Muhd

It could be argued that describing the evidence ought to be a significant focus of the body of a post, if you are trying to persuade someone who might not otherwise be persuaded. It's certainly a useful concept though, particularly when you just want to quickly share an idea that you expect will not require significant persuasive effort to be well received (to avoid people being overconfident in your idea).

On the other hand, if you think that a contingent fact will get you out of a hard choice, perhaps you will be more likely to find legitimate contingent facts.

Conversely, I can't think of any applications for which tying IQ to race is useful.

If the results of the racial IQ studies are true, then that is very important because it disproves the doctrine of ethnic cognitive equality. Many people, especially in America, have this idea that all ethnic groups must have exactly equal average cognitive ability, and that if one or more ethnic groups perform below average on a test of aptitude, that is taken as strong evidence that the test is invalid and racially biased and thus cannot be used.

For this reason, many aptitude tests are severely restricted in their use since they are considered racist. This in turn would have a negative economic impact if these tests are actually valid, since employers and colleges are forced to use other, less effective means to vet candidates.

I think the behavior we are seeing here may be more a case of loss aversion rather than anything else.

Assuming that red cards must come at some point (true if we are flipping over a limited set of cards with a blue-red ratio of 7 to 3; not sure if that is the setup), the subjects adopt a strategy that gives them the highest likelihood of avoiding failure completely. Predicting blue cards every time requires accepting a certain degree failure right from the outset and is thus unpalatable to the human mind which is loss-averse.

Even if the experiment is designed so that red cards are not guaranteed to come at some point (if, for example, you shuffle after every flip), the subjects may fall prey to gambler's fallacy, which, when combined with their loss-aversion, leads them to adopt the 70-30 strategy.

These were my thoughts when I read this.

A better analogy might be buying stock in a technology startup which is making a product completely unlike anything on the market now. It is certainly more risky than the sure thing, with lots of potential for losing your investment, but also has a much much higher potential payoff. This is generally the case in any sort of investing, whether it be investing in a charity or in a business -- the higher the risk, the higher the potential gain. The sure stuff generally has plenty of funding already -- the low hanging fruit has already been taken.

That being said, one should be on the lookout for good investing opportunities of both kinds -- charging more (in terms of expected payoff) for the riskier ones but not shunning either completely.

That link does not talk the effects of estrogen...

I see nothing there that contradicts what I said, but it does seem most of the links are dead.

Aren't numbers a human universal?

No. The Pirahã, for example, have no concept of exact numbers, only of smaller and larger amounts.