Ask cperciva: Are great mathematicians born or made? - <AUTHOR> Okay, I have been reading quite a bit about this whole nature vs nurture debate. But I want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. Can people who are not inherently 'gifted', start with an immense interest in math at a mid-point in their life, and still go on to make meaningful and significant contributions to the field? In other words, is precocity a prerequisite to doing good work in Math? I'd be interested to hear from a Putnam fellow like you. Also, what are the rest of YC readers' thoughts on this? <comment><USER2> _Can people who are not inherently 'gifted', start with an immense interest in math at a mid-point in their life, and still go on to make meaningful and significant contributions to the field?_

Probably not.

 _In other words, is precocity a prerequisite to doing good work in Math?_

Maybe, depending on whether you by "precocity" you mean "demonstrated precocity".

Intelligence is something you either have or don't have -- and while there's still debate about how much of intelligence is genetic (25%? 50%? 75%?) it's clear that the nurture which is most important is that which takes place before age 5, when the brain is still at its most plastic. Consequently, I would say that anyone who is not gifted when they're 5 years old is unlikely to have a significant mathematical impact.

However, not everybody with intellectual gifts demonstrates them early. Mathematics is a field known for child prodigies, not because it's particularly suited to prodigies, but rather because mathematics prodigies tend to get noticed. Some fields, like mathematics or chess, have little knowledge required before intellect can be applied; others, such as chemistry or biology, require years of prerequisite study. Moreover, just like chess prodigies, the abilities of a mathematics prodigy are obvious and unarguable, while a remarkable writer is still likely to be rejected by his first 19 publishers -- and what 9 year old writer is going to send his manuscript to 20 publishers?

In short: You have to be smart to do make a significant contribution to mathematics, and I don't believe that people can "become smart" past a very early age. However, it's possible for someone to be smart despite not having been recognized as such, depending on which fields his intellect is applied against. Finally, it's definitely possible for someone who is smart but has never done well in mathematics to make a contribution to mathematics -- if he can develop the interest which is necessary for him to apply his intellect appropriately.

Is this a useful answer? I have some other ideas about intelligence and IQ and the Putnam and flashes of insight floating around, but I'm not entirely certain how to explain them -- and given that news.yc stories don't stay on the front page for long, I thought I should post what I could promptly rather than waiting for everything else to crystallize.

<comment><USER3> What is "intelligence?" Can we separate it from society's conception of it? Can we state a computational definition rather than a definition in terms of satisfaction of cultural standards? We undervalue a lot of mental attributes - consistency of thought, sensitivity to subtle differences in concepts, patience, self-reflection, the ability to "go meta" etc. which cannot be detected by the rough and rigid abstract problem solving required by low-level Math (e.g. the Math problems which would qualify prodigies).

I am highly turned off by the idea that we can't "become smart" after an early age. I feel like I "got smart" after I started playing go, I feel like I "got smart" after I learned category theory. I feel like every year I get smarter - and not smarter in the sense of "having more knowledge" but smarter in the sense of being able to solve larger classes of problems, and more complicated problems.

and c.

<comment><USER2> _I am highly turned off by the idea that we can't "become smart" after an early age._

I find this notion rather peculiar. Do people get "highly turned off" that they can't "get tall"? I've known for my entire life that I could never become a professional athlete -- I simply don't have the physique.

What is it about intelligence which makes people get so much more upset than they get about physical attributes?

<comment><USER3> I think you're being presumptuous. I'm not saying that I'm "turned off" by the -fact- that I can't get tall(1). I'm saying that this is not a -fact- at all. Even if it -is- a fact, it certainly is much more uncertain/open for debate than the question of whether you can get tall at a late age. I'm saying that the fact that you -claim it is a fact- is what turns me off. Perhaps I was slightly imprecise. I should have said "I am highly turned off by assertions to the effect that we can't become smart after an early age." This turns me off because belief/assertion creates cultural structure, and cultural structure changes the world. This point is too complex to go into here, sorry.

My claim is even slightly deeper/more provocative than that - I don't think that efforts by a lot of academics (including a lot of my friends) to propagate an idea of "general intelligence" which solidifies at a young age are entirely benign. I think that they are largely founded in worry and attempts to create an elite academic class. Once you're in, you're in (since getting in means that you have a "good" brain which is not really subject to change). It's self-reinforcing and (in my experience) always based in self- doubt.

\---

As an aside, the idea that "people get so much more upset" about the intellectual than the physical is completely absurd. I know a ton of people (girls and guys) who freak out constantly about their appearance. I know like 3 guys (including myself) who are the least bit worried about our intellects. Admittedly, most of my friends are academics, but my interactions with people outside this sphere indicate that the trend is not peculiar to my social group (and is probably even more physical-attribute oriented, in general). Seriously, I can't believe that you wrote this. This isn't meant to be mean or like ad hominem - but seriously? Do you actually believe what you wrote? Do you know anyone who isn't an academic?

To answer what I think you might have meant (namely: why do _I_ get much more freaked out about my intelligence than my physical attributes - which is also presumptuous because you have -no- idea how much I care about my physical attributes) I would like to observe that in modern western society "we are our minds." Your mind is essentially the limit of your capabilities in the sort of world I'm sure both you and I live in (the quote unquote information world). The mind is connected with the ability to create beauty (art), the ability to connect with other human beings (sex), the ability to experience spirituality (love), etc. In the academic world, at least, our physical bodies are a burden. They wear out. They get cancer. They die.

Did you seriously ask this? Were you being rhetorical? I can't tell. I don't mean to be mean, but sheesh.

(1) and I accuse you of attempting to employ an underhanding rhetorical trick in making this implicit comparison, I might add.

<comment><USER4> There are basically 3 requirements for intelligence that surpass the basic need to survive:

DNA, Diet, and Stimulus.

DNA limits what structures can develop which is the basic foundation of intelligence.

Diet provides the raw materials to crate the structures that DNA is trying to build. Poor diet causes DNA to sacrifice specific objectives to insure survival. Specific toxins like lead also limit the body's ability to create structures. At the same time short term diet inhibits performance.

Experience refines specific structural elements. Without early experience in specific areas it becomes harder to develop efficient systems for dealing with those situations. It's not impossible to learn French at 50 if you only know Spanish, but it's far easer to learn it at 5 than 50. Part of this has to due with the brain ignoring sounds that it finds unimportant.

All of the above statements are well supported by a huge body of research being annoyed by them is like getting pissed off at gravity while building rockets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi dwaters,

I know you are waiting for cperciva to give you reply. But I want to tell my own experience.

I was very bad at math when I was in high school. I figured out algebra without problem but failed pretty bad in classical geometry when I was 9th grade. From my 10th to 12th grade, I just have dyslexia to what math textbook says.

Then I studied with 2 teachers for a year to prepare taking another entrance examination in my country (Taiwan). Both explained clearly two things to me that I like most later, one is physics and another is math. The math teacher taught me calculus in 2 weeks and I just started to become literate to meanings in those symbols and after that when I look back analytic geometry and classical mechanics in our high school textbooks, I just felt my mental block was removed! I did not feel any trouble in understanding the problems and I later chose my major in physics just because I like to learn more of it and went through my undergraduate pretty ok and later I found computer science and I started to work in the trench for 16 years.

I did not make any contribution to math and physics, but I still like to use the training that I received in my daily life and I still sometime open books from Dover Publishers to read and feel interested. I like the feeling in figuring out problems and find ways to solve them. And that is the joy I'm glad to had a chance to acquire due to two best teachers that enlighten me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Short answer: nurture, very early on, because children have a fantastic curiosity and ego-less stubborn determination.

Long answer: From my personal experience, a lot of what some claim to be 'nature' is actually very early-age 'nurture'. So it's not that children of academics are genetically smarter, it's that they are raised by people with whom dinner or a walk in the park ends up being as educational as a university lecture. On top of that, if you consider that knowledge is like money under compound interest, I think it's possible to explain people that seem smart beyond comprehension as just having gotten a good head start on learning.

Math is also a special case for two (related) reasons: (1) emotions, especially ego, has a lot to do with learning math, and (2) math is filled with "aha" moments, where one thing which seemed incomprehensible one moment is obvious the next. Little kids have an advantage related to both of these - they (hopefully) don't yet have an ego to build or protect when it comes to knowing things, and they take a lot more pleasure from the "aha" moments.

