The Io Language - <AUTHOR> http://www.iolanguage.com/ <comment><USER2> Two of the best posts written about Io were by _why:

* Io Has A Very Clean Mirror - [http://web.archive.org/web/20080212010904/http://hackety.org...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080212010904/http://hackety.org/2008/01/05/ioHasAVeryCleanMirror.html)

* Lazy Bricks, Lazy Mortar - [http://web.archive.org/web/20080430135919/http://hackety.org...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080430135919/http://hackety.org/2008/01/10/lazyBricksLazyMortar.html)

Unfortunately they're only available via WayBackMachine.

Other useful links:

* Io notes - <http://iota.flowsnake.org/>

* Io sub-reddit - <http://www.reddit.com/r/iolanguage/>

<comment><USER3> So the most significant posts about Io are only in the wayback machine? Really?

<comment><USER2> Well "significant" is your words not mine :)

Unfortunately _why disappeared off the net and with it went (most of) his sites including this predominately Ruby blog site (Hackety.org).

Who knows perhaps it might get resurrected one day. But at least its not lost thanks to WayBackMachine.

BTW... All of _why's code was saved here: <http://github.com/whymirror> And among this you can find a small web framework he wrote in Io: <http://github.com/whymirror/yown>

<comment><USER4> He also created a language of his own which was inspired by Io: <http://github.com/fogus/potion> (and here's the pamphlet: <http://runciter.net/potion> )

<comment><USER2> Yes I was following this quite avidly before _why's disappearance.

Also I liked CoffeeScript version of the pamphlet: [http://github.com/jashkenas/coffee- script/blob/master/exampl...](http://github.com/jashkenas/coffee- script/blob/master/examples/potion.coffee)

I did (for my own leisure) write Perl5 version of this pamphlet. As some point will also do Io & Perl6 versions methinks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've written a very powerful C++ binding library for Io. It allows you to mirror object-based C++ APIs inside Io and will do most conversions for you automatically. (For instance you don't have to worry about calling methods by pointer or by reference; it will "do the right thing" automatically.) I've used it to bind the Bullet physics engine and the Irrlicht 3d graphics engine, for game making.

<http://github.com/dennisferron/LikeMagic>

</comment><comment><USER6> One very simple thing that Io gets right is the unification of instance variables and methods as slots. It lets you override behavior with little friction:

      Person := Object clone do(
        name ::= nil

        greeting := method(
          "Hello I'm " .. name
        )
      )

      bob := Person clone setName("Bob") greeting
      # => I'm Bob

      bill := Person clone
      bill greeting := "Yo"
      bill greeting
      # => Yo

<comment><USER7> What am I missing?

      >>> class Person(object):
      ...     def __init__(self, name=None):
      ...         self.name = name
      ...     def greeting(self):
      ...         return "I'm %s" % self.name
      >>> bob = Person("Bob")
      >>> bob.greeting()
      0: "I'm Bob"
      >>> bill = Person()
      >>> bill.greeting = "Yo"
      >>> bill.greeting
      1: 'Yo'

<comment><USER8> Notice that you use bob.greeting() but bill.greeting (without the parentheses), while Io uses the same syntax in both cases. Whether this is good or bad is mostly a matter of preference, I think...

Of course, this implies that Io would need a separate construct to get the value of a slot (e.g. bob getSlot("greeting")), while in Python you'd just use bob.greeting no matter whether greeting is callable or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _why's Io Has A Very Clean Mirror: [http://web.archive.org/web/20080222044550/hackety.org/2008/0...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080222044550/hackety.org/2008/01/05/ioHasAVeryCleanMirror.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> it would be great if every language on their home page, as well as listing how to do common things such as this:

<http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/io/docs/IoTutorial.html>

would also give a demonstration of what makes this language unusual (beyond syntax).

for io it seems like this might be some smalltalk-inspired message passing stuff:

[http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/io/docs/IoGuide.html#Objects-F...](http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/io/docs/IoGuide.html#Objects- Forward)

combined with concurrency:

[http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/io/docs/IoGuide.html#Concurren...](http://www.iolanguage.com/scm/io/docs/IoGuide.html#Concurrency- Actors)

but it's hard to tell at a glance.

fwiw, the haskell page does a great job of this: following the "why use haskell?" gives the classic quicksort example.

<comment><USER11> I don't know. Of course it's nice if a language has an informative homepage (which Io does), but I think languages shouldn't (and probably can't) be judged at a glance.

Instead of "quick stuff", I'd rather have a (possibly peer-reviewed) paper about the language.

<comment><USER12> Even papers have abstracts, which I'm going to read first to determine if I'm going to take the time to read the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If only there was actually an Io community... If you notice, practically everyone in here mentions they've "dabbled" with Io, but practically no one is using this for production code.

Io still doesn't even have releases which I find pretty disconcerting.

<comment><USER5> That can be a problem. When I wanted to "freeze" a version of Io to use as a base for making the game engine scripting off of, there wasn't a point release I could refer to as "the last stable version". So I just took the then-most- recent github snapshot and forked it (forked in the github sense) and I will update that as I vett new versions of Io against my own code. It has proven to be stable enough not to be a problem, but I think when someone wants to get started in it, the lack of an official pre-built binary to download and install may throw people off. This has been discussed on the mailing list and I wouldn't be surprised if Steve is already working on getting some binaries like that up somewhere.

<comment><USER13> Yeah I actually asked Steve about this and heard the "We're busy people; we have families" response. There's nothing wrong with this by itself, but when you couple it with the size of the community it makes me wonder if Io will forever be "a fun idea", but nothing more.

I sincerely hope they get point releases up. Can you imagine someone with a casual interest in the language being in love with the fact that they have to keep their own version up to date and review core code for inclusion in their "version"? What about libraries across those frozen versions? It's a recipe for disaster and it pains me to no end that it hasn't been done yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I absolutely love Io, and my favorite "feature" of the implementation is the ability to modify scripts in real time and have the changes take place immediately, for better or worse ;)

<comment><USER15> Agreed. But, I like it when I get to take it a step further; change a method's implementation while said method is in the middle of being called :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I first encountered this language while looking at the ToC of "Seven Languages in Seven Weeks":

[http://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in- seven-w...](http://pragprog.com/titles/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks)

...and it was the only language I hadn't seen anything of before. Interesting mix of paradigms, and very clean syntax, at least from the little I've seen of it. If any HNers have used it for a non-trivial project, would love to hear of your experiences please.

<comment><USER16> I only played around with it a long time ago. Very interesting language indeed. You may also like Ioke (<http://ioke.org/>) - a jvm based language that is directly inspired by Io.

<comment><USER17> Ioke is lovely. Not particularly practical, but I had a ton of fun learning and contributing to it. More friendly and approachable and (if I understand Ola correctly) explicitly macro-friendly than Io. I think of it as the ultimate DSL language.

Also, fully translatable. Check out Hindi: [http://github.com/olabini/ioke/blob/master/examples/multilan...](http://github.com/olabini/ioke/blob/master/examples/multilang/hindi/account.ik)

<comment><USER6> In what ways is it more macro-friendly?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Design flaw in Intel processors opens door to rootkits - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2965872/components-processors/design-flaw-in-intel-processors-opens-door-to-rootkits-researcher-says.html <comment><USER2> > _To exploit the vulnerability and install the rootkit, attackers would > already need to have kernel or system privileges on a computer._

Let's not downplay this.

Millions of Windows users have system privileges; they can elevate to effective root simply by clicking on a security dialog box, which they are trained to do without a second thought.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very detailed discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10020134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10020134)</comment>


Show HN: Gusto is awesome - <AUTHOR> http://gusto.is/awesome

<comment><USER2> Pretty cool site. The pong game is (hopefully) an elegant tool for pre- screening clients; or maybe I'm reading too much into it.

One note: if you're trying to show off how successful you make your clients, don't list clients that appear to have gone under. The link to Oh Crap (the app) points to a generic GoDaddy domain page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Their site hasn't gone up yet, but thanks for the comment! And yes, it is a way of pre-screening clients. And yes, I'd highly suggest doing something similar if you freelance.

<comment><USER2> Cool, good to know. I'd maybe put a tooltip over that link for now ("Link coming soon!" or something). I love the timeline scroll animation, by the way. Congrats on doing something really cool with scroll without completely breaking it - not enough people respect the scrollbar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Respect the back button.

`history.pushState()`

Besides that, looks great guys!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We've had enough people complain about the back button, we'll remove that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your unnecessary URL changing trick completely blocks the use of the Back button.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not intended to be much of a trick, just utilizing the HTML5 history library. Would you opt for HTML5 pushstate with hashtags or just removing it altogether?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Removed the history pushstate, everyone should be happy now!</comment>


Throw away the keys: Easy, Minimal Perfect Hashing - <AUTHOR> http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=119

<comment><USER2> Looks like the site's overloaded. Anyone have a link to a cached copy of the post?

<comment><USER3> Looks like they didn't pay enough attention to that article from yesterday about server load from Delicious going tits up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Article Text:

In part 1 of this series, I described how to find the closest match in a dictionary of words using a Trie. Such searches are useful because users often mistype queries. But tries can take a lot of memory -- so much that they may not even fit in the 2 to 4 GB limit imposed by 32-bit operating systems.

In part 2, I described how to build a MA-FSA (also known as a DAWG). The MA- FSA greatly reduces the number of nodes needed to store the same information as a trie. They are quick to build, and you can safely substitute an MA-FSA for a trie in the fuzzy search algorithm.

There is a problem. Since the last node in a word is shared with other words, it is not possible to store data in it. We can use the MA-FSA to check if a word (or a close match) is in the dictionary, but we cannot look up any other information about the word!

If we need extra information about the words, we can use an additional data structure along with the MA-FSA. We can store it in a hash table. Here's an example of a hash table that uses separate chaining. To look up a word, we run it through a hash function, H() which returns a number. We then look at all the items in that "bucket" to find the data. Since there should be only a small number of words in each bucket, the search is very fast.

Notice that the table needs to store the keys (the words that we want to look up) as well as the data associated with them. It needs them to resolve collisions -- when two words hash to the same bucket. Sometimes these keys take up too much storage space. For example, you might be storing information about all of the URLs on the entire Internet, or parts of the human genome. In our case, we already store the words in the MA-FSA, and it is redundant to duplicate them in the hash table as well. If we could guarantee that there were no collisions, we could throw away the keys of the hash table.

Minimal perfect hashing Perfect hashing is a technique for building a hash table with no collisions. It is only possible to build one when we know all of the keys in advance. Minimal perfect hashing implies that the resulting table contains one entry for each key, and no empty slots.

We use two levels of hash functions. The first one, H(key), gets a position in an intermediate array, G. The second function, F(d, key), uses the extra information from G to find the unique position for the key. The scheme will always returns a value, so it works as long as we know for sure that what we are searching for is in the table. Otherwise, it will return bad information. Fortunately, our MA-FSA can tell us whether a value is in the table. If we did not have this information, then we could also store the keys with the values in the value table.

In the example below, the words "blue" and "cat" both hash to the same position using the H() function. However, the second level hash, F, combined with the d-value, puts them into different slots.

How do we find the intermediate table, G? By trial and error. But don't worry, if we do it carefully, according to this paper, it only takes linear time. In step 1, we place the keys into buckets according to the first hash function, H.

In step 2, we process the buckets largest first and try to place all the keys it contains in an empty slot using F(d=1, key). If that is unsuccessful, we keep trying with successively larger values of d. It sounds like it would take a long time, but in reality it doesn't. Since we try to find the d value for the buckets with the most items early, they are likely to find empty spots. When we get to buckets with just one item, we can simply place them into the next unoccopied spot.

Here's some python code to demonstrate the technique. In it, we use H = F(0, key) to simplify things.

<SNIP>

Experimental Results I prepared separate lists of randomly selected words to test whether the runtime is really linear as claimed. Number of items Time (s) 100000 2.24 200000 4.48 300000 6.68 400000 9.27 500000 11.71 600000 13.81 700000 16.72 800000 18.78 900000 21.12 1000000 24.816 Here's a pretty chart.

CMPH CMPH is an LGPL library that contains a really fast implementation of several perfect hash function algorithms. In addition, it compresses the G array so that it can still be used without decompressing it. It was created by the authors of the paper that I cited. Botelho's thesis is a great introduction to perfect hashing theory and algorithms. gperf Gperf is another open source solution. However, it is designed to work with small sets of keys, not large dictionaries of millions of words. It expects you to embed the resulting tables directly in your C source files.

<comment><USER5> Please don't do this. This is worthless, especially without the diagrams. If you felt like it made sense to copy and paste the article because the server was down, then you are wrong; that's why Google's cache and Coral exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hmm... just map everything to 404. Genius! Why didn't I think of that?! :D</comment>


Senate Gives Green Light to NSA to Continue Bulk Data Collection  - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/bulk-data-collection-still-ok-senate-panel

<comment><USER2> "We're outraged that you were doing that without permission.

"Here's permission.

"Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"</comment>


Google's Matt Cutts Wants To Give Ranking Boost To SSL Sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.seroundtable.com/google-ssl-ranking-18256.html

<comment><USER2> This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, because it is blatant social engineering: there are very, very few search terms for which a site's SSL capabilities have any relevance, and so it is outright dishonest for SSL to affect their ranking.

On the other hand, it is not hard to argue that SSL desperately needs to be more widely adopted, and current attempts at changing Web developer/host behavior have not been effective in driving that adoption. Perhaps search engine ranking -the lifeblood of many Web-based businesses- will force them when gentler methods will not, by providing what amounts to a threat to their business models.

But is the situation really dire enough to be worth corrupting the entire concept of Web searches?</comment>


Taleb is wrong about IQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.jsmp.dk/posts/2019-06-16-talebiq/ <comment><USER2> This does not address the substance of Taleb's arguments. Read Taleb's original article:

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

He's showing us that psychologists' statistical methods are faulty, that IQ advocates don't understand the underlying mathematics and blindly plug things into R. Lo and behold, in rebuttal, psychologists try to prove Taleb wrong by plugging more things into R.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't mean the psychologists are wrong.

