The Curse of Genius - <AUTHOR> https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-curse-of-genius <comment><USER2> A decade ago, my niece went in for pre-K testing, and the teacher showed her a list of animals, asking her to name them. Picture of a dog, spot. Picture of a cat, whiskers. Picture of a rabbit, hoppy, etc. The teacher tells her parents that she failed that section and needs to work on being able to identify animals. They point out to the teacher that she had asked her to name them, not identify them, and that's exactly what she did. Even now, she's a very smart, but very literal thinker, and it's fair to say it has caused her some conflict in school.

<comment><USER3> Anecdotes are fun.

In first grade my sister had to write the first letters of pictures. The teacher corrected her: "No, no. Fff.Fff... Flower starts with F."

My sister: "No, no. Tuh ..tuh .. tulip starts with T."

Teacher had the nerve to call my mom and tell her my sister had been disrespectful.

<comment><USER4> Reminds me of a joke I read once.

Teacher: OK, who can start a sentence with "I"?

Student: I is...

Teacher: No, no no, it's "I am..."

Student: I _am_ the ninth letter of the alphabet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The 'curse' of genius is more the fact that society is designed to function for average people. The average person goes to school, gets training in something, works their job at an average pace, etc...

'Genius' goes one of two ways. Either they have a good support system around them (usually meaning money) and advance, then later have chance for entrepreneurship and a career they can advance at their own pace (meaning quicker than average). Or they are stuck in a system designed for average people and they get bored then act out, become depressed, etc...

I can relate somewhat. I could speak very young. Could read at 2. Could speak, read and write two languages and use computers (we're talking old IBM PCs pre- Windows, when hardly any normal people used computers) at 4. Was always in advanced classes through school. Built (somewhat crude) robots and did computer programming in elementary school.

Of course, none of this provided me with particularly great social skills, so eventually I gave up on intellectual pursuits and plied myself with drugs and alcohol. In adulthood wound up working several careers, playing poker professionally and travelling for awhile, did some day-trading, did a bunch of university, but I mostly enjoy eating, drinking, travelling, and hanging out with my girlfriend.

Anyhow, the gist of it is that being on an 'advanced' path in my youth wasn't particularly great. Not sure if I'm was 'cursed' genius or a somewhat intelligent person with a mental disorder (ADHD, bipolar?). Building a business now so wouldn't say I'm unsuccessful, but certainly not what I imagined when I was younger. Then again, I'm also far happier today.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing. Glad to hear that you're happier today.

I'd be interested in hearing what changes to society you think you would have made things better for you. Also, in the absence of any societal changes, do you think your parents should have done anything differently?

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure society would be better if everything was geared towards people who are outliers or more productive earlier. It might be worse for everyone else. Several Asian societies seem hyper concerned with academic achievement and work productivity, and have a fairly toxic work culture with poor work- life balance as a result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing that helps is the lightbulb moment: The most interesting thing you can know is other people. Not as objects, curiosities, but real, truly unfathomable beings. You'll never truly understand what's in someone else's head, but you can still spend your life striving to get to know them better, and to perhaps know them well enough to try and make their lives better.

There is the age-old cliche of intelligent people finding 'normal people' dull. That idea starts to fade when you really, truly embed yourself in another person's life, or they manage to embed themselves in yours before you realize that's what's happening.

Regardless, it's not all hopeless. It's a harder path, for sure, but it can be traveled.

<comment><USER8> > _There is the age-old cliche of intelligent people finding 'normal people' > dull. That idea starts to fade when you really, truly embed yourself in > another person's life, or they manage to embed themselves in yours before > you realize that's what's happening._

Does it, though? I mean, the part when you're discovering another human's story is interesting, but for me, that was always modulated by the feelings I had that made this person feel special. Beyond that, once the feelings fade or when there are none involved, I've always found the - to quote 'bartread - ""average" life lived well (partner, children, family, home, job)" to be very dull. Soap-opera level boring. IME, people get boring once they start living this average life. They forget their dreams, their own insights about the world, their own goals - everything that made them interesting and special - and engage in the age-old pattern of "partner, children, family, home, job, retirement, death".

Or maybe I'm saying it wrong. People do get interesting with enough effort. It takes _a lot of effort_ to dig through these layers of "average life well lived", to find and remind them of their old-forgotten passions and thoughts, and only then you get to have interesting conversations about molecular biology, or anthropology, or that time they wanted to be an actor, or how can we improve our community - as opposed to talking about diapers, who married whom, who just had a kid, and how we all don't have money.

I'm probably an outlier here. I don't claim above-average intelligence, but I do find "normalcy" boring and sort-of pointless, in a recursive, self- propagating way.

<comment><USER9> "partner, children, family, home, job"

I found all of these "ordinary" things in life to be quite extraordinary when they happened to me!

<comment><USER10> That's rather the point though, isn't it? _Your baby_ is fascinating because it's yours, but babies in the abstract aren't actually very interesting. They pass through the same developmental milestones at roughly the same rate and have the same (very limited) capacity for novelty. I've never met a baby with a unique perspective on the Israel-Palestine problem or a fabulous collection of golden age comic books. It's a bit like following someone else's baseball team - unless you're emotionally invested, it's really rather dull.

Maybe I'm just a cynical misanthrope, but I'm not very interested in the mundane minutiae of other people's lives, nor do I expect them to be very interested in the mundane minutiae of mine. It would be quite weird if all seven billion of us were innately fascinating.

An interesting question is how interestingness is distributed. A normal distribution seems plausible, but while I can think of people who are three- sigma interesting, I'm not sure I could think of someone who is three-sigma dull. Mass media would seem to suggest that a power-law distribution is more likely - most of us are really rather boring, but there's a long tail of exceptionally interesting people.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I think any random baby is more interesting than a comic book collection but maybe that's just me.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, it's just you. A random baby below 2 y.o. is slightly less interesting (and less mentally developed) than a kitten. Unless you have an interest in medicine/psychology, there's not much to see there. It's also perceived a bit weird/creepy to be overly interested in other people's babies.

Seriously, were I to be given a chance to spent an hour with a random baby (!= _my_ baby, that's a different thing) vs. an hour with a random comic book, I'd pick the comic book every time.

Can we admit that just because we're socially expected to consider something the cutest and most best thing in the world, doesn't mean it's _actually_ all that interesting?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> (disclaimer: not a genious, iq 125) grade 0, first day, found name of classmate interesting as it was the same name as a character in a tale I liked, I remarked this, was told that it was cruel to "call people names", class was encouraged to find a "bad name" for me.

grade 1, teacher used to enjoy holding me in front of the class, telling "this is [name], he thinks he's special, he likes attention" and have the other kids point and laugh at me before starting class.

Was evaluated by psychologist, I remember I was given stupid puzzles, the kind you played with in kindergarten, asking me to complete them, I was offended by this and refused, she pushed me and I did a few before breaking down from being treated like an imbecile. Test showed I was probably not.

grade 3, handed in assignment in basic, we were supposed to write a story, and I wrote a small program with arrays of words, and arrays of indexes to print the story.. Teacher told me it didn't count to "write some hieroglyphs", I told he it was a program, she explained to me "it's not possible to just make a program".

These set the tone of my further education. Still working to get past those (and so many more) events. I still feel like I'm worthless. Thanks school! I still got to be a software developer though.

<comment><USER13> > grade 3, handed in assignment in basic, we were supposed to write a story, > and I wrote a small program with arrays of words, and arrays of indexes to > print the story.. Teacher told me it didn't count to "write some > hieroglyphs", I told he it was a program, she explained to me "it's not > possible to just make a program".

yeah, i'm with the teacher on this one. you didn't complete the assignment. At grade 3, a lot of the value in homework is simply in learning how to do homework correctly. You didn't do the homework correctly, so it absolutley shouldn't have counted to "write some hieroglyphs".

<comment><USER12> Well, she told us to write it down, not how, she could have asked me to run and print it instead. At that age, I still had a sense of wonder about the world, and I thought exploring it was why we were here. I didn't understand that conforming was more important that exploring, but I understand that now.

<comment><USER11> There's a time and a place for both. If you're going through security at the airport, conform. If you're learning something in your free-time, explore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Makes me think about the intro to Huxley's Doors of Perception[0] - genius is probably a pretty lonely place. Fortunately that's one problem I don't have to deal with.

> From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. > Most island universes are sufficiently like one another to permit of > inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or "feeling into" ... > But in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even > nonexistent. The mind is its own place, and the places inhabited by the > insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where > ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of > memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling.

[0] [https://maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfPerce...](https://maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfPerception.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> I went through a gifted program starting in 3rd grade but I don't think I'm gifted.

Most of what I think seems obvious. For example, the ability to ask simple questions in the moment is a skill anyone can learn. For the highest level poker player, analytical thoughts are rather systemic but require emotional and intellectual control.

Had I focused on any one thing, I think I could had been a brilliant programmer, physicist, poker player etc. But I haven't. I've been cursed by entrepreneurship, activism, esoteric ideas and other things that have had low utility.

While I'm ambivalent about most people's intellect, for truly gifted people I'm somewhat intimidated by them. (Like many yc founders.) Like, oh I could never execute that life plan and business in the way they did because it's perfect.

