That is also a very good point against the utility company example.

I think I'll remove it, unless somebody persuasively argues in its favor in a few hours or so.

Regarding the "status quo bias" example with the utility company, I think it's fallacious, or at least misleading. For realistic typical humans with all their intellectual limitations, it is rational to favor the status quo when someone offers to change a deal that has so far worked tolerably well in ways that, for all you know, could have all sorts of unintended consequences. (And not to mention the swindles that might be hiding in the fine print.)

Moreover, if the utility company had actually started selling different deals rather than just conducting a survey about hypotheticals, it's not like typical folks would have stubbornly held to unfavorable deals for years. What happens in such situations is that a clever minority figures out that the new deal is indeed more favorable and switches -- and word about their good experience quickly spreads and soon becomes conventional wisdom, which everyone else then follows.

This is how human society works normally -- what you call "status quo bias" is a highly beneficial heuristic that prevents people from ruining their lives. It makes them stick to what's worked well so far instead of embarking on attractive-looking, but potentially dangerous innovations. When this mechanism breaks down, all kinds of collective madness can follow (speculative bubbles and Ponzi schemes being the prime examples). Generally, it is completely rational to favor a tolerably good status quo even if some calculation tells you that an unconventional change might be beneficial, unless you're very confident in your competence to do that calculation, or you know of other people's experiences that have confirmed it.

the principle of comparative advantage says it's better for a country to specialize in the products it's best at producing.

This is not quite right, just as saying "evolution changes organisms so that they act to preserve the species" is not quite right.

The reason it is called comparative advantage rather than absolute advantage is that a country could be better at everything and benefit from trade. The classic example is a high powered executive who is better at typing than his* secretary. It may still be better for him to to employ a secretary than to do his own typing. He could lose more by spending time typing letters - time that could be better spent making lucrative deals - than the cost of the secretary.

*An old example, reproduced in original form.

Could you please taboo "oppression" and its synonyms? You seem to be using it as a sort of discrimination/cognitive bias affair which doesn't seem to fit colloquial use of oppression.

Oppression in common usage appears to signify systematic stereotyping with a net negative effect for the population group in question, or specific behaviors associated with oppression of a group, in which case neither males nor white males are oppressed, even though there are indubitably cases where discrimination and cognitive biases turn out negatively for specific subgroups (such as male nurses, cuckolds, divorcees, etc.)

"Objectification" is another such concept. We know that it's yet another piece of jargon for a bad thing that men do to women. But we don't really know what it and why it's wrong, nor it is demarcated from ethical forms of imagery.

Objectification is a well-defined and experimentally verified to exist phenomenon by which women in western society at least judge themselves by the impression others have of their physical bodies, which correlates, amongst other things, to eating disorders.

While the connection between sexual imagery and objectification is less easily findable with google scholar, here is a study which correlates violence in watched pornography with short-term aggressive behavior.

With this definition of objectification - the identification of women and their physical appearance (9 on the list) - it is obvious that the Playboy magazine is an example of an act of objectification, while people playing in mud is not: the playboy magazine serves to display a prime specimen of the female body, while the other image serves to display a prime specimen of people playing in mud.

Hence, the only assumption we need to make is that playboy magazines cause the same objectification which causes psychological damage to women is that objectifying specific women or seeing women being objectified causes the objectification of other women, which frankly does not seem unbelievable because it's basic "monkey see, monkey do".

It should also be noted that every last posited "defining characteristic" is directly implied by characteristic #9. #8 through specification and the others by negative phrasing, and that #9 is in fact the apparent scientific definition of the concept. So while the other characteristics increase the probability of objectification, they don't guarantee it.

Of course, social constructionism isn't the only objection to feminism. See this post for some other books that critique feminism. Keep in mind that not all feminists make these sorts of errors, but particular groups of feminists do, and don't get sufficiently called on it.

One last thing: Your statement that not all feminists are social constructivists implies that the truth value of social constructivism doesn't affect the truth value of feminism, but rather the truth value of whatever those feminists do believe that makes them social constructivists, assuming there are rational feminists who are not social constructivists.

