4-17% of the rest of the world is tone deaf and can't learn them.
Nothing to do with tone deafness. If you weren't exposed to an Asian language as a child then your brain simply won't hear some of the sounds in Asian languages, in fact your brain actively filters out the unfamiliar sounds as "noise". The same is true for Asian children, which is why virtually ALL Asians have trouble with "R" and "L" sounds. It's all about how your neurons are wired in the first few years of life, it's why a 2yo can become fluent in a new language in a matter of months while an adult may take years or even decades to achieve "native" fluency.
much like the aether
...and gravity, it is a model that fits our observations.
never ever helps out the common man
A modern $200 video card has more raw processing power than any supercomputer built before 2000.
It was just an example of how knowing an algorithm can modify behaviour to change the outcome.
Why is that a bad thing? If I am going to be judged by an algorithm, don't you think I should know what the parameters are? How can I ever rectify a problem parameter if I don't know what it is?
There will always be cheats, you can't eliminate them all you can do is minimise their damage. There comes a point when the efforts to catch cheats outweighs the benefits, the system itself suffers as the rules and parameters expand in an attempt to catch every last petty cheat. The US health system(s) are a prime example, both private and public systems spend an inordinate amount of resources on lawyers and accounts that do nothing except look for ways to deny coverage / payment. It ends up costing the honest players up to 10X what it does in comparable countries such as Australia, but it still hasn't eliminated cheats.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire