> There's no indication of the circumstances of their birth
Table C1, page 45.
This is also the Cornell University Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, where the median family income for students is over $150K, so certainly none of them are poor.
=Smidge=
Meanwhile, the older workers are frankly very concerned about what wishy-washy easy-to-impressed Upper Management will use AI for. What insane, implausible, improbable, impractical-to-implement nutcase ideas will they come to us with next?
With all the hallucinations and such, I can't expect much sanity from the C*O offices for the next decade or so.
They set up an experiment with "workers" who get compensated based on either luck or performance, so some workers get more than others but not necessarily because they did a better job. The students actually being studied are then asked to redistribute the earnings if they want, in either direction (e.g. give workers they feel worked harder more, or give workers they feel were exceptionally lucky less)
One of the variables the the experiment is how much it costs to redistribute the earnings. For example, you can take $1 form worker A and give it to worker B, but if the efficiency cost is 50% then worker B only gets $0.50 and the other $0.50 is lost. This lost value is the efficiency cost.
Basically they're saying that the likelihood and amount of redistribution is strongly dependent on how much it costs to implement it. The more expensive it is to transfer wealth, the more disparity there is between the haves and have-nots.
Overall the paper seems to show that people born with a silver spoon up their ass not only see inequality as less of a problem, but are severely less inclined to do anything about it at all if the solution isn't literal magic. Quelle surprise.
=Smidge=
Nazism isn't an internet insult. It was an actual, real thing that happened in this world, with an actual, real ideology, and the core of this ideology was racial-based social Darwinism.
BTW, re: the Congo in particular: the most common traditional type of fishing is basket fishing with woven funnels suspended in the rapids. You sure as hell better know how to swim if you want to do that.
Famous angler Jeremy Wade referred to the local Congo fishermen as nearly suicidal, just diving into the rapids to get nets unstuck and the like.
SIGH.
There were 10 people chosen and people with dark skin in the USA make up about 1 out of 8 Americans.
1 in 8 is 12,5%.
African-American without mixed race in 2024 is estimated at 46,3M, or 14,2%
With mixed race, that rises to 51,6M, or 15,8% of the population.
Some hispanics have dark skin, some light. In 2023 there were 62,5%, representing 19% of the population (though there's a small overlap with black - doesn't affect the numbers much).
In 2023, Asians were 25,8M people, or 7,7% of the population. This is again a diverse group with mixed skin tones (for example, the Indian subcontinent)
In 2023, there were 1,6M people (0,49%) of pacific island ancestry and 3,3M native Americans - again, mixed skin tones.
People of Mediterranean European ancestry often have so-called "olive" complexions.
With a strict definition of dark skin, you're probably talking like 1 in 6 or so (~16,7%). With a looser definition, you could be talking upwards of 40% or more of the population.
The chances of the 10 people to be a perfect representation of the racial demographics of the USA is quite small.
Here are the actual odds of selecting no dark-skinned people at different population percentages being "dark skinned", by one's definition of "dark":
15%: 1 in 4
20%: 1 in 8
25%: 1 in 17
30%: 1 in 34
35%: 1 in 73
40%: 1 in 165
Then consider that NASA astronauts are required to pass a swimming test
It is not a test of swimming prowess, just of an ability to not drown. You have to be able to do three lengths of a 25-meter pool without stopping, three lengths of the pool in a flight suit and tennis shoes, and tread water for 10 minutes while wearing a flight suit. This is not some massively imposing task. You don't have to be Michael Phelps to become an astronaut.
and as a general rule those with African ancestry tend to have less stamina in swimming than those with lighter skin
Yes, white athletes tend to have an advantage in swimming. A 1,5% advantage. While a 1,5% advantage may be of good relevance at the highest level of a sport, it's hardly meaningful in a "can you tread water with a flight suit on" test.
Think of the different races as just really big families
That is not how genetics work, and is instead the pseudoscience that drove fascist movements, and in particular, Nazism.
There is far more genetic diversity within a given "race" than between them. Certain genetic traits tend to have strong correlates - for example dark skin and sickle cell anemia - but that's not because races are some sort of genetic isolates, but rather for very practical reasons (dark skin is an adaptation to not die of skin cancer in the tropics, and sickle cell disease is a consequence of a genetic adaptation to not die of malaria which also happens to be found in such climates). But the vast majority of genes don't have such strong correlates.