<comment><USER2> Well, IQ is their measure. They should be able to defend it properly.

And frankly, if there is any doubt that IQ maps to intelligence, then its abuse over the last half-century has done immesurable harm to individuals and given considerable fuel to racists.

<comment><USER4> An IQ test is a tool. Just like any other tool the way you use it matters.

IQ tests turned out to be pretty useful when investigating the effects of Lead in paint/gas/industry/other. See Herbert Needleman's research from the early 80's.

The test itself isn't really good or bad (bearing in mind most modern iq tests are heavily scrutinized for bias in race/class/income/location/etc) it's just a tool.

<comment><USER5> > IQ tests turned out to be pretty useful when investigating the effects of > Lead in paint/gas/industry/other. See Herbert Needleman's research from the > early 80's.

Taleb argues precisely that IQ is only a good measure of unintelligence, not intelligence, and that this prevent IQ from being meaningful. He showed that if you IQ test 10K people, 2K are dead (0 IQ) and then test their performance on something, you'll still end up with correlations that'll get you published in prestigious journals, and peddle nonsense conclusions. [https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1115193783145123840](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1115193783145123840)

(the point being that in that scenario, 0 IQ perfectly correlated with 0 performance, can make the population correlation look significant even when "alive" IQ is completely uncorrelated with performance, which, in that example, it is)

<comment><USER6> The problem with Taleb's argument is that, as the linked article shows, IQ tests are as good measure of intelligence as of unintelligence. There is no inflection point after which IQ stops correlating with wealth. The slope is constant across all scales.

Taleb's argumentation relies on fictional scenarios whose conclusion do not match what he would have gotten looking at raw data instead.

<comment><USER7> Thats also what I got from it. It would be very wierd if IQ correlated very well below the median, and then just stoped..

<comment><USER8> It's not weird at all.

Caloric intake in children correlates to height very well below the median(+), and then it stops. You can't grow arbitarily tall by eating more food, but if you underfeed a child enough, it will end up shorter than its more-fed siblings.

In case you need some justificaiton for this intuitive claim, here's some tangential data: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-of- human...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-of-human- height/)

" In contrast, in developing countries, nutrition deficits lead to a lower heritability. The fact that the mean height of the U.S. population has almost plateaued in the past decade suggests that the nutrient environment has almost maximized the genetic potential of height, at least in this country. Improved nutrition elsewhere may have similar benefits in terms of stature."

(+) I use median here to mean some unspeicified percentile, as you did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> But Taleb is specifically arguing against simple linear correlation measures like R^2. (See figure 1 in Taleb's article.) Feels like you haven't grasped the specifics of his argument without taking that into consideration.

<comment><USER10> This really needs to be the top post.

It's increasingly acknowledged, even in the "soft" sciences, that r-squared is not an appropriate analysis tool.

Anyway, wasn't the IQ test originally created to determine whether or not someone was mentally disabled? It seems like with more modern statistical methods it still could be useful measurement for that purpose, even if it doesn't accurately "scale" beyond 80 points. Ultimately, if you just want to answer the question "Does this person have significant cognitive deficits?" it still has its place even if it's not a good measure for broader intelligence.

<comment><USER11> but it does scale beyond 80 points. why ignore all the available evidence and trust instead the Taleb's evidence free assumptions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of my favourite papers discusses this (and more):

 _> Top 10 Replicated Findings from Behavioral Genetics_

 _> 1\. All psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic influence_

 _> 2\. No traits are 100% heritable_

 _> 3\. Heritability is caused by many genes of small effect_

 _> 4\. Phenotypic correlations between psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic mediation_

 _> 5\. The heritability of intelligence increases throughout development_ (from 41% (age 9) to 55% (age 12) and to 66% (age 17); "unlike the other findings, this one is limited to a specific domain")

 _> 6\. Age-to-age stability is mainly due to genetics_

 _> 7\. Most measures of the 'environment' show significant genetic influence_

 _> 8\. Most associations between environmental measures and psychological traits are significantly mediated genetically_

 _> 9\. Most environmental effects are not shared by children growing up in the same family_

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739500/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739500/)

</comment><comment><USER13> IQ is useful to me. Whenever someone thinks it's important I gain useful information about that individual

<comment><USER14> Pretty cruel to ignore IQ and leave millions of mentally disadvantaged people in the lurch.

<comment><USER15> You're not wrong. IQ (or more generally intelligence tests) are very useful to diagnose people with some mental disabilities. That said: a) the IQ part of the intelligence test is sort of unnecessary for that purpose, and b) That's usually not what people are (righfully) criticizing IQ for and you know it.

