Slashdot Mirror
Genetic Glitch May Prevent Kids From Learning From Their Mistakes
jamie pointed out an interesting piece being featured in Newsweek that claims a "genetic glitch" may prevent some kids from learning from their mistakes to the same degree as others. "If there is one thing experts on child development agree on, it is that kids learn best when they are allowed to make mistakes and feel the consequences. So Mom and Dad hold back as their toddler tries again and again to cram a round peg into a square hole. [...] But not, it seems, all kids. In about 30 percent, the coils of their DNA carry a glitch, one that leaves their brains with few dopamine receptors, molecules that act as docking ports for one of the neurochemicals that carry our thoughts and emotions. A paucity of dopamine receptors is linked to an inability to avoid self-destructive behavior such as illicit drug use. But the effects spill beyond such extremes. Children with the genetic variant are unable to learn from mistakes. No matter how many tests they blow by partying the night before, the lesson just doesn't sink in."
Kinda like the Democrats?
Dark Reflection
Let's party like we don't know any better!
Is this humanity's insurance policy against catastrophic changes, where the old rules don't apply?
After 25 years of research the leading scientist discovered he also had the gene.
lol: You see no door there!
We actually have a special set of receptors called legislons that determine if a molecule is illicit vs one approved by congress.
Kinda like the Republicans?
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Illicit does not necessarily mean self-destructive. It is a matter of law, not health.
nowhere else in the world is their [sic] a group of individuals more afflicted by these [sic] disorder then [sic] the Slashdot editers [sic]. What do they have to loose [sic]?
I know I fail to learn from my mistakes.
I forget to take out the trash.
I'm told about it.
I forget again.
What's my problem??
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Sounds like Dubya has this genetic glitch..
This must explain conservatives. Keep trying the same failed policies time after time, each iteration expecting a different result. (Not a troll, just statement of fact. Look at the neocons trying to get us into a war over Georgia.) And let us not forget our pending war with Iran.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Why Bart Simpson kept trying to reach the electrified candy, while Lisa's hamster did not. The whole "bzzt...ow...bzzt...ow" sequence is stuck in my head.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
They should really do more debugging before release.
Kinda like the Libertarians? (if they ever got a chance damnit)
from the bzzt-ow-bzzt-ow-bzzzzzzzzzt-ooooooow dept.
http://xkcd.com/242/
Sounds like ADD to me. I've got ADD and although I'm very intelligent, I haven't been an 'A' student since freshman year of high school. I can learn things well, but I continue the same behaviors that prevent me from succeeding, such as reading Slashdot (among other things) instead of doing homework.
I took Adderall in school, which I believe stimulates dopamine and does indeed make it easier to do my homework. Also makes me test positive for meth, tell jokes that don't make sense to anyone but myself, and sleep 5 hours per night.
I was going somewhere with this post, but as usual, I got distracted. Anyway, I hope this perspective can inform someone or at least make the other folks with ADD feel like they're not alone, even when so many people don't even think ADD is real.
...its just a glitch, we'll have this fixed in no time.
*bang*!
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
So /. editors don't learn from publishing dupes?
OK, maybe this isn't a dupe (diffrent researchers, maybe?), but I don't want to bring the groupthink's wrath down on me by RTFA.
I'm not surprised anymore at articles such as this one. Our DNA is basically a blue print of who we are. Our limitations, strengths, etc...
While we are also a product of our environment, it's interesting to see how as we move forward in the research of the human body and mind, many of our issues which we would have deemed "environmental", are actually genetic.
So, the question is, can we fix this? And then, if we fix it, are we a different person? or just better? Is our individuality really based on our DNA? what does that make of the human soul? Not a religious person by nature, I do think there is a God, but, I believe that humanity has the right and the responsibility to learn as much of itself as possible, in order to survive and to improve as a species.
To me, an interesting question that raises is about our soul, such as, is our individuality link to it? or not? Having read and seen documentaries that a person on their death bed loses weight as they migrate from life to death. Many believe that our "soul" has a quantitive weight.