The concept of "race" as a distinct biological category is not supported by modern genetics.
If we are to ignore skin color and just put one big family up against another big family on swimming ability then just due to random mutations, perhaps some Darwinian selection way back in the family tree, one family will swim better than the other
The main "racial difference" in swimming ability in the US is "inherited", that is, parents who don't know how to swim tend to not teach their kids how to swim. As a result, white children are 56% more likely to receive swimming lessons than black children. One can expect that to directly correspond to an advantage in adulthood. But again, the ability to tread water is not out there knocking 90% of astronaut candidates out of the race - especially given that astronaut candidates tend to be athletic and motivated to learn new skills.
People with light skin tend to have ancestors that had to go fishing for their protein
Utter tripe. Fish consumption has no correlation with skin colour. How much fish do you think your average herder or plains horseman ate? And fish is massively important in much of Africa - in coastal areas (Gabon, Ghana, Sierra Leone in particular note), along the Congo (it's literally the world's largest river, people have been fishing it since time immemorial), Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, the Niger Delta, etc etc. What sort of racist stereotype world are you living in where black people don't fish?
Having a large candidate pool relative to the number chosen makes it easier to show bias and still get high-quality candidaes, not harder.
Cry me a river.
Lemme translate: "We're concerned self-driving cars are going to do to us what we did to the taxicab industry."
He's not worried about "his" drivers, he's worried about his money.
Public schools don't fail int he same way that private ones do. They can't, because they aren't businesses.
It's really sad to have to explain, over and over, that operating public services as for-profit businesses - or worse, replacing public services with for-profit businesses - is literally the whole reason shit is falling apart. The peak of American civilization also had the highest tax rates for the wealthy and the most extensive and functional public services. That was not a coincidence.
=Smidge=
> I can tell that you have no idea what you're talking about because the vast majority of public K-12 school funding is through local taxes, not federal funding.
About 13% of public schools are funded federally. You say "the vast majority" as if to handwave 13% of their funding as unsubstantial. Most importantly, this funding goes to schools that do not have the local tax revenue to fully support them.
> The federal government has almost no control over it so they can't cut funding
The federal Dept. of Education plays a key role in ensuring equitable access to education. You know how they exert control over local schools? By creating and enforcing (or NOT enforcing) policies, because their job is ultimately to implement and enforce laws created by Congress that apply to public education.
> There are also many states that have charter schools that perform better for less money than the public schools, so it's not a money problem.
Charter schools have an abysmal reputation; approximately 1 in 4 charter schools end up out of business within 5 years, leaving their students in the lurch and those who paid for it with empty wallets.
It's just a scam to funnel public money into private hands and push indoctrination. Look at all the enshittification that's happened and is currently happening in the name of chasing profits - we cannot afford that in education, financially or culturally.
=Smidge=
Don't buy a new fridge. Find something nice made anywhere from the 90's to the early 2000's.
Bulletproof, easy to fix, parts everywhere, doesn't know what wifi or bluetooth is, but does have the basic conveniences like ice maker and water dispenser.
"new" is quickly losing its shine to me, the 'new shiny' is more like the "new.. ew... why?"
Enshittification in meatspace.
Little Ginny Weasley did it, poured her heart into this weird blank diary that would write back to her.
Fantasy then, reality now. And instead of a murderous megalomaniac with ambitions of eternal life, now we have Tom's Diary powered by automated avarice giving hurt, vulnerable people life advise.
It is folly to look for answers too deeply in this thing called The Internet. Most, if not all, are trying to lead you astray for their own reasons.
> HOW ABOUT we use a lifting body like an airship instead?
It's not immediately clear that a larger airplane would need a larger airport. The size of the runway needed really depends on the minimum speed needed to take off and stay aloft, and how quickly it can reach that speed from a standstill. A huge plane with large, efficient wings and powerful engines that can take off in 5000 feet of runway with a 100+ ton load can still use just about any existing airport.
Meanwhile you can't even get an airship out of its hangar if it's a bit windy, and it's not like a construction site for wind turbines would have any strong wind, right?
=Smidge=
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire
