Links - 2nd November 2018 (2)

Here's what happens to your body when you walk those recommended 10,000 steps - "Roizen points to a recent study, that found postal workers in Glasgow, Scotland, who walked 15,000 steps a day, had fewer risk factors for heart disease than colleagues who sat throughout the day."

KBG84, Japan’s oldest idol group, have released their first major label single and it’s amazing - "the song features a sanshin (Okinawan string instrument) performance by Kikuo Tsuchida, an Okinawan musician, in the vein of traditional min’you music with a pop idol vibe to it. In other words, it’s a mixture of traditional and contemporary — perfect for an idol group with an average age of 84!"

Open letter to Seah Kian Peng over post that “incited fear and distrust between citizens” trends online - "While I appreciate your display of patriotism and sense of duty to defend Singapore’s sovereignty, I also am aware of your false assumption about Teo Soh Lung being a member of the SDP. As a member of the Select Committee on Online Falsehoods you would know very well how dangerous fake news can be in the age we are in. Many Singaporeans are now taken aback by your false assumption, how can we trust that your moral position in the select committee is not compromised?"

Why Genghis Khan was good for the planet - "Genghis Khan, in fact, may have been not just the greatest warrior but the greatest eco-warrior of all time, according to a study by the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Energy. It has concluded that the 13th-century Mongol leader's bloody advance, laying waste to vast swaths of territory and wiping out entire civilisations en route, may have scrubbed 700m tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere – roughly the quantity of carbon dioxide generated in a year through global petrol consumption – by allowing previously populated and cultivated land to return to carbon-absorbing forest."

To the New York Times op-ed writer: If you can’t serve honorably, don’t serve at all - The Washington Post - "The “deep state” exists after all. But it turns out that deep state is not made up of the permanent bureaucracy, shadowy intelligence officials, or even Obama administration holdovers; rather it is made up of President Trump’s own senior appointees... For an unelected appointee to hide documents or refuse to carry out the lawful orders of the elected president is not noble. It is not patriotic. It is an assault on democracy... For an unelected appointee to hide documents or refuse to carry out the lawful orders of the elected president is not noble. It is not patriotic. It is an assault on democracy."
Apparently you must kill democracy to save it

How College Ruined My Life - "education and the big banks preyed on unsuspecting Americans, who went to college, and now have an outstanding burden of debt that may threaten their way of life. These people had plans for the future, but are now stagnant and unable to move forward. One person shown in the magazine says she owes about $152,000 dollars’ worth of student loan debt. She has a good job now, but is unable to penetrate the debt"

How Over-Hyping a College Education Destroyed the Millennials - "college-bound Millennials are most likely to choose college degrees in social science and the applied science fields. These are the liberal arts and psych majors that were encouraged to pursue their passion by their “advisors”, only to later be ridiculed because after graduation, they realized they couldn’t get much more than a job in social services."

Benevolent Sexism at Work: Gender Differences in the Distribution of Challenging Developmental Experiences - "stereotype-based beliefs that women should be protected may limit women’s exposure to challenging assignments, which in turn may partially explain the underrepresentation of women at the highest levels of organizations."

Gender Differences in Responses to Moral Dilemmas: A Process Dissociation Analysis - Rebecca Friesdorf, Paul Conway, Bertram Gawronski, 2015 - "men showed a stronger preference for utilitarian over deontological judgments than women when the two principles implied conflicting decisions (d = 0.52). PD further revealed that women exhibited stronger deontological inclinations than men (d = 0.57), while men exhibited only slightly stronger utilitarian inclinations than women (d = 0.10). The findings suggest that gender differences in moral dilemma judgments are due to differences in affective responses to harm rather than cognitive evaluations of outcomes."
In other words, women are more likely to make moral judgments based on how they feel rather than making considered moral judgment

Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape - "of those who obtain doctorates in math-intensive fields, men and women entering the professoriate have equivalent access to tenure-track academic jobs in science, and they persist and are remunerated at comparable rates—with some caveats that we discuss. The transition from graduate programs to assistant professorships shows more pipeline leakage in the fields in which women are already very prevalent (psychology, life science, social science) than in the math-intensive fields in which they are underrepresented but in which the number of females holding assistant professorships is at least commensurate with (if not greater than) that of males. That is, invitations to interview for tenure-track positions in math-intensive fields—as well as actual employment offers—reveal that female PhD applicants fare at least as well as their male counterparts in math-intensive fields. Along these same lines, our analyses reveal that manuscript reviewing and grant funding are gender neutral: Male and female authors and principal investigators are equally likely to have their manuscripts accepted by journal editors and their grants funded, with only very occasional exceptions. There are no compelling sex differences in hours worked or average citations per publication, but there is an overall male advantage in productivity... although in the past, gender discrimination was an important cause of women’s underrepresentation in scientific academic careers, this claim has continued to be invoked after it has ceased being a valid cause of women’s underrepresentation in math-intensive fields"
So much for sexism in academia

Moral typecasting: divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients. - " good- and evil-doers (moral agents) were perceived to be less vulnerable to having good and evil done to them. The recipients of good and evil (moral patients), in turn, were perceived as less capable of performing good or evil actions. Moral typecasting stems from the dyadic nature of morality and explains curious effects such as people's willingness to inflict greater pain on those who do good than those who do nothing."

