These guys have devoted a major part of their lives to building the most complex piece of machinery in history, in order to push forward our knowledge of the laws of nature, and you are somehow ashamed of them? Jeez. Give them some credit for being awesome heroes.
Too often people don't release stuff like this because they think it's not clear enough, or high quality enough. I say just release it. Some thirteen year old genius Einstein in some corner of the world may get a lot out of it.
What do you mean, the argument from authority fallacy only applies to people talking outside their field? I thought a main part of the spirit of science was a complete rejection of argument from authority in any form. If Richard Feynman himself showed up and told me something crazy about theoretical physics, I'd be like, "you fool, that's crazy."
But there should be unique items, a few of them so rare and so powerful that whoever comes to wield one of them will be like a demigod in that world. Players will form factions, armies, to steal just one of these items from whoever currently has it. (And it will take an army to get it.) Players will betray each other to get control of one of these items.
Also, it should be possible for a character to really die, and stay dead--not just respawn. Once dead, a character should become a ghost, who can roam the world, chat with other players, and contribute in minor ways to a party, perhaps as a spy. Then governments will form. Good players will unite to protect newbies and others from player killers, and a justice system will spontaneously develop.
I am all in favor of not using overly-fancy words when explaining a difficult point, if it can be avoided. Feynman was great in that way. And most philosophers I've read are terrible in that way.
When arguing a logical point, it may be a good idea to specifically avoid appealing to emotions. Emotions confuse an issue. I want people to agree with me because they agree with my logic, not because I have engaged them on a personal level.
People need to use their phones because flights are boring and talking to friends is fun. You wouldn't stop people from talking to each other on the airplane. So why would you stop one person on the airplane from talking to someone not on the airplane? What's the difference?
People are so quick to control the way other people behave.
The way to settle this is to let individual airlines make their own policies, with the goal of maximizing profits. If people really don't want cell phone use on airplanes, then an airline which implements that policy will make more money.
Set the smart students free to learn at their own paces. Even in an environment like math camp, where every student is among the best at the school he came from, the fastest students learn five times faster (or more) and with better comprehension than the slowest students. (I know, I was there, and I was not among the fastest students.) So in a school situation it should be common for some students to be progressing through the course material at least five times faster than other students. Grouping kids by age is a mistake.
Let students spend a lot more time on the subjects that interest them. If a student is very excited about math, let him learn a lot of math at the expense of learning history. He will learn the history later, once he realizes how interesting it is. For the time being, be very happy that he is excited about learning anything. (The same applies for a student who is interested in history but not math, or writing but not history or math, etc.)
Unleash the motivating power of competition in education. At math camp, everyone knew what problem set everyone was on, and that provided a lot of motivation to keep up with everyone else, or try to get ahead. If a student is free to progress twice as fast as his classmates, a sense of competition will motivate him to do so.
Privatize education. Unleash market forces in education. What if we saw the same kind of intense innovation in the field of education that we see in the field of, say, tennis shoes? Perhaps the most heartbreaking failure of socialism is the public school system--heartbreaking when you imagine what could have been accomplished with the innovative ingenuity of private enterprise.
Rely heavily on video lectures. Most teachers are average. Let students learn from the best. Teachers will then have more time to answer questions, provide feedback on work, and mentor, their most important contributions.
The summary says the target market is research labs. It's not a toy. Its use is for robotics research, perhaps for trying out different algorithms and things like that.
Michael Spivak is a mathematician who wrote the very popular math textbook, Calculus on Manifolds, which you've probably used in a class. Apparently he has given some video lectures on elementary mechanics. I haven't watched them, but he's an excellent teacher so they are probably great.
Why did LSCs fail in the 1970's? Two reasons: the collected light was absorbed before it reached the edges of the glass or plastic plates, and the dyes were unstable.
What about stability? We tested one of our devices and found that it was stable (to 92 percent of initial performance) for three months. This isn't good enough yet for products but we are confident that the technology developed for organic light emitting devices (OLEDs) in televisions will be portable to this application.