<comment><USER16> The difference between IQ at 20, 60, 100, 140, and 180 are all noticeable. However, the gaps become less impactful as you go up the scale. Simply because fewer activities are really impacted. Digging a ditch with a shovel for example is only so difficult.

<comment><USER17> > because fewer activities are really impacted ... Digging a ditch with a > shovel

Yes, and that is why over time this is becoming more important. To put out some arbitrary numbers, you can use a shovel with an IQ of 70, you can operate a backhoe with an IQ of 90, you can engineer the backhoe with an IQ of 120. Manual shoveling disappeared as an occupation 50 years ago apart from niches, driving as a profession might disappear in the next 15 -- and it does matter whether the people made unemployed by technology can be upskilled to be repairmen/engineers/programmers. If IQ is >50% genetic, they can't and you have to figure out how to deal with 10-20% of the population being permanently unemployed or employed in extremely-low-skilled jobs.

<comment><USER15> > you can engineer the backhoe with an IQ of 120

I think this requires rephrasing: The fact you _can_ engineer the backhoe, means you have a higher then average IQ. The fact you have the engineering degree and education required gives you a higher likelyhood of having an above average IQ.

I'm sure you _can_ engineer a backhoe with an IQ of 90. But it is going to be harder for you to get the degree and education required. Whether it is harder because of some lack of some mental capabilities or because the whole education system is stacked against you because of your socio-economic status (which is predicted to be low given a lower then average IQ) is debatable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The problem is, it has been show time and again that most IQ tests are socio- economically biased. And every "proof" in this paper is a correlation that would also hold true is you replaced "high IQ" with "had rich parents".

<comment><USER9> That's not true. There are definitely papers that tries to control for socioeconomic factors.

<comment><USER19> Studies with twins could offer some form of either repudiation or confirmation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Taleb is, as usual, a bit over-wrought and goes too far but this area has been a long-time interest of mine and I think he's directionally correct in that IQ is too often misapplied or misunderstood in practice. In general, laypeople tend to think IQ represents things it doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm pretty unconvinced by this, the author makes a number of leaps that lost me. For instance, at the end of the article, the author says that Taleb's claim that IQ only measures unintlelligence well isn't true because at higher IQ, income continues to increase. This could be easily explained by numerous other third factors, like (hypothetically) IQ being a test for WASP culture and knowing WASP culture being correlated with better job opportunities.

<comment><USER22> > _" like (hypothetically) IQ being a test for WASP culture and knowing WASP > culture being correlated with better job opportunities."_

These sort of arguments always ring hollow for me, because I am not a WASP and the test I took didn't resemble a WASP-culture test in the slightest. The test I took was all _" given this series of abstract geometric patterns, which comes next,"_ not, _" During which season is the weather at Martha's Vineyard the most temperate"_

Maybe wrapping your mind around abstract geometry is something WASPs are good at and, say, people from the Islamic world suck at, but I really _really_ doubt that considering the relatively elevated roll geometric patterns have in Islamic culture compared to WASP culture.

Of course I am neither a Muslim nor a WASP, but even so I am pretty sure I didn't struggle too hard on that test.

<comment><USER21> That's what the "hypothetically" was for- it was meant as an illustration that there could easily be a third effect loosely correlated with both. For this to dispute Taleb's claim, you have to think that income is also correlated with intelligence and not more strongly correlated with other things that IQ could be measuring.

That example probably popped into my head first, because of the long controversy around IQ tests cultural effects and the history of using those tests to make arguments that race determines intelligence

<comment><USER22> Oh, I don't claim to refute Taleb's claim because reading too much of what Taleb writes makes my head spin in a rather uncomfortable manner, and it would be unfair of me to try refuting Taleb's claims without first coolly considering them. Maybe my IQ is low after all, or maybe I just have a low tolerance for self promotion... either way, my intention is only to speak about my personal experience, which is that the IQ test I happened to take did not seem culturally biased, except perhaps to some woodsman who's never seen a straight line before (but even then I'm skeptical.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cljs-js-eval One of his repeated criticisms of analysis like this is using regression to fit datasets that don't necessarily follow a straight trend line.

His larger point with respect to IQ is that it only predicts substandard IQs. Measures like the variance are largely influenced by the effects of IQs below the average, not above the average.

A second point which I don't see addressed is that IQ measures share features with testing. If how you test in school affects future income, and testing well in school predicts testing well on IQ, then more robust analysis is needed. A sample space of people in a wide band of IQ ranges who all got about the same grades in school would be a true test of the predictive value of IQ on income.

<comment><USER11> it is all unfounded speculation based on mathematica simulations and his own assertions. there is no empirical support for his arguments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> IQ arguments are the most boring thing I've seen hackers engage in. Even worse than blockchain and genetic engineering in terms of poor scientific quality, immediate jump-to-conclude-my-personal-pet-theory-is-right-because-anecdote, ignoring social factors.

<comment><USER24> They are boring, and I'm not even sure what the argument is. On the edges, I think there's a general agreement that low IQ is correlated with mental disability, and on the upper end high IQ is correlated with a certain type of cognition that makes you a good professional Mathematician or Physicist. I'm not sure what the big middle really says about anything.

If I were to guess why this IQ debate keeps coming up is that it is a bit taboo now (which makes it very tantalizing in and of itself). There is also some gaslighting going on with certain segments claiming IQ is completely junk and has no genetic basis (even partially). This triggers the contrarians, who then themselves may overstate the science, prompting responses that may understate the science ... and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Some things become clearer once you understand: a lot of people who say "X is invalid" really mean "We are better off not talking about X".

</comment><comment><USER26> _" The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool."_

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman)

<comment><USER27> Feynman's IQ was only 125 - what would he know? ;-)

<comment><USER28> Wow [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-next- ein...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-next- einstein/201112/polymath-physicist-richard-feynmans-low-iq-and-finding- another)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I believe his biggest issue with IQ—one that worries me greatly as well—is that it is being used to create a feeling of "otherness" towards populations that can be demarcated out using a single dimensional property: IQ. History shows us this as a strategy to subjugate using other "scientific" methods of classifying people, phrenology being a fairly recent example.

</comment><comment><USER30> Analogy (sarcasm):

-Height differences do not exist because the measuring scale used to measure height is inaccurate.

-Height differences are not dependent on hereditary because height depends on nutrition.

-Assuming that height differences between the races are inherent tantamounts to racism because height differences are clearly depend on nutrition.

-Bad nutrition is caused by discrimination, since bad nutrition results in shorter heights it's clearly discrimination that indirectly causes shorter height.

-Height is not hereditary because short parents can have tall children and vice-versa.

-Person X measures very short using a 'height' scale, but he's a great basketball player. Hence obviously height is not a factor in being a great basket ball player.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is the elephant in the room that explains why IQ is such a controversial topic:

[https://brainstats.com/average-iq-by- country.html](https://brainstats.com/average-iq-by-country.html)

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-14/nobel-prize-winner- ja...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-14/nobel-prize-winner-james-watson- stripped-title-race-comments/10712588)

<comment><USER32> Yeah, I'm honestly not sure how to interpret this.

Either you assume that IQ is 100% not genetic, or you have to admit that race seems to be correlated.

<comment><USER33> So, here's a reasonably rational response to a hotbutton claim like that: I think most numerate folks would look at that data and view a "race/IQ correlation" as at least a reasonable hypothesis.

But come on, it's weak. The relationship that chart shows clear as day is wealth. _Wealth_ is super correlated. The top of the chart are exlusively industrialized democracies. The bottom are exclusively impoverished (and mostly unstable) backwaters.

And within those cohorts, sure, you can kinda/sorta say that east asians sit above europeans, maybe. Or maybe not. Four points of IQ are nothing -- it's like three decades of development per the Flynn effect, or maybe one decade of really focused investment in education.

There are counteless other good hypotheses for a weak signal, and this isn't an area amenable to direct experiment, so realistically we're never really going to know.

And the same stuff is true of the linked article. It's poking holes in specific statements by finding rigorous numbers that "disprove" it, but only very weakly. Basically, the point to the article isn't that "IQ is solid science", it's that Taleb's paper was too aggressive in its conclusion. Which is sort of a yawner, and not really a good excuse to bring race into the discussion.

But yeah. It's possible that darkies are dumber or that the gooks are smarter. It's possible. What drives those of us on the left absolutely bonkers isn't the possibility that you might be right, it's the fact that you look at messy data like this _and immediately go to the least tolerable conclusion_ as if that's what you _want_ to be true. And... yeah, yuck.

( _Edit: and right on cue three quick responses about "but that doesn't prove race isn't correlated, here's another hypothesis for why race might be correlated!", which sounds to me suspiciously like "I really want race to be correlated with IQ!" The truth is we just don't know, we might never, even if it is it's weak, and I for one would rather live in a world where people don't want this to be true than the one I'm stuck in. _)

<comment><USER32> Sure, wealth is correlated as well. But perhaps wealth comes from intelligence? That seems reasonable, does it not? Wealth creation, at its most fundamental, is all about doing things more efficiently than they were done in the past. Who would be best equipped to tackle invention if not people with good problem-solving skills, as measured by IQ?

Honestly, this could be put to rest fairly "easily" (obviously this wouldn't be that easy and is never going to happen) if you took 1000 expectant mother's who have just become pregnant from Equatorial Guinea and transplanted them to various wealthy countries. Then measure the children's IQ as they grow up and compare them to the rest of the local population.