So to answer your question - I would say it's nurture, but the kind which is (most of the time) limited to very young ages. On the other hand, given the determination and stubbornness of a 5 year old facing a challenge, it's nothing you can't do at 40. But I worry that I don't quite have that determination at 22, and will only have less of it as I am starting to worrying about becoming financially secure, starting a family, etc.

<comment><USER7> I whole-heartedly agree with everything you wrote.

I competed in Math competitions while in high school but never made it to the IMO. My friends who went to the IMO were doubtlessly very smart, but they had something else: they had many years of training under their belts. I failed because I was an amateur, they succeeded because they trained like professional athletes.

To do Math, intelligence is required, but not sufficient. Tenacity, patience, stubborness, an obsession to figure things out, and the willingness to work very hard are also required. Prof. Terence Tao knows much more than I do on the subject and he explained things clearly:

[http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have- to...](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a- genius-to-do-maths)

When one is young, one does not mind feeling stupid. Understanding something in Mathematics takes a lot of time and effort. After a certain age, one does not want to feel that stupid anymore. That's why many great mathematicians did their best work before they were 30. It's more psychological than intellectual, I'd say.

<comment><USER6> _When one is young, one does not mind feeling stupid. Understanding something in Mathematics takes a lot of time and effort. After a certain age, one does not want to feel that stupid anymore. That's why many great mathematicians did their best work before they were 30. It's more psychological than intellectual, I'd say._

That's right on the spot, and a much better way of saying it than I did when I talked about ego.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All the easy math has been done. People have been working on Mathematics for a long, long time. To "make meaningful and significant contributions to the field" is one of the hardest intellectual tasks a person can do. It is probably impossible for someone at a midpoint in their lives to suddenly develop an interest in math and make a meaningful contribution. Even people who have been immersed in Mathematics their whole lives often cease to make major contributions in middle age.

You do have to be inherently gifted to be a good Mathematician. You even have to be really smart to be a mediocre one. This is hard stuff, the Olympic Marathon of intellectual pursuits. Do you have to be gifted to run in an Olympic Marathon? Someone that was merely determined might be able to qualify for it, but the ones that win are definitely genetic freaks.

You can certainly enjoy math without being a super-genious. If someone were dogged and creative enough and focused on a new enough subfield, they might even be able to contribute a little, provided they've kept their analytical facilities sharp in a field like Physics or Engineering. But then again, anytime a new field opens up there's hundreds of PHD students across the world that jump into it looking for a new bit of math to write their thesis on. It gets fleshed out pretty quick, and the low hanging fruits are the first to go, and the people picking the fruits are PHD math candidates.

Please note that this is just my opinion from being around Mathematicians. I'm not a Mathematician myself, but I was around them when I got an undergraduate degree in Mathematics. That degree taught me that Math was really hard and I would probably have a more significant impact on the world if I pursued something else.

<comment><USER9> I disagree with most of your points, though you're more qualified to talk on the subject than I am.

| All the easy math has been done.

How easy are we talking about? While I was in high school, I remember a news article about some other high-school-age kids that happened to a solve a long- standing and relatively simple problem in geometry involving triangles. I can't remember the specifics, nor can I find anything about it now, but I think there are still plenty of relatively entry-level problems to work on.

| It is probably impossible for someone at a midpoint in their lives to suddenly develop an interest in math and make a meaningful contribution.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amateur_mathematicians>

It's a pretty crappy list, and most of the names are from centuries past, but there are a couple of interesting entries there.

| Do you have to be gifted to run in an Olympic Marathon?

Your example of Olympic marathons is specifically a zero-sum game, whereas mathematics is not.

| But then again, anytime a new field opens up there's hundreds of PHD students across the world that jump into it looking for a new bit of math to write their thesis on.

This seems to contradict your previous point that mathematics has become inaccessible. There are a few differences between a grad student and a sufficiently dedicated hobbyist, and none of them are genetic, nor are any of them necessarily bound by a particular age bracket. Indeed, someone in middle age could attend university on a specific curriculum, and in a few years be looking at the same problems as the PHD students. The older person might have some advantages in self discipline or experience in tangential fields.

<comment><USER8> > There are a few differences between a grad student and a sufficiently > dedicated hobbyist, and none of them are genetic, nor are any of them > necessarily bound by a particular age bracket.

This raises an interesting empirical question: is there a significant deterioration in brain performance after about 40 years of age or so? Anecdotally it would seem to be the case. The Fields Medal is the highest award in Mathematics and it has an age cap of 40, but the rule hasn't raised controversy because almost all the worthy contenders have been under 40 anyway. However, some people have hypothesized that the dominance of the young is the result of other career and family concerns distracting people in middle age. That could well be the truth, and I hope it is. It would be interesting to know the answer.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1149615.e...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1149615.ece)

:-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Few notes.

The whole discussion whether intelligence is born or made, misses the fact that motivation to work hard for years is unfrequent. Most people give up quickly, and are not able to commit themselves without immediate reward.

I easily imagine a mathematican without great intelligence, yet with high motiviation and ability to stay focus for hours. I can't imagine a mathematican who is smart, yet is not able to concentrate.

Another thing is that what seems to upset most people about genetic intelligence is limitation of our free will. It goes something like this: "I _realize_ I want to become a mathematican and environment _limits_ me; I can't afford this thought."

The problem is that between born and made there is a lot of grey area. What if, for instance, you do not realize it?

You might grew up in a suburbia environment that encourages you to become a MBA or a lawyer. If so, non-zero chances are you'd simply don't want to become a mathematican, or a quant. (no money, no chicks). Is your free will limited, or no? In different environment you'd dream about becoming an Erdos.

You might think that you made the decision, while, actually, the socialization process made the decision, and if you want to change it, you have to overcome the defaults. A non-trivial task.

I also feel that, besides the intelectual curiosity, there is something more behind this question. It seems, at least to me, that most people asking it, actually ask whether chances are their effort will be rewarded.

There is nothing wrong with it. One wants to minimize her risks. If investment of 10 years would be known to give 0 output (here: becoming a great mathematican) in some cases (here: lack of genetic intelligence), then, under given circumstances, it doesn't make sense at all.

The point is that intellectual work is highly non-linear and if there are any constant factors, they are highly more complicated than born vs made.

</comment><comment><USER11> Precocity is overrated. To me, believing that genius is decided at age 0/5/10 whatever means that you are just rationalizing not working hard enough with "I am not a genius. I will not make it. Therefore no point in working hard".

The primary test really is : a) Are you having fun (with maths in this case)?

b) Are you willing to put time and effort into it? Note that the amount of time available may be one hurdle if you are starting at mid-age since its likely that you are pursuing it as a side hobby instead of a full time profession.

See Hamming's lecture on PG's site. Search particularly for "hard work is compounded" and "why is he so much smarter than me" or roughly along those lines.

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://www.jinfo.org/Fields_Mathematics.html>

25 percent of fields medal winners vs. 0.227 percent of world population. >100x difference. [discussion of statistical signfigance omitted.] Nature vs. Nurture is a stupid discussion, as "nurture" is costly and transient and a ripe subject for government boondoggles. People are different. No way around it.

On the other hand, a basic command of mathematics can be widely shared, and learned at most ages.

<comment><USER13> That may well be true, but I think the problem of disentangling the incredibly powerful Jewish cultural influence (or any other cultural, influence, really, as a half-asian I can tell you my heritage helped push me) from whatever biological differences there might be is an incredibly tricky one. So I think that asserting such conclusions here is either chauvinist or premature.

<comment><USER14> Assuming as little as 10% could be nature, the lack of genetic conditions would mean a lot for top achievements.

Also talking about a certain community doesn't necesarily mean something related to race. There could be some kind of selection for people that become jew marrying or people that quits.

<comment><USER13> I would also like to ask, _how could such conclusions, were they actually true, be put to use by society?_

I haven't been able to identify any way to use such information which I wouldn't consider deeply immoral. But I have unusual views here.

<comment><USER15> It would help us avoid expensive mistakes to correct non-problems. Imagine a world in which height is as politically charged as race. Every year, short people rail against the overrepresentation of the tall people in sports, in politics, in film, etc. And every year, the tall people talk about how some of their best friends are short, they themselves aren't prejudiced, they understand there's a horrible legacy of discrimination, perhaps short-person- related affirmative action programs are necessary.

But then some annoying researcher points out that of _course_ tall people are better at basketball, because they are closer to the basket (among other things). And that within ethnic groups, height correlates with intelligence because of a confouding variable: malnutrition is known to reduce cognitive ability and height, and cognitive ability correlates very well with income.

So it basically transforms something from a political problem to a scientific fact. There is no longer anything to rectify, because everything is as it should be -- people have characteristics that make them better or worse at various tasks, and that's just the way things are. A short person who tries hard can succeed at tall-person fields, but not to the extent that they could if they were tall. A tall person can live a long time if they try hard to be healthy, but not as long as they could if they were short.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-t Math education is so bad right now that any genetic differences are drowned out almost entirely. Of all the mathematicians I've met (including IMO gold medalists, Fields medalists, etc.), there seems to be little correlation with siblings, at least beyond what you would expect from having parents who emphasize learning math.

To answer your question, if you want to contribute significantly, you will need to study hard for several years, but it is possible. One of the best mathematicians I know well didn't have any interest until he was 16, and he's now 25 or so.

<comment><USER16> Wow, 16 is sooo old. I'm sure plenty of great mathematicians didn't know what they wanted at 16 either.

25 is pretty young still I think. Thats only 3 years into a PhD, so really I wouldn't expect anyone (except super geniuses) to make many achievements by that age. I'd say 30 between 27 and 30 seems like a pretty solid age, as you've reached a peak with your PhD and you're still young and inquisitive and hopefully humble.

<comment> mark-t Ask around. 16 is quite late to start taking math seriously and end up at the very top. He wasn't doing math for fun. He wasn't asking himself mathematical questions. He wasn't doing math competitions. He had no knowledge outside of what was taught in school to students at his grade level. This is freakishly uncommon, but he shows it's possible.

25 is young. He is just a few years into his PhD, and he hasn't made many major achievements (he's been a grader for the IMO, written one paper that's still being refereed for publication). The point is that he's noticeably better than I am at almost every branch of mathematics except combinatorics, and he had no interest until he was 16.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone else see the flaw in asking a gifted mathematician about the human brain, merely because they're a gifted mathematician? cperciva is certainly very smart, and may also happen to know a thing or two about the subject...but mathematical ability doesn't necessarily correlate with knowledge of how humans learn or cognitive development.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, but his answer is in line with what's known about cognitive development.

<comment><USER17> Sure, but anyone with a couple of hours to spend on the Internet can find out what is in line with what's known about cognitive development (certainly more than a few threads at HN will provide). Since it was directed at cperciva specifically, there seems to be a desire to get something more than just knowledge. Permission, maybe? I dunno.

I just found the question interesting. And it's a common phenomenon. Musicians, for example, even not particularly gifted ones, get this kind of question pretty frequently--"can adults really learn to be good musicians?", "it just comes naturally to you, right?", etc. Humans have funny logic sometimes, I guess, including the people on the receiving end of the questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would strongly suggest that you read the biography of Erwin Schrodinger. Empirically, it seems to be quite possible to pick up mathematics and science at a later stage. But it doesn't happen too often. I cannot tell if this has to do with society's influence (there are many pressures keeping people from switching fields) or something to do with natural talent.

But I do think that success in science, mathematics, or really, anywhere, is much more a product of your habits, discipline, environment, and beliefs than is ordinarily given credit. I don't think 'nature', or 'very early nurture' is unimportant -- for example, it can play a very important role in the sorts of things you get interested in and the preferences, beliefs and skills you acquire. But _conditioned on having the same beliefs, habits, and discipline as masterful scientists, business people, or researchers_ , if you're talking about great contributions, I think the other dimensions of talent truly shrink into irrelevance.

Three terrific links: Michael Nielsen on Extreme Thinking. <http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/?p=19>

(Edit: Whoops! Michael, the link is broken! Here's an archived version, [http://web.archive.org/web/20061018164649/http://www.qinfo.o...](http://web.archive.org/web/20061018164649/http://www.qinfo.org/people/nielsen/blog/archive/tough- learning/tough-learning-final.html) )

Terry Tao's Career Advice: <http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/>

And the classic, Richard Hamming, You and Your Research: <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html>

<comment><USER9> | I cannot tell if this has to do with society's influence ... or something to do with natural talent.

Both. Those with natural talent are more likely to produce notable work at an earlier age. Likewise, for male scientists, testosterone seems to drive creativity, and in later ages that has a tendency to get channeled into marriage and family instead ([http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1149615.e...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1149615.ece)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just read 'A Mathematician's Apology' where Hardy touches on this at one point. If you want to consider someone's opinion on your question (besides cperciva), consider Hardy's (because he was a great mathematican and a brutally honest person). Briefly, Hardy thought the ability to make deep contributions to mathematics erodes after middle age. He cites Euler, Abel, Ramanujan, et al. Hardy mentions Gauss who was old (55, I think) when he made a major contribution but, Hardy notes, the idea for it had germinated while Gauss was young. I personally think Nature plays a bigger part than nurture when it comes to mathematical ability (of the rarer kind). Ramanujan is a classic example. He had pretty much no nurture. Way before anyone knew or cared, he was producing stunning mathematical insights.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't know what the "experts" say, but I've always run my business with a principle that almost no one else agrees with, "Almost anyone can learn almost anything".

I constantly witness failures in business because someone said, "It can't be done," or "He can't do that," or "She'll never be able to do that."

I love proving them wrong. I'm rarely disappointed.

Given the right resources, the opportunity, and most of all, genuine encouragement and support, it's amazing what the human brain, at any age, can accomplish. Sometimes, all it takes to discover it is a little more faith in another than in onesself.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have had similar thoughts recently. Although my desire to get better at maths is not to "make meaningful and significant contributions to the field". My desire is to make meaningful contributions to other fields. Reviving and extending my dusty math skills may be an essential component. So I think if you realign your question/purpose as I have, the answer is "yes". Otherwise, my instinct says "no".

</comment><comment><USER22> Wasn't there a story recently on HN about a guy who proved a longstanding open problem as a hobby, and was a security watchman in his day job? (Or some other job, I don't know).

I am surprised so many people here seem to lean towards "nature". I am pretty sure you can pick up mathematics at any age. Sometimes I also wonder: humans manage so many really complicated tasks in their daily lives, can it really be a much farther stretch to reach into mathematics?

Of course experience and knowledge and training help in mathematics, but as in other fields, maybe sometimes an outsider can bring a fresh view into it. It might also depend on the field of maths you choose, some might be more approachable than others.

That said, I agree with the other post that genius mathematicians are probably somehow born or made very early on.

<comment><USER23> There was such a story ( <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966679.html> ), but the guy was "an accomplished mathematician" before becoming a security guard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> With the well known exceptions of Gauss and Ramunajan, great mathematicians tend to emerge in communities of talent. I would say that community and social network play a very large role in the emergence of mathematical genius.

</comment><comment><USER25> What about Hardy's collaborator Littlewood, who continued to do excellent research into a very ripe old age?

Hardy was a depressive, and this may have had an effect.

How many of the great mathematicians used Cocaine or amphetamines--not a silly idea, look at how many students use such drugs--to get early success. Recall that Cocaine was LEGAL in the 19th century. Does this explain their early burnout, and the bipolar depression symptoms ( called repeated nervous breakdowns) of so many of the great mathematicians in the 19th and early 20th century?

</comment><comment><USER3> People vary in mental attributes. Let's get this out of the way right now. It -has to be the case-. We should obviously remain agnostic about what these attributes are (for instance, I would be hard pressed to say that "good memory" is even genetic because it is hard to disambiguate "memory software" from "memory hardware" in the brain).

Cultures screen for genetic attributes at a young age. This is not necessarily a good thing, but it just happens to be the case. Attractive children are treated differently. "Bright" children are treated differently. "Slow/inattentive" children are treated differently.

The sum of genetic attribute and cultural reaction to that attribute produces higher-order attributes which are consumed by new cultures, etc.

There is an academic culture of Mathematics. To participate, you need to have had the right experiences (enabled by the right genetics, pre-conditions, and cultural/socio-economic starting-point). People like MIT's Daniel Kane or Reid Barton were made-and-born.

So no, you can't become part of the culture of mathematics if you're not. Sorry, they're very picky. They also have a lot of resources (people to talk to, seminars to attend, journals which are expensive) which you can't have if you're not in the club.

Another unfortunate thing is that new math research really has to be presented in terms that "old math" can understand. E.g. constructivist mathematics struggles to get widespread approval. Adoption of ZFC axioms seems arbitrary in some senses (the C part).

So what does it mean to do "good" research? You need to create a result and argue it. Creation requires resources, argument requires facility with standards and ears to listen. Without acceptance into the community, you have neither.

That's one definition, anyway.

Do you just want to develop truth for yourself? Do you want to understand math deeply?

The fact is that there are many people who are extremely gifted in terms of genetic skills, who can do good math, but who don't quite "fit the mold" (trivial example: people with tremendous visuo-spatial reasoning abilities vs. people with tremendous pure-abstraction symbolic-manipulation abilities). These people can still do good math. They just have to do it largely on their own and they may have trouble communicating it with others.

In short, it's insanely complicated and has to do with the marriage of genetics and -culture-, not nurture, per se. If you want deeper insights into this question, I recommend you look at the history of mathematics and mathematicians.

\---

Anyway, if you want a good example of a non-stereotypical mathematician, I recommend you look at the autobiography of Grothendiek. Good read.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm surprised at how strongly held most of the opinions are argued in the forum. The reason why is that I know of very little scientific evidence that would lend people such certainty. Firstly, as I understand it, to date, there has been no longitudinal study of mathematics talent in people who develop in interest after adolescence. Secondly, the neurological basis of learning is a rapidly growing field, but the field right now may not have much to say about the development of mathematics talent. The points that have been made: i.e. that you can't do it may be true, it's just that you probably should take what they say with a grain of salt since they are talking about a subject that is not very well understood.

I would wager, though, that going from having a small knowledge of math to going to a level of knowledge of comparable size to a mathematics researcher is going to be very hard. People who focus on math starting freshman year of high school go through 4 years of high school + 4 years of college + 5-7 years of grad school = 13-15 years before they become research mathematicians. So it might take you 10+ years before you know enough to start contributing.

Additionally, if you read psychological research on expert performance (which you probably should, and Eric K. Andersson is one of the experts in that area so perhaps start with an article by him), it normally takes 10 years to develop expert skills in a field, and that expertise comes about from something he terms "deliberate practice". Check out: ([http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf)) The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.

Most evidence would indicate that the abilities of a Putnam fellow are probably not out of reach to somebody who uses a strict deliberate practice regimen to develop their working memory (google that with 'mathematics') of and the ability to execute the thousands of tricks that mathematicians employ to solve problems. I am not very confident in this particular assertion, and I believe there is only weak evidence for it, however, there is only weaker evidence against it (and most people who argue against it make use of hand- waving has their primary argumentative technique).

On the actual task of becoming a mathematician I suggest you read some essays by Gian-Carlo Rota ([http://web.archive.org/web/20070630211817/www.rota.org/hotai...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070630211817/www.rota.org/hotair/hotair.html)), in particular look at the "10 Lessons I wish I had been Taught" and the reflections on math and mathematicians. He points out that mathematicians seem to have only a couple of tricks up their sleeve which they apply over and over and over again.

      The points made by yelsgib are good since mathematics is about a community of researchers, and most problems have been looked at by hundreds of researchers.  At the very least you will need to attend conferences at Universities.

This brings me to my final point, which is that if you want to make contributions to the field you'll make it a lot easier on yourself if you attend grad school in mathematics. In general people don't have to pay for math grad school, but it will cost you time. The reason why I say that it will make your life easier is that, firstly, math grad school will induct you into the community of mathematicians. You'll have better guidance than I can give (I am a lowly undergraduate) on how to become a mathematician, and when you get to doing serious research you'll have an advisor who will (hopefully!) guide you through it. One of my friends who is finishing up his P.h.D in analysis points out that he would have no idea whether he was making progress or not if it weren't for his advisor (he's doing research on semiclassical wave functions). Secondly, you'll know whether mathematics is right for you.

And, if you plan on making 'significant' contributions you'll have to do more or less the same preparation that a math grad students goes through and you'll have to put in the same, if not more time as grad students do in preparation to do research.

I admit that I am curious to see what happens if you go through with such a project. It would take a great deal of perseverance on your part as you come across all the barriers I am facing (as a math major) as well as those that come about because of your age and station in life.

My main suggestion is to try to get into correspondence with mathematicians to try to get more guidance. This can be difficult because you are probably just starting out, but you will most likely find one or two gracious ones if you start trying to correspond with mathematics departments.

I lack the experience to be a good person to talk to but I am nearly always willing to discuss this sort of thing so feel free to send me an e-mail to [my sn without the 'm'] [the a with a circle around it] uchicago [period ] edu.

</comment><comment><USER27> converting -110 degrees celsias into fahrenheit

</comment><comment><USER28> Very great mathematicians are born. You're either born as Ramanujan or Erdos or you're never going to be Ramanujan or Erdos. No way around it.

But, merely pretty damn good mathematicians can work really good and be a thousandth as useful as an Erdos or Ramanujan.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't want live the life of Erdos...

<comment><USER2> * I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't want live the life of Erdos...*

Come on... travelling the world and couch-surfing for years on end, while having no financial concerns at all? I think most people would love to live that life.

<comment><USER6> For a bit, sure, but I'd imagine sooner or later, most people get tired of doing math 16-20 hours a day and want to start a family or something.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Flutter apps coming to the Linux desktop - <AUTHOR> https://ubuntu.com//blog/canonical-enables-linux-desktop-app-support-with-flutter <comment><USER2> Potentially interesting news. But I wonder if Flutter desktop apps will suffer from the same bloat as Electron based ones?</comment>


You need math to be a good programmer, and that's a good thing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tabini.ca/2012/11/you-need-math-to-be-a-good-programmer-and-thats-a-good-thing/

<comment><USER2> Nicely written ... Getting the mathematical logic is the key ... I wish teaching concentrated on explaining the patterns.</comment>


Why global markets are collapsing right now, and who you should blame for it - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/why-global-markets-are-collapsing-and-who-is-to-blame-2018-10 <comment><USER2> I always get mad when you read after the fact why a market crashed. Why didn't you talk about all this before the market crashed. Half of it I have heard about, but some of of this I hadn't heard about.</comment>


Twitter app store oneforty gets more funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.pehub.com/58674/twitter-app-store-oneforty-gets-funded/

<comment><USER2> I'm curious to know what hypothesis is behind funding third party app directories. I'm pretty sure oneforty isn't the only one to get funding. Is there a business to be built here that would be worth $20M? I know a lot of people assume these are acquisition plays, but I'm pretty sure there has to be an alternative theory. Is this a trojan horse? Get your start in one thing and use it to expand into something more lucrative?

<comment><USER3> oneforty can make money with sponsored application sections and a cut on selling applications. So it can be a profitable business on its own.

but first they need eyeballs.

<comment><USER4> Speaking of, if you've got an app, client, tool, website, or something that uses the Twitter APIs in a meaningful way that you want to sell through oneforty, e-mail me: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER5> You might want request that the author links to your site. I couldn't easily jump from the article to check out oneforty.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Archery company sues LARPer over patents, then files gag motion to silence him - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/archery-company-sues-larper-over-patents-then-files-gag-motion-to-silence-him/ <comment><USER3> Larping.org imports and resells foam arrows. Global Archery also sells foam arrows, and is suing for trademark infringement and patent infringement. According to this article, the trademark infringement claim is based on the name "Larp Arrow", which sounds pretty generic, but more importantly is actually only being used by some unrelated seller. The patent claim is based on patents dated after the company that made the arrows started making them, and Larping.org doesn't make them anyways, they only resell them. Larping.org launched a crowdfunding campaign to finance their legal defense, and Global Archery demanded that they shut it down, shut up, and pay them all the money raised so far.

A sane court system would be able to investigate and dismiss the IP claims quickly, before they forced the defendant to incur any significant costs. The US courts, however, are not a sane system, especially where intellectual property is concerned. It is a system where people believe, first, that if you don't spend a lot of money on lawyers, then the merits won't save you. And it's a system where defendants almost never get to recoup the money spent on lawyers.

So we get this. When patents appear in the news, it's always a mean plaintiff trying to bully a meritorious defendant out of a market, or extort a payout. This is very different from the stories our lawmakers hear about, which are about patents protecting virtuous inventors from theft by big companies--a scenario which, as far as news headlines are concerned, never ever happens.

<comment><USER4> No, the trademark claim is based on the defendant's deliberate use of Global Archery's "Archery Tag" trademark to market their own product.

Their use of that trademark is probably fine (you're allowed to compare your products to those of other firms), but it's not correct to suggest that Global Archery is somehow enforcing a trademark on all of "larping".