My point is I think it's all about process. Asking questions, reasoning from first principles, obsessive focus, curiosity and resiliency will make any person gifted.

<comment><USER16> Gifted might just mean top 10% of society. Which means that if you're in the 10th percentile there are still very many people who are more intelligent than you. Further, for any given field of expertise, you'll still bump into people who can intellectually wipe the floor with you (in their topic of expertise) unless you stick around and learn enough to surpass them.

Additionally, a lot of people mistake learned knowledge or implicit social values for intelligence, and so it can take a long time in a new environment to be able to actually demonstrate to anyone that you're intelligent.

I know this isn't the primary point of your comment, but it can quite easy to not feel very intelligent in a lot circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am somewhat of a mixed bag myself - certainly not to those extremes but above average. On the autistic spectrum and - withim normal developmental time tables but I had a habit of unthreading myself from infant car seats repeatedly and an unusually far back memory. I always remember being able to read but lacking much of an attention span for it.

I will refrain from the "G"-word and say I went to college at 16 and skipped trigonometry because I knew enough about SOH CAH TOA to work around the other details - it was just a subset of geometry so I didn't get why it was considered the more advanced class. B-average Computer Engineering student. Not the best luck with careers or self starting with side projects - late ADHD diagnosis which in retrospect made sense didn't come up too much because I found most of the stuff interesting.

Anyway my personal suspicion is that much of the curse comes from mismatch with society and its paradigms and the difficulty of finding kindred spirits.

It often feels like the masses are barking mad and yet you are the crazy one for pointing out it makes no goddamned sense.

Like charging a teen as an adult - especially for status offenses like sexting. Practically nobody questions the hypocrisy of "treated as a minor until we find it convenient otherwise" or takes the "insufficiently functioning brain argument" to give a cut off age to elder votes because we can't trust them to be fulky functioning mentally.

Or the interviewing process judging people on suits and posture is batshit insane, that they find people incapable of or not mimicking their tone less trustworthy for being insufficiently deceptive and more.

<comment><USER18> > _Or the interviewing process judging people on suits and posture is batshit > insane, that they find people incapable of or not mimicking their tone less > trustworthy for being insufficiently deceptive and more._

If the G factor if intelligence is really "general," won't it also improve your ability to posture and choose suits?

</comment></comment><comment> happy-go-lucky > Even Albert Einstein, one of the most emblematic examples of genius, wrote > in 1952: "It is strange to be known so universally and yet be so lonely."

Really so strange. I'm just trying to see how lonely he must have felt having to keep to himself.

<comment><USER19> Feynman didn't have that problem, so it's not universal, but it does seem like most geniuses are afflicted with loneliness.

<comment><USER20> I don't agree with that given his lifestyle. He wanted to connect but rarely could, hence an abundance of mostly shallow affection beyond his first wife.

<comment><USER21> Here is a morbid thought, the loneliest thing is that we didn't get to hear his last words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Through the game of tennis, I quickly learned that in order to achieve a state of equilibrium or balance, everything must be in moderation. When you hit a tennis ball, it's always a trade off between power and precision. You cannot gain in one area without losing in the other. Same principles applied to most things in life.

The problem with current methodology is we mostly measure intelligence strictly through very few standard categories like mathematics. Sure, mathematics is a universal language for everything in life, but to thrive in a human society it requires many more skills than just math. It's almost a given that when you have a gifted child measured by one of those standard categories, this kid often would have some types of deficiency in other areas that have not been measured because they are unestablished.

10% of human population have the genetics that provide them with much higher capabilities than the rest in some certain areas. Though this would take enormous effort, but if we provide adequate support to compensate for the areas where they lack, this should help raising them to a level matching the areas where they really excel, and thus achieving a higher overall equilibrium state. However, because the rest of our society is still operating at a much lower baseline, so even then it's always going to be a challenge for these individuals to fit in. Maybe they are just ahead, or behind, of our time in terms of evolutionary development?

<comment><USER8> > _in order to achieve a state of equilibrium or balance, everything must be > in moderation. When you hit a tennis ball, it 's always a trade off between > power and precision. You cannot gain in one area without losing in the > other. Same principles applied to most things in life._

You mention "higher equilibrium" further in the comment, but I think it needs to be said explicitly: the trade-off only exists if you're at 100% utilization. If all the aspects you're balancing add up to less than 100% of your capabilities, you can improve all of them simultaneously without having to trade anything off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Having worked in Silicon Valley with some really really smart people. I wonder how many people think they are genius because their circle is limited?

When you work in the valley for any period of time you think you might have a shot, and you might. If you get a chance to meet one of the founders of a well known valley company and have a conversation the realization that luck had nothing to do with their success should happen. Its truly humbling to meet a genius and get a glimpse of how their brain works.

<comment><USER24> > the realization that luck had nothing to do with their success should happen

Convince me.

<comment><USER17> The strong version is trivially disproveable - if they had got eaten by a dingo as an infant you would never seen any success regardless of how smart said poor illfated baby would be.

That said talent, genius, and drive certainly are factors even with priviledged upbringing like needing money for education, seed capital and ability to dedicate their timr without side jobs. While self-made men, women and nonbinaries are rare and rarer still without posers - there are some who if they were born poorer would only have had their rise delayed by a decade at most.

In contrast others who are peak "idiot heir" prove that it isn't /just/ privilege that brings success as they find ruin no matter their connections, starting wealth, and a futile attempt by their parents to teach how to perpetuate their birthright.

<comment><USER23> Being eaten by a dingo is a strawman.

Given two people in the same place with the same opportunity you will see the difference. Yes chaos can happen and create challenges. Genius rises above it.

<comment><USER17> It was a point about survivorship bias in the most blunt and literal way. Not all challenges may be risen above. I agree that they can rise above but not always.

<comment><USER23> If you want to compare yourself to dead people... so be it ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds more like the Curse of /r/iamverysmart...

</comment><comment><USER26> >We don't yet know why this is, or whether it's down to nature, nurture or both. One study shows that among members of Mensa in America, the rate of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is almost twice that diagnosed in the general population.

>Among these individuals, the incidence of depression, anxiety and ADHD is higher than in the average population.

how is adhd linked to gifted children?, i find this fact interesting...

<comment><USER27> That's such obvious selection bias. People who join Mensa have something to prove.

<comment><USER28> Is your alternative hypothesis that ADHD is twice as prevalent in people who feel they have "something to prove"?

<comment><USER4> Maybe they ended up taking MENSA entry tests when they were meant to be doing their taxes or something.

<comment><USER29> Now _that_ sums of much of ADHD experience. More seriously, there are indications that aspects of ADHD affect information processing in potentially beneficial ways. I have a hunch that given the overall detriment ADHD has to many life skills that ADHD genes would be selected along with genes for higher IQ as a counterbalance, with both combined together conferring unique advantages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This damn Mensa survey again! The Mensa data which is the only empirical support for this claim of a 'curse' is doubly self-selected, the claimed effects absurdly strong, and contradicts pretty much all research on unbiased high-IQ samples: [https://www.gwern.net/SMPY#fn1](https://www.gwern.net/SMPY#fn1)

</comment><comment><USER31> A kindergarten screening question that was given to my child:

What is a pair?

Most kids say either "socks" or "a fruit" (because hearing pair in this sentence is indeed ambiguous...)

The answer they really wanted was "two of something".

<comment><USER32> I wonder how many adults would give the desired answer, with no context. I don't think I would.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> See also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional) .

<comment><USER12> Interesting! Does sound like a spectrum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The curse of the genius is that when you are hyper recombinativeinventive every problem looks like a need for a new hammer and that your first success silences all opposition permanently. The other extrem is that cooperations beloved mediocrity, produced by systemic processes, risk avoidance and intrigant politics today prevent game changers from even reaching entry level.

<comment><USER4> So wait, do these cursed geniuses "silence all opposition permanently" or are they "prevented from even reaching entry level"?

<comment><USER34> The successful ones silence opposition until they fail big time. Then they become ammunition to prevent hiring their kind at entrance level?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Curse of the genius: "F*cking brilliant"

</comment><comment><USER36> I remember understanding people talking but not knowing how to speak when I was very little. I guess I'm a genius

<comment><USER37> What's your IQ? Mine is 163. It would be tough to argue that I'm not a genius.

<comment><USER38> Considering your apparent lack of social awareness...

<comment><USER39> Yes, knowing your IQ score and saying it outloud is badthink.

<comment><USER40> Everyone I have known who has bragged about their IQ has been a knob.

<comment><USER41> Well this guy who bragged to me one time that he had an IQ of 100 was definitely something.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole - <AUTHOR> https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/ <comment><USER2> When opponents think about how 'damaging' papers like this are, they should also consider how damaging things like this are to the field in general, and how they may cause a lot of second-order harm.

Many that I know have begun to distrust areas of academia much more recently, and when they see scenarios like this over and over it doesn't help. We all know that no one will support you for saying the truth if it won't go down well politically. The end result of this is that Academia will only publish the 'right' results, but it will not matter as few will trust them to begin with.

