lemming934

joined 2 years ago
[–] lemming934 0 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Polls have been remarkably accurate in the last few election cycles.

The "polls are wrong" talking point is a convenient way for politicians to ignore the will of the people. Trump has done this for a long time, and recently Biden has taken up this practice to pretend that the "Real Americans" think he is fit to be president for another 4 years.

So please don't repeat this talking point, or at least read a bit into historical accuracy of polls before you declare them bullshit.

[–] lemming934 5 points 9 months ago

Biden is absolutely not leading. State polling has him behind in every swing state. Nate Silver's model gives Biden a 30% chance of winning, slightly down from the debate.

[–] lemming934 9 points 9 months ago

They did this in California and Oregon, then the schools went to shit.

Also, property taxes are a good way to encourage density, which is necessary to fight climate change

[–] lemming934 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Tolls would also work

[–] lemming934 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In the US you sometimes hear that phones in class are necessary to see if your kids are OK in a school shooting scenario.

I think this isn't a good argument, since school shootings are rare, and it's unclear if each student having a phone would do more harm than good in that kind of situation.

[–] lemming934 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think your Title IX comment is a misinterpretation of the video. He never said Title IX is responsible for the achievement gap, and cautioned against policies that disadvantage girls. He used Title IX as an example to show that the academic achievement gap in favor of boys, that Title IX was attempting to solve, is smaller than the current academic gap in favor of girls (at least by one measure); therefore systemic action is necessary.

But I found this video did a good job at clearly stating the crisis we have for boys, particularly black boys in America. And the idea of pushing for more male teachers, particularly English teachers, seems like good policy.

[–] lemming934 7 points 10 months ago

The video is not about sports, it's about the achievement gap in k-12 education in boys, particularly in social or economically disadvantaged classes.

[–] lemming934 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

I don't see the connection between neurodivergence and phones

[–] lemming934 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Bikes are cheaper than cars

[–] lemming934 14 points 10 months ago

I've received the advice that you should always make your charts so that you numbers are proportional to a length, since people aren't good at comparing areas (or volumes).

So the numbers here probably ought to be proportional to diameters

[–] lemming934 3 points 10 months ago

hitting refresh in firefox reader mode works for me.

[–] lemming934 5 points 10 months ago

You don't need to "tie a specific neuronal activity to a thought or memory" to know whether a set of neurons can have humanlike memory or emotions. We know that specific brain regions are required for specific brain functions. Most famously, we know that hippocampi are necessary to form new episodic memories due to Patient HM. This organoid does not have anything like these necessary specific brain regions, so we can be pretty sure they don't have these human brain functions.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "tie a specific neuronal activity to a thought or memory" We've known examples of single unit neural activity being correlated with thoughts for many years, see place cells and Grandmother cells. Really, the whole field of systems neuroscience studies this at some level. And I think that field has made some progress.

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