Well let’s say there’s an algorithm to find length of longest palindrome with a set of letters. I look at 20 different implementations. Some people use hashmaps, some don’t. Some do it recursively, some don’t. Etc

I consider all of them and create my own. I decide to implement myself both recursive and hash map but also add certain novel elements.

Am I copying code? Am I breaking copyright? Can I claim I wrote it? Or do I have to give credit to all 20 people?

As for forbidding patents on software, I agree entirely. Would be a net positive for the world. You should be able to inspect all software that runs on your computer. Of course that’s a bit idealistic and pipe-dreamy.

If I look at a few implementations of an algorithm and then implement my own using those as inspiration, am I breaking copyright law and circumventing licenses?

It depends how you define effective. Of course the consumer would prefer a free market with competition and low barriers to entry. This is the most egalitarian system, where money (and therefore power) gets distributed almost democratically.

It’s a liberal democratic version of capitalism. It’s the version of capitalism that works. Not perfectly, but it rises people out of poverty and is more or less egalitarian, relative to the alternatives.

Authoritarian capitalism is where you still have the large private sector except you don’t have the political freedoms. Think China post 1970s, modern Russia, Singapore.

The government essentially rewards companies that support the power structure. They get privileges and a say at the table. It creates a sort of incestuous relationship between the government and large corporate entities.

The US is moving towards this system as wealth inequality and corporate influence rises (more strongly under Biden than Trump, might I add. Probably to do with pandemic). More $$$ = more power. More power, more influence within the government. Creates a cycle where it’s a “buy your policy” type of democracy.

Slowly our political freedoms are being eroded. Mass surveillance, the CIA and Pentagon are now allowed to spread propaganda on US soil (they were not allowed to before early 2000s), erosion of democratic institutions through populism. For example “fake elections” and events like Jan 6th. We are starting to censor and ban outside views (“misinformation” bans from Covid, the banning of TikTok, Google & Facebook & reddit & Twitter regularly manipulate the information people receive and cooperate with the government)

Only some crazy number like 20% of people approve of Congress in this country. The democracy is falling apart and some new system is forming.

As China is opening up their private market to become more like us in terms of finance, big capital, corporate rights, etc. We are closing down our political system to become more like them in terms of the loss of political freedoms, censorship, etc.

You know how China has a strong centralized government and cooperates with their big companies? Government says jump, Huawei says how high?

We have a similar system. A strong centralized government that cooperates with the big companies. The primarily difference is that on the spectrum of

Government power <-----------> corporate power

The US leans more to the right.

Really what’s interesting is both the US and China are slowly converging onto a point in the middle. Zizek said something like this some years back… authoritarian capitalism is unfortunately the most effective form of capitalism.

Telecommunications. Administration for a company that constructs fiber networks.

Ideally I’d have a 10 inch cock but unfortunately I gotta settle

We’re not talking hobbyists. We’re talking top level athletes. Men aren’t just stronger. There are dozens if not hundreds of items they outperform women on.

The sports where women can actually compete with men are rare. For example marksmanship or long-distance marathon. Virtually every sport men have distinct and significant advantages.

Men have larger hearts, more lung volume per body mass, more red blood cells, more clotting factors which means they recover quicker and have a higher pain tolerance.

Testosterone allows for more rapid muscle gain as well as better recovery. So two people training the same exercises an identical amount of time, the man would have gained significantly more muscle mass and strength.

Men have higher blood pressure, which means they feel fatigue less than women. Men don’t lose iron to menstruation, which means there’s more iron for oxygen circulation in the blood.

These items basically make it so men are much better at almost all sports.

For example soccer. The US Women’s national team lost to a team of high school age boys.

Men can kick harder, sprint faster, run longer, train longer & they gain more from training & they recover faster from training so they can do it more, they feel less pain so they can stay at max exertion longer, they can convert oxygen into energy faster so they can sustain all of this more than women,

Etc

There’s a reason we have women’s leagues. If we didn’t have it, women wouldn’t get to compete at a high level.