After reading the full article I find it funny they decide to critique the paper by calling it 'pseudoscientific'. I'd like to play the same game back at them and simply call their beliefs 'pseudoscientific' and proceed to pretend like they are discredited and don't warrant further inspection.

If you keep crying wolf, eventually no one will believe you when you really need them to. You can't go against truth forever.

<comment><USER3> It's a tough issue because both sides are right. Recent political and social events show that the general public is not yet able to discuss issues like this rationally and maturely. Yet at the same time science must be free to inquire without political restriction. I do not have an answer.

<comment><USER4> You are ambivalent about whether this article should have been censored in the way it was?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Assuming the basic facts claimed by the author are correct, this is really bad. I'm not referring to the behavior attributed to the U Chicago professor and her husband, either. That might be exaggerated by the author (the account is only one side of the story) and, even if it isn't, strong feelings are not uncommon when it comes to controversial topics. Systems should work even when individuals or small groups of people behave badly.

The scandal here is the journal editors deviating from their standard procedures. There are procedures in place for re-evaluating articles which have been published or accepted for publication, and for retracting them if they don't meet proper standards. If the members of editorial boards don't think those procedures are proper, they should work to change them, or, barring that, resign. What they did instead undermines the credibility of the journals. How do we know that usual procedures are followed in other cases when they clearly weren't in this one (assuming the facts are as stated in the post)? Are there articles that are accepted for publication because of external pressure, over the objection of reviewers and editors? Are there other papers which have been disappeared without the expected retraction notices? What a disgrace.

<comment><USER6> The process, as told by the author, was that one of the editors invited to submit, and three weeks later it was published upon which the rest of the editorial board took notice and threatened resignation.

By that telling it was published practically on the spot, especially for mathematics where things are famously glacially slow. Browsing through the journal one mostly sees submission and publication dates separated by many months. Last published paper in the current volume was received over a year before. But this paper made it in three weeks.

So it was fast tracked by an editor. Editorial board could take issue with that, arguing it haven't gone by the review properly or whatever the usual procedures before publication are. It might have been put up on the web by the managing editor (since on leave and replaced in the interim) or whomever had the admin password, but editorial board to whom the journal's reputation really belongs hasn't deemed it to be their publication.

Of the timeline, author says he's uploaded to ArXiv in September, while by that time he was on revision 3 of [https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184) uploaded in March. What was added in September however was a piece of journalism in an appendix, that then disappeared in most recent revisions. Last revision was posted just 2 weeks ago, apparently there still were arguments to strengthen (or journalism to remove) before Quillette ran the story.

There he paints his work as "science" and some people including the editorial board as "activists". By Google however appears the same Ted Hill founded a site "to promote campus activism in general" and "to serve as a focal point for organizing activists" where he chronicles his long history of activism [http://www.motherfunctor.org/CompleteHistory2013.php](http://www.motherfunctor.org/CompleteHistory2013.php)

<comment><USER7> According to the article, publication was approved by Editor-In-Chief Mark Steinberger, who founded the magazine 25 years ago.

The members of the editorial board did not just threaten resignation, but (according to the article) threatened to "harass the journal until it died."

<comment><USER6> I find these threats doubtful, I don't see the editorial board wasting their life on sustained activism over the years chasing remnants of something they helped to create and what would be served a deathly blow by their resignation already. The author however has a history of activism I haven't looked into, but that usually involves a spin. There's also the possibility of his correspondents' misguided politeness by throwing him something to chew on to diffuse the blame. Mathematical Intelligencer editor could be seen as doing that in a somewhat more intelligent way blaming the possibility of "international hype".

As for the description of alleged emotional states involved, I'm oblivious and not seeing the relevance. Recounting the events and actions taken sufficed for a horrific story. The author deemed it important however to make it into something even more colourful with threats of some unspecified future actions (how does one harass a journal?).

The managing editor you speak of went on leave and has an interim replacement. I can see that entirely appropriate if only because of how retraction was handled by deletion and overwriting, instead of a proper notice in place. This was extremely unprofessional administration, which is usually a duty of the managing editor solely. The other possibility I described is that it wasn't really published the usual way, which is even more damning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems new, and passed over in all the comments so far:

> None of them had ever heard of a paper in any field being disappeared after > formal publication. Rejected prior to publication? Of course. Retracted? > Yes, but only after an investigation, the results of which would then be > made public by way of explanation. But simply disappeared? Never. If a > formally refereed and published paper can later be erased from the > scientific record and replaced by a completely different article, without > any discussion with the author or any announcement in the journal, what will > this mean for the future of electronic journals?

I'd had the impression online journals normally had some plan for archiving. So insiders were left out of the threat model?

<comment><USER9> > Retracted? Yes, but only after an investigation, the results of which would > then be made public by way of explanation.

Just to clarify: when papers are retracted, they are _not_ normally erased from the database and replaced with an explanation. See this Nature paper for an example; the entire paper is kept available online, just as before, except that the words "RETRACTED" is stamped on each PDF page

[https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10167](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10167)

Likewise, nothing published to the arXiv is ever removed. A retraction notice can be added as an update, but the complete version history is always available.

Articles are much more likely to be "un-published" (wiped from the archives) in journalism than scientific publications.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, but the ArXiv does have a moderation team and stuff is being removed. Alike, most online journals remove stuff by wholly replacing it with a retraction notice. Journals printed on paper issue retraction letters and leave it at that, but some also do restrict online access afterwards.

What no journal does is to replace erroneously published article with another entirely unrelated one in-place. This is a very poor behaviour on the part of the managing editor here, who is currently on leave and replaced.

Nature is unusual, for example they publish letters complaining about ArXiv's moderation, beside publishing a lot of editorial and opinion stuff.

<comment><USER9> > Alike, most online journals remove stuff by wholly replacing it with a > retraction notice

Can you provide a copy, or even examples? I can pull up dozens of Science, Nature, and Physical Review retracted articles to support my point. If those huge families of journals behave as I say, on what basis are you claiming "most" journal don't?

> What no journal does is to replace erroneously published article with > another entirely unrelated one in-place.

Did anyone ever suggest this was the case?

> the ArXiv does have a moderation team and stuff is being removed

I know several members of the moderation team. They of course reject some articles at the time of submission, but I'm not aware of any being retracted and un-published after being posted publically. Can you please link to such a retraction, or to evidence of this in the Internet Archive?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had not heard of Quillette until Tyler Cowen interviewed [0] Claire Lehmann, the founding editor. This article, and the precipitating events, fit perfectly into Quillette's _raison d'etre_ [1].

[0] - [https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/claire- lehmann-t...](https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/claire-lehmann- tyler-cowen-political-correctness-social-norms-australian- culture-e52e2c08c629)

[1] - [https://quillette.com/about/](https://quillette.com/about/)

<comment><USER11> Indeed. The suspicious part of me wonders if the authors deliberately engineered this situation.

<comment><USER12> If the authors got fired would you still suspect they engineered it? In reality this kind of stuff spirals out of control chaotically so it's incredibly risky to do it on purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone have an outside source on this? The writeup linked seems pretty one-sided, and the whole naive-surprise-meets-hardnosed-doggedness tone doesn't seem very genuine. So I'm left wondering how accurate a portrayal of events this is.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. It's quite a story, but something in it doesn't ring true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/dijkstra.html](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/dijkstra.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> This disgraceful behavior from academia is shredding the credibility of the entire enterprise.

How is anyone supposed to trust _any_ unintuitive conclusions with expensive implications --- for example, on climate change --- when the academic community has demonstrated a propensity to shriek at and censor unorthodox ideas instead of contest them on the merits?

<comment><USER17> This is specificly why I am a climate skeptic. Not a denier, mind you, but a skeptic when it comes to anything purporting to be "settled science." It's specifically because there is a strong resistance to anything damaging to the status quo, as supported by grant funding and, to a lesser extent, political agenda.

Frankly, it's hard to trust academia on controversial topics.

<comment> semi-extrinsic What we need to distinguish here is what exactly we're talking about being "settled science".

Is "human CO2 emissions are causing an increased greenhouse effect and ocean acidification" settled science? Yes.

Is "how much will that affect us and the planet at different time scales" settled science? Not completely, no. The climate system is incredibly hard to model.

What scientists are doing in the latter regard is making their best estimates, seeing that these predict very bad things happening, and then saying we should work as hard as possible to reduce emissions.

Which, incidentally, nobody is actually doing.

<comment><USER16> Well, reduce emissions and more seriously consider geoengineering. A lot of otherwise-reasonable climate researchers seem to have an unduly negative view of potential direct interventions in the climate.

<comment><USER18> A lot of otherwise-reasonable climate researchers seem to have an unduly negative view of potential direct interventions in the climate, and for good reason. Scientists know that theory and practice often are very different. You can't 'experiment' with global scale geo-engineering.

To put it in HN terms: you're deploying untested code for a global scale life support system written by a first-project-junior in an experimental new technology stack directly to production without having a test or staging environment, and there are no backups.

<comment> 08-15 > Scientists know that theory and practice often are very different.

Obviously! But the theory of Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Climate Change is different. This one is beyond reproach and matches practice perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, I didn't know that academia was getting this bad; what happened to letting the truth be debated a la the Socratic dialogue in the academia of all places!

