Life extension in mice via senescent cell clearance

[K. A. Pital]

1. It is not a bad thing, but it is a sign of socialization problems where marriage is the prevalent social union form. And the more prevalent and accepted marriage is in a society, the more likely it is that never-married people have problems accepting the dominant social unit for whatever reasons. I am not saying socializing and socializing in marriage is an absolute good either.

2. I am not generalizing, especially not in what concerns geographical locations. In my last posts here, I have noted that (1) second-world communist nations like USSR and China have had an extremely high share of female engineers (40% or more) and also that (2) Singapore has a very high share of women in computing, over 40%. If you compare Western Europe vs. the post-communist Eastern Europe, you will also notice the difference, for example Britain's pathetic 5% of women in computing versus Hungary's 35%. I am not generalizing here, neither is it my aim to generalize. If there are examples of gender-balanced IT fields in some nations and not in others, one still needs to understand the underlying reasons for this.

I also find it a bit funny to be criticized for spreading stereotypes about the profession, when it fact the interview guides for IT managers explicitly specify long working hours as a job requirement, and have passages such as "It is of course not good to discriminate on demographic grounds, but applicants with a large family might find themselves unhappy in an IT job, because it requires long hours" or something, instructing the project and team managers to factor this in their hiring decisions.

I am not the one to blame here.

[K. A. Pital]

Now, the temporal development of the time-pressure on highly skilled workers (among which I'm certain STEM occupations comprise a large share):


Sadly enough, I was not able to find good breakdowns of what percentage of STEM occupations and programmers in particular were subjected to extended working time in 1970s, 80s and 90s, I feel this could be a critical statistic to the debate but I cannot find it.

There are many articles which suggest that not only is the profession suffering from a serious discrimination problem, but it is getting worse in some places, like for examples this:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/com ... rsons-game
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/11/video-game-industry/

Finally, I'd like to return to the topic of pure machine interaction (even with the internet) having adverse consequences in regards to socialization for children. If what is reported here is true, there is no reason to dismiss my opinion on this as "ignorant":
http://futureofchildren.org/publication ... ionid=1342

In one recent study, the HomeNet project, researchers conducted an in-depth analysis of the effects of acquiring access to the Internet among a group of 93 families (see Box 5). The study found that 10- to 19-year-olds (referred to inclusively as "teens") were especially likely to report using the Internet for social purposes. Compared with the adults in the study, teens—and especially girls—liked using the Internet for communicating with friends, meeting new people, getting personal help, and joining groups.65 Teens told researchers that keeping up with both local and distant friends was an important use of the Internet for them, and they often used the Internet for keep-in-touch communications involving small talk, gossip, and news of the day, with a "here-and-now" flavor. As discussed further below, the two-year study documented that, despite the use of the Internet for such social purposes, teens who spent more time online experienced greater declines in social and psychological well-being during their first year with access to the Internet. Over time, however, these effects appeared to diminish.

Evidence of Initial Increases in Loneliness and Depression

Among both teens and adults in the HomeNet project, greater use of the Internet during the first year of access was associated with small but statistically significant declines in social involvement as measured by communication within the family, size of social networks, and feelings of loneliness.66 Greater use of the Internet also was associated with increases in depression. In this study, those who were lonely or depressed were not more drawn to the Internet. Rather, the HomeNet results suggest that using the Internet in itself caused the declines in social well-being.67 It is unclear, however, whether these effects were because the time spent using the Internet was substituting for time previously spent engaged in social activities, or because social relationships created online provided less social support than those grounded in the offline world.68

[LaCroix]

I'm not going to keep up with this discussion anymore since me working in that field for 20 years clearly means that I am unaware of all what is going on, and since I only know about the working conditions of about about 15000 people all over Europe (having aquaintances working in a lot of companies and talking to m collegues about other jobs they had), all I say is just worthless anecdote, because some gloomy articles about (some small fields of) IT in the US (a country where "we expect you to work extreme hours for as little pay as we can get away with" is pretty much every job description) say otherwise.

I got better things to do with my life. Consider that a concession if you want, but I'm done with that discussion.

[K. A. Pital]

I don't think it is an unreasonable position to take, and I also have better things to do. I know about several multinationals in Europe, and it isn't quite 15000, but still over 1k people overall. Like I said before, I am glad you managed to completely avoid what is described above. Glad you completely missed out the gamedev pits, the understaffed and overworked banking IT departments, non-tariff jobs and trusted working time, and the rest of the bad.

[Channel72]

Gender imbalance among software developers is obscene in the United States. We do try to fix it... really we do. At least, my organization goes out of it's way to find the top, brightest female students from major universities. But it's just very difficult. Most applicants/candidates are male, including the overwhelming majority of foreigners. There's obviously a serious cultural issue going on here, which may not be rectified for another generation.