Who are we? If one could fix a learning disability by "re-wiring" our DNA, then, what's this "soul" thing to us?
Could it be that really, our version of heaven is actually our ability to learn about ourselves to the point where we can engineer our own immortality?
After all, for many, heaven is a blissful eternity of life after death. That's what many religions sell in their brochure :P (I said MANY, not all)
Is our goal to achieve long life by understanding our DNA? is this really what our reward will be? our quest for immortality lies within our reach in research and understanding of ourselves and what makes us really tick? :)
This thread may sound off beat to the topic at hand, but, I personally think it that there is a link.
Being able to fix a person by DNA so that they can finally "learn" from their mistake, is a behavioral fix. Done using medical treatment. To me, this means that there could be a day where "Psychology" as we know it might actually end, and DNA fixes could actually be the cure to depression, etc...
Cheers!
I always hit submit before
I wonder if this person learnt from his mistake...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZZXslsLDLs&fmt=18
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
But essentially flambait: illicit drug use is not always a self-destructive behavior. Some people find it very fulfilling and regard it as beneficial.
We should implement this test for all citizens and immediately revoke all civil rights for everyone with this abnormality. This is the first case where people can be accurately defined as sub-human despite looking like one and being able to breed with one.
Once we revoke their human rights we should have a popular vote on whether to sterilize them.
Illicit does not necessarily mean self-destructive. It is a matter of law, not health.
A matter of law is a matter of health for people who catch a disease while incarcerated.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm guessing there are many perfectly productive and successful adults out there who also have this "defect." Like ADD and OCD, which can morph into powerful creative and focusing skills as positive adult byproducts, I'm betting this one can manifest itself as otherwise helpful traits such as "never giving up", "persistence in the face of resistance", etc. "Once bitten, twice shy" probably isn't a meaningful phrase for them and they likely wouldn't suffer from a host of ordinary hangups that stymie many adults (who learned from mistakes in an ordinary fashion).
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
There are several studies available on "the Google" where you can find that genetically, we as a species are bound to obey the genetic code we are born with, whether that is good or bad. This is just another example. You'll see in my journal that the MWNN regarding atheists. This supports the atheist understanding of the world. We are born as we are, mostly accidental, or luck of the draw regarding genetics. There is no deity responsible for this. What a reprehensible thought that an all powerful and all knowing deity would do this to people?
As a hobby, I try to build small autonomous robots, and generally speaking most people believe that the human experience is the 100% value or perfect way of interacting with the world. What they forget, and what I like to call 'failure mode' is that we humans are anything but perfect: bad vision, autism, this story's problem, and many other failures. Ever bump into the wall in the dark? There is another failure.
We are far from perfect, hardly worthy of being called a creation of an all powerful being. Destructive behavior is what we excel at. Brilliant design, eh?
Back on topic: for the most part, we are finding genetic reasons for many problems with the human race. Even if they could all be corrected, I'm not sure it will improve our situation. I sometimes think that we are trying to save nature's discards. Amazing really. Apparently war fixes some of the overpopulation, or used to.
The answer to such problems is fantastically unimaginable. How do you fix the discards and keep population withing the realms of what the planet can support? China has taken a step in that direction and it has caused unimaginable hardships for their population; selling babies, hiding from the government, fear of things that are only natural.
So, what are we to do with things like this? What are we to do with people like this? Fix them, or abort them?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Sure kiddo. The DNA made you do it.
Why can't people just have particular types of character, it is has served use well for millennia.
Now, they think it is all to do with dopamine receptors, and neuro this and that.
It is a load of mumbo jumbo, designed to sell more drugs, justify research grants, and support a whole string of others in the chain.
Some people just get bored easily, and are easily distracted, perhaps meditation could help improve focus, or some type of activity, though then they will probably get told they are obsessive.
We know substances can have an effect on feelings, and thoughts, but we don't really know how it all works, so these things are really just a smoke screen to try and validate what is just generalised observed behaviour. The problem is the substances can effect others in completely different ways.
