Stereotyped as less of a STEM country, probably accurately, so it seems newsworthy plus gives people hope and optimism to hear about cool inventions from there.
Haha I loved this: in a thread where everybody is talking about the technology, the merits of the kid "discovering" it and all that, invariably there's the guy who enters the room and shouts "why does people care that she is Mexican!!"
Like... nobody cared, until the guy mentions it. And then he replies back "no I don't care she's Mexican, why do you bring their origin!!!"
FWIW I saw these news in my local news Spanish language sources (yep, Im Mexican too) a couple of days ago. And found the majority of the reporting at that time was exactly a "cool science project" thing.
When I saw it here on HN I was surprised. I even thought like "wow, maybe I didn't put a lot of attention, and it's something bigger". But apparently it's just sloppy reporting, in a telephone-game kind of thing: Some Chilean news saw the headline, and decided to report it as "Mexican 16yo invents X", which draws clicks. Then English based news took it and further deformed the actual facts.
Hopefully this kid gets invited to some podcasts or whatnot and gets something from this. Also hopefully it helps other kids get more interested in sciency projects.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
The average IQ of Koreans is now the highest in the world, after making consistent gains of 8 points per decade for people born between the 1940s and the 1980s. Your ignorance, like IQ, is fixable.
That article has a very silly conclusion with the whole obesity example, and doesn't understand the actual conclusion that the sensitivity analysis that these numbers are derived from, means (especially with their plant example).
Foster families are not that different. I've seen multiple kids raised by parents who value education reading at age 2 and their cousins on either side reading at age 6 because their parents didn't value it. The changes in IQ possible by environmental differences are absolutely massive and clearly far larger than anything genetic aside from severe heritable brain disorders. That's what the Koreans and the Ashkenazim know and exploit. That's what made the large differences between European countries seen in the early 20th century disappear.
The article's obesity conclusion is no less silly than your IQ beliefs.
> Results indicate that genetic influences account for over 60% of the variance in scientific achievement, with environmental influences accounting for the remaining variance.
For a kid, only 40% can be changed.
It's just absolutely wild that people don't think there's a genetic component to intelligence. There are NO studies that suggest otherwise. There's a genetic component to literally every single difference in humans. It's so strange to think that this single dimension is somehow invariant across the genetic populations found across the world.
Can you guess the most reliable way to physically measure someone's intelligence? With our thinking bits being a chunk of meat, it should be fairly obvious!
edit: I can't reply to your opinion, but reference please for this claim "There are small genetic differences in intelligence that are absolutely dwarfed by environmental differences, just like everything else.". Any at all would be fine.
That flies in the face of the evidence. Apply some common sense, and then review the study more carefully. See if you can figure out the methodological failures yourself before you ask me to give you the answer.
There are small genetic differences in intelligence that are absolutely dwarfed by environmental differences, just like everything else. The Koreans weren't genetically engineering themselves to be taller and smarter than their parents and their cousins in DPRK. The Spaniards didn't genetically engineer themselves either.
Edit: Regarding references for my claim, if you don't understand how the example of the Koreans and the Europeans is evidence that environmental factors are more influential than genetic factors, you need a much larger change to your environment to bring your mental abilities up to the task than I can provide.
Please provide some evidence besides your opinion.
> The Koreans weren't genetically engineering themselves to be taller and smarter than their parents and their cousins in DPRK. The Spaniards didn't genetically engineer themselves either.
I don't really understand these genetic engineering points, especially since you use phrasing that includes intent. But, maybe you're saying that height is more related to nutrition than genetics. Yes, but there's a genetic component there as well. A person, feed the same food, will end up at a different height entirely due to genetics.
I can't understand your Spaniards point, but they have a genetic population a bit different can others elsewhere in the world for the same reason as all of them: dicks are only 6 inches long, so geographic isolation results in genetic populations with some level of similarity.
