I would think that the decline of reading would be relevant to discuss on a hacker forum.

That assumes the shift was entirely due to high school students becoming adults. There are also people who haven't read much over those years and have had their skills declined to the point of failure. Or, also likely, sample size issues.

You're making the assumption that the change in absolute terms is entirely driven by deficient additions to the population. It's just as possible that some portion of the population lost their skill by allowing it to atrophy from underuse.

It worked to a degree in Venezuela. (Depending on what you think the goal was, of course...)

The goal was simply to display performative strongman machismo using the military (just like the missile strikes on alleged drug boats). It's a branding exercise for Trump personally (not even for the US as a whole). To that end, it doesn't seem to be working, especially with the Iran quagmire.

No, everything does not need to have a reason! "Just because" or "I just wanted to" do not inherently make the activity useless, nor mean that it should be discontinued.

If an activity is harmful is some way, but not beneficial in any other way (just because one "likes" it doesn't count"), the reasons to ban it outweigh the reasons to keep it

Earlier this year, I rented a new Toyota Camry (US model). It had lane assist, but it was very easy to override it. I didn't really have to fight it. (And that was nice. I've drive other cars where it was more of a battle.)

So, yeah, it's done badly some of the time. But it at least can be done well.

I don't know, even if it's not that forceful, sometimes I have a light touch on the wheel and I'm going straight, I don't want to suddenly have to fight the car swerving me onto oncoming traffic.

I strongly disagree that agile was invented to make up for the absence of secretaries. Agile was invented to make up for the absence of omniscience (and absence of the recognition of non-omniscience). Secretaries weren't going to make that work.

Probability of inheriting sickle cell anemia, for one.

All black people? Or just those from some regions or ethnicities?

The point I am making is that “white” and “black” simply aren’t races on any biological basis. It’s nothing more than a social distinction.

The level of scientific ignorance on display here is weird.

You seem to keep suggesting that boundaries have to be perfect for categories to exist. This is not the case. White colour and dark colour exist as categories yet are blurry. Yet no sane person suggests colours don’t exist.

There’s no sharp boundary between a hill and a mountain. There’s no sharp boundary between dark and white colours. There’s no sharp boundary between male and female either at the edge cases when you consider intersex. Language has its limitations and it’s obvious to most of us and we don’t have to play semantic juggling each time.

Does the way people use race as a word have biological basis? Absolutely yes. For example you take people who self identify as black and white and try to find whether their DNA can predict their self identified race. You would agree that it can predict to a good extent I hope.

On a side note: I think you have fallen into this popular rabbit hole where you expect sharp boundaries for commonly used words/categories. Such sharp boundaries never exist and every normal person from a child to an adult knows and works around this. This kind of rhetoric is popular with some extremist academic types to signal their in group presence. Tip: if you want to solve racism, don’t get into debates on esoteric definitions of race and pretend race itself doesn’t exist. Normal people aren’t convinced.

I am not pretending that sociological concepts of race don’t exist.

I am saying that it is clear from scientific consensus that biological, genetic race does not exist.

If it did, as I keep saying, “white” and “black” would not be biological races. That is actually not plausible. It’s scientific racism to claim it is.

What even is biological race? Race as used sociologically has a biological basis. And normal people think that race is real, the same way colour is real.

You have said this

> Races don't exist on any biological level

And it is completely untrue. Sociological race does exist at a biological level. DNA of blacks and whites are different.

Just like wavelength emitted by black and white colours are different.

The survey asked whether race is real - of course race is. Just like colour is real.

White and black are not biological races but words used to describe real clusters of people, even if its lossy. In the entire conversation, you have made a complete strawman, as if people are talking about some made up definition of biological race you have come up with and then claim that "ha that made up definition is not real!"

Your article:

>race has become a social reality that structures societies and how we experience the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences

You said

> Races don't exist on any biological level

My suggestion: separate your moral claims and virtues from objective facts. I think you are spiralling into a maze of arguments that you yourself can't keep up with.

This is an extraordinarily obtuse comment.

You have taken the phrase "real biological consequences", which is talking about the illness, healthcare, stress, poverty etc. impact of racism on centuries of people and used it to support your essential thesis that race itself can be detected on some biological level.

This is shameful.

> I think you are spiralling into a maze of arguments that you yourself can't keep up with.

And this is projection. Bye.

You start with one party - doesn't matter which - getting in power, and then prosecuting corruption on both sides, not just on the other side.

> You start with one party - doesn't matter which - getting in power, and then prosecuting corruption on both sides, not just on the other side.

The day this happens is the day that 90% (or more) of our "leaders" find themselves suddenly in prison.

No, you've raised the efficacy from 98 to 99, which is not much of a change. What you have done is halved the inefficacy, which is a big change.

Let me restate that: Enough accurate data about the real world can let you learn something about the real world without having to yourself interface with the real world. So, for example, Kepler's Laws were based on Tycho Brahe's observations, not on Kepler's.