Andre_Wanglin

Taking note of the context within which an acronym or abbreviation is used is part of being an informed reader. In this case, one does not even have to go to the link to get a clue as the URL is right here on HN.

Everyone I know (and know of) espouses obvious claptrap from time to time. If that is the sieve with which you denote undesirables to remove from your personal sphere, your circle either has a radius of 1 or you delude yourself about your detection abilities.

Do think that Republicans are irrational? Are Democrats rational? What about Libertarians or Greens? Irrational or no?

Most people would welcome a government that is merely indifferent to them.

And self-replicating robots at that! They will just require food, water, and shelter as inputs.

How do you (unconsciously) select for attributes that do not exist? It was not until several generations that the first physiological changes began to be observed and those were in hormone levels, not morphology. In fact, the physiological, anatomical, and morphological changes were entirely unanticipated. The testing & categorization methodology is described in the article:

The tests for tameness took the following form, which was still in use as of 2009. "When a pup is one month old, an experimenter offers it food from his hand while trying to stroke and handle the pup. The pups are tested twice, once in a cage and once while moving freely with other pups in an enclosure, where they can choose to make contact either with the human experimenter or with another pup. The test is repeated monthly until the pups are six or seven months old." At the age of seven or eight months, the pups are given a tameness score and placed in one of three groups. The least domesticated are in Class III; those that allow humans to pet and handle them, but that do not respond to contact with friendliness, are in Class II; the ones that are friendly with humans are in Class I.[5] After only six generations, Belyayev and his team had to add a higher category, Class IE, the "domesticated elite", which "are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old."

What is a racist? Is this a fixed idea or does it change year to year and depend on the context? Shouldn't we be careful about writing off people based on fluctuating social mores? What about fascists, Marxists, communists, and anarchists? And, say, Trump supporters? Do they deserve basic human respect? Is there any reason not to dehumanize these groups too? Or others who fail our moral tests?

Ideas are expressed by people. Does every person deserve serious consideration?

Ideology is a relatively new (taking the long view of human history) mechanism for demarcating tribal affiliation that is a uniquely powerful tool for sowing discord and disunity among people who otherwise have every reason to owe allegiance to and be socially bound to one another.

What does someone who has spent his academic career with a tailored education program that provides extra time to complete tasks and take tests do upon entering the workforce? Will employers go the extra mile to cater to his needs? Will the market do likewise for his business or product? If I could have taken as long as I wanted on the SAT, I probably would have been able to get a perfect score. But then I wouldn't have been taking the same test as everyone else, would I?

Obesity is a sign of improved living conditions that is also a sign of declining living conditions. The former conditions are largely out of the individual's control while the latter conditions are largely in his control. That is, being able to be obese is dictated by the economic vitality of one's country whereas being obese is dictated by one's actions.