> If one considers studies from around the world, across many cultures, it's pretty clear to me that there's no IQ huge disadvantage to having African genetics. Nigerian immigrants are presently kicking ass and even outdoing Asians. Immigrant from many Caribbean backgrounds do very well. Also cited by myself elsewhere, there's a study that found that the African American children of US servicepeople in Germany was basically the same as their classmates.
The above is discussed in Thomas Sowell's Migrations and Cultures.
An overarching theme in Thomas Sowell's books: The world is ruled by human capital, that is: cultures and people's ideas of how the world is and should be. Thinkers like Jordan Peterson would add that the world is also ruled by various forces working below the level of consciousness, for which humans have developed religion and art to try and deal with -- which also fall under the rubric of culture.
I think it's Culture which is the dominant factor, and this is a great foundation of hope. It means that all of the greatest accomplishments of human civilizations are available to all peoples, given enough effort to transform one's understanding and way of life. Such is the power of culture, that this effort may take generations to accomplish. History bears this out. If the descendants of Irish peasants (who, during the potato famine could start out 1/2 to 1/4th as wealthy as the average US slave) could arrive at their current place in modern society, then there's basically nothing that cultural transmission can't accomplish, given enough resources and time.
Flynn effect is a result of misunderstanding of IQ scale: "The basic misunderstanding is assuming that intelligence test scores are units of measurement like inches or liters or grams. They are not. Inches, liters and grams are ratio scales where zero means zero and 100 units are twice 50 units. Intelligence test scores estimate a construct using interval scales and have meaning only relative to other people of the same age and sex. People with high scores generally do better on a broad range of mental ability tests, but someone with an IQ score of 130 is not 30% smarter then someone with an IQ score of 100. A score of 130 puts the person in the highest 2% of the population whereas a score of 100 is at the 50th percentile. A change from an IQ score from 100 to 103 is not the same as a change from 133 to 136. This makes simple interpretation of intelligence test score changes impossible."
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3950413/
"A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden -- beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them." E.Durkheim [1][2]
In this sense, liberal democracy, with its rituals (eg. PC) and non-provable beliefs ("we are all equal"), etc. can be seen as religion.
It's kind of thought provoking to apply the definitions of religion in a logical manner to movements like string theory, or LGBT movements, or even programming cultures in addition to traditional religions like Christianity. Essentially if there are beliefs and practices which are beyond questioning at the risk of violating taboos and social ostracization then you get a form de facto religion. Not that this necessarily makes these things wrong, but it does carry consequences and should be realistically scrutinized by the public. At least if I become religious I prefer to knowingly choose it or be aware of it -- e.g. I'm Christian and chose to be so including accepting certain intellectual dissonances. Personally most of those intellectual dissonances have provided more areas for me to grow in deeper understanding of the world (vis-a-vis my world views). In physics I keep an eye on similar dissonance like the current non-compatability of quantum mechanics and relativity at mixed scales. Or that new EmDrive which could prove valuable insight into physics... However, since social beliefs also follow physical laws and result in consequences (I consider it as a multivariate game theory problem where different religious beliefs and axioms will produce different optimal outcomes -- though we rarely live up to the optimal solutions). Look forward to reading Durham and see if the views offer more clarification.
It is clearly known how to do this. I lost 15 kg in 3 months after changing my eating habits and I can tell it is simple (but not necessarily easy).
Key changes to introduce to your diet:
1. Eat less carbohydrates, especially those with high glycemic index (eg. pasta, pizza, bread). Ideally replace them with beans, lentils, peas (they have lower glycemic index).
2. Remove alcohol from your diet. It is highly caloric and increases your insulin levels (which will make you eat more).
3. Remove sugar and sweets from your diet. Use xylitol as alternative to sugar (it has lower glycemic index).
Additionally:
1. Drink water, avoid soft drinks, juices or milk. Do not add sugar or milk to your coffee.
2. Eat more protein (fish, chicken, beef, eggs).
3. Eat more high quality fats (fish oil, nut oil, olive oil, coconut oil).
4. Eat more vegetables, but avoid potato, sweet potato, corn.
5. To maintain results, motivation and high energy - excercise (eg. running, gym) for 1 hour every 2-3 days. It will make you feel great, after 1-2 months you will start missing the training day :)
6. Let yourself enjoy anything, in any quantity once in a week (but consider avoiding alcohol) to deal with your cravings and temporarily boost metabolism.
The advice is based on Tim Ferris recommendations from his "4 Hour Body" book [1]. I followed it and it simply works.
I've built http://lstack.com to satisfy my need to store custom parameters with bookmarks, rather than tags only (eg. http://www.clojure.org/ programming language, licence:epl, lisp, clojure, platform:jvm, language:clojure, paradigm:functional). It's private and under development. You can give it a try.
Alternative research done by the independent experts from US and Australia (like http://goo.gl/YREux by www.simulate-events.com) is being ignored and / or silenced.
Except it's not 100 tons of steel. It's a very delicate structure of tons of parts, and the part that got damaged wasn't the most resilient (nor did it account for 100 tons of steel). Breaking into pieces happened when the whole plane hit the ground in the worst possible (for airliner) way - upside down. At over 180 km/h.
And more specifically: https://trezor.io/passwords/