I have a feeling the difference in IQ would be negligible, and that the vast divide can be attributed almost wholly to nutrition/etc in early development, but you can't maintain that this is the case until you've actually tested the hypothesis, which as far as I'm aware has not been done.

I'm not entirely sure how the Flynn effect is relevant, unless the claim is that certain countries (African ones mostly) are not being retested at all, but European countries are. Is that the idea?

<comment><USER34> >Perhaps wealth comes from intelligence? That seems reasonable, does it not?

Trivially disprovable by looking at children adopted into wealthy families. Spoilers: they stay wealthy.

<comment><USER6> > Spoilers: they stay wealthy.

But not as much as their non-adopted siblings. Correlation of 0.23 vs 0.33

[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/rich- pe...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/rich-people-raise- kids-family-wealth/399809/)

<comment><USER33> That's not a finding about race, though. It's saying IQ is highly heritable, which everyone accepts. The question is whether whole "races" (which are populations with vastly higher genetic diversity than a nuclear family!) actually correlate like that, not whether smart people tend to have smart kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Im curious what people will get out of determining measurable IQ. What are their end goals.

1) You dont get smarter. Its not like knowing you are 120 vs 100 IQ changes anything about your ability to solve a problem

2) IQ is more of a speed of learning not an ability to understand. With enough time you can learn anything (challenge placed) the biggest barrier is discipline and desire.

3) IQ is abstract and is very useless within any context. If you want to know if someone is good at math give them a math test. If they are a good writer look at their portfolio. IQ is like determining someone is good at being a chef by only asking them questions. IQ is very far from any specific field of knowledge.

IQ is like space knowledge. Its only important/useful subject for a select few people.

<comment><USER36> IQ was important to determine the effect of lead exposure on cognitive function. Without it we probably wouldn't have nearly as stringent laws banning it (eg. in paint, and gasoline), and would still be suffering from endemic lead poisoning.

It's not particularly important to know your own IQ as an individual (you probably already have an idea of your abilities) but it's very useful for that sort of public health purpose. If there are other neurotoxins floating around which we don't know about, IQ will be important to identify and justify banning them.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8162884](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8162884)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Taleb: " _"IQ" is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact [measures] to a lesser extent (with a lot of noise), a form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects — how good someone is at taking some type of exams designed by unsophisticated nerds._ "

Well, _that_ statement is clearly false. The exams are designed by very sophisticated nerds.

</comment><comment><USER38> Actually, I don't care much about if the IQ can measure the mental capacity precisely or just find those who are mentally disabled. I think the core problem is, that our society thinks of an IQ as some magical figure to determine the value of a human being.

I think an IQ is much closer to what the clock rate is for computers. Just because a computer runs at a higher frequency, doesn't mean that it is computing more important calculations.

In fact, there is no advantage in having 3 times the processing power if you are just running a word processor. Equally, there is no advantage in having 3 times the IQ if you are just going to shop groceries.

Yes, there are a few use-cases where having more processing power is relevant (e.g. when you have a limited time to make a good and impactful choice), but I think those cases are not a frequent as most people think they are.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://twitter.com/UntergrundmannG/status/11558354759463813...](https://twitter.com/UntergrundmannG/status/1155835475946381313)

"Taleb has an updated post up at medium that takes care of most of this. You could take the time to weigh that in against this all over again.

And if you come back here in a few days, I may have a post up about how this is a trivial misunderstanding of NNT's case. Quantitatively."

Anybody who understands Taleb's argument realizes that these "counterarguments" are missing the mark. The fact that they spend more time obsessing his "meanness to them" than on his arguments, without understanding that his meanness is never directed at people who disagree, only people who bullshit, proves that point.

<comment><USER39> Completely misunderstanding NNT's arguments' basic premises in rebuttals to him seems pretty common.

<comment><USER40> That's because he tends to go after things that are widely misunderstood in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The most fascinating thing for me in the article is bimodal distributions in the last grap, where lower peak is ~same as the peak for low-iq distribution. I wonder what is the cause for this.

</comment><comment><USER42> Off topic, but how does one go about to measure his/her IQ?

<comment><USER43> You can find free online tests. They should take at least 30 min. Do 3-4 different ones to confirm you get about the same score (less than 5 points difference).

If you live in a big city, you can probably find a place to do it for less than $100.

<comment><USER42> It looks like there is general distrust on the online tests (searching Reddit posts). Can you recommend a few if you know any?

<comment><USER43> I can't recommend any, but that it's why I mentioned doing a bunch of them and not just one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Tl;dr from the article:

> All the claims from the article that I looked at, that can be interpreted as > something specific and tested in a real data set, turned out not to be > correct. If Taleb hadn't blocked everyone who disagrees with him, perhaps he > would have found out about this, and not published a post with all these > incorrect claims.