<comment><USER5> Indeed. I'd like to assume that people are smart enough to explicitly call out other companies and piss them off. Selling your imported arrows as "Better than Archery Tag" is just asking for trouble.

The actual mechanics where the man is getting sued for patent infringement is likely an unrelated lash-out by "Archery Tag". Archery Tag just saw this guy deliver the "first blow" since he was purchasing Google Ads explicitly using their trademark without permission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The suit seems to be over the use of the "Archery Tag" trademark in advertising? That seems perfectly legal (article states it as well). Typical "we'll suebully you" case imo.

So how do you get these patents voided if there's clear evidence another company (the arrows he sells from Germany) produced something similar before? Pretty clear case of priors at least according to European patent law which is the only one I'm vaguely familiar with. I think that would be awesome. You bully you pay a hefty price.

</comment><comment><USER7> His claim that it will "end" LARP archery is disingenuous. It will pave the way for the owner of the patent to have a lock on the market for the foam arrows. He would either need a license or have to stop selling them, but presumable the patent owner would try and step in to fill the void (of the sellers that could no longer sell them, without a license).

</comment><comment><USER8> Now this is an example of a company that really doesn't understand the term "Streisand Effect"....

<comment><USER9> It's also a company that has hired a lawyer who doesn't know how to spell. Apparently the interference is "long and twisted", or tortuous:

"As a result of Larping's _tortuous_ interference with Global's contractual relationships, Global respectfully requests this Court to enter judgment against Larping in such an amount to be proven at trial, together with punitive damages, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest at the highest legal rate, the costs of this action, and all other relief as this Court deems just and proper."

<comment> vic-traill Doesn't seem that out of line to me according to [0]. Subsituting from definitions in [0] yields 'as a result of Larping's deceitfully indirect or morally crooked interference' || 'as a result of Larping's circuitous interference', etc.

[0] [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tortuous](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tortuous)

<comment><USER9> A tort is a specific legal term. Tortious interference is a specific phrase used throughout the filing, and it has a very specific and well defined meaning in civil suits. This filing is a badly written, flawed and absurd lawsuit and it's bound for failure. I hope the defendant applies for and is awarded damages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Holy crap, it's pretty obvious that under the first amendment that the guy can publicise he is getting sued! There are no grounds for a gag order, whatsoever.

Global Archery are bullies. I hope this action causes their sales to shrivel.

 _edit:_ actually, it looks like things are much, much worse for Global Archery. It appears that iDV filed a German patent in 2004 for much the same thing as Global Archery's patent. It's where the guy is importing his arrows from!

Something tells me that they suddenly have a far bigger problem than they original anticipated. That $150,000 legal budget? I hope they top it up - <USER2> think someone is about to challenge their patent.

<comment><USER10> Gag order isn't over publicizing being sued it's over claims of slander etc.

There are many rectrictions, civil and criminal, on free speech.

But, yeah litigant is kinda fucked even if they win case.

<comment><USER9> I think you mean libel, not slander. And the injunction is for "tortious interference", not libel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Question for someone who knows patent law:

If the foam arrow already existed, how is it not prior art?

And if the patent is invalid how are they not using the courts to bully a competitor out of business?

<comment><USER12> I am not a lawyer, so please take this for no more than what it is: an amateur commenting on his opinion of the law, not legal advice which it would be illegal for me to give you.

If, indeed, foam arrows existed (and were publicly known, not some sort of trade secret) before the date that the patent was issued then that would make the patent invalid. There is a point in the legal process where the defendant is allowed to argue that the patent was invalid. Unfortunately, in many cases that point comes AFTER the defendant has already run out of money and been forced to concede the case.

Using the courts to bully a competitor out of business is perfectly legal. For instance, if the competitor is illegally selling a product that uses your validly patented invention, then putting them out of business (and/or requiring them to obtain a license for the patent) is exactly what the law requires. Your application of the word "bully" simply means "to demand something which I think is unfair". Now, if the patent is NOT valid, then the whole argument falls apart, but as I mentioned, that comes up at a later point in the legal process.

<comment><USER9> In this case they have raised the ire of the EFF. The playing field just got levelled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unrelated, but archery tag is super fun. Halfway between laser tag and paintball.

I'd recommend it when you have the chance.

<comment><USER9> Given the company's ethics, I think I'll pass.

<comment><USER14> You could play it with the other arrows, only I guess you'd have to call it something else. Not sure what.

<comment><USER13> But you couldn't sell those without violating a patent, right?

<comment><USER14> Of course you can. That patent holds no merit. But the trademark might.

<comment><USER13> "That patent holds no merit."

Has the US Patent Office reached a conclusion on this question?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, gosh. I submitted this to HN a day ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11140459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11140459)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's odd, appears to the exact same url too

<comment><USER15> And, my comment above was marked dead by the moderators!</comment></comment></comment>


Is porn good for us? - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/57169/ <comment><USER2> "Despite the widespread and increasing availability of sexually explicit materials, according to national FBI Department of Justice statistics, the incidence of rape declined markedly from 1975 to 1995. This was particularly seen in the age categories 20–24 and 25–34, the people most likely to use the Internet."

The article is filled with statements like this without telling us if researchers controlled for any of the infinite possible confounding factors. This may be just a bad article, and the research may actually support the hypothesis of a causal link (perhaps even through a controlled experiment, rather than a statistical survey). But as it is, there's really no strong evidence at all in this article. Unless someone writes a more competent article, one would need to go read the actual studies.

EDIT: Wait, they are giving the internet credit for reducing rape between 1975 and 1995? The first graphical web browser, Mosaic, wasn't developed until 1992. OK, this article is total baloney.

<comment><USER3> VHS was released in the mid-1970's. Betamax was released in 1975. They are widely considered to have popularized (or been popularized by?) video porn.

<comment><USER2> First, Playboy and other print pornography were available long before VHS and Betamax. Is the claim that _video_ pornography is the key product which reduced sexual violence?

Second, what fraction of young men _regularly_ viewed pornography on videotape from 1975-1990? It has to be much, much lower than the (near-ubiquitous) viewing of online pornography today. (Then again, maybe those most at risk to commit sexual violence were much more likely to purchase pornography on video.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem with this article, and those that assert the opposite, is that it's barely science.

There's no good control, and there are so many possible confounding factors that it's impossible to know what's really happening.

Even worse, if you read the comments, it seems that people can't even agree on whether or not sexual violence has increased or decreased in the US over the past 40 years or so!

Has anyone actually done any real science in this area? It seems like all we see are a bunch of ideologically motivated people selectively interpreting the data for their preferred viewpoint.

</comment><comment><USER5> The only issue I contend with personally on porn is the number of women who create it in order to support a drug habit, thus removing a portion of the voluntariness from it. I know that factor does not apply to all women creating porn, not by a long shot, but by knowing the stories of women in the exotic dancing industry, where many porn actresses are recruited from, it's hard to ignore the reality once you become aware of it.

Also, like any fantasy based pasttime porn has it's own addiction dangers that would not necessarily be considered 'healthy'. Although this of course would not apply to people who are not prone to fantasy addiction in the first place, there is a reason that internet porn is a multi-billion dollar industry.

>Note: Just to clarify, I don't have any issues with the act of making, staring in, or viewing porn itself. I do watch porn. And I know that addiction occurs across _all_ industries and walks of life. It does happen to have a higher occurrences in certain industries though, such as, for example, adult entertainment or telemarketing. I personally do not view porn as either bad or immoral.

<comment><USER6> Couldn't that be an issue with virtually any job? Do you take issue with factory jobs, due to the number of alcoholics working there just to support their beer-purchasing habits?

It is an issue for sure, but not one specific to pornography.

<comment><USER7> The social stigma applied to porn actresses is enormous. Working a factory job will not exclude you from other lines of work later in your life, nor is it necessary to hide former factory work from your parents or acquaintances. Even a brief stint in porn can cause long lasting deleterious effects in a woman's life.

<comment><USER8> I think that may be outdated. There are intelligent, interesting actresses that are covered in main stream media, best known current example is Sasha Grey but there are many others.

How do you know that "even a brief stint in porn can cause long lasting deleterious effects", have you talked to them? As in any job, e.g. programming, IT, etc. there will be people who hate their job. I think the relevant question is whether someone is _forced_ to a job they hate or has "deleterious effects"?

The idea that all porn actresses are clueless feather brains who were tricked into this trade and continue to be victimized is condescending.