As for long working hours... it depends on the industry. Finance in particular is notorious for long working hours for programmers. But the other side is that the industry tends to really pamper programmers these days, trying to outdo each other in terms of stupid amenities (massages, free gourmet lunches, etc.)

[Darmalus]

I imagine that, like any large industry, programming has companies that are a dream to work for while others are Foxconn wannabes.

Gender imbalance is a tricky thing to address, since universities (including STEM) are 60% female, the question isn't where are the women, since they are already there, so much as why the self-segregation in degree choices.

[K. A. Pital]

I am not sure there's anyone willing to continue the debate about the influence of modern technology and lifestyle on people, but for what it is worth, there was a large study which reported dramatic decrease in empathy for American youth.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/

Since the creation of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index in 1979, tens of thousands of students have filled out this questionnaire while participating in studies examining everything from neural responses to others’ pain to levels of social conservatism. Konrath and her colleagues took advantage of this wealth of data by collating self-reported empathy scores of nearly 14,000 students. She then used a technique known as cross-temporal meta-analysis to measure whether scores have changed over the years. The results were startling: almost 75 percent of students today rate themselves as less empathic than the average student 30 years ago.

But what is interesting is that this is quite possibly tied to rising social isolation in the new generation:

Konrath cites the increase in social isolation, which has coincided with the drop in empathy. In the past 30 years Americans have become more likely to live alone and less likely to join groups—ranging from PTAs to political parties to casual sports teams. Several studies hint that this type of isolation can take a toll on people’s attitudes toward others. Steve Duck of the University of Iowa has found that socially isolated, as compared with integrated, individuals evaluate others less generously after interacting with them, and Kenneth J. Rotenberg of Keele University in England has shown that lonely people are more likely to take advantage of others’ trust to cheat them in laboratory games.

If some of the participants think that such a rapid shift is completely unrelated to the spread of new technology (which its advocates undoubtedly would like you to believe), they are uncritically accepting a field that until now, has been sparsely explored.

Technology advocates spent a great deal of time trying to minimize the importance of studies that link adolescent isolation, loneliness and the use of newer technologies, but there were other studies carried out, e.g. in Turkey, that show the link exists and persists, and that a relevant gender imbalance also exists:
http://www.cyberpsychology.eu/view.php? ... 2008111802

1049 adolescents completed the questionnaires pertaining to their own internet usage, internet attitudes and feelings of loneliness. At the end of the study, it was revealed that Turkish adolescents’ loneliness was associated with both increased Internet usage and Internet attitudes. Adolescents who reported excessive uses of the Internet for web surfing, instant messaging, emailing and online games had a significantly higher mean score of loneliness than those who did not. In addition, male adolescents reported a higher frequency of Internet usage and more loneliness than females.

[Starglider]

This point is completely unrelated to your original claim about programming, except in the tangiental fashion of social networking tools being written by programmers. Software development in the 20th century was not any more antisocial than writing, scientific research or any similar endeavour. There was a decade or so where programmers were much more likely to make heavy use of online communication than average, due to restricted access to the technology (skillset, hardware and connection requirements). Now that we are at mass adoption this is no longer the case.

As for the validity of this point itself, correlation is not causation, or rather it is likely the technolgy will only amplify the pre-existing variance in social skills and preferences. Naturally we would expect people who are not good at conventional interaction to seek alternatives, and success with those alternatives reduces the effort devoted to improving face-to-face outcomes.

[K. A. Pital]

Forcing everyone to program will make people spend even more time with computers and devices. This already has the effects described. Doing even more of this will have a more pronounced effect. You clearly did not miss the point.

As to your other argument... Not sure what to say. Device deprivation rapidly improves emotion recognition in children, so correlation In this case is not just that; causation is very strongly suspected.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 3214003227

Finally:
http://genius.com/Dr-sara-h-konrath-why ... -annotated

Degrading human empathy will only turn future humans into even more asocial, callous, diconnected and stratified individuals.

[Purple]

K.A. Irregardless of if your argument is right or wrong I can't help but notice that you have yet to demonstrate that such a hypothetical future would in fact be a bad thing. Presumably any loss of such skills inured due to mass use of technology will be a result of those skills not being needed. So in a future where everyone uses technology to a much larger extent and personal contact is lessened will said loss be a bad thing? Or if you prefer an alternative why do you feel such a future would be a bad thing in the first place? Frankly sounds like a nice place to me.

[K. A. Pital]

As the studies I've linked to demonstrate, there is a strong link between personal contact and empathy. A further decline in empathy is very easy to predict if we go on with this impersonalization cheerfully.

I don't know if a world of people who are callous and uncaring is a "bad" outcome. I personally think that it is dangerous.

We already know that a lack of empathy is the key to many disorders like psychopathy and sadism. Indifference towards others is linked to this. Do we need a more callous population of ruthless "homo economicus" who oversocialize on the net, but can't even bother to care about the suffering of others? How is this "a nice place" when in fact it is a cyberpunk dystopia?