Gender and Helping Behavior. A Meta-Analytic Review of the Social Psychological Literature - "Results from our meta-analytic review of sex differences in helping behavior indicate that in general men helped more than women and women received more help than men"
More on women receiving more sympathy/help than men. This helps explain why only men pay taxes

Sex Differences in the Ultimatum Game: An Evolutionary Psychology Perspective - "Using evolutionary psychology as the theoretical framework, we predicted and found that males made more generous offers when pitted against a female as opposed to a male. While females made equal offers independently of the sex of the recipient. That male allocators are altruistic towards female recipients and competitive with male recipients is construed as a manifestation of social rules, which evolve from the male pre-disposition to use resources for attracting mates. In contrast, females have not evolved such a pre-disposition, and thus, female allocators are more concerned about fairness when making offers to recipients"

Sarsour: American Muslims Shouldn’t ‘Humanize’ Israelis - "“You wouldn’t automatically associate such language on the part of someone who is touted as an elite spokesperson for women’s rights, equal rights in the United States,” Cooper said. Cooper added that Sarsour’s comments likely stem from “desperation” due to recent global developments of Gulf Arabs having “unprecedented normal contact” with Israelis."

For Low-SES Students, Not Focusing on Grades is an Impossible Dream - "Life Beyond Grades won’t be the last ground-up initiative that’s run by those who come from middle to upper-middle class, English-educated backgrounds, that aims to tackle the increasing pressures children face in school. After all, it’s these people who have the resources to start such projects to help the less fortunate in the first place... their children are free to explore other options beyond traditional academic pursuits. They don’t need good grades, because they are largely protected from the far-reaching consequences of coming from an underprivileged background and not doing well in school"

John David Ward's answer to What are the facial differences between the Japanese and Chinese? - Quora - "This image is a composite of, from left to right, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese women. To me, the most noticeable thing about that composite image is the difference in skin tone, but the general shape of the face and the hair is also different. This is a cluster analysis from Dieneke's Anthropology blog which shows how the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people fall out genetically... As you can see, there's a lot of genetic variability in China, reflecting the fact that it's a big, multiethnic country, a fair amount in Japan, which stretches from the Ryukyu Islands to Hokkaido, and the people of Korea are in somewhere in between, but tightly clustered so that they don't overlap with either."

Nigel Yeo - [377A] This is not a call to action for the retention... - "Yes, the Westboro Baptist Church exists. Yes, there are thousands of Christians who express their aversion to homosexuality online, who make hurtful and cutting comments which belie a lack of understanding of the LGBT community. But there are also sections of the LGBT community who intentionally wear BDSM attire at pride parades to provoke, who organize casual swinger orgies, or who pour inflammatory vitriol against those they disagree with. Just as how it is not right to brand the entire LGBT community with the actions of these few, it is not right to do the same to Christians. It is unfortunate that in the course of the responses to LGBT activism (and I use these terms descriptively), Christians are now represented by their opposition to sexual lifestyles outside of man-woman marriage, in particular homosexuality (but also pansexualism, bisexualism, etc). This community of so-called “bigots” who apparently only want to further oppress their LGBT neighbours, is the source of countless individuals who have laid down their lives and given all that they have to take care of and feed those who cannot do so for themselves... Increasingly, we’re being told by others how to run our own religion. Just take Truelove.is for instance. An initiative set up by a local church that (1) does not itself prescribe whether homosexuality is wrong or not; (2) shares the stories of Christians who were / are LGBT and VOLUNTARILY went to their church leaders for help; (3) with the intention of reaching out to other Christians who might be facing the same situation, has received disdain and even actual hate from those who disagree with them. Here we have an example of a church attempting to do what the church has been criticized (rightly or wrongly) for not doing enough of: reaching out to those in the body of Christ who are LGBT and journeying together with them. But no. Immediately, they’re accused of conversion therapy (despite there being absolutely no evidence that they have intended to convert anyone) and that the only way of being a loving church is to affirm LGBT lifestyles – even if this may go against what they believe in... Ultimately my point to those who are anti-377a is this: if your belief in a tolerant society is a genuine one, then display that same tolerance to people whose views you disagree with"

US lawmakers say AI deepfakes ‘have the potential to disrupt every facet of our society’ - "“hyper-realistic digital forgeries” showing “convincing depictions of individuals doing or saying things they never did” could be used for blackmail and misinformation. “As deep fake technology becomes more advanced and more accessible, it could pose a threat to United States public discourse and national security”"

Stuck In A Web: How Game Journalism Lost Its Originality - "I remember visiting the White House and assassinating the Vice President in Hitman: Blood Money back in 2006 without articles addressing its politics. So what happened? Why in 2018 must all games be political? From Far Cry 5 not being enough of a Trump supporter killing simulator to The Division 2 not being political enough, and even up to the current release of Shadow of the Tomb Raider for not addressing it’s history of “colonialism”... Controversy sells... Only one thing hurts a website, and that’s the dwindling of funds, so hurt them in their wallets"

Justin Trudeau maintains that Japan is 'inward looking' and 'not intolerant' for its anti-immigration policy - "For a leader so set on refusing to see any option other than a virtually open-border approach to immigration, the comments come as contradictory, if not hypocritical."