Mathematical models of most recent common ancestry hide relevant historical details. Actual human phylogenetics is considerably more sparse. For instance (ten seconds of googling):

http://austhrutime.com/genetic_evidence.htm

"They conclude that the ancestors of this Aboriginal man, and possibly all Aboriginals, are of similar distance from Africans as are other Eurasians, and that at about 62,000-75,000 BP the Aboriginal ancestors split from the gene pool that gave rise to all other populations of modern humans. The authors say their study supports the model of human evolution according to which the modern Australian Aboriginal people descended from an early wave of expansion into Asia about 62,000-75,000 BP. Their data also supports the substantial population admixing and replacement of populations of the first wave by the 2nd expansion wave, predicted by this model, though a few populations are descendants of the early dispersal, such as those in Australia and the highlands of Papua New Guinea and Aeta. According to the authors this is compatible with data from mtDNA that indicate they derived from the same few founder haplogroups shared by all populations outside Africa, though all haplogroups observed in Australia are unique to this area. The data also support the the suggestion that modern Aboriginal Australians have descended from the first humans that entered Australia at least about 50,000 BP."

Which is to say, it is easy to identify pairs of population groups which have had essentially zero genetic interaction with each other for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years, despite the existence of genetic clines that link their intermediary populations over shorter timescales.

I've noticed a lot of disciplines, particularly ones that sometimes have to justify their value, often make a similar claim:

"[subject] isn't just about [subject matter]: it teaches you how to think"

This raises some interesting questions:

• I can believe, for example, that Art History instils in its students some useful habits of thought, but I suspect they're less general than those from a discipline with an explicit problem-solving focus. What kind of scheme could one construct to score the meta-cognitive skills learned from a particular subject?

• Are there any subjects which are particularly unlikely to make this claim? Are any subjects just composed of procedural knowledge without any overarching theory, cross-domain applicability, or necessary transferable skills?

• Are there particularly potent combinations of skills, or particularly useless ones? It seems that a Physics degree and a Maths degree would have similar "coverage" in terms of thinking habits they instil, but a Physics degree and a Law degree would have much broader coverage. "I have technical skills, but I also have people-skills" is a fairly standard contemporary idea. Do Physics and Law have strikingly different coverages because Physics Lawyers don't really need to exist?

I drink the equivalent of 1-2 bottles of wine per week (purchasing 2-3 bottles, some will be consumed by my girlfriend), mostly medium reds (shiraz, merlot; zinfandel and chianti when I can get them), some white aromatics (riesling, gewürztraminer, pinot gris), mostly 1-2 glasses at a time in the evening, for the purposes of relaxation and gustatory pleasure.

Beer is not good on my digestion, and I almost totally avoid it except for particularly tasty ones (prototypically, something like a Trappistes Rochefort 10). Even the thought of swilling a six-pack is enough to cause me pain.

When drinking socially (~biweekly), it will be whisky (Scotch, neat, naturally), neat Jäger, or possibly G&T or white/black russians if I'm mixing for other people, most usually not to the point of inebriation, just to maintain a comfortable level of sociable buzz. To this end, I adopt an approach informed by control theory, and deliberately front-load my consumption to give something close to an ideal dead-beat response when convolved with my internal alcohol-processing dynamics.

My palate is fairly typical, I have a (probably conditioned) liking for the taste of alcohol, a sweet tooth that I have a System II response against, and as far as I can tell, average-to-low bitterness tolerance (the only coffee I will drink is strong espresso, but I am very sensitive to improper extraction and the associated bitterness.

Hello open thread!

I am going to be in San Francisco on the 8th of February, and I will have the rest of the day to spend in town before heading onward for a work trip. It will be my first time in the US (coming from New Zealand), and I would be delighted to get in contact with some LWers.

Unsure if I should post an email or something, but do leave a comment if you know of any happenings, or are just keen to meet up.

It's not just that the risk of defection increases with the number of people, though that's certainly true. It's also that the dynamics for 3+ people are qualitatively different from the dynamics for two people -- if you're in a monogamous relationship, you can't play the other people off each other to your benefit, because there's only one other person.

(This is also technically true for couples with children, but children are probably less likely to be skilled at and inclined toward that sort of manipulation than polyamorists, and married parents (though IME not divorced ones) should be able to put up enough of a united front to prevent the obvious failure modes.)

To what extent is the crosslinking necessarily a pure trade of tail risk for profit now, and to what extent an actual improvement? Is there an increased reserve requirement which still results in an increased profit but without increasing the tail risk?

Creationism was discussed to death long before Lesswrong existed, which is why people downvote attempts to rehash it as a waste of everyone's time. To the extent that Neoreaction is something different than plain old Reaction, a) it's a relatively new memeplex, so if it's bad, someone has to do the work of swatting it down, and b) when the Neoreactionaries aren't busy reviving obscure archaic words for their own jargon, they're using Lesswrong-style jargon. You run the risk of outsiders pattern-matching LW and Neoreaction together either way. I'd prefer the association be "Lesswrong is a place where neoreactionary ideas are discussed and sometimes criticized" than "Lesswrong is that place that sounds very similar to Neoreaction minus the explicit politics".

That being said, there's ample discussion already on Slate Star Codex, and I wouldn't want to see it crowding out other topics here.

Was anybody else disappointed that the Sex Role Inventory wasn't nearly as raunchy as the name suggested?

You need to read Moldbugg to find out what Progressives think. Querying your own mind won't work because PROGRESSIVES LIE TO THEMSELVES!!!

Got a link on hand? (I don't disbelieve you, I was wondering how he worded it.)