At a lower level, like hobbyist or local leagues the story may be different. There’s more variance among the general population than amongst top athletes.

Serena Williams, #1 woman tennis player, can’t hold a candle to the 203rd best man. Look up her interview about it. She’s under no illusions about this

Women make up roughly 15% of USCF members yet they only make up roughly 1.5% of grandmasters.

That means they are underrepresented by about an order of magnitude. Women on average are about 200 ELO lower than men.  It’s a very large difference and there has been research done to figure out why.

There are no real conclusive findings (as with much of this type of sociological research) but we have evidence for various different reasons. One, women are not encouraged to play chess at the same level that men are. Similar reason that more men go into Computer Science or Physics. It’s not a built in biological difference, but a cultural one.

Another one is that women are younger by 11 years on average, so their ratings haven’t peaked yet. So we should see this gap close in the coming decades. There are also various other inequities between men and women (like for example stereotype threat).

So that explains at least some of the gap. What I’m trying to say is that beyond these factors, there is also a biological difference that results in men being overrepresented in the top chess players. Notice I’m not saying average chess players, but specifically the best in the world (the grandmasters).

Why?

Well, there’s evidence for something called the "greater male variability hypothesis”. Think of every person sitting somewhere on a normal distribution. Pick a trait like aggressiveness or competitiveness.

There are the extremes on both sides of the bell curve. On the left, super passive and on the right super aggressive. Most people clump at the mean, in the center of the bell curve.

There’s evidence that more women cluster around the mean relative to men. Men are overrepresented at the extremes of the bell curve, even though the average is the same as women. Only by a little bit, but it’s statistically significant. That means that if you took a sample of all the super-aggressive and super-passive people, the majority would be men.

When you look at top chess players, they are more likely to have extreme attributes (being ultra-competitive for example helps you get better at chess).

This same effect is also theorized to be why we see that vast majority of prisoners are male. Vast majority of homeless, etc. Because extreme attributes tend to either be really good or really bad.

So that’s one biological difference. The other is the visospatial intelligence. Men tend to score better on visospatial tests when compared to women. This effect is already visible by 2 or 3 months of age, so it’s unlikely to be some sort of cultural effect.

Visiospatial cognitive ability is positively correlated with chess ability. Another biological difference between men and women that likely has some non-zero effect on chess ability.

So why are women underrepresented in grandmasters when compared to males? There is evidence for both

a) external social factors

and

b) innate biological factors

Nobody knows what % of the difference is due to a) or b). We just know there is some non-zero effect for both.

I encourage you to fact check every claim I’ve made. Don’t just look for one  research paper that confirms your argument. Each claim I’ve made I’ve seen multiple studies on. There are studies that will say the opposite, but look at it in aggregate. Look at metaanalysis studies.

It’s a question of

How much effort (man hours which ultimately translates to $$$) versus how much revenue lost (people not buying because of Firefox bugs)

In my experience this depends on your specific application. Sometimes there are weird bugs or behavior where you have to really hunt down what’s going on. Other times it’s as simple as changing a few css lines or something.

I view India as a rising power that has the potential to rival China and the USA. I think the culture is backwards in many ways and advanced in others. I don’t like your current administration, but I do think India overall has interesting politics. I mean, you guys have an active Maoist insurgency. Pretty wild for the 21st century.

I tend to get along well with Indians I meet in the states. I appreciate India long history and cultural impact (Buddha came from India for example). There were democracies in India before Athens was a thing.

All in all India’s a rising power with a lot of potential. Unfortunately I don’t think they will reach China-status anytime soon because they don’t exercise as much central control as China does.

In some ways this is good, Cultural Revolution wasn’t exactly a great experience for a lot of people. But in other ways it means the Indian government doesn’t have the power to reshape India in a way where it can successfully rival the European powers.

Every claim I’ve made can be double checked by going on Google scholar or libgen. You’ll find multiple studies and recent studies.