PS: Hi, I'm new here. Please be patient with me if I'm in error.

This actually bothers me less than the original, simply because the stereotype of "properly raised wife having to train her lower-status husband to act appropriately" is a VERY common social meme, whereas "husband training wife" is something I generally only see in the context of physical abuse (which, given the lack of violence, this obviously isn't).

Is there a cultural meme I'm missing here that makes THIS version the more offensive one? o.o

The statistical evidence is that liberalism, especially social liberalism, is positively correlated with intelligence. This does not prove that liberalism is correct; but it does provide some mild evidence in that direction.

Insulin / tendency to insulin resistance. Or perhaps your body is just very reluctant to give up fat. In Atkins' book he describes some extreme cases of such people one chap could not lose fat on 800 calories a day of pure fat in his diet.

I would also consider the effect of high cortisol levels on metabolism. Apart from Cushing's {disease,syndrome} it would appear that high cortisol levels are associated with various forms of childhood trouble (illness, neglect, abuse, hunger) - perhaps an epigenetic effect. And high cortisol produces a strong tendency to insatiable appetite, tendency to store fat and difficulty in mobilizing fat.

Endocrinologists seem to assume that you either have Cushing's or there is no problem. Maybe you have high cortisol due to alcoholism (pseudo-Cushings). How much do you drink?

If you have a tendency to excessive appetite, abdominal obesity, and perhaps high levels of anxiety and conscientiousnes (there are many cortisol receptors in the brain) have a look into your cortisol levels.

At this point your troubles start. Apart from the idea that you have Cushing's or you are fine as mentioned above, there is a problem with testing cortisol levels. Doctors will assume that a blood test is best. But for measuring the cortisol burden it is not. The reason is that cortisol levels fluctuate wildly on an hourly basis and across the day, lowest after midnight. So a blood test is like measuring traffic by taking a single photograph across a road. A 24 hour urine test is best for assessing the overall cortisol burden.

A lot of people with high 24 hour numbers have normal serum numbers during the day. The problem is that the serum levels don't go down overnight in some people (eg me).

Also worth noting that the normal levels of cortisol cover a very wide range and that levels in the upper half are associated with bad outcomes in life (heart disease, blood pressure, strokes, diabetes, eye damage etc). So get the numbers not just the "normal/not normal" result.

a quick look at the economic data shows they do control the majority of our planet's wealth

Not really, actually. The ereason is a bit subtle.

A very large portion of the planet's wealth consists of the capacity of people to earn income by working. Most people have an asset - the value of their labor - which is no counted in standard tabulations of wealth.

Wealth in terms of financial capital is indeed distributed in a very skewed fashion, for a number of reasons. Wealth in terms of ability to earn income is still skewed, but far less skewed.

You can see this when you look at the distribution of financial wealth versus the distribution of financial income.

The difference is enormous. I consider this to be an example of a factoid - true but misleading.

I think the post here gives the impression that Einstein made fewer errors, and had fewer detours than he did.

It is true that there were very few degrees of freedom in GR. When the initial red shift numbers came in, they seemed to contradict GR. Einstein was pondering abandoning it, until better numbers came in. There was nothing he could tweak to adjust the answer.

Also, he made the wrong prediction for the bending of starlight around the sun due to missing something (a second order effect) in the calculation. Through several strokes of luck, all the expeditions to check the values were stymied for one reason or another during the time Einstein had the wrong numbers out there. It was only after Einstein realized his mistake and redid the calculations that an expedition finally succeeded in getting the measurements which were right. Had an earlier expedition succeeded, Einstein's prediction at that time would have been wrong.

Einstein did use a lot of data though it was data everyone else had too. He knew Newton's law was mostly accurate, a fact which implies a lot of data. Also the invariance of gravitational acceleration (gravitational mass = inertial mass). He was aware there was a problem with Mercury. Also Newton's law was not (or only with great difficulty) consistent with SR.

There is a very interesting book "General relativity conflict and rivalries : Einstein's polemics with physicists" by Galina Weinstein.

Einstein was incredible but not alien magic. An algebra mistake cost him a couple of years!