People are so conventional in their criticisms of Google. Not every company should be run like Microsoft. For once, the greatest company in the world was founded by true nerds, hurray, and those founders may be as interested in maintaining an atmosphere of creative freedom and innovation as they are with making huge profits. (And oh, by the way, they are making huge profits.) Also, how do you deal with the mythical man-month problem; how do you keep company growth from bogging things down and reducing code output to nine lines a day? Google has an innovative solution: let small teams have a lot of freedom to pursue their own projects. Not everything will be a homerun, but everything will be done with passion, and a few things will be homeruns, which is the most you can ask for.
People have such high standards for Google. Just calm down and be happy that Google is a place where smart people have the freedom to try creative things, and not everything has to be revolutionary.
No no, I said that memorizing times tables is NOT outdated. And yes, even though what I described is in fact all the algorithm does, it is easier to understand (and takes longer to execute) when presented in this more conceptual way. The fact is that most students don't understand why the long multiplication algorithm works, or why they are putting extra zeroes in certain places. It is just a memorized process to them. And that is the kind of thing that makes them hate math.
What's outdated is not memorizing times tables, but learning the algorithms for long multiplication and long division. Speed is no longer of value when performing arithmetic by hand, because you can just use a calculator, and all these algorithms do is teach children that math is a horrible process of rote memorization that they don't understand. Let's teach children to multiply conceptually, by breaking a large problem into smaller problems. 23*47 = 23*(40 + 7) = 23*40 + 23*7. We have two easier problems now. Let's do 23*7. It's equal to (20 + 3)*7 = 20*7 + 3*7. Again we have easier problems. This approach takes longer, but children can actually UNDERSTAND it and ENJOY it, and learn to think like mathematicians rather than memorizing finger motions.
I'd like to see a series of videos on youtube that shows how to build electrical technology from scratch up to the level of what Tesla had. (Or up to the level of radio.)
Suppose you were living in a primitive hunter/gatherer society. How would you develop basic technology? How do you make metal tools and weapons? How do you farm? How do you make soap? How do you make houses and buildings? What useful mechanical devices should you make, and how do you make them? How do you make rope? Candles? Where in the wild do you find your materials? I don't know, but I would love to see these things explained systematically.
Do you believe we should abandon lectures entirely, and only use textbooks? If not, my point stands.
In some ways, a lecture explanation is more clear than a book explanation. The teacher can point to an expression and say, "now this thing over here looks a lot like this thing over here, and if I just factor out a so and so they will be even more similar..." and things like that. Harder to do that in books. Also, tone of voice can help, for example to know what the professor thinks is hard, what is easy, etc.
But the main point is that most people who give lectures just don't have time to write a textbook, or they are unwilling to do so. It is these people to whom I am speaking---if they don't want to write a textbook, at least they could record their lectures, and it would be very valuable.
Professors, teachers, please start recording your lectures and putting them online. It is invaluable for a student to be able to press pause, in order to think over a difficult point, or to rewind to see a difficult argument explained again. It is inefficient for thousands of mediocre teachers to give the same lectures all across the world, year after year. It would be much more efficient for the best teachers to give the lectures once, and for everyone else to watch them on video. Professors/teachers would then have much more time for their greatest contribution--answering questions, providing feedback on work, and mentoring students.
With video lectures, those words and explanations you prepared so carefully are not simply lost forever the moment you deliver them. A lecture series can now be a lasting contribution to society, like a great novel or great textbook. This makes it much more worthwhile and provides more motivation to prepare excellent lectures, at those times when you do give lectures.
If only the Feynman Lectures on Physics had been videotaped and we could see them on youtube...
Considering the fundamental role Einstein played in the eventual invention of nuclear reactors, and his role as one of the pioneers of Quantum Mechanics, couldn't you argue that Einstein was one of the greatest wealth creators of all time?