It is pure madness not by the individual but by the observer, who seems to have some voyeuristic tendency, let people be who they are, and let society adapt, not the other way around.
I'm not saying this report is wrong, because I don't know enough to have an opinion. However, I can see what one of its results is going to be: teenagers claiming it's not their fault that they did the same dumb thing for the fourth time, it's the fault of their genetics and hence, their parent's fault. Just what we need: another way for kids to avoid taking responsibility.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
It's interesting to find a brain mechanism for persistence versus adaptation, but not interesting to add an exaggerated normative claim. If at first you don't succeed, (1) Quit; (2) Try again; or (3) Split the difference and alter the plan. Different people favor different strategies. Pretty obvious and pretty benign, unless your objective is to get research funding "for the children".
Seriously, this is just about the perfect setup for a bout of good ol' eugenics. "Newsweek reports that ~30% of the population are defective subhumans!" Bring on the cheap and unreliable test-kits at every drugstore, and hysteria generally!
Once we finish moderating these, we'll know which one of the parent posts didn't learn from their mistakes!
... I know I make these all the time, when I send commands to the motor centers some of them never get there and some of my posts are truncated or the wrong message was sent, so I might say their instead of there, etc.
Many errors are really the result of neurological issues and I wish more teachers would understand that.
I still make unconscious errors, so I'd have to agree with the article.
Whether it's a disability or not, I think we should seriously consider segregating the two populations and putting them in different classrooms. I bet that, to achieve their best, they'll need radically different teaching methods.
I would much rather read the original article than an oversimplified Newsweek summary.
I was thinking of that Simpsons episode myself, where Lisa did the tests to see if a hamster was more intelligent than Bart by wiring a electrical charge to a cupcake.
Whenever someone at work made the same mistake twice, we'd always trundle out the Simpsons quote (is there nothing that the Simpsons don't have an appropriate quote for?)
I intend to live forever, or die trying. - Groucho Marx
I don't care if daddy beat you or if you've got bad genes. be a douche and you should face the music.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
there would be nothing on YouTube but cats.
Also, survival traits in some cases may benefit the species more than the indivdual - some of us are needed to find out what new things can or can't be done. Some of us are needed to hold the beer.
Geez, no wonder he keeps recycling the failed policies of Jimmy Carter.
We all knew there had to be something genetically wrong with anyone who "thinks" that putting huge taxes on oil companies will make gasoline cheaper for the common man.
Replace "humanity" with "evolution" and you are absolutely correct. Dawkin's The Selfish Gene explains it well.
Japanese scientist: Technically, sir, tomatoes are fags. Military scientist: He means fruits.
So we could test for this at birth to see who was going to be drug addicted politicians later in life?
Bush...Twice?!?
It's like the cover of Britain's "Daily Mirror" asked after the re-election of Bush: "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" (with a comment at the top of the cover saying: "Doh! 4 more years of Dubya")
And now our electorate is still a little confused about the people responsible for many of the bad policies of the past eight years... John McCain is only a few percentage points behind Obama. That is absolutely insane!
This genetic glitch must affect half of the American population -- especially the 20% who think Bush is "doing a heck of a job"! LOL!
(Warning: Anecdote)
I can say that there is definitely something to this. I am the oldest in a family with 3 male children, two of whom, my younger brothers, are dizygotic (fraternal) twins. One of them is 450 pounds, has never had a problem with drugs or alcohol, is diagnosed with a form of schizoaffective disorder --they say his executive functions are broken, meaning that he has trouble putting things together as well as learning from his mistakes-- and is currently living on social security disability. My other brother has had numerous problems with drugs and alcohol, yet does not suffer from schizoaffective disorder, looks like a rail-thin anime character and is currently finishing up his undergraduate degree. Our mother is schizoaffective but stable on meds, and both our parents met as high-functioning graduate students at Stanford. As for me (and in reference to TFA) I was considered the "mellow" baby but am probably the most teflon-like of the three. The point, of course, is that although we all grew up with almost the exact same parenting --right down to breastfeeding, fireside chats and access to the best psychiatric resources-- all three of us turned out quite differently.
