the really big players.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unless you're going to run a million dollar TV commercial on launch day, chances are you won't have more than a few hundred to thousand users for a long while. From what you've described, a $20/month Linode VPS will be sufficient.

You can upgrade the instance's resources as needed with a few clicks of a button, and if image hosting is the primary use of storage and bandwidth, that can be offloaded to Amazon S3 for pennies while the VPS runs the website/API.

Plenty of successful startups have started just like that. Running the website/API on EC2 is where costs skyrocket. There is a huge premium there for the benefit of being able to programmatically start and stop instances. If margins are tight, you would do much better with a VPS or even a single dedicated box. I think Foursquare was well into the millions of users while still running their database on a single server with 64GB RAM.

</comment><comment> rush-tea I am also in the same stage as you. At first, i m thinking of shared web host such as godaddy or 1and1, and then watch the traffic daily. If it spikes to the point that you need a VPS, then you upgrade immediately.

Not sure if this way would be doable for you. But to me, why waste fund on something that you never use if you can allocate your fund to something else (i.e business cards, SEO, marketing, etc)? i remember reading that before pinterests got big, they only have few hundreds or low thousands users for the first few months they were starting.

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER4> take a server (basic config or medium one) from linode, prgmr or digitalocean and that should do for initial year or so. Some image downloads will not land you in any trouble unless you are going to be pinterest in less than a year.

<comment><USER5> Anything but Linode. People REALLY need to stop recommending them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whatever number you arrive to, double it.</comment>