One of the best ways to get kids into math is to expose them to contest math. There are lots of great books about contest math for middle schoolers. Check out www.artofproblemsolving.com to learn more about that.
You can't be a Randian Objectivist and an anarchist. Ayn Rand wanted a minimal government, which would only use force in retaliation against people who had initiated the use of force (including fraud), and otherwise left people alone to live their own lives.
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These guys have devoted a major part of their lives to building the most complex piece of machinery in history, in order to push forward our knowledge of the laws of nature, and you are somehow ashamed of them? Jeez. Give them some credit for being awesome heroes.
Too often people don't release stuff like this because they think it's not clear enough, or high quality enough. I say just release it. Some thirteen year old genius Einstein in some corner of the world may get a lot out of it.
What do you mean, the argument from authority fallacy only applies to people talking outside their field? I thought a main part of the spirit of science was a complete rejection of argument from authority in any form. If Richard Feynman himself showed up and told me something crazy about theoretical physics, I'd be like, "you fool, that's crazy."
Perhaps I misunderstood you.
But there should be unique items, a few of them so rare and so powerful that whoever comes to wield one of them will be like a demigod in that world. Players will form factions, armies, to steal just one of these items from whoever currently has it. (And it will take an army to get it.) Players will betray each other to get control of one of these items.
Also, it should be possible for a character to really die, and stay dead--not just respawn. Once dead, a character should become a ghost, who can roam the world, chat with other players, and contribute in minor ways to a party, perhaps as a spy. Then governments will form. Good players will unite to protect newbies and others from player killers, and a justice system will spontaneously develop.
I am all in favor of not using overly-fancy words when explaining a difficult point, if it can be avoided. Feynman was great in that way. And most philosophers I've read are terrible in that way.
When arguing a logical point, it may be a good idea to specifically avoid appealing to emotions. Emotions confuse an issue. I want people to agree with me because they agree with my logic, not because I have engaged them on a personal level.
What's the point of using any word, when you could use more simpler words instead?
The only issue is whether or not a word is used correctly.
The solution libertarians offer, laissez-faire capitalism, is the greatest engine of wealth creation mankind has ever discovered.
A libertarian would say, "That's unfortunate, but we should not resort to force in an attempt to solve this problem."
People need to use their phones because flights are boring and talking to friends is fun. You wouldn't stop people from talking to each other on the airplane. So why would you stop one person on the airplane from talking to someone not on the airplane? What's the difference?
People are so quick to control the way other people behave.
The way to settle this is to let individual airlines make their own policies, with the goal of maximizing profits. If people really don't want cell phone use on airplanes, then an airline which implements that policy will make more money.
There's no secret that makes this easy.
Go run for half an hour on a treadmill every other day. Start slow--slow enough that you can go for half an hour. Build up speed over time.
If that's boring, a more fun option is to play raquetball four times a week.
Whatever you do, make sure your shirt is drenched in sweat by the end of it.
Set the smart students free to learn at their own paces. Even in an environment like math camp, where every student is among the best at the school he came from, the fastest students learn five times faster (or more) and with better comprehension than the slowest students. (I know, I was there, and I was not among the fastest students.) So in a school situation it should be common for some students to be progressing through the course material at least five times faster than other students. Grouping kids by age is a mistake.
Let students spend a lot more time on the subjects that interest them. If a student is very excited about math, let him learn a lot of math at the expense of learning history. He will learn the history later, once he realizes how interesting it is. For the time being, be very happy that he is excited about learning anything. (The same applies for a student who is interested in history but not math, or writing but not history or math, etc.)
Unleash the motivating power of competition in education. At math camp, everyone knew what problem set everyone was on, and that provided a lot of motivation to keep up with everyone else, or try to get ahead. If a student is free to progress twice as fast as his classmates, a sense of competition will motivate him to do so.