<comment><USER7> > The idea that all porn actresses are clueless feather brains who were > tricked into this trade and continue to be victimized is condescending.

That's not what I'm saying at all. You are not a realist if you think a resume that includes porn or other sex work will not very much damage a woman's life. Find me one instance of a factory worker facing these kinds of consequences:

<http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2009/07/08/mzberlin/>

[http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/08/31/2009-08-...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/08/31/2009-08-31_bikiniclad_teacher_tiffany_shepherd_turns_to_porn_after_being_fired_from_florida.html)

<comment><USER8> The conclusion I deduce from these news stories is that there is still quite a bit of prejudice against porn workers (one can argue esp. in the US; in Europe I have the feeling that they are more accepted). This, of course, doesn't make their profession inherently bad.

You cannot have it both ways: You are either (i) against the widespread stigmatization of porn workers (female _and_ male, you don't see the male stories because they don't make for juicy journalism) and fight for them to become legitimate members of the society; or, (ii) you hold that porn is a dirty thing that should be eradicated (along with its workers). In the end, you can't be _against_ porn and _for_ porn workers (this actually was/is? the self contradictory stance of feminist activists against porn in the 70s). A lot of them see that as their job.

<comment><USER7> I'm not taking a stance on the inherent goodness or badness of porn at all,I'm merely pointing out that sex work is in no way equivalent to factory work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The idea that pornography _only_ objectifies women is inherently sexist. There are men in porn too. I think people take this point of view out of some antiquated notion of chivaly: women need to be protected because they _obviously_ can't do it for themselves.

<comment><USER7> The vast majority of porn is created for men, and the men in these films are not objectified in the same way women are. This has nothing to do with chivalry.

<comment><USER10> Secretly, most, maybe all, women like be objectified to an extent, it's part of their dna. Find me a woman who says they wouldn't secretly like to show a bit of flesh in a magazine and i'll show a liar.

<comment><USER11> I don't know about any of that stuff, but I think you've successfully shown me a sexist.

<comment><USER12> 'Sexist' is thrown about too much, imho.

To some circles, you're sexist if you believe men and women are different at all. I call bs, we are inherently different in some ways. call me sexist if you like.

To the rest of the circles, you're sexist if you put any stock in any of what are usually considered negative stereotypes about women. (the key being for example if you believe women are more kind than men, that is not branded sexist!) This is ridiculous as well, imho. It's like the stereotypes about blacks and guns. Some rapper was arrested a few years ago for having a bunch of guns in his car, and he screams 'you racists'. Dude. You had guns in the car, if anything you're literally living up to the stereotype you're complaining about. You can't complain about being profiled in regards to 'riding dirty' if you were in fact 'riding dirty', imho.

I'm usually pretty bad at illustrating this half of the argument, but as unpopular as it may make me I believe many stereotypes are based on a truth. To apply them to ALL MEMBERS of the group is folly, but the inverse is also true- to assume that it applies to NO MEMBERS of the group, or even ALMOST NO MEMBERS of the group, is folly as well.

I should perhaps start constructing a counter-offense argument... after all, have you considered that the belief that women as a rule do NOT like being a little bit exhibitionist could also be considered sexist?

<comment><USER11> > 'Sexist' is thrown about too much, imho.

On the contrary, I don't think it's thrown around nearly often enough, at least in the tech/entrepreneurial community. In the name of rejecting political correctness, the cultural norm has swung in the complete opposite direction -- and virtually no one has been willing to speak out for putting the brakes on. (Those who do seem to end up branded a pariah or whiner.) Top tip: we can enjoy freedom of speech _and_ insist upon basic politeness from our peers; they aren't mutually exclusive.

\---

As to your anecdote: So, you're a racist too?

(The above was mostly tongue in cheek, but consider...) :

\- There's no law against gun ownership -- the right to bear arms is a guaranteed one -- so why is the fact that this guy had guns named as if it were a valid cause for his arrest? Somehow I have trouble imagining stories of Jeff Foxworthy, a famous white man with a 'redneck' stereotype, being arrested "for having guns in his car" being passed around with the same tone of smug judgement.

\- Don't forget the history of racist double standards when it came to black gun ownership in America, both recent and (comparatively) ancient. Nor the fact that law enforcement is often anything but colorblind.

<comment><USER12> I forget the details of the arrest, but there are plenty of reasons possessing a gun is illegal. Don't immediately assume he was innocent and rule out the possibilities that concealment laws or registration laws didn't come into play. Maybe he didn't violate any laws after all, but that wasn't his defense so it seems irrelevant to the topic.

I am not being smug or judgemental, and I wouldn't have batted an eye or cared in the least, if he hadn't tried to play the racism card. Maybe it's foolish of me, but let me try to illustrate with a more extreme example.

Suppose a black man was to commit some heinous crime, and we had irrefutable proof he was completely guilty (just suppose, bear with me). Normally, he'd be tried and put away. But what if this black man's defense was 'well, I was being profiled- if it wasn't for the stereotype that blacks are more violent and commit more crimes, I wouldn't have been caught so clearly this is unfair. I should go free.'

IMHO, you can file complaints and suits and get all the damages you like for being unfairly profiled, and I'll generally back you up, but as soon as you're guilty of what they profiled you for, you loose all my support and earn my disgust. He may be right, maybe through racism we catch more guilty blacks than whites or something, but either way the hypothetical man is _guilty_. The way to fix that flaw is not let him go but start catching the whites too.

re: double standards and corrupt law enforcement, I'll give you that.

<comment><USER11> On my phone,so pardon the terseness.

A) There's two issues here: whether the incident was racism, and whether the _retelling_ you gave was, due to the assumptions it carried. I was addressing the latter.

B) Of course you were being judgemental; the entire point was to communicate your judgement of the situation as a flagrant race card play. Smug is in the eye of the beholder; I'm certain it wasn't intentional.

C) Re: hypo. It can be true that he is guilty and that he was persecuted due to racism at the same time. Not mutually exclusive; just as in another situation someone fully guilty may be proven so by an illegal search. Its up to the courts to decide whether the violation of equality would prevent a conviction. (Currently: racism no; illegal search yes.)

D) Would you hold the same position if the crime was possession of a recreational amount of marijuana?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> " _According to the conservative media watchdog group Family Safe Media, the porn industry makes more money than the top technology companies combined, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon."_

No way. Let's keep things in perspective.

These four companies had combined revenues of almost $150 billion (2009).

All porn total revenue estimates are maximum in single digit billions.

Even the smallest company in Fortune 500 had at least $18.5 billion revenue.

Despite appearances, porn is niche.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting how much of HN comments are devoted to media criticism, often focusing on the sad state of science journalism. Maybe with the demise of Editor & Publisher there's room for a start-up here.

</comment><comment><USER15> "As the use of porn increases, the rate of sex crimes goes down"

This is a perfect application of "Correlation does not imply causation". It's very likely that over time (during which internet porn has skyrocketed and made consumption frictionless) the awareness for supporting victims of sexual assault as also gone up.. from completely unrelated trends like rises in feminism and an overall decrease in crime over the last 15 years.

Source 1995: [http://www.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/ucr/Cius_97/95CRIME/9...](http://www.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/ucr/Cius_97/95CRIME/95crime3.pdf) 2008: <http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_25.html>

</comment><comment><USER16> _No correlation has been found between exposure to porn and negative attitudes towards women._

As other commenters have stated, it is really difficult to conduct a good experiment given the difficulty controlling for other variables. However, I'm not even sure it is the right question. I'd be more interested in men's attitudes towards themselves given habitual exposure to porn.

The same experimental difficulty exists, but I think it is more "upstream" from negative attitudes towards women. That is, in the course of the hypothesized man turned sexual predator, there is probably a period of sexual frustration that may be exacerbated by the non-reality of porn. This then develops into the deviant.

</comment><comment><USER17> The only thing I think anyone can tell you about porn for certain is that it is, literally, everywhere (I'd say around 95% of the computers I poke around inside of contain porn).

</comment><comment><USER18> I am on the pro-porn side since my job and company is built on its existence. Luckily, our technology works well and if you don't like pornography, you can easily buy products/services that will block porn (and other harmful content, e.g., hate, drugs, abortion, etc).

Leveling-up I see pornography as content that will exist irregardless of laws, restrictions, etc. It is human nature that is simply exploiting the Internet medium to the fullest. I.e., it won't go away that easy.

<comment><USER19> Legal rights protected by the supreme court are "harmful content" now? I didn't get that memo.