Incidentally, about a year and a half ago my family was asked to participate in a medical study at Baylor looking for genetic links between schizoaffective disorders, drug/alcohol addiction and (oddly) the presence of involuntary eye movements which show up to varying degrees when people track moving objects...apparently, when a police officer stops you on the highway and asks you to follow his pen from side to side, he's not looking to see if you can actually follow the pen; he's looking for these little eye flutters at the periphery of your vision which become more noticeable under the influence of alcohol. From what I know, the study was designed to see if paying attention to these eye flutters might eventually allow doctors to prescribe medication more quickly and effectively for both addictive and schizoaffective disorders. The study still has a few years left, but we'll see what comes up.
Posterity, my posterior.
Kinda like those guys who keep finding genetic links to damn near everything?
I think your comment is right-on to the topic. This finding, if it bears out, kind of blows the whole "sin" doctrine right out of the water, doesn't it? If some people cannot help but repeat their mistakes, how can they ever be "saved" from sin?
A paucity of dopamine receptors is linked to an inability to avoid self-destructive behavior such as illicit drug use.
Yeah, because things can become self-destructive by legislative fiat. Considering that I owe a large portion of the person I am today to LSD and MDMA, I must say I am rather offended at the implication that I should regard this as destructive.
This just explained the government.
Yes, of course. If you ran a business, you'd be a "libertarian" too, now, because now everyone knows "Republicans" run the country like a business: into bankruptcy, fire sale and embezzler's prison. So you have to start calling yourself "libertarian" so you can keep voting for the President of Sim City, instead of someone whose profession is governing.
--
make install -not war
George Bush syndrome.
Sayonara, personal responsibility!
Game... blouses.
"Will you hold my weed officer while I get my geneticists exemption note?"
Id have to agree - I think I know quite a few of these people.
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a reference to Godwin's Law approaches 1
That's why god created "Natural Selection"....
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
They are casuing wars, and they already been cooked once. Yet they are now controlling the media, academia, banking and government in the U.S. , like 1930's Germany. History will be repeated. But this time, an ultimate total final solution will be fully and completely executed. Yay!
I know it's tacky to reply to your own posts, but I wanted to add something here. According to the article:
In about 30 percent, the coils of their DNA carry a glitch...
One of the strongest and most counterintuitive findings in this nascent field is that children with a sweet temperament, which is under strong genetic control, are the least likely to emulate their parents and absorb the lessons they teach, while fussy kids are the most likely to do so.
DNA variants can protect children from bad parenting.
Both views--that everything is genetic and that parents can transform a child like a lump of clay--are as wrong as wrong can be.
I think these finding have serious implications for how we look at religion, and how it can or cannot work effectively to shape people's behaviour from the time they are children to adults. Some people -- at least 30 per cent -- are hard-wired to find it difficult to deal with "sin" without feeling guilt, shame, failure and worthlessness. They will either end with serious psychological and spiritual hang-ups, or will reject religion altogether.
Worse than that, Slashdot editors are science enthusiasts, but never learn about science.
The real title of the Newsweek article should be, "Why, when you don't give your children much attention, you aren't at fault. It's their genes."
From TFS (and presumably TFA?)...
[...] one that leaves their brains with few dopamine receptors, molecules that act as docking ports for one of the neurochemicals that carry our thoughts and emotions (emph mine - Internalist)
I know /.'s readers won't get sucked into this "explanation" of how the activities of our brains gives rise to our thoughts and emotions, but John & Jane Q. Public might, and boy does that tick me off! OK, so it's probably not a big deal if people don't see the difference, but we as scientists should be encouraging right-thinking ways in the lay public.
Oh, and the subject line is from a paper by Paul Churchland that I can't be bothered to find right now. In one of the first Betty Crocker cookbooks for microwave ovens, the intro explains that microwaves work by making the molecules in food jiggle really fast, thereby encouraging them to rub together more and create heat via friction.
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun
Being able to meddle with these things also brings to mind the question: where is the threshold between OK and defective. If you can't get straight As or run a 4 minute mile then are you defective and should you be considered disadvantaged?
