"The day will come when the darkness will lift, and we or our descendants should be prepared to remember the world as it was rather than only have the understanding of priests who preach how it should have been."
I'm curious about the assumptions in the work you cite. e.g., how certain are we that Mitochondrial DNA mutates at the assumed intervals and give us timelines? What assumptions might be wrong and will, when corrected, require material reassessments?
Stanislas Dehaene has a fourth book out, How We Learn (2021). It is as good as the other three. He says that four things are required for effective learning to take place: Attention (Ch 7, about 30 pages), Active Engagement (Ch 8, about 20 pages), Error Feedback (Ch 9, about 20 pages), Consolidation (Ch 10, about 15 pages).
I think he is right, and he does a wonderful job explaining why.
Dehaene seems to think that greater knowledge of cognitive science will lead to substantially greater learning for the planet's young people. I suspect he is deluding himself. Once they pass puberty, most young people have little intrinsic interest in what schools are trying to teach them. "When am I ever going to use this?" "Well, um, it's education, and you need to be educated." Curricula get abstract and academic when they want practical and "what matters in my life." Teachers (I was a high school one) spend an incredible amount of effort to get students "motivated" so they will be actively engaged. Most often, we fail. The best we can do is get them interested in their grade on the next exam. Once a unit is over, they passively resist "error feedback" (e.g., going over the unit test) and will feel betrayed if you keep going back to things they learned (and then forgot) from previous units, because you are trying to consolidate that learning. "Of course, we don't remember that; we did it two months ago." "We were already tested on that!"
- Are there any thinkers you know who have ideas about the future course of evolution? Will assortative mating drive a greater spread in population intelligence?
- When will databases of non-European populations allow polygenic score analyses allow comparisons with Europeans. Are the Chinese close to this now--and will they tell us? Will African genetic diversity require multiple population analyses?
I am reading Razib for over a decade I believe and this year has been kind of a wild rollercoaster ride for me. I got ssri's for the first time in my live since I stopped being able to sleep from anxiety. That was February. They worked like magic pills for me. I felt good like I haven't for years. In September I started feeling too happy, excited, couldn't sleep more than three or four hours each night. I quit the drug when I noticed my crazy risk taking in traffic and other things. Now I feel finally calm again to be able to read something on the internet again. But it has been weeks or months since I read Razib. I feel lost where to start reading again. I am glad I learned about Freddies mental health struggle on gnxp or on the podcast, also I was well prepared for the fake fairweather friends that abandoned me like rats leaving a sinking ship (they are proscribed and may Sulla bring justice to them), reading how people treated Razib during the witchhunts etc. Maybe this is too personal, but I don't give many f***s these days. Truth matters, Duty, Honor, Family - the rest is details. I am glad to be back here, I missed you guys
If we went back in a time machine and tried to naturally produce with hominids in the past; how far back could we naturally reproduce with some difficulty? (For example maybe having a 1/3 chance of having offspring after having lots of intercourse for a decade during prime fertility years.)
2nd question:
How many human beings might have been alive during the Toba eruption around 74,000 years ago? Might any of these survivors have been outside of Africa?
i set up my youtube channel to upload the podcasts once they're ungated https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCggqJq2YjrkuClFAQCXd4Jg (please subscribe if you use youtube)
"The day will come when the darkness will lift, and we or our descendants should be prepared to remember the world as it was rather than only have the understanding of priests who preach how it should have been."
Well said, sir!
I'm curious about the assumptions in the work you cite. e.g., how certain are we that Mitochondrial DNA mutates at the assumed intervals and give us timelines? What assumptions might be wrong and will, when corrected, require material reassessments?
Stanislas Dehaene has a fourth book out, How We Learn (2021). It is as good as the other three. He says that four things are required for effective learning to take place: Attention (Ch 7, about 30 pages), Active Engagement (Ch 8, about 20 pages), Error Feedback (Ch 9, about 20 pages), Consolidation (Ch 10, about 15 pages).
I think he is right, and he does a wonderful job explaining why.
Dehaene seems to think that greater knowledge of cognitive science will lead to substantially greater learning for the planet's young people. I suspect he is deluding himself. Once they pass puberty, most young people have little intrinsic interest in what schools are trying to teach them. "When am I ever going to use this?" "Well, um, it's education, and you need to be educated." Curricula get abstract and academic when they want practical and "what matters in my life." Teachers (I was a high school one) spend an incredible amount of effort to get students "motivated" so they will be actively engaged. Most often, we fail. The best we can do is get them interested in their grade on the next exam. Once a unit is over, they passively resist "error feedback" (e.g., going over the unit test) and will feel betrayed if you keep going back to things they learned (and then forgot) from previous units, because you are trying to consolidate that learning. "Of course, we don't remember that; we did it two months ago." "We were already tested on that!"
A couple questions for future discussion:
- Are there any thinkers you know who have ideas about the future course of evolution? Will assortative mating drive a greater spread in population intelligence?
- When will databases of non-European populations allow polygenic score analyses allow comparisons with Europeans. Are the Chinese close to this now--and will they tell us? Will African genetic diversity require multiple population analyses?
I am reading Razib for over a decade I believe and this year has been kind of a wild rollercoaster ride for me. I got ssri's for the first time in my live since I stopped being able to sleep from anxiety. That was February. They worked like magic pills for me. I felt good like I haven't for years. In September I started feeling too happy, excited, couldn't sleep more than three or four hours each night. I quit the drug when I noticed my crazy risk taking in traffic and other things. Now I feel finally calm again to be able to read something on the internet again. But it has been weeks or months since I read Razib. I feel lost where to start reading again. I am glad I learned about Freddies mental health struggle on gnxp or on the podcast, also I was well prepared for the fake fairweather friends that abandoned me like rats leaving a sinking ship (they are proscribed and may Sulla bring justice to them), reading how people treated Razib during the witchhunts etc. Maybe this is too personal, but I don't give many f***s these days. Truth matters, Duty, Honor, Family - the rest is details. I am glad to be back here, I missed you guys
If we went back in a time machine and tried to naturally produce with hominids in the past; how far back could we naturally reproduce with some difficulty? (For example maybe having a 1/3 chance of having offspring after having lots of intercourse for a decade during prime fertility years.)
2nd question:
How many human beings might have been alive during the Toba eruption around 74,000 years ago? Might any of these survivors have been outside of Africa?
Has Razib chatted to Lyman Stone, Martin Kolk, Henry Gee? Sry guise.
I will check the backlog sometime