<comment><USER18> Well, as a parent, I want to protect my children from seeing the Internet in the raw form. Seriously, look at the content on the Internet. There is an amazing amount of content, not all of it is safe for children to view. Heck sometimes I see stuff that I would rather not. Don't confuse the issue here - it has nothing to do with rights.

<comment><USER8> Can you define "child"? At what age is it safe for a child to see a soft porn act, a hardcore one? Who makes up these rules? If you say every parent should make up the rules for their own family I'd support that; sadly, in real life it seldom works like that, e.g. see the recent misguided Australian attempt to ban access to porn _for everyone_.

<comment><USER19> Hey... if God had intended for us to see each other naked, we wouldn't have been born with clothes.

<comment><USER18> I am not talking about nudity here. Pornography is more than just nudity. Other content that is considered not good for children is abortion photos, hard core porn, murder, etc. You know stuff that makes an normal adult go wow, that is messed up (go to stile project, or ogrish for stuff)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would recommend photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders's book, "30 Porn- Star Portraits" ([http://www.amazon.com/XXX-Porn-Star-Portraits-Timothy- Greenf...](http://www.amazon.com/XXX-Porn-Star-Portraits-Timothy-Greenfield- Sanders/dp/0821277545)) to gain a better understanding of how and why people choose to work in the porn industry. In addition to nice photos (of course) it includes essays by porn workers, e.g. Nina Hartley (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Hartley>) and biographical information. This comes in handy next time you encounter someone who claims all porn actresses are drug addicted victims who are either brainless or over-sexed.

</comment><comment><USER20> The question in the article's title is "is porn good for us?" That's not the question they actually answer.

The question they actually attempt to answer is "does porn availability increase sex crimes or lead to unhealthy attitudes about women?" Their answer is that it actually improves both situations, though it's poorly supported by the data. (As others have noted, it's a mere statistical survey with no good control and many confounding factors.)

If they wanted to answer "is porn good for us", they'd have to investigate a number of situations -- porn use within a relationship, for example. I suspect they'd find it has some serious downsides.

<comment><USER21> _I suspect they'd find it has some serious downsides._

Gaaah, this comment was so good until you whiffed at the end! You point out that their methodology was sloppy, that the title is not apropos, and then _assert your own unfounded opinion_ right at the end.

<comment><USER20> I've done enough marriage counseling to know of the _existence_ of serious downsides to pornography, which is all I asserted. This is not an unfounded opinion.

Had I expressed some statistical conclusion (say, that the downsides outnumbered the upsides, or that under some particular weighting scheme the downsides were 62% worse than the upsides) your criticism would be valid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Google thinks so.

> adheresToDontBeEvil("incognito mode") > true

</comment><comment><USER23> And in every region investigated, researchers have found that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or ___not increased._ __

ridiculous

</comment><comment><USER24> no</comment>


Plaxo's servers used to access Google Accounts, and their cryptic response - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plaxo.com/2012/05/google-account-%E2%80%9Csuspicious-activity%E2%80%9D-next-steps/

<comment><USER2> Yes this is a cryptic response.

Who has been compromised?

What is the exposure?

Password changing is recommended, but why?

If they were using OAUTH, why is it necessary to change passwords? (And what about users of 2 step authentication?)</comment>


Closure Object Binding in PHP 5.4 - <AUTHOR> http://christophh.net/2011/10/26/closure-object-binding-in-php-54/

<comment><USER2> It's definitely nice that closures are real objects, but I don't see the justification for the bindTo() method. Take this, for example (from the article):

      $app->get('/', function() use ($app) {
        $request = $app['request'];
        });

The _use_ keyword is good for importing anything from the current context into the closure. However, I'm not sure it's a good idea in this case because it seems unnecessary - which makes the example a bit of a straw man: The $app object already knows about itself, so why not do the simpler and more loosely bound version:

      $app->get('/', function($app) {
        $request = $app['request'];
        });

then when calling the closure, the object just has to do this:

      $closure($this);

That way you don't have to remember to "use ($app)" every time you define a closure (and I'm also not wild about overlapping variable names from different contexts).

Now we have the new bindTo() method which results in yet more extra code:

      $boundClosure = $closure->bindTo($context);

Granted, you could define a general bindTo mechanism once per class implementation, and being able to use $this inside the closure is nice, but I'm not sure this justifies an addition to the language's complexity when a perfectly fine method has been around that does the same thing (and with less code).

<comment><USER3> > but I don't see the justification for the bindTo() method.

The new array syntax, closures, binding ... I'm surprised you're not seeing the pattern. All of these features are borrowed from JavaScript. Absolutely fine by me. I already spend most of my time in JavaScript anyway. I'm willing to bet I'm not alone, hence the changes.

<comment><USER2> So it's desirable to eventually converge PHP and JavaScript? You're right: I don't get it. Why then have PHP at all? I'm not saying that retrofitting a language is a bad idea per se, I just don't see the appeal of doing it when there was a perfectly fine alternative to begin with. The new array syntax is great, and introducing closures was way overdue, but this one..?

Oh well, it's in there now, so I guess there is no point of discussing it. But I do believe, on a more general note, that saying "no" to features is important - and bindTo() would have been an excellent point to say no to. For better or worse, PHP is not JavaScript and vice versa. Their paradigms are not really compatible to begin with. Transplanting stuff from one to the other just because it saves 7 bytes in developers' brains is not enough of a reason to do that in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> > So it's desirable to eventually converge PHP and JavaScript?

PHP has always been about making coding easy and fun. Since more people are doing JavaScript, it only makes sense to make things familiar.

> Why then have PHP at all?

That's a question that will have to be answered soon.

For now, the answer that I'm coming up with, is that with PHP-FPM you can make PHP properly threaded. All of the server-side JavaScript implementations are event driven. The threaded model has advantages when jobs are cpu or io heavy.

Right now, I'm working on an implementation where Node.js is receiving calls via websockets and handing that off to PHP-FPM via FastCGI for processing. A hybrid system like that has advantages of both the event model and the thread model.

<comment><USER2> > _Right now, I'm working on an implementation where Node.js is receiving > calls via websockets and handing that off to PHP-FPM via FastCGI for > processing. A hybrid system like that has advantages of both the event model > and the thread model._ <

That sounds pretty cool. Personally, I was blown away what difference Nginx<->PHP-FPM makes compared to the old Apache way of doing things. Nginx is an absurdly fast evented web server as well. It would be very interesting to bring this kind of thing to Node.js because it would allow for some awesome customization which just isn't possible with Nginx.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would have preferred something to enable more visually pleasing metaprogramming, like:

$closure = function() {

echo $this->foo;

};

$context = new \StdClass;

$context->foo = "Hello World";

$context->closure = $closure;

$context->closure();

Not sure if this will be possible in 5.4, but haven't seen anything on it. Right now, we have to do

$context->closure = $closure;

$temp = $context->closure;

$temp();

which is kinda ugly.

<comment><USER5> You can use this:

        call_user_func($context->closure);

But yeah, some syntactic sugar would sure be nice. I'd like to see this in a future version of PHP...

       ($context->closure)();

<comment><USER4> It doesn't even have to be 'sugar' like that.

$content->closure()

It could look at the registered methods, then scan for properties of that name that would be closures, _then_ fall back to __call. You could add this to __call with __set() checks for assigned values being closures, but it's rather ugly to have to do that for all class definitions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it is worth noting here that PHP 5.4 is still in at version beta1.

I'm looking forward to this new feature, as it is cumbersome to pass anonymous functions to object instances in 5.3.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's an evil thing originated from JavaScript. PHP always has borrowed evil things from other languages. As a result, PHP keeps getting more evil by the version.</comment>


Does usetogether/screen hero etc. use some kind of VNC or RDP protocol - <AUTHOR> https://www.use-together.com/ <comment><USER2> Both are based on WebRTC: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC)

(RIP Screenhero)</comment>


How 19-year-old activist Zack Kopplin is making life hell for creationists - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5976112/how-19+year+old-activist-zack-kopplin-is-making-life-hell-for-louisianas-creationists

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not post this article to incite another evolution over creationism debate. But rather, because it highlighted the journey of a young man who is trying to change the world for the better.

A young man who is not trying to enact change through destruction, hyperbole or negativism. Nor is he simply trying to build "awareness". He is trying to _actually_ change things in his state by using rational discourse, reasonable publicity and rallying both popular and distinguished support.