We end up with huge moral issues too: Is a criminal really a bad person or is he just a victim of his DNA?
In countries with the dole, where do you draw the line between lazy and a victim of their DNA: given all kinds of handout and assistance because they are disadvantaged.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Getting rich of government and regulated industry spending, and never learning a new trick? Sounds like M$ to me. I wonder if this genetic defect is linked to rocking back and forth in a witness chair.
Be nice to Iowa, they had a great anti-trust trial.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
fucking stupid bitch whore faggots.
Giving up hope is a function of learning from your mistakes, there are situations where it is perfectly rational to give up hope.
Maybe, but those situations are a drop against the bucket of "learned helplessness", where after failing enough times you just give up. And that has been wired into our genes since we diverged from rodents, if not longer.
The rise of monitoring people for their own health, and sharing that information with employers/government as well as trying to find this impossible "normal" that so many people apparently have (though I've never seen) seems more like a power play than anything. It just seems like more information skewed to make people feel better about themselves.
"Of course!" they exclaim, "I always learn from my mistakes!" as they wend their way through the same old habits that produce the same results in their lives over and over again. It seems to allow "intellectuals" the ability to further lament "the downfall of civilization!". People must just be dumb as a bag of hammers, but not me! No sir.
I recognize that the information offered in the article could have useful implications. However, when we treat information (science?) as entertainment in a headline blurb, it will be just that: Entertainment.
I recognize that Slashdot is a place where we can have arguments (i hope) instead of being fed entertainment news, but /. feels like the exception and not the rule, and even then it's not always very good argument.
I shouldn't get any mod points for this. All this has been said before on slashdot in one way or another, and I would rather getting modded for a nugget of new truth than for regurgitating the same tired old cliches.
-
Who shall decide the winners and losers? The Soviet Union had tests to segregate people based on ability. They were abused for politics and who do you know kind of stuff. The National Socialist wanted to segregate people based on their idea of racial purity. When you build two systems, one for "smart" people and one for "dumb" people what you ultimately create is a class division and give someone the power to decide what kind of education people get.
There is no longer a need to be stingy with education, so your main motives no longer apply. Electronic publication makes it possible to share knowledge with everyone and no one interested should ever be denied. Wealth comes from the freedom to exploit resources. Artificial restrictions and scarcity create poverty and resentment. Hoarding knowledge is a crime.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Apparently the editors don't learn from their mistakes either http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/24/2220209
Thanks Democrats, for making us so fucking dependent on foreign oil that all we can to to help Georgia is stand by and shake our fist in the air.
Readers and moderators should note that twitter is a confirmed twitter sockpuppet.
.. if they really have such a learning problem, then they wouldn't even get to the part about "partying the night before" a test!
Oh man...serves me right for not checking first that there's a /. user named "Jane Q. Public"...you're certainly not the fictitious person I was talking about!
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun
Is that a breakout disease would have a much higher chance of destroying all people on the planet.
And nothing can make me thing... me thing... grr. me thing differently!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I wonder what the prevalence of this disorder is in males/females. There is a lot of talk (and some action) of separating girls from boys in schools because they supposedly "learn differently".
I don't know about the rest of slashdot, but I would've hated to have been in a male-only school. If one can make any argument at all, it is for segregating schoolchildren based on ability, not arbitrary factors such as race, sex, or even religion.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
This is old news.
> Geez, no wonder he keeps recycling the failed policies of Jimmy Carter.
Yeah! We should recycle *Bush's* failed policies! That's bound to work!
That it was my fault. What a relief. I had nothing to do with my lazy, ineffective behavior in college. Halelujiah.
Speak for yourself.
A relevant 1st post?You must be new here.Seriously though, I wonder if this genetic defect correlates with any genetic traits that make kids more likely to enter politics?I.e. Just like Dyslexic persons are usually able to see patterns and correlations that mis others, perhaps these none learners have that extra arrogance which says "a million strangers will choose me over you".