<comment><USER16> What happened? I call it valence hijacking.

Sometimes, a thing --- a word, an institution, a bit of history --- has cultural power. It's surrounded with an aura (or valence, if you will) of gravitas and mystique, usually accumulated over decades, or millennia.

Acrivists notice that these things have cultural power and hijack them, turning them into something useful for the cause while denying that anything has changed. Consider, for example, how many people claim, in all earnestness, that disagreement is "literal violence". Disagreement is obviously not violence, but by using this word, activists can "steal" some of the emotion attached to the word "violence" and weild it for their cause.

This hijacking works for a while, until people catch on. At that point, activists, like locusts, move on to areas not yet stripped bare of meaning.

The same mechanism that at micro scale operates on words operates at macro scale on institutions.

Academia in particular has been ravaged by this process: huge parts of the academy no longer practice anything resembling science. Their studies do not reproduce. Their papers go unread. Their lectures become diatribes. Their students become zealots. The forms are present, but the substance is gone.

This article describes the early stages of such a hijacking.

<comment><USER20> I like that term, "valence hijacking" and I don't disagree. Ultimately I think we as a society are approaching a pivotal point where any body (individual or institution) are so afraid of a drag through the public square for their statements/image that we have created de facto censorship on what is "appropriate" and what "is not", which might have negative repercussions on what is allowed under freedom of expression and free discourse.

<comment><USER21> Well hey, there you have it! That's precisely why you see "mirimir" as the author of this comment. Because, you know, my meatspace persona can't tolerate anything at all controversial. I learned my lesson on Usenet :( And the climate is way^N worse now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Skim the preprint [https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184) , especially section 7.

The article is not fit for publication in a mathematical journal, it is cosplaying as math.

To cite:

> The following simple proposition may be well known, but since no reference > is known to the author, a proof is included for completeness.

>Proposition 7.1. N(µ, σ1) is more variable than N(µ, σ2) if and only if σ1 > σ2.

>Proof: [lots of lines]

In a real mathematical paper, this claim would not be glorified into a numbered proposition, and it would not merit a proof; this amount of mathematical work is the distance between one line and the next. I would not even expect students to provide a proof for such utter trivialities in a homework assignment.

Author should have submitted to PNAS instead, or written a blogpost.

<comment><USER23> "The article is not fit for publication in a mathematical journal, it is cosplaying as math."

It's not up to you to decide, but up to the reviewers and editors of the journal where it was sent for publication. And according to what we know, it was accepted.

I downvoted you, for this reason.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, but it is for everybody to decide. Reviewers don't have a sacred sanction and exclusive right to judge. Many a time in cases of plagiarism I worked through I've met with this argument from the accused authors. It boils down to that I have no right to question basic decency because only reviewers are entitled to pass judgement on that and they already did.

Also from the description, which is not impartial being by the author, it is admitted it was snuck into an online journal by one of its editors. We don't know anything about the nature of peer review in this case other than when the wider board of editors got a know of that, majority of them allegedly threatened to resign.

It is however a very bad form by the managing editor to publish another article in the place of the other, even if that one was decided to be published erroneously. NYJM journal page says he's on leave and ceded his duties to an interim replacement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just love this new concept of inclusivity by exclusivity.

And what are those people thinking? They are seriously undermining their credibility in the long term. Imagine this in 50 years - whenever you would mention something about gender-inequality you would be taken as a tin-foiled freak.

<comment><USER25> > whenever you would mention something about gender-inequality you would be > taken as a tin-foiled freak.

Are you sure? We won't be allowed to acknowledge differences in average adult height or differences in the ability to carry children?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The suppression of uncomfortable truths is not new; it seems almost like a religion and reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair)

</comment><comment><USER27> I have observed empirically GMVH in cats. Female cats were more "standard" in behavior, and held their own much more consistently. (This is NOT to say that they were run-of-the-mill; every one of them had pretty different personalities. I still miss Maria, my Siamese cat. Hope reincarnation exists.)

The male cats varied from totally dumb to extremely intelligent. One cat "Negro" was almost like a monkey, he managed to walk on my shoulders around my head, while most cats are afraid of being held this high. But he ran the wrong gay when my dad was parking the car and was run over ;( Pretty dumb error for a cat that was so intelligent. An idiot-savant cat, perhaps?

<comment><USER28> You are getting downvoted because you included the name of your cat which to an American-native audience means something quite different than a Portuguese- or Spanish- native audience.

<comment><USER27> Oh... damn. But I won't edit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Amie Wilkinson has managed to do many times more harm to the image of women in science then this paper ever could.

<comment><USER21> Well, that's going too far, I think. She comes off as extremely unprofessional, but there are lots of unprofessional men, as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Here's a blog post discussing this:

[https://gowers.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/has-an- uncomfortable...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/has-an- uncomfortable-truth-been-suppressed/)

Here's a "Statement addressing unfounded allegations." by the Mathematical Intelligencer:

[https://math.uchicago.edu/~wilkinso/Statement.html](https://math.uchicago.edu/~wilkinso/Statement.html)

And here's a "Statement in response to Ted Hill's unfounded allegations." by the New York Journal of Mathematics:

[https://www.math.uchicago.edu/~farb/statement](https://www.math.uchicago.edu/~farb/statement)

</comment><comment><USER31> Direct arxiv link to the preprint in question: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184)

Kudos to the author for being brave enough to detail these events. Academia and the process of science has enough blind spots without needing activists in the mix to add their own.

>"Several colleagues," she wrote, had warned her that publication would provoke "extremely strong reactions" and there existed a "very real possibility that the right-wing media may pick this up and hype it internationally."

It's as if these people had never heard of the Streisand Effect. What would have been a stuffy publication of no interest beyond a small circle of curious researchers is now a public salacious affair.

<comment><USER32> It looks like a well written paper with some really cool ideas. Too bad about what happened to it

<comment><USER33> There is nothing original or subtle about it, and it was blatantly intended by the _Mathematical Intelligencer_ editor to stir shit up.

<comment> barry-cotter All of that can be true and Amie Wilkinson's campaign of harassment would still be vile and disgusting behaviour, unworthy of an adult of any kind. She got the paper withdrawn from two different journals, and got Dr Tabachnikov to withdraw his name from the paper.

What do you think of Dr Wilkinson's behaviour? Because that's what the article is about, a campaign of harassment from a woman in a position of power.

<comment><USER33> > What do you think of Dr Wilkinson's behaviour?

I'd need a more authoritative account of it to form a view.

<comment><USER34> And what authoritative accounts have you used to dismiss the paper and the journal editor?

If you believe the editor when they say "I am happy to stir up controversy" why not also believe them when they say "we could make a real contribution here"?

<comment><USER33> > what authoritative accounts have you used to dismiss the paper and the > journal editor?

I read the paper and drew my own conclusion.

> why not also believe them when they say "we could make a real contribution > here"?

That snippet in context: "After the Middlebury fracas, in which none of the protestors had read the book they were protesting, we could make a real contribution here by insisting that all views be heard." That's just fancy language for "stir shit up." There's nothing there about the intellectual merit of Hill's paper, just an unobtainable value that "all views be heard."

People should read the paper to make up their own minds, though. I'm with her, there.

<comment><USER4> > That's just fancy language for "stir shit up."

How so?

> I'm with her, there.

With who?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > _"Our concern," [the NSF] explained, "is that [this] paper appears to > promote pseudoscientific ideas that are detrimental to the advancement of > women in science, and at odds with the values of the NSF."_

I think this is a rational position to take. In particular I would argue that whether or not _this_ paper is one of them, I can conceive of _some_ papers that the NSF should distance itself from quite rationally.

Suppose someone had written a paper showing that, say, scientific reaearch itself was harmful, that the more research was done, the more we angered the gods, or something, and so we should limit our research. The authors have actual evidence to this effect (increasing natural disasters in countries with nationwide science programs, etc.) and apart from the intuitively-bizarre hypothesis, nothing is obviously nonsensical with their methods. Still, almost all scientists think the hypothesis is far-fetched enough that this evidence isn't nearly strong enough to even put the hypothesis into play. Also the hypothesis happens to align with a political plank of the Yellow Party, one of the major political parties that believes in not angering the gods and reducing NSF funding.

I think the NSF would be justified in quashing this paper early instead of letting it play out in the marketplace of ideas, because of the risks to the marketplace of ideas _itself_ if the paper is put to the debate it otherwise deserves and becomes popular on Yellow-leaning non-scientific media.

At that point we are just trying to figure out where the line is. Science, in the sense of the project of humanity to do research about the world, _does_ have values of its own; it is not inherently unscientific for the NSF to ever object to a paper that is at odds with its values.

<comment><USER7> > I think the NSF would be justified in quashing this paper early instead of > letting it play out in the marketplace of ideas, because of the risks to the > marketplace of ideas _itself_ if the paper is put to the debate it otherwise > deserves

What about the risk to the marketplace of ideas if certain ideas can be quashed by authorities for being distasteful? Galileo being the canonical example of this.

> it is not inherently unscientific for the NSF to ever object to a paper that > is at odds with its values.