<comment><USER2> _I did not post this article to incite another evolution over creationism debate_

You're implying that there even _is_ a debate there, where there hasn't been one for a very long time.

<comment><USER3> Depends on who you have on your friends list. I have a few from my days of living in Mississippi, its always quite interesting what they believe, and maybe quite shocking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting how some groups are actively trying to hold humanity back.

-edit, and by those groups I mean creationists. I don't know why this was downvoted.

<comment><USER5> Knowing several people who disbelieve evolution or climate change, I think this is not really true and the wrong attitude to take. People that want to teach creation along with evolution in the classroom _truly_ think that evolution is a weakly supported hypothesis that does not fit the scientific evidence. Not just because they believe it contradicts their religion, but because they believe it's physically, literally wrong and is scientifically falsifiable. There is a minority of disbelievers that want biblical literalism taught in the classroom, but I think most truly believe that evolution is probably untrue, and at best, unproven, and simply want what they feel is the evidence taught in the classroom, instead of one unsupported or weak theory taught with cherry-picked evidence. Yes, that's really what they think.

Obviously they are wrong, but I think if most of the evolution-deniers truly understood the modern theory of evolution, and understood that it is separate from abiogenesis, I think they wouldn't have a problem with it.

<comment><USER2> _People that want to teach creation along with evolution in the classroom truly think that evolution is a weakly supported hypothesis that does not fit the scientific evidence_

I think you're giving way too much credit to science deniers. There's no amount of physical evidence that can fairly compete with the argument of "well, the creator of the universe wrote this book and it has to be correct"

<comment><USER5> I'm not talking about the people that choose to deny evolution solely because of some literal interpretation of the Bible. I'm talking about the ones that were raised by people like that, and have been incorrectly told how weak the evidence for evolution is. There is a LOT of money behind teaching people this, and teaching that scientists lie to push some agenda or another.

A lot of the same people don't believe in climate change for the same reason, that is, they don't think it's supported well enough by evidence. I think that makes this subset of evolution-deniers skeptics at heart (At least for some things). Beginning from first principles, I think skepticism is a great attitude with which to teach science. I think a lot of these people could be taught, given willingness to learn, and an absence of mistrust of science in general, which a lot of them have been unfortunately taught.

<comment><USER2> I just don't think that's a worldview that anyone arrives at in an intellectually honest way.

I'm reminded of the great example of gaps in the fossil record. If you find a fossil that's in the middle of the two end points of the gap you make things worse, because now you have TWO gaps in the fossil record.

Ranting aside, I have no idea how to deal with this phenomenon in a constructive way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article says Zack was 16 in 2008 and is 19 in 2013. Has Zack been impressing the importance of scientific literacy by promoting it from a relativistic spaceship? Or should he also start promoting numeracy to journalists?

<comment><USER7> Presumably someone asked him "when did this all start?", and he said "when I was, I think, 16? -- Louisiana passed this act and I...", and he didn't stop to calculate it carefully.

And it looked about right, and if he was off by one it's completely irrelevant, so quite rightly no one put any thought into making absolutely sure that the numbers were exactly right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you read the article, make sure you watch the video. It's a rather hilarious take down of a state senator.

</comment><comment><USER9> We could do worse than teaching Creationism in schools. Especially why it's wrong.

I've learned more about the theory of evolution from the [Index of Creationist Claims](<http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html>) than from almost any other source (and I studied primatology).

You become convinced of nothing so strongly as when you study the flaws of its critics.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why is this on HN with 41 upvotes (as of this writing)? Is he creating a company? Is he building a startup? Is he writing javascript, putting together something really interesting, or what? I see nothing here HN-worthy.

This is the kind of thing I expect to find elsewhere (and do, in fact, look for this sort of content there). HN is a niche site for hackers, entrepreneurs, and money folks. No need to bring excessive religious topics/debates here - keep that on reddit/etc.

<comment> guard-of-terra People who force creationism on us are trying to create a future where you won't have any start-ups because you will die young, ill and poor. Therefore the topic is important in the long run.

<comment><USER2> _you will die young, ill and poor_

I was ready to dismiss this as pure fear-mongering, but when you think about it, there's something to it. Would you want to trust your life to a doctor or medical researcher who, for non-scientific reasons, refuses to consider the main organizing principle of all life sciences?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't mind creationism being taught side by side with evolution. But replacing the latter with the former is plain idiotic/dumb/stupid.

Obviously, if you teach them side by side, anyone with half a brain will sooner or later realize that creationism is simply bullsheet, which is probably why these people want to silence the inconvenient (for them) truth...

<comment> guard-of-terra Creationism has no relation to science so it should not be on science class.

<comment><USER11> True, but try to tell that to the millions of people who believe creationism IS science... To make it simple, just let the kids choose and decide for themselves...

<comment><USER12> > To make it simple, just let the kids choose and decide for themselves...

No, that's not how it works. By that logic we also would have to teach about ghosts, dwarfs, <stroke>astronomy</stroke>astrology, or just claims made by other religions or folklore. There's a reason we teach our children sciences. They are objective, observable, testable, falsifiable, etc. We want a rational society, not despotism.

<comment> guard-of-terra You meant astrology.

<comment><USER12> Yep, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this reddit?

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't find it acceptable to budle up issues of creationism/evolution and climate change. Writer is being devious when he's doing it so lightly as he did; especially when climate change wasn't mentioned in the title.

<comment><USER15> Hardly. The Lousiana law also made allowance for "supplemental material" on climate change, and Kopplin himself mentioned that "We don't just deny evolution... We are denying climate change and vaccines and other mainstream science...". Evolution denial is in the title but climate change denial is not because evolution is the main issue Kopplin has focused his activism on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The fastest way to repeal this garbage law is for the non-christian teachers to start bringing Islam-related supplemental materials and start teaching it to all the Christian kids, and failing them on tests if they answer "incorrectly".</comment>


A rich REPL for Clojure in the notebook style. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JonyEpsilon/gorilla-repl

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Makes me wonder how long until we see something like a mix of LightTable and Cloud9 (web-based IDE). Web-based REPLs will be great for collaborative development.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great to have a notebook~equivalent in clojure. I wonder how difficult it is to integrate DVCS into it.</comment>


Commodore 64 emulator and software library - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_c64?and%5B%5D=emulator%3Avice-resid&sin= <comment><USER2> If you only want to enjoy the music, there's [https://hvsc.c64.org/](https://hvsc.c64.org/) which is a project to collect and document every tune ever produced with the C64.

The C64's SID chip was way ahead of its time, capable of 8-bit 48Khz sample playing - on a machine from 1981, with 64K ram, and 1Mhz CPU[0]

Some PCs gained comparable sound output capability about a decade or so later with the appearance of the original SoundBlaster; it wasn't until 1996 or so before this became standard with PCs.

[0] The hardware was always capable; the way to get it was only discovered in the last decade by Mahoney, see the examples and comments in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16696246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16696246) ; Still, at every point in time until about 2000 or so, only Amigas produced better sounds among personal computers.

<comment><USER3> > Still, at every point in time until about 2000 or so, only Amigas produced > better sounds among personal computers.

Gravis Ultrasound was released in 1992. It was probably best known in the demo scene, but got some game support too.

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

<comment><USER2> I meant "typical personal computer"; Gravis was indeed marvelous but did not enjoy any significant market share; Sound Blaster was the standard, and 16-bit did not really become common until almost 2000

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The page is not that great for browsing on mobile, but does anyone know if archive.org has a similar emulator and program library for Atari 400/800? This is pretty amazing.

<comment><USER5> What I am aware of are the old programming books, in case you don't know about the web site.

[https://www.atariarchives.org/](https://www.atariarchives.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone figured out what to use for joystick input? Most of these programs require one and I haven't found a way to fake it.

<comment><USER7> It defaults to the numberpad on joystick port 2 with 0 being the fire button, make sure numlock is on.

If you need to change the defaults, hit F12 to get the emulator menu.</comment></comment>


Misconceptions of [React.js] Tooling in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://javascriptplayground.com/blog/2016/02/the-react-webpack-tooling-problem <comment><USER2> > "Drop React in a script tag, have your app in app.js and write ES5. No > tooling required!"

Whoops! I used JSX and it doesn't work.

(I personally don't care for JSX, but it does seem to be used by most React users. So while it's ostensibly true that you can do this, every tutorial you come across will probably be telling you to do things that aren't compatible with this approach)</comment>