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
... of what anecdotal evidence has suggested throughout history.
Stupid is genetic.
It's a dummy account, he doesn't care.
So little dopamine receptor deficient Jamal in the projects hits the crack pipe for the first time in his life. He flicks the muthafuckuh lighter and da crack ... well crackles and fizzles and
that vapor of cocaine is absorbed from his lungs directly into his bloodstreams and fraction of a second causes that massive release of dopamine that divine bell ringing blissful soma
that has tears streak into your eyes while your heart is thumping and about to leap out of your throat... only little Jamal doesn't "get" it. I mean it isn't bad, it kind of lifts his mood
and for him it's like snorting a small line of mediocre coke... so little Jamal will probably not be renting out his ass to da brothers and da Y-T crackerz for another hit off of the crack pipe.
Following logic here where does addiction come into play for little Jamal when he's lacking the very equipment for it?
Seems like this is another criminal behavior is in the genes and paid for article.
I submitted a Slashdot story several months ago on this topic (sans the kids aspect). Reference this article for a basic overview.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Okay, no, I didn't RTFA, but is there a reason why it targets kids in the headline? Do the "coils of their DNA" change when the kids grow up? Does the genetic glitch learn that it's a mistake?
"Our DNA is basically a blue print of who we are. Our limitations, strengths, etc..."
Don't think of DNA as a blueprint. Think of it more as a book of recipes. Various dishes can be cooked at any given time, and there are (or can be) multiple variations of each recipe depending on a host of different factors, some of which are environmental.
Every time we do something stupid, the doctor should prescribe electroshock therapy instead of vikaden... just to make sure the experience was painful enough we wouldn't do it again.
We can blame whoever we want for our problems. Our blame might be justified, or it might not. The important thing is who is responsible for our problems, and that is always us, regardless of who's fault they are.
"I don't blame people for their problems. I only ask that they take responsibility for them." - John Hammond, Jurassic Park
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Readers and moderators should not that wiIIyhiII is not the same person as willyhill, and that this account is being used by twitter to whore pity by pretending he is being unfairly harassed.
One step closer to being able to rationalize how Bush got re-elected.
further research showed, those 30% with the gene inhibiting learning from their mistake, could still be taught to not repeat the mistake if they were smacked upside the head while their mistake was pointed out.
"Children with the genetic variant are unable to learn from mistakes. No matter how many tests they blow by partying the night before, the lesson just doesn't sink in."
-----This is the type of person most commonly known as a DUMBASS. Other terms include, but are not limited to: Idiot, moron, knucklehead, bonehead, airhead, shit-for-brains, pea-brain, fucktard, and Congressman.
I wonder how long it takes before criminals start claiming, "I'm sorry, your honor. It's not my fault. I have a genetic disorder that prevents me from learning from my mistakes."
Every slimy and scuple-less defense lawyer will be all over that "research" like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat.
Call it cruel, but sometimes a .45 is the best medicine for stupidity.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I am under the impression that many people make a confusion between "learning from their mistakes" and "persist in their behavior".
Let's say a baby tries to force a circle into a round shape. It won't work, period. The baby should notice it and try some other combination.
Now imagine a man (or woman) expressing a "non authorized" opinion in a dictatorship. He (or she) will be severly punished for his (or her) "mistake". Does it mean that he (she) should bail out because it is a mistake? He will acknowledge it is a "mistake" according to his opponent's standard, but may decide to persist in what he perceives as the correct behavior. There is an actual learning, the person simply have decided to persist in what isn't considered a mistake, even if the chances of success is basically the same as the baby's in the previous example (with more dangerous consequences though).
Between Asperger's syndrome and this people on the internet will never have to take responsibility for their behaviour again.
In other slashdot news, editors don't lear from posting dupes:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/24/2220209
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Every book on this area I've ever read says that the part of the brain that is responsible for cause/effect doesn't wire up properly until you're 18 and that's why teens/kids do dumb stuff. Has that one been thrown out as wrong now?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Apparently, so does Rick Astley..
"Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down"
TBH, I fail to see why that's a bad thing anyway, assuming that our goal _is_ to give all people the best education we can. (No kid left behind, etc.) As opposed to, say, a some fucked-up kind of show-business to make under-achieving parents of under-achieving children feel better.
Well, or let me better qualify "bad thing." I don't think it's worse than putting everyone in the same classroom and then dumbing it down to the level where even the... _special_ kid on the right can feel special for being able to draw doodles like everyone else.
Most (all?) of Europe isn't afraid to separate kids by skill level, at least at high school level. It wasn't just the USSR and co. I don't think it caused anything bad, so far. Even the USSR and its satellite states, for all we see their economical failures, look around you how many of your co-workers come from their universities. They managed to produce some well educated people. (Then they failed to use them, but that's a different failure.)
Splitting by learning method actually seems to me like the logical next step. Instead of dumping someone into the lowest bracket just because their wiring doesn't fit the teachers' style, maybe there is some other way of teaching them stuff.
And before it sounds like either a nerd-elitist opinion or conversely some kind of plot to isolate and oppress nerds, remember that ADHD and Aspergers' aren't all roses even as educational prospects go. For each ADHD kid that's found his niche with his home computer, there are a couple who just flunk because they just simply get bored to tears in classroom. For each Aspie who's become some great programmer or physicist, there'll be one or two who just got bullied around and discouraged, and maybe backed into some useless interest (as an Aspie you _will_ have a very narrow focus of interest) like remembering all the football scores since 1900. Or flunked because their narrow interests didn't include geography and victorian english literature and God knows what else. Maybe we can guide them down a better path.
Even for neurotypicals, well, maybe they can do better if they don't have to compete with the local autism-spectrum disorder kid. Or at least find a better passtime than taunting the nerd.
It won't be a neat 70/30 split, duly noted, but it will be a good start anyway. We don't build all tools the exact same way, we don't raise all animals the same way (raising chicken can be slightly different from raising sheep), we don't plant all plants the same way, so, umm, I fail to see why we must teach everyone the same way _if_ we have enough proof that their brains do work differently.
It will be more expensive, though. That much is obvious.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I submitted this comment anonymously years ago because I'd forgotten my password.
Your psychological and emotional states are united by neurotransmitters. For every psychological state you enter (building a stairway), emotional states corresponding to that state are created by neurotransmitters (satisfaction, accomplishment etc.) This process gives you your connection to reality. There is a one - to - one relationship between your emotional and psychological states. The emotional state is supposed to follow the psychological state but if the situation is reversed (drugs, hypnosis, religious bafflegab,) an incorrect reality will be created because of the one - to - one correspondence.
Obviously the current research shows that a persons reality can be altered by their genetic implementation of the neurotransmitter scheme. Another story I read said research showed that nicotene altered people's ability to act on knowledge that smoking was harming them, so they kept on smoking anyway. Again, dopamine was the culprit.
Everyone wants everyone else to set aside their personal feelings and agree with them, but no one wants to do that with their own.
This is my sig.
I suspect this is actually a case of a genetic variant that prevents science journalists from reporting science findings accurately. The chances that a single gene is responsible for our ability to learn from our mistakes is slim to none.
There's an error in the newsweek article (backed up by the report in Science). The genetic variant isn't found in 30% of humans. The 30% number is the deficit of dopamine receptors in parts of the brains of people with the variant. The allele frequency is not actually discussed. Surely if the reporter had stopped to think about what they were writing, the effect of 30% of the population being unable to learn from their mistakes would have been obvious.
...one that leaves their brains with few dopamine receptors, molecules that act as docking ports for one of the neurochemicals that carry our thoughts and emotions. A paucity of dopamine receptors is linked to an inability to avoid self-destructive behavior such as illicit drug use. But the effects spill beyond such extremes. Children with the genetic variant are unable to learn from mistakes. No matter how many tests they blow by partying the night before, the lesson just doesn't sink in.
Sure are a lot of fancy words for "Some kids are born stupid."
Not sure if it'd be something like learning too much from your mistakes, but I do wonder if there's a consequence from having too many dopamine receptors?
Article Summary: 30% of teenagers are immature. Good call.
And there I wondered, why they come up with the same bullshit over and over again...
Yes, a tad flip and no where near enough conspiracy theorist for this crowd, but just think about it for a moment...
of the IT people I work with apparently have this gene.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Whoosh!
Darwin had his theory "Evolution of the Species". What he didn't count on was that there would be a peak sometime in the 1950's to 1970's where we would see the beginnings of the "De-evolution of the species".
We're going back to becoming monkeys in a few thousand years. Think "Planet of the Apes"
They are assuming that the lack of formation of those receptors is a "genetic glitch", but there is plenty of scientific research indicating that the formation of important receptors in the brain is controlled by what the mother is eating during the third trimester of pregnancy. Omega-3 fatty acids and choline are the primary influences on the formation of those receptors, not genetic predisposition. If you examine the diets of the women who had those children lacking in dopamine receptors, you'll see that they weren't eating fish or eggs or other sources of omega-3s and choline enough.
Finally, the dupes that appear here are explained with a genetic condition! If this is genetic, does that mean it's a real disability that you should be able to collect money on, i.e. "I can't learn to not screw up, therefore I have a disability & should get paid!"
stuff |
No matter how many tests they blow by partying the night before, the lesson just doesn't sink in
and here i thought it was because they just didn't give a crap
So this is where Bush's supporters come from!
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
This makes me curious .... if a genetic "glitch" can make certain people less prone to learning from their mistakes, I wonder if there's something that makes a portion of the population overly sensitive to mistakes? You'd have symptoms of timidity, anxiety, an unwillingness to take risks, overreactions to negativity, etc. Wouldn't surprise me if another third of the population might fall into this category, too. It's just a guess, but it would be a pretty sensible distribution, it seems.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Well, until recently, pretty often. It 30% shows me there is obviously some form of survival benefit to this for it to be so high.
Newsweek misinterpreted the numbers in the article, which is why that figure seems so high.
According to the actual journal article, it's not that 30% of children possess the allele that reduces dopamine receptor density.
Rather, it's that children that possess the allele have a 30% reduction in dopamine receptor density.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
suffered from that. :)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
That's a really good point, too bad you posted AC...
They're called parents.
They are called idiots.
and got it in the I*, and stopped working for Apple thereafter.
Legend:
* - iSuck, iGotLoadedInTheEye, iDontGiveHeadAnymore, iThinkSteveJobbsDoesntGiveHeadAnymoreSinceHeHadanLSDsexChange, iDontCareAboutModerators, iThinkBadKarmaIsGoodForEarSex.
Anyone has a link to the original research article? The newsweek story is quite vague for my hardcore scientific taste.
I didn't have the free will to refrain from posting this off-topic comment!
Like filming something at 1 fps or posting completely unwatchable links?
I mean, there's like 15 copies of this on YouTube, and you pick the one where you can't actually see him kicking?
The percentage must be higher on /. Why else would we keep returning here every day?
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
This may require a corollary for the axiom "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."
Obviously, the gene is perpetuated because women reward those who have survived past cannon feeding attempts.
Genetics do indeed play a role, as do epigentics and our environment in our behaviors. What some people are forgetting about is our choices, which at any given time may exceed 'influentially' all genetic and environmental factors. What one chooses even if one has done a behavior several times without the "oops, don't do that again!" gene, may choose not to do so based primarily on societal factors of disapproval, depending on what behavior is performed. If this is repeated with the Pavlovian reward/punishment system, the mechanism of choice can trump any gene anytime! If this is known as environmental, it is because the society has created this form of ultra environment within our physical environment for a reason. These experiments only confirm what was already known, only now things are being confirmed and identified and labeled. Believe me, to choose wisely is always in fashion, whereas we must pick our misbehaviors accordingly.
Human society needs a variety of personality types from hyper-extroverts to near-austistic introverts. Even during ancient tribal hunting grousp we needed this variation to survive. To say there is a one-standard "normal" is ridiculous.