</comment><comment><USER45> Can we please agree that recognizing the rigorous science on the heritability of IQ does not imply racism?

</comment><comment><USER46> The 2000 SAT is supposedly an IQ test, and I boosted my score by 100 points by doing 10 practice exams. So, IQ probably tests some objective human faculty, but insofar as the 2000 SAT is an IQ test, it is clearly the case the IQ tests can be studied for (hence all the expensive SAT prep tutors).

</comment><comment><USER47> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligenc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences)

there are versions of this, but is anyone surprised that an attempt of big-S Science to put a single number on humans, has fundamental challenges ?

</comment><comment><USER48> Being somebody who was always labelled as "smart" growing up - I was in the "gifted" program in elementary school, so there's that - in a way, I want intelligence to be something that can be quickly, easily, and objectively measured, even if it turns out I'm actually not as smart as I've been led to believe I was. I can understand why this would make a lot of people uncomfortable, though. If IQ tests were ever shown to be perfectly correlated with that nebulous quality we label "intelligence", it's also not something you can improve. Your IQ, and likely your income level, are going to stick with you forever, just like your height will. Still, from what I can tell about this Taleb guy (other than that he seems like a difficult personality) is that he's just trying to figure out how accurately IQ tests correlate with actual intelligence; he's not railing against the concept of trying to measure it in the first place, as many others do.

<comment><USER49> > I want intelligence to be something that can be quickly, easily, and > objectively measured

I don't think it can be. I think (at least, important part of) intelligence is ability (or speed) to learn (patterns in the data?). So it can only be measured on something you haven't learned yet. Since as humans, we cannot "unlearn" things, the result will always be skewed by your previous experience.</comment></comment>


A second whistleblower working at Google comes forward to warn of search bias - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1VeElBAeas <comment><USER2> Before people start shooting the messenger (Project Veritas a.k.a PV), I highly recommend watching congressional testimony [1], [2] by Google lawyers & employees where, under oath, they've confirmed materials from P.V. leaks to be accurate.

Google's only defense in the testimonies was that seemingly partisan actions weren't company policy, but actions of a few individuals. That line of defense fails to hold muster when said actions repeat like clockwork.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX6LlEcJ4nw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX6LlEcJ4nw)

[2]: [https://youtu.be/zIniYSkAWo0?t=5074](https://youtu.be/zIniYSkAWo0?t=5074)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a single comment from anyone who has actually gone through the documents, like they don't reveal important AI security exploits caused by the "good intentions" of Google's morally superior engineers. Why is that?

Is HackerNews supposed to just assume Google is the paragon of moral supremacy? If so, can we get that written in the TOS so people know what to expect?

<comment><USER4> I've read a few of the documents (by no means all) and I'm just left wondering where the meat is?

There have been other leaks that suggest a rather unpleasant political mono- culture, and some creepiness with the "bring your whole self to work attitude" and I don't doubt that the Google execs would be glad to be rid of Trump, but I don't see a "smoking gun" of obvious conspiracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> meh. 85% ad for PV, 15% information about Google.

It could have been much more impactful if done the other way around.

I would also like to point out it's hosted on youtube. Delicious.

Now that said, this is indeed troubling information. It seems unlikely to be the intentional action of a small cabal. More likely, standard groupthink behavior. "How corporations go bad."

It's the reason the US founders wanted the 3 branches of government. Google would do well to create an ombudsman position. They are very powerful and they need internal checks and balances that are perhaps antagonistic.</comment>


Ultimate Fighting Robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/297756.html

<comment><USER2> They seem to be remote controlled, but I wonder how? Maybe the moves are preprogrammed and the remote only triggers the moves? Quite impressive.

<comment><USER3> they get the robots from a package with very basic moves, and they can then program a sequence of movemnts for the servos, requires lots of tuning and fine-tuning to get fighting moves. in my knowledge, the robots aren't sold in north america

<comment><USER4> Trossen Robotics (<http://www.trossenrobotics.com/>) has similar looking robot kits. They cost from $100-$1K+.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting that these robots are anthropomorphic and have human-style "moves" like punches and grapples. For fighting in a ring I would have thought a more "vehicular" style would yield better results, but of course the human- shaped robots are more entertaining!

</comment><comment><USER6> Too cool for words...only drooling can suffice.</comment>


AT&T defends unlimited data throttling, says the FTC can't stop it - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/att-defends-unlimited-data-throttling-says-the-ftc-cant-stop-it/?comments=1 <comment><USER2> Bad link. You're linking into the comments section which hides the article.

Just remove the "?comments=1"</comment>