The mystery of what drove German Justice Minister Heiko Maas to his towering presence and greatness uncovered

Finally there is scientific proof of the foundation of the Justice Minister's und His NetzDG Dudeness' uniqueness. It comes from beyond the pond.

People search for meaning when they approach a new decade in chronological age

Authors:
Adam L. Altera and Hal E. Hershfield -Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, NY 10012 and Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095.

This paper is the first to demonstrate, to our knowledge, that people audit the meaningfulness of their lives as they approach a new decade in chronological age, further suggesting that people across dozens of countries and cultures are prone to making significant decisions as they approach each new decade. The paper has broad implications for interdisciplinary science, because it demonstrates a striking pattern in human behavior that bears on, among others, the disciplines of psychology, medicine, sociology, economics, and anthropology.

Abstract

Although humans measure time using a continuous scale, certain numerical ages inspire greater self-reflection than others. Six studies show that adults undertake a search for existential meaning when they approach a new decade in age (e.g., at ages 29, 39, 49, etc.) or imagine entering a new epoch, which leads them to behave in ways that suggest an ongoing or failed search for meaning (e.g., by exercising more vigorously, seeking extramarital affairs, or choosing to end their lives).

Sounds convincing, right? Andrew Gelman begs to differ, but then again, he may just be jealous.

I think Andrew Gelman is wrong because: evidence, evidence and did I mention evidence? OK, one might maintain a study can in no way be proven right based on one person only. To which I say, we are talking THE HEIKO here! We are looking at the awesomeness of 175 cm from foot sole to balding crown. We are dealing with a triathlete.

Heiko Maas was born Sept. 19, 1966.

• In 2015, the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection formed a working group on dealing with criminal content in social networks which resulted in the NetzDG.
• Heiko Maas stated in 2015 that he considers a statutory women's quota on the supervisory boards of listed companies and executive boards to be necessary. Bang!
• At the beginning of 2015, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) filed a complaint for unlawful disclosure of state secrets by journalists of the blog Netzpolitik.org. Crikey!
• Early 2016 he chucked his old bitch and eloped with a B-movie chick going by the name of Natalia Wörner.

I would venture to say that is damning evidence this study is rrright.

Natalia Wörner and her new crush

Oh, wait a sec., that is a different politician. Forgot his name.

Ella, elle l'a

Still one of my favorite songs.

MMT is economics for the twenty first century where all money is just a government promise, backed by tax

To be sure, backed by tax, but not funded!

via Richard Murphy

Merkel, and Why everything took so long

It is time to put Mutti's dilemma/intransigence/blunders/bungling into perspective. Three months plus without a government is next to nothing. After all, the rope (no pun intended) was invented only as late as 28,000 years ago. Probably the phallus (and dildo) as well. You would think, why did they not invent a rope much earlier as its usefulness is obvious. To us.

Katja Grace has two interesting posts on inventions and

Why did everything take so long?

One of the biggest intuitive mysteries to me is how humanity took so long to do anything.

Humans have been ‘behaviorally modern’ for about 50 thousand years. And apparently didn’t invent, for instance:

• rope until 28 thousand years ago.
• the wheel until at least 4000BC
• writing until 3000BC
• woodblock printing until 200AD

This kind of thing seems really weird introspectively, because it is hard to imagine going a whole lifetime in the wilderness without wanting something like rope, or going a whole day wanting something like rope without figuring out how to make something like rope. Yet apparently people went for about a thousand lifetimes without that happening.

Some possible explanations:

Read them here.

There is a follow-up post.

Why everything might have taken so long

I asked why humanity took so long to do anything at the start, and the Internet gave me its thoughts. Here is my expanded list of hypotheses, summarizing from comments on the post, here, and here.

Inventing is harder than it looks

1. Inventions are usually more ingenious than they seem. Relatedly, reality has a lot of detail.
2. There are lots of apparent paths: without hindsight, you have to waste a lot of time on dead ends.
3. People are not as inventive as they imagine. For instance, I haven’t actually invented anything – why do I even imagine I could invent rope?
4. Posing the question is a large part of the work. If you have never seen rope, it actually doesn’t occur to you that rope would come in handy, or to ask yourself how to make some.
5. Animals (including humans) mostly think by intuitively recognizing over time what is promising and not among affordances they have, and reading what common observations imply. New affordances generally only appear by some outside force e.g. accidentally. To invent a thing, you have to somehow have an affordance to make it even though you have never seen it. And in retrospect it seems so obvious because now you do have the affordance.

More here.

So relax, Mutti is still deep inside the time pattern of great inventions. Unless she is being met by a Betamax moment.

I can not help but pick up on point 3 "People are not as inventive as they imagine. For instance, I haven’t actually invented anything – why do I even imagine I could invent rope?"

One of the UBI (German: Bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen) people's claim is it would free up people to bring out their awesome creativity. Sure, creativity is not the same as inventiveness, but honestly, how many creative people do you know?

Kali

It's f&cking Political Correctness Week in Mutti Land and Heiko Maas is scratching his itchy balls ...

... how to get decency back into the interwebs of which Germany has absolutely no part.

So Heiko, here's to you and your faggot Netz DG.

Hey Faggot! Why you should say nigger, you f%cking cunt.

 

Steven Pinker on political correctness

Must-watch for all-white Saarlouis bimbo Heiko.