Science investigates empirical facts about the world. How can a fact be at odds with a value?

Facts describe the world as it is. Values describe what we think is important, and how we ought to act. Discovering a fact about the natural world does not inherently say anything about what is right, moral, or good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Interesting. I strongly disagree with the author's attempt to connect his experience with the Damore fracas. Damore's "manuscript" comprised a number of weakly-justified claims on a variety of subjects in psychology and sociology, reaching far beyond the GMVH, and was furthermore directly critical both of the hiring policies of his employer (!!) and of inclusiveness initiatives in the technology industry more generally. By contrast, the paper by Hill et al provides a single argument about a specific topic and downplays the political implications (to the extent it mentions them at all).

The paper is not without at least one obvious mistake:

> If gender differences in selectivity have been decreasing and are now less > significant in some species than they were in prehistoric times, then this > theory could also predict that the gender difference in variability in those > species has also been decreasing. One recent meta-analysis found empirical > evidence of exactly that trend in humans, reporting "The gender difference > in variability has reduced substantially over time within the United States

Gender variability over the 240 years of the existence of the United States is probably not a good proxy for gender variability over the 5000 years from the beginning of literate societies to the present.

</comment><comment><USER37> I have to issues with it: The write-up seems very one-sided as can already be noticed in the language (1) and the paper, as others have pointed out, is not much of a good scientific paper (2). It seems like the whole controversy was engineered or, at least, he deliberately tried to provoke/"troll" the academic community with his paper.

1)

Certain parts of the post ring my alarm bells when it comes to the language used:

For example: "Fortunately for me, I am now retired and rather less easily intimidated—one of the benefits of being a Vietnam combat veteran and former U.S. Army Ranger, I guess."

Also, certain parts don't really seem to pass a smell test:

> Half his board, he explained unhappily, had told him that unless he pulled > the article, they would all resign and "harass the journal" he had founded > 25 years earlier "_until it died._" Faced with the loss of his own > scientific legacy, he had capitulated. "A publication in a dead journal," he > offered, "wouldn't help you."

I also find it highly suspicious that so many statisticians, fellow mathematicians etc seem to think of the paper as pseudoscientific. When even the NSF and editorial boards, institutions traditionally very conservative, are unhappy, there is probably a reason why

2)

I'm not mathematician but a cursory glance at the text reveals a few very surprising assumptions. The paper's hypothesis is this:

> SELECTIVITY-VARIABILITY PRINCIPLE. In a species with two sexes A and B, both > of which are needed for reproduction, suppose that sex A is relatively > selective, i.e., will mate only with a top tier (less than half ) of B > candidates [1]. Then from one generation to the next, among subpopulations > of B with comparable average attributes, those with greater variability will > tend to prevail over those with lesser variability. Conversely, if A is > relatively non-selective, accepting all but a bottom fraction (less than > half ) of the opposite sex, then subpopulations of B with lesser variability > will tend to prevail over those with comparable means and greater > variability.

[1] As the author points out himself, this presupposes that there is an absolute scale of attractiveness. However, he hides that fact (and its facial controversy) in a bit more convoluted writing: "it will be assumed that to each individual (or phenotype) in each sex is assigned a numerical desirability value which reflects its desirability to the opposite sex". There is only a larger group of people in the top bracket, e.g. 9s, if that is an absolute value on an universal, absolute scale (i.e. if you pick a set, numerical point on this graph [https://i.stack.imgur.com/JWWuw.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JWWuw.png)). If attractiveness is relative and based on the average for example, your contextual situation and "top bracket" corresponds to e.g. top 10%, than the group size doesn't change and the subpopulation with greater variability doesn't have an advantage. And there is evidence for that when we recall that most people date people from a similar social background and that ideas of attractiveness are (partially) based on your background.

Additionally, looking at statistical evidence, we can see that, while there is a difference in childless partners, - which would imply that one groups dates more selectively - that difference is not as large as the authors allude to: [https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2010/27/more-childless- men](https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2010/27/more-childless-men). And that is only one crude statistic, best would be number of children per partner.

From the way he writes the paper (and especially this write-up), despite disclaimers to the contrary, he clearly tries to apply his theory to humans with women being the selective sex.

<comment><USER38> I don't see a problem with any of this. For 1) maybe you want to explain more explicitly what bothers you? I don't find the U.S. army ranger thing surprising in a personal blog post. If one cannot write this without losing credibility... now that's something that worries me.

For 2), this looks quite normal in terms of mathematical modelling. You make a model based on some simplifying hypotheses. You show what result you can get from these hypotheses. The conclusion is "these results follow from the hypotheses". You don't pretend to prove that this is how it works in the real thing, you just give one example of a mechanism that gives the observed results. This is basically how you propose a new theory. Then your "opponents" are supposed to show with more scientific work that a) you made a mistake, or b) your simple theory is a bad model, for example because after changing hypothesis X to better reflect reality, the model no longer produces the expected result.

(Your opponents are not supposed to suppress your theory by exploiting their social connections to prevent publication behind your back. Well I guess there is a viable argument for suppressing valid research if the "truth" is harmful to society, but I don't think this was properly argued here).

<comment><USER39> And as others note, that would be a reasonable social science paper, but "flimsy oversimplified model that might explain a phenomena" does not a mathematics publication make.

It's not made clear (and others mention) that the paper has changed a lot, so it's current form is different than it was originally, and it appears that the author tried to sneak it in to at least one journal, without normal peer review.

That's not good science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > Half his board, he explained unhappily, had told him that unless he pulled > the article, they would all resign and "harass the journal" he had founded > 25 years earlier "until it died."

Half a board of academics skulking to avoid controversy, ok. But becoming a hive of killer bees threatening to _attacking their own hive_? That doesn't pass the smell test.

<comment><USER41> Sounds exactly like standard academic politics to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > Google engineer James Damore suggested that several innate biological > factors, including gender differences in variability, might help explain > gender disparities in Silicon Valley hi-tech jobs.

Did he? I read it when it came to light and briefly again just now and cannot see any mention of higher variability amongst men. Psychological differences, yes, but mostly in the slightly vague "women like people, men like things" or "women are more neurotic" sense.

I'd also question the premise that Damore was fired _merely_ for bringing up psychological differences. He also bridged the is/ought gap by making several demands of Google's hiring practices.

<comment><USER43> > I'd also question the premise that Damore was fired merely for bringing up > psychological differences. He also bridged the is/ought gap by making > several demands of Google's hiring practices.

I don't think he made demands. He called for open discussion, and a reconsideration of aggressive recruitment of women.

<comment><USER42> Fair point, demand is too strong a term. He specifically attacked funding for programs for minorities or women, and any hiring practises with emphasis on diversity, as being "based on false assumptions generated by our biases" (supposedly the creeping "leftist" ideology that's taking over Google) and that they "can actually increase race and gender tensions" without backing this up.

I'm not going to argue against that in this post, but I think imo he went beyond simply highlighting biological differences.

<comment><USER43> What he was saying was that if these biological differences are real, then we ought to expect unequal representation in engineering of women. And therefore, diversity programs that _aim for equal representation_ are misguided and doomed to failure.

<comment><USER42> You use the word "therefore", but it is in the connecting logic between your first and second sentences that Damore brings in a lot more than biological differences. For example, he claims that the opinions of staff at Google are clouded by leftist ideology, and that this determines the manner in which it attempts to increase workplace diversity.

Again, I am neither advocating for or against the truth of this. I'm pointing out that Damore did _more_ than simply highlight biological differences. I think that's important because the shallow way it is discussed - e.g. in the linked article - only leads to divisiveness.

<comment><USER43> So, you think that his statements garnered controversy because he proposed policy amendments and didn't simply leave things at "innate biological differences might explain these disparities better than bias"? I think that's a pretty profound misreading of the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Well that's a fine indication of how corrupt our scientific institutions are these days. Damn shame.

</comment><comment><USER45> Isn't Quillette a right-wing propaganda outlet? I have them blocked on Twitter.

<comment><USER46> Extraordinary.

"I don't know a particular thing, but I'm censoring it anyway and (because?) I heard it was "right-wing"."

Read their (succinct) about page to find out more ([http://quillette.com/about/](http://quillette.com/about/)), and consider reading their articles for yourself, especially before echoing any disinformation you've acquired from your trusty sources.

Your comment adds nothing to the discussion. Mine only serves to help guide you in thinking for yourself.

</comment></comment><comment> another-cuppa I don't even understand why this is controversial. I've explained this to a number of women before and none of them have felt hurt. On the contrary, in fact, it makes them feel better. Humans always fixate on extremes. Men and women. It's a problem in our society. We always want to see the very best and we're not interested in others who are still way above average. There are thousands of women doing great science, engineering, programming etc., but the _very best_ are almost always men, and it's our fault that we only care about the very best.

<comment><USER47> It may have made the women you've talked to feel better, but personally, I'm not a fan of the idea that I'm simply less biologically capable than men in any way.

<comment><USER23> "the idea that I'm simply less biologically capable than men in any way"

Nobody (serious) is saying that. First, when this is talked about, it's always about averages, which are meaningless from individual perspective.

Second, there are obvious biological traits where women are less capable than men on average, like weightlifting. There are also traits where women are more capable, like having kids.