Changed it. I always assume people online are male for some reason. I didn’t read your username

Men and women are the same intelligence on average. There are more men at the extremes of the distribution curve for certain attributes, though. And when you are talking about chess players, you are taking a sample of the ends of the distribution curve.

There’s also evidence that chess ability and visiospatial cognitive ability are positively correlated with chess ability. Men tend to perform better than woman on average. (Stuff like rotating imaginary 3d shapes for example)

This may be partially why we only see 42 out of 2500 worldwide grandmasters being women. Men may only perform 2.5~4% better, but when you’re talking about the extremes (best chess players in world) that small % means a lot.

Tldr: It’s not because they aren’t on equal intelligence. Women for example score better on verbal cognition tests.

And on average men and women have the same IQ

This is why my personal opinion is we should allow trans athletes if they didn’t go through male puberty. If they did, sorry you’re out. If they didn’t, it’s OK.

And you’re right not all mtf athletes are going to end up at the top echelon but given enough time statistically speaking they will be drastically overrepresented.

Edit: also the data is quite clear trans women are stronger, have more lung capacity, etc even 5+ years into hormone therapy. Iirc I even saw 10+ years on a paper once

But the ones that went through male puberty. I think this is why we should try and find gender dysphoria earlier and treat b4 puberty. It’s much more effective the younger you start

Of course issue is you don’t want to be too broad with diagnosis because of false positives and the conservatives going nuts. So it’s a difficult thing to do. Maybe we will identify what causes gender dysphoria some day and that will help

What personal experience am I dismissing? Please explain. I’m talking about human anatomy. The organ that produces testosterone are the testicles. Ovaries produce a token amount.

We are talking about T % in blood. Not personal experiences.

All athletes tend to be outliers, regardless of gender. A small % difference in ability is the difference between 1st place and 300th

Which is why Serena Williams, the #1 female tennis player, loses dramatically to the 203rd male tennis player.

If the 203rd male tennis player became trans, he would instantly become the world’s #1 female player overnight.

Virtually all men with functioning testicles have higher T than all women. This is because testicles produce T at 10-50x the rate of ovaries.

Men going through puberty see permanent changes to the body. You cannot undo this. It gives MTF permanent advantages compared to women.

They are stronger than women on average even after years of being on estrogen.

As for the variance naturally seen, you’re right. But consider this

Who ends up becoming a top athlete? The very best, right? So they are already near the top of the bell curve. So when you compare athletes, you’re not pulling random samples from the entire population.

You’re pulling a random sample from the people with highest T, densest bones, highest rate of fast twitch muscles, etc.

The male maximum and the female maximum is vastly different. This is why we see such a massive difference in performance.

Presence of hormones currently in the blood does not entirely measure this.

We’re talking about testosterone in blood not wrestling abilities. A 300lb woman will beat an 110lb man in wrestling. Doesn’t mean she has higher T.

I’ve read multiple papers on this topic. I’m a 2000 rated player and have tutored girls in chess. This is an interest of mine.

There is a very large gap in performance. The research overall implies a complex variety of factors. This includes what you mentioned, along with other inequities. It also includes the fact that women players are roughly 11 years younger on average and therefore haven’t peaked yet, which will account for some.

But there is evidence that there is also an innate biological difference. Men score better on visuospatial intelligence tests when compared to women. Chess, especially at a high level, involves a lot of this type of thinking.

I’m not arguing that women are bad at chess. Humans are individuals and there are varying levels of players in both genders.

Just that if you look at the extremes (which the top chess players will be) you’re going to see a higher level of males even if we fixed all of the inequities currently influencing the gender gap in chess.

We don’t know if the 10x difference is 5% due to biology or 50% due to biology. But we know it’s a non zero number

Essentially I used it as an example in the wider context of why we have women’s leagues and men’s league in sports.

No I don’t understand what you mean about 18-22. What difference does that make?

18-22 is a fully sexually mature adult. The testicles and ovaries are already functional by 14 in overwhelming majority of the population.

And yes I’m putting everything into two piles. Either you have testicles or you don’t. If you have functioning testicles, you will always have more T than someone who doesn’t.