I'm reading "6-Year-Old Girl in China Sets a Rubik’s Cube Record
Lian Yunzhi of China solved a Rubik’s Cube five times in an average of 4.27 seconds, setting a women’s world record" (NYT).
And I'm not thinking oh, isn't she cute? like most of the commenters over there. I'm thinking: 1. Child abuse, and 2. A separate "women's" division is bullshit.
The "men's" record — i.e., the record — is 3.51 seconds, almost 20% less.
These kids who train for hours a day in Rubik’s Cube solving — what are they really being trained for? It made me think of this viral video:
@chinaminutes 😭A third-grade student in Tianjin, China, had a full-on existential crisis while doing his homework after thinking a little too far ahead about his future Through tears, the boy worried that when he grows up, he’ll simply become a “wage slave” working for the rich. His mother tried to reassure him that studying hard could lead to a good job — but he wasn’t convinced, telling her that was just “imagination,” not reality. The moment quickly went viral on Chinese social media, with netizens joking that he had become “enlightened too early” and was already thinking like someone decades older. 💭Is he too woke for his age, or does he just understand the future a little too clearly?👇🏼 #funnykids #relatablevideos #schoollife #existentialcrisis #growingup ♬ original sound - China Minutes
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21 కామెంట్లు:
I recently saw a model of the cube with detachable and re-attachable color squares. It made the puzzle a lot easier to solve.
Solving the puzzle itself was always the least interesting thing about the Rubik's Cube.
Eye-hand coordination, predictive skills, and manual dexterity.
A separate women's division is bullshit? Isn't there well documented research that males are on average better at spatial awareness?
I say this as a guy who is a little below the male mean in this area. Unless I concentrate, do things deliberately, and find ways to 'cheat' by using other skills such as memorization, my navigation, body mechanics, and general coordination suffer.
Also think of the stereotype that men hate asking for directions.
A women's division for a spatial awareness contest makes as much sense as a women's division for contact sports. CC, JSM
Wow...the kid in that video is a future Arthur Miller or Joseph Heller. At the very least he's stumbled onto the realization of so many 25 year old American baristas. This damned degree didn't protect me from work.
I wonder in which cube division the Chinese place the trans kids?
This was culturally interesting in the early 80s when I was 13. The local mall had a contest and I made it though the first round with 43 seconds. My cube exploded in the second round (they weren’t made for speed back then)
Humans have the extraordinary ability to turn everything fun to unfun. That includes games, leisure, sex, children, and life.
Men are faster, stronger and smarter.
Men, what would we do without them.
We wouldn't have women without men... and vice versa.
"The "men's" record — i.e., the record — is 3.51 seconds"
I don't understand how that's possible.
Tell junior that an education will give him lots of things to think about and lots of places to go in his imagination while he toils for the man. That may not be much, but it's not nothing.
If it makes them as happy as that little girl we should abuse more children.
Physiological differences. But, why recognize men and women categorically? Why not bloc rights in weight divisions or similar?
"This is why I'll stay child-free. No need for my beautiful non-existent kids to suffer."
If you actually believe that if you had a child that they would spend more time suffering than being happy, it's probably a good thing that you don't want to be a parent.
rhhardin said...
"Men are faster, stronger and smarter."
Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better... stronger... faster.
*I made it though the first round with 43 seconds.*
My fastest back then was 51.
I still have a Cube and solve it from time to time just to make sure I can still do it. Often after having a few beverages.
"Men, what would we do without them."
You'd be living in a damp cave.
Maybe you'd have fire.
"A separate "women's" division is bullshit."
“If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband's brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. And if the man does not wish to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband's brother to me.’ Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, ‘I do not wish to take her,’ then his brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother's house.’ ...
My point is that societies place various burdens on men and women at different times. In this age, in the USA, the woman's burden is the separate women's division of Rubik's Cube solving in China.
Something else that occurs to me often, is that the term adult only conveys information about biological age. In terms of mental/emotional maturity, there is no such thing as an adult.
All of us are children. When you start looking at people in that way, that they are all children, perhaps THAT would be the beginning of adulthood.
But first, you'd have to recognize the child that is you walking around in what appears to be an adult.
Althouse: 2. A separate "women's" division is bullshit.
I don't know what Althouse means by this statement. Is the objection to the term itself because the competitors aren't "women and men" they are little girls and boys, or that there shouldn't be separate competitions based on sex? In the second case there is a very small likelihood for the average girl to win so girls might as well not bother.
After all, the average male is stronger and faster than the average female. I'm not sure about being smarter. In fact I am sure they are not.
Confirmed by Claude ai:
"Large studies and meta-analyses generally find that average full-scale IQ is essentially the same for men and women — differences, when found, are tiny (a point or less) and inconsistent in direction across studies....Several studies do find that male scores show greater spread — more men at both the very low and very high ends of the distribution, with women's scores clustered closer to the mean...
Specific abilities, not overall IQ: Where sex differences show up more consistently is in subtests, not the composite score:
Women tend to score higher, on average, on tests of verbal fluency, processing speed, and some memory tasks.
Men tend to score higher, on average, on tests of mental rotation and certain spatial reasoning tasks."
That speed and spatial advantage would definitely favor the males over females on the Cube.
I never understand men who need to think of males as superior and females as inferior, at least if the men are straight. Without a female partner and the family and home she is able to create a male's life is essentially sterile and loveless. Single men are rated the most unhappy people in society.
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