These are facts though. You might also not be a fan of idea that "Earth revolves around Sun", but that's how it is.

On the other hand, I can understand your feeling. I am for example not a fan of idea that many humans are xenophobes.

<comment><USER48> Weightlifting is an excellent example. It's not controversial in the least to say that men (on the whole) are stronger than women. And the strongest man will almost certainly be stronger than the strongest woman. But that doesn't mean a particular woman can't out lift a particular man. I see this all the time at my CrossFit box, where there are women who regularly put more weight on a barbell than I can manage. I'm not even talking about pound for pound of bodyweight either. I'm talking about women who are 50 pounds lighter than I am who can still deadlift 50 pounds more than I can. Some of these CrossFit women are _strong_.

<comment><USER49> Perhaps it's not controversial in your circles. I realize this is anectodal, but I've dated two women pursuing a PhD in a STEM field, both smarter than me in many ways. The second I began to suggest the reason for my greater physical strength might be biological in origin, they both became completely irrational. They somehow believe biology plays no part in the differences between men and women--or maybe that there is no biological difference at all (?). Imagine the intellectual revolt that would occur if I were to bring up this GMVH hypothesis.

There's something about the "girls can do anything" mantra (which I totally agree with!) that seems to translate to "no girl has ever been less capable than anyone at anything as long as they try hard enough." Any theory or evidence contradicting that notion is nonsense.

<comment><USER50> I've had similar, surprising conversations with well educated women who believe that differences in physical strength between men and women have no biological basis. Maybe they were taught that; they didn't have first hand experience training as an athlete in a strength related sport.

My daughter, who is very strong and is stronger than her brothers, wouldn't even compete if she had to go up against men in her sport, powerlifting. It's very obvious in that sport that sex related hormones make a difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> And yet it still ~~moves~~ distributes.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is a one-sided story pushing a "Us vs Them" narrative. I can see nothing productive coming out of this.

<comment><USER53> The weird thing is that the paper was accepted at two journals. Which says something about it's quality. It doesn't mean the author is right! But at that point (if you assume scientifc honesty) you'd expect critics to distill their disagreements in a paper and publish that.

That hasn't happened however. All that's happened has happened behind the scenes. Unless the article we read is dishonest in this regard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> My main problem with the paper is that it's about groups, not individuals. Groyp selection has been debunked. There are better ways to think about the wider variance that don't involve groups. Think instead about each individual "gambling" in its embryology and development.

<comment><USER55> Selection in the paper operates at the individual level. The groups are only a convenient abstraction to determine outcomes at the population level. You can think of group membership being determined by carrying a specific allele. Then the number of individuals in a group is just the frequency of that allele.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> The paper seems to have some egregious and basic errors.

Take a look at the paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf)

On page 2, it says (in discussing Special Case 1): "If sex A is relatively selective and will mate only with the top most desirable quarter of sex B, then all of the next generation will be offspring of the more variable subpopulation B1"

However, if you look at the histogram in Figure 1, it's clear that if sex A mates with the top most desirable quarter of sex B, then sex A is choosing _most desirable mates who happened to be part of the subpopulation B1_.

That is, as diagrammed in the histogram, variability is not a function of the population any more, since the red rectangle noting 'B1' with desirability 3 to 4 is _no longer variable_. It would be absolutely incorrect to say that "all of the next generation will be offspring of the more variable subpopulation B1".

In other words, it's like saying:

"In Sack 1, I have a mix of of blueberries and watermelons. Sack 1 is varied in fruit size, and has a high variability. I've sorted them by size, and taken the most largest fruit and put them in Sack 2. Now Sack 2 is full of variable sizes of fruit, since it came from Sack 1, which had high variability."

(EDIT: to be clear, I think the above sack example is incorrect; I'm illustrating the logic in which the paper seems to be incorrect, according to my understanding.)

<comment><USER16> You've identified the mechanism by which sexual selection operates. It's clearly a powerful force.

This paper is arguing that in addition to sexual selection's first order directional effect, there's an overlaid second order effect on variability, and the argument makes sense. Male reproductive success is already highly variable, because male gametes are cheap. Some males end up being disproportionately successful, e.g., Genghis Khan. From a gene's point of view, being hosted in Khan was winning the jackpot.

If you have a number of male offspring, some of them will be evolutionary "duds" no matter what. If you increase the variability in reproductive success of your male children, then some of them will be less reproductively successful and others will be more successful. But there's an asymmetry: "duds" are already duds and can't be made _less_ successful, but on the other side of the curve, by increasing variability, you increase the likelihood of a jackpot.

The effect doesn't apply to female children, since a female mammal cannot have 200 offspring in her lifetime, but a male mammal certainly can.

(Your fruit analogy is inapt, since fruit in a bag don't reproduce among themselves and regress toward the population mean.)

<comment><USER21> > ... since a female mammal cannot have 200 offspring in her lifetime ...

Ah, but now she could. With enough money to pay for enough surrogates (or eventually, machines) and childcare.

So maybe, going forward, there'll be more variability in human female reproductive success. Interesting.

<comment><USER16> Yeah. Various kinds of reproductive and genomic technologies invalidate general evolutionary assumptions, but the techniques haven't been around long enough or been common enough to matter so far. But in the future? Who knows?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Eric S. Raymond ("ESR", co-founder of the OSI) banned from the OSI mailing list - <AUTHOR> https://telegra.ph/Eric-S-Raymond-ESR-co-founder-of-the-Open-Source-Initiative-was-banned-from-OSI-mailing-list-03-03 <comment><USER2> This is very much worth a read, even if someone re-flags it.</comment>


How Hillsong Church conquered the music industry - <AUTHOR> https://christiandailyjournal.com/2018/10/20/how-hillsong-church-conquered-the-music-industry-in-gods-name/ <comment><USER2> Hillsong music is simple, catchy, and easy to play. If a teenager can pick up a guitar and lead their friends to sing along with easy lyrics, it'll be a hit.

A satirical take on this is How to Write a Worship Song (In 5 Minutes or Less).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhYuA0Cz8ls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhYuA0Cz8ls)

Translations of Hillsong music into other languages are also popular. 約書亞樂團 Joshuaband translate some songs into Chinese, and it was a huge help for me learning Mandarin. I also know about illegal translations of a lot more songs, in Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hungarian. It's illegal because CCLI doesn't operate in those countries, so there's no way to license the song translations officially. Email me if you want to know where to get the chords/PPT/OpenSong/sheet music/MP3s.

For other languages, there's Hillsong Global Project for German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Korean, Indonesian, French, and Chinese.

<comment><USER3> I am not a Christian, but I feel like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ffg4mU7FNE&t=2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ffg4mU7FNE&t=2s) is far more divine sounding then someone with a guitar as in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io2WOQ-3aVs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io2WOQ-3aVs) . Sadly my faith tradition is stuck with Debbie Freedman.

<comment><USER4> It's all about culture. If you were influenced by a high-church growing up, you're more likely appreciate hymns.

People that converted without a high-church context gravitate toward a more modern style of worship.

The downside of so much hillsong influence is that it dominates a culture and drowns out other modern styles. I feel like all hillsong songs sound the same.

<comment><USER5> Tend to agree. Most Christian music sounds very samey to me and simply doesn't _stir my soul_.

I realise this is a very personal perspective, but I find a lot of "secular" music better for worship: Hendrix, Led Zep, Guns 'N' Roses, Soundgarden, Hybrid, She, Pendulum, and of course plenty of orchestral and ensemble music from earlier eras. This stuff stirs my soul.

I'm honestly not trying to be edgy here, and I'm well aware that this isn't going to be everyone's (or even the majority's) bag, and I'm definitely not suggesting that Christian music needs to change for my benefit (it really doesn't). That's all totally OK: it's just me saying that after 22 years of being a Christian I know who I am.

<comment><USER6> > I'm honestly not trying to be edgy here, and I'm well aware that this isn't > going to be everyone's (or even the majority's) bag

We forget that people are extremely varied, there is room for everybody. An infinite God probably doesn't create only ~3 "right" ways of worshipping, living, serving, teaching, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just wanna say, I clicked through to the comments expecting this to be a diatribe against christians and christianity, and I am thoroughly pleased to see that's not the case.

As a (struggling with faith) christian, I tend to think my fellow tech heads will mock me if it comes up. And yet this post has been really respectful, largely just debating the merits of the article rather than as an opportunity to attack.

Kudos, hackers, for proving civility still exists. I'm tickled pink.

<comment><USER8> Dude, I totally second your comment. That's the very first thing I thought as I initially scrolled through the comments. I tip my hat, both to Christians for not being scared to express their beliefs, and to non-Christians for showing respect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been playing in worship groups for +20 years now and I'm currently leading the youth band in a very small church and here are two things that I've been noting recently:

Hillsong's music and most "mainstream" music that come from white english- spoken megachurches have lyrics that talk about "grace","love" and "God accepting you as you are". While the themes on worship music coming from South America (and I think black churches in US too) are more about "Joy", "Freedom" and "God, the mighty warrior defeating his enemies and delivering his people". I found that really interesting.