[Channel72]

The study from genius.com speculates about many possible causes for this decline in empathy. Note firstly that the decline in empathy is based on survey results, asking about things like volunteerism. While that's certainly interesting, I'm not sure this is necessarily an effective measure of empathy. Secondly, the study speculates about numerous possible causes, from reality TV to increased overall work loads and higher expectations of success (students today generally need to work harder to get into colleges and land good jobs, and busy people tend to be more self-absorbed etc.). Increased use of social media and technology is only one speculated cause.

The point is, all of this is very far from certain. Intuitively, I'd expect that somebody who spends their life exclusively interacting over social media is obviously likely to experience major social disorders when interacting in the real world - but I don't know how common this actually is (it's not like millenials can function without interacting with real people anyway), nor am I confident that social isolation is some kind of major epidemic that is responsible for decreasing levels of empathy. Essentially, I'm highly skeptical that any of this will actually result in an entire generation of sociopaths and narcissists. I mean, there's studies which seem to imply the exact fucking opposite is happening! Here, at least, a study claims that over 80% of millennials donate to charity, despite being more cash-strapped than their elders. And another study claiming that millenials are more likely to volunteer their time for social causes than prior generations.

[K. A. Pital]

Self-reported empathy is not the only thing. Did you carefully read the article where Konrath discusses the issue? Like, for example, this:

Similarly, young adults from 18 to 25 (precisely the age range of most college students) consistently give the least amount of money to charity among all age groups (Gallup, 2006), giving less than 1.5% of their after-tax incomes in 2005 alone (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005).

...

Indeed, volunteerism and charitable giving are consistently low among young adults (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005; 2009c) and have decreased significantly throughout the 2000s (Philanthropic Giving Index, 2008; also see Helms & Marcelo, 2007), as would be predicted by a corresponding decline in empathy.

Here, at least, a study claims that over 80% of millennials donate to charity, despite being more cash-strapped than their elders.

You are countering the above example with "Achieve", an organization that is devoted to showing how good the millenials are. There's nothing clear from the study. What is a "charitable donation" and how much they donate? Is what they donate more than before? Less than before? Is it more than older generations? Is it less than older generations? No comparison means no answer. I could make myself feel good by donating a dollar to some worthless Kickstarter project and obviously report this as a charitable donation. But I've found some graphic comparisons here:

And here:
http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/22807/file- ... y.copy.pdf
And for Britain:
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablo ... p-age#data

I'd expect that somebody who spends their life exclusively interacting over social media is obviously likely to experience major social disorders when interacting in the real world - but I don't know how common this actually is (it's not like millenials can function without interacting with real people anyway)

Did you ever talk to a person who was texting on his smartphone endlessly and seemed to think he's Julius Caesar of multitasking? They can function, but can they function in a fashion that is compatible with the prior social norms?

...nor am I confident that social isolation is some kind of major epidemic that is responsible for decreasing levels of empathy.

Can't say I am confident in how you describe this either, but the example of children's improved emotional recognition still stands. It is not an epidemic, more like a slow change that will eventually take its toll, if it already hasn't.

[Purple]

How is donating your money and time to charity any indication of anything? That seems to be a very odd metric to use.

[K. A. Pital]

Seems strange when taken on its own, yeah, but if it corresponds to lowering scores of self-reported empathy, seems like there is a connection. The ability to feel and understand others, imagine yourself on someone else's place, has been severely lacking in the youngest generation (hence the "Me generation" nickname), I think there were studies to that effect as well.

[Adam Reynolds]

One issue I see with this is that younger people are less wealthy and thus less likely to donate for that reason, regardless of empathy. Does the oldest generation also include estates being donated?

Though the general point is still reasonable enough, and that is an interesting metric to use.

[LaCroix]

I see this in the people I know - they (being students) don't have any money to donate, but they are volunteering a huge amount of time to charities (some of them even went to greece for the refugee crisis).

If you were to include volunteering into that graph, the picture would look quite different, I'm sure.

[K. A. Pital]

You're quite right about students, though as soon as they stop being students, their volunteer participation rate drops (I don't blame them for that).

However, what is even more interesting is whether the trend of more volunteering on part of the older generation can be noticed on a cross-generation diagram...

And here a graph for Canada:


Seems like the picture is quite complex, with some slight shift to older generations in comparison to 1970s, and dropping across all age groups before the 1990s to rise again in the mid-2000s...

[Purple]

One thing you should note is that, at least where I am from volunteering anywhere is marketed to students as a way to buff their CV's with "work experience". Don't matter if its a fair or a charity the people trying to recruit you always talk about it as if your future employer is going to look upon that as something valuable. Most of the people I know who volunteer anywhere do it because they have bought into this. Now obviously this is anecdotal and in an already antisocial field (programing) but it is something to consider.