The other thing is that even while Hillsong's and similar music is very shallow and simplistic, it is becoming increasingly difficult to perform with simple, cheap instruments. So small and poor bands like ours lose appeal against the ones in megachurches with lots of instruments, talent-pool and technology.

I, for one, I'm embracing this and going for a rock-punk attitude for my little worship band.

<comment><USER10> There's another interesting language difference to look at, both within the history of Western worship, and in various countries.

Western worship has become heavily "I/Me" based, where historically it was more "Us/We" based. To the point it's starting to drive me crazy. Worship is becoming almost entirely selfish. A group of individuals having an individual experience, instead of a group of people having a collective, binding, experience with God.

<comment><USER11> I'm reminded of two things. First, Knuth's article "On the Complexity of Songs", which features K. C. and the Sunshine band's "That's the way..." (Knuth, btw, is a Christian). Second, many years ago, a music minister and I were goofing around with worship songs set to disco music. I did, "That's the way, uh huh, huh huh, I praise Him, uh huh, uh huh..." This was, partly, to express my discontent with I-focused worship and banal lyrics. He responded with an amazing, impromptu version of the Bee Gee's "Staying Alive" with the lyrics "He is alive! He is alive!".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a conservative, I've never really paid any attention to Hillsong stuff. What I did hear of typical pentecostal music struck me as pretty shallow and.....commercial. Admittedly as an ignoramus, I do wonder how they get around tax exemption while they rake this all in.

I know you can't brush everyone with the same stroke, but it feels reminiscent of those mega-pastors that fly around in their private jets to shake hands and take selfies with the poor - the message becomes a sideshow to the brand. It makes me uneasy - but, disclaimer, I don't really know on the pentecostal spectrum of commercialism where they lie.

<comment><USER5> Uneasy is the word I'd use as well. And in saying this I have to be honest and admit that I can't point to anything specific that's _wrong_.

Hillsong often get the plaudits (and the rap), but there are other similar movements. Worship Central and HTB here in the UK spring immediately to mind. I do go to these kinds of places from time to time and, whatever the organisation, you talk to the people involved: they're approachable and seem genuine, and they talk about empowering and benefitting the church and Christians at large, and I have no evidence to the contrary. All of which just leaves me feeling guilty about my discomfort, and maybe that's OK because maybe I'm wrong.

On the flip-side everything is so _shiny_ : everyone you see ministering is beautiful and/or handsome and, although the quality of the music and lyrics might be questionable, the production values are excruciatingly high, and you're surrounded by people - particularly at the front - who appear to be going out of their way to model this kind of aching hyperreal trendiness.

Compare this with the composition of the average congregation (of any denomination) in the UK[1]. Even stepping past the issue of ageing congregations in many places, we're (and I mean no unkindness in saying this) a pretty miscellaneous bunch. In lots of churches you end up with all sorts having to get involved in making it work, not just those who are good-looking or loaded or "good people". There's space for _everyone_ , and all can contribute, or at least that's what we aspire to - we believe in a God who calls the things who are not as though they are.

Possibly that last observation is rose-tinted when compared with reality, and possibly unfair on Hillsong and its imitators. Still, the contrast between Hillsong-like and most other churches does feel jarring and leaves me with that lingering unease.

Sorry: this ended up a lot longer than I expected.

 _[1] Note that I deliberately haven 't gone down the route of comparing with the lives and lifestyles of Jesus and the Apostles, not because I necessarily think the comparison is invalid, but because: one, for many people I think there's a lack of familiarity with the source material that may render the comparison meaningless to them, and, two, because the societal and cultural situations are radically different, which makes any such comparison much more complex._

<comment><USER13> For me, the big problem with this kind of musical/theatrical production is that you're doing one thing — provoking excited emotions and feelings in a group context, just as would happen at a well-produced secular concert, or a moving, personal comedy show — and implicitly or explicitly claiming that it is a personal religious experience. Many times with young people who don't know the difference.

I suppose it might be fair to include music-induced group ecstatic experiences in your definition of "religious". But I find the mix-n-match, the implied claim that the emotion of the large-context experience is _actually_ a result of some kind of personal, relational connection to God, to be a heavily loaded and ambiguous possible untruth.

ymmv — I definitely have religion issues :-)

<comment><USER5> > you're doing one thing — provoking excited emotions and feelings in a group > context, just as would happen at a well-produced secular concert, or a > moving, personal comedy show — and implicitly or explicitly claiming that it > is a personal religious experience. Many times with young people who don't > know the difference.

 _That_ is a very thought-provoking perspective, which I think I'll probably be chewing over for a while - thanks for sharing it.

<comment><USER14> I would stringently urge any evangelical who hasn't attended a high energy secular concert - a good one - to go. After you've had that kind of experience, it is like subtracting the noise from the signal.

gave me a permanent distaste for "concerts" at church.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I went to a few Hillsong events about 10 years ago, when the church was becoming very obvious cultural influence Australia-wide. There is a lot that's very entrepreneurial about this church. They also started Gloria Jean's, a big, international Starbucks competitor. Like the music stuff, this had to do with youth culture and creating social aspects to the movement.

In Australia a lot of people called the denomination "charismatic churches" which is largely overlapping with "evangelical" in the states, where it comes from. The larger family of denominations has been growing and internationalising at a serious pace.

In any case, when it comes to religion, opinions are.. sensitive. But, I think the recent history of this religion is worth learning about, for those interested, just because they've been " _making things happen_ ". Religions are pretty diverse structurally, from one another.

Hillsong and related movements (mostly descendants of American evangelical denominations) tend to be quite decentralised. The Church (institution) and the church (building/parish) are almost the same thing. They don't have a traditional, top-heavy hierarchy (bishops, cardinals) and they don't have a traditional local parochial structure.

<comment><USER16> _> just because they've been "making things happen"._

Actually, my biggest fear about Christianity in the USA today is that it's _NOT_ "making things happen" Or, perhaps more accurately, the things that it's making happen are businesses.

The mainline congregations and Catholics of the 19th and early-mid 20th centuries made serious contributions to:

1\. Education. In addition to the obvious middle and high schools, they started colleges and universities. There are literally hundreds of catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, etc. colleges dotting rural America. There are also many more that have since shaken the affiliation but were originally started as schools for pastors and teachers. These christian educational institutions touched more than just the churches; e.g., Fred Rogers was educated at a college founded by Congregationalists and a seminary founded by Presbyterians.

2\. Pastoral training/care. Aside from the above-mentioned colleges and universities, these congregations also started/supported seminaries and -- perhaps more importantly -- insisted on well-trained pastoral leadership that understood the church's teachings.

3\. Congregational care. This included everything from helping out a sick congregant, to gardening, to helping keep the church building in working condition.

4\. Community care. Everything from running food pantries to setting up and staffing health clinics, and sometimes even entire hospitals.

Many modern christian churches aren't much more than tax-free concert venues with a self-help workshop on the side run by charismatic communications majors. They'll take the parsonage exemption, but don't seriously engage in any of the traditional Christian charity work: education, healthcare, caring for the homeless and elderly, or even teaching the gospel.

Even the congregation's own members seem to have become not much more than leads for related businesses; e.g., the charismatic church a family friend attends runs a (very profitable) counseling center and refers its members there for basically every problem mentioned to a pastor or other staff member. Not a casserole in sight when she threw out her back, though.

Which I suppose is reasonable. After all, running a lead-generating combination concert/lecture venue is already a full-time job.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. When I moved into a new area and was "church hunting", one of my stops was the largest church in the area, with multiple satellite campuses. I realized why it was so popular: every Sunday was a big production. People were going to be entertained, not engaged.

There's definitely a continuum, though. There are small churches doing the traditional thing just as there's megachurches doing God, Inc. The church I attend now has a definite focus on the fundamentals you listed above.

<comment><AUTHOR> Big churches that are charismatic and feel like concert venues (The Rock Church here in San Diego for instance) I don't feel are necessarily bad. If that is the door into religion then one could find their way to another congregation like the Methodists who truly focus on good works (help for those recently out of prisons, etc).

<comment><USER18> Audiences vs congregations.

I've been attending a Rock & Roll Jesus church. Partially out of curiousity. It's been weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you read anxiously through the whole article like I did thinking: "Yeah I get it but what are the numbers?"

From 2015 article: "The Hillsong empire they founded (she, too, is a senior pastor) pulled in tax-free revenues of nearly $80 million in Australia last year and more than $100 million internationally."

[https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/inside-the-hillsong- churchs...](https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/inside-the-hillsong-churchs- moneymaking-machine-20151026-gkip53.html)

<comment><USER20> Mega-churches remind me of this warning from Jesus: "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it."

<comment><USER21> I am more skeptical about mega churches. But big or small, the thing I look for is the message. Is it a feel good, everybody is okay type of message? Or do they actually talk about sin, repentance and salvation? Jesus said that believers would be hated by everyone for spreading his message. So I have a more skeptical eye towards mega churches. But you can find the gospel in some large churches, and the feel good pop psychology messages in some smaller churches. So size is not an absolute inverse index.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> barrow-rider "You're not making Christianity better, you're just making rock and roll worse" -H. Hill.

[https://i.redd.it/5iqvu91yz0ly.jpg](https://i.redd.it/5iqvu91yz0ly.jpg)

<comment><USER5> Amazing. How have I never seen that before? Made me laugh primarily because it resonates quite strongly for me (although I suspect not for everyone).

There _are_ Christian artists I've really enjoyed. Iona spring immediately to mind, although I haven't listened to them regularly in years, but the relevant points are:

1) Their lyrics tend to have more substance to them.

2) Even if the style isn't your cup of tea, there's some real and undeniable musicianship on display.

Although way poppier, and with edgier lyrics, I'd probably put Switchfoot in the same category.

<comment><USER22> > Switchfoot

You would probably also appreciate Jon Foreman's (Switchfoot founder) solo work too.

<comment><USER5> Thanks: I'll definitely check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hillsong NYC volunteer software engineer here. We're passionate about using our skills to serve the local community in addition to our church. Shoot me an email if you're in the area and would like to chat about helping local nonprofits with code. e at emersonhall dot com

<comment><USER24> What kind of technology stack(s) do you guys use?

<comment><USER25> Would love to know this as well =).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hillsong is influential, no doubt. But I bet in the long run, even more influential will be the music from 'Veggietales'. (Sort of like 'Schoolhouse Rock'. Very catchy, and popular with all ages.)

<comment><USER27> The catchy Veggie Tales songs are the "Silly Songs" though.

Such great classics as "Dance of the Cucumber"[1], "Monkey or Ape"[2], and "Song of the Cebu"[3]...

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13DvXLdr_H4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13DvXLdr_H4) [2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--szrOHtR6U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--szrOHtR6U) [3]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uv8Ej4CEoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uv8Ej4CEoQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> While not directly rated to Hillsong, there's an interesting series of episodes from Gimlet Media's StartUp podcast called Church Planting that dives down to reveal more day to day operations on how church plants that start small like Hillsong grow into bigger churches. Lot of the aspects of pitching to established investor churches, growth hacking, etc. have a lot more in common to a startup company than a church and pastors more like founders. Church plants that can adapt have a more successful growth. I think it provides an interesting perspective into how "successful" churches like Hillsong that started by meeting in a high school end up turning into megachurches across 6 continents.

</comment><comment><USER29> The other 900lb gorilla in the contemporary Christian music world today is Bethel Church, in Redding CA. They've put out as much if not more of than Hillsong in terms of the music played in contemporary churches these days. Too bad their great music hides some "interesting" theology, IMHO.

<comment><USER30> Yes, Jesus Culture is the other big player in the space.

<comment><USER2> There's also IHOP, Passion 268Generation (Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, David Crowder Band), and Worship Central from the UK (Tim Hughes, Ben Cantelon).

<comment><USER29> oh, Passion is a good one. I don't normally associate Tomlin, etc. with them because they're all such huge solo artists these days (vs. someone like Kristian Stanfill).

Chris Tomlin is especially big in terms of writing songs that modern churches play. There's a reason we called it "Good Good Grief, We're Playing This Again?" on my worship team :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've been playing bass in churches for 30 years. I really enjoy listening to Hillsong's music and playing it.

In the 80s we had lively songs and pensive songs. I enjoy the modern style of quiet songs which become epic anthems.

</comment><comment><USER32> Good interview with Carl Lentz on Bill Simmon's podcast:

[https://www.theringer.com/2017/11/8/16623902/pastor-carl- len...](https://www.theringer.com/2017/11/8/16623902/pastor-carl-lentz-on- locker-room-culture-secret-scrimmages-and-more)

</comment><comment><USER33> Outside the church, this Guy Sebastian type music doesn't cut the mustard. Speaking as an Australian - most of us find Hillsong vaguely threatening. It's a Sydney thing really. I sound negative but in reality, good on the church for enjoying their own music.

</comment><comment><USER34> Off topic: isn't this an overly inflated clickbaity editorialised headline?

<comment><USER35> It's not remotely about "conquering" anything except their music's lack of popularity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm having a hard time absorbing and getting through all the high-quality insights and contributions. There's no doubt that there are a lot of very intelligent people here.

Very happy to be a part of this community.

</comment><comment><USER36> TLDR; I am disappointed that this headline is not satirical.

</comment><comment><USER37> My sister's involved with Hillsong. A scam if ever I saw one. I no longer have anything to do with her.

<comment><USER38> Would you mind elaborating? I personally enjoy the music Hillsong puts out, but am always curious about the inner workings of an organization such as theirs.

<comment><USER39> They share a bit of commonalities with IHOP. I think they might mean their "internship" program is a scam. Look into how IHOP is a cult / scams young people. Its a lot of fluff. My cousin too joined one of the internships but for her own reasons and thankfully she knew better so by the time she got out she just knew we were right about them, except she knew the whole enchilada.

In the case of IHOP they have sexualized lyrics which they front as worship music by over emphasizing being the Bride of Christ. This leads sexually frustrated / confused (in a Christian viewpoint / sense) youths even more confused about Jesus and their relationship with Him. Its a lot to take all at once so research it and pray about it and take your time. I just personally avoid IHOP / Hillsong for multiple reasons. The other thing to remember is they are not all at fault some are just there genuinely or misled into being there.

<comment><USER40> Took me quite a while to work out you weren't talking about pancakes

<comment><USER35> It is indeed an initialism for International House of _Prayer_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> What relevance does this have to Hacker News?

<comment><USER42> It's a pretty clever business niche and a way to run tax-free. The end result is a cultural machine that may well have changed the nature of Christian worship. Interesting, no?

<comment><USER41> Sure I guess.

tl;dr: Christian organization scams tax payers, recent conservative trends on Hacker News somehow makes this interesting?

<comment><USER42> Is it really a scam if it's what taxpayers want?

I don't think this is interesting because any conservative trend. It's a cool business hack that allows you to make money without taxes.

<comment><USER41> I would argue that all religious tax-dodges are scams if you're an atheist. My businesses and lack of faith don't get a free-ride, but I have to subsidize that of somebody else's?

By this logic, it's a cool business hack to run a megachurch and buy your own 737 without paying taxes, not a scam?

<comment><USER5> You aren't really subsidising it, unless you're making the argument that if organisations - such as Hillsong - paid taxes the overall tax rate would be lowered for all? Ideally this might be true but the cynic in me suggests it wouldn't... well, that and the fact that their income within a given country is relatively insignificant as compared to GDP within that country.

Moreover:

1) Hillsong runs substantially on donations and purchases of their merchandise (including music). Most of the people who give or buy their merchandise are taxpayers themselves.

2) Anyone paid as an employee by Hillsong will pay taxes, just like everyone else. I don't know much about the lifestyles of their senior employees/leaders - maybe it's a televangelist-style Gulfstream-and-champagne-fest, maybe not.

3) We know Hillsong earn a lot of money but we don't know that they keep very much of it[1]. If they're anything like HTB, they quite likely don't[2]: the vast majority will be spent on staffing, ministry, along with a chunk given to support other organisations and causes. Ministry means everything from what you see on a Sunday and special events through to social initiatives such as food banks, homeless shelters, childrens' work, soup kitchens, and educational initiatives (and more) that many churches either support or run.

Point (3) is important because it's the point that makes a church a net good within society (or not, in the absence of it). If they're not a net good then I'd be more inclined to agree that, yes, they should be taxed as businesses rather than not taxed as though they're charities. Quantifying that is obviously non-trivial.

 _[1] It 's possible they do but I don't have any information to hand on this._

 _[2] At a pure numbers level this is something that distinguishes a charity from a (healthy) business: one does not generate a profit (which is not to say the money shouldn 't be used carefully and beneficially: clearly it should), whilst the other does._

<comment><USER5> > I don't know much about the lifestyles of their senior employees/leaders - > maybe it's a televangelist-style Gulfstream-and-champagne-fest, maybe not.

Sadly, if this article is accurate, it may be closer to the above than I'd thought: [https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/taxpayers-support- lavish-h...](https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/taxpayers-support-lavish- hillsong-lifestyle/news-story/25af3a860c70628c874389e90d33917b)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Dear World,

we're sorry

\- Australia

(well SOME of us are)

</comment><comment><USER44> Sorry but where are my downvote buttons?

<comment><USER27> Your account had very low karma. There is a minimum threshold of karma required in order to down vote (in order to encourage participation in the conversation, rather than just downvoting topics you don't like).

<comment><USER44> Sorry yes understood thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Huh,

tobymac - 26M views [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeBv9r92VQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeBv9r92VQ0)

Skillet - 242M views [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mjlM_RnsVE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mjlM_RnsVE)

So, if aggresive/suicidal/depressive music is popular, why christian bands may be in underground?</comment>


Social Media Advertising – A chronology - <AUTHOR> http://blog.viraliti.com/social-media-advertising-a-chronology/

<comment><USER2> What value do you provide for the social media users? Not many would be willing to post sponsored content on their networks it would decrease their influence. Any thought on that.

</comment><comment><USER3> This has been tried a few times... a lot of people have tried to provide a good service but failed. Your model looks promising.. All the best

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds interesting. You guys have done a good research.

</comment><comment><USER5> Are you guys on Twitter as well?</comment>