Privatize education. Unleash market forces in education. What if we saw the same kind of intense innovation in the field of education that we see in the field of, say, tennis shoes? Perhaps the most heartbreaking failure of socialism is the public school system--heartbreaking when you imagine what could have been accomplished with the innovative ingenuity of private enterprise.
Rely heavily on video lectures. Most teachers are average. Let students learn from the best. Teachers will then have more time to answer questions, provide feedback on work, and mentor, their most important contributions.
The summary says the target market is research labs. It's not a toy. Its use is for robotics research, perhaps for trying out different algorithms and things like that.
Michael Spivak is a mathematician who wrote the very popular math textbook, Calculus on Manifolds, which you've probably used in a class. Apparently he has given some video lectures on elementary mechanics. I haven't watched them, but he's an excellent teacher so they are probably great.
http://www.math.hc.keio.ac.jp/coe/videos/spivak2004/
Why did LSCs fail in the 1970's? Two reasons: the collected light was absorbed before it reached the edges of the glass or plastic plates, and the dyes were unstable.
What about stability? We tested one of our devices and found that it was stable (to 92 percent of initial performance) for three months. This isn't good enough yet for products but we are confident that the technology developed for organic light emitting devices (OLEDs) in televisions will be portable to this application.
People are so conventional in their criticisms of Google. Not every company should be run like Microsoft. For once, the greatest company in the world was founded by true nerds, hurray, and those founders may be as interested in maintaining an atmosphere of creative freedom and innovation as they are with making huge profits. (And oh, by the way, they are making huge profits.) Also, how do you deal with the mythical man-month problem; how do you keep company growth from bogging things down and reducing code output to nine lines a day? Google has an innovative solution: let small teams have a lot of freedom to pursue their own projects. Not everything will be a homerun, but everything will be done with passion, and a few things will be homeruns, which is the most you can ask for.
People have such high standards for Google. Just calm down and be happy that Google is a place where smart people have the freedom to try creative things, and not everything has to be revolutionary.
No no, I said that memorizing times tables is NOT outdated. And yes, even though what I described is in fact all the algorithm does, it is easier to understand (and takes longer to execute) when presented in this more conceptual way. The fact is that most students don't understand why the long multiplication algorithm works, or why they are putting extra zeroes in certain places. It is just a memorized process to them. And that is the kind of thing that makes them hate math.
What's outdated is not memorizing times tables, but learning the algorithms for long multiplication and long division. Speed is no longer of value when performing arithmetic by hand, because you can just use a calculator, and all these algorithms do is teach children that math is a horrible process of rote memorization that they don't understand. Let's teach children to multiply conceptually, by breaking a large problem into smaller problems. 23*47 = 23*(40 + 7) = 23*40 + 23*7. We have two easier problems now. Let's do 23*7. It's equal to (20 + 3)*7 = 20*7 + 3*7. Again we have easier problems. This approach takes longer, but children can actually UNDERSTAND it and ENJOY it, and learn to think like mathematicians rather than memorizing finger motions.
I'd like to see a series of videos on youtube that shows how to build electrical technology from scratch up to the level of what Tesla had. (Or up to the level of radio.) Suppose you were living in a primitive hunter/gatherer society. How would you develop basic technology? How do you make metal tools and weapons? How do you farm? How do you make soap? How do you make houses and buildings? What useful mechanical devices should you make, and how do you make them? How do you make rope? Candles? Where in the wild do you find your materials? I don't know, but I would love to see these things explained systematically.
Do you believe we should abandon lectures entirely, and only use textbooks? If not, my point stands. In some ways, a lecture explanation is more clear than a book explanation. The teacher can point to an expression and say, "now this thing over here looks a lot like this thing over here, and if I just factor out a so and so they will be even more similar..." and things like that. Harder to do that in books. Also, tone of voice can help, for example to know what the professor thinks is hard, what is easy, etc. But the main point is that most people who give lectures just don't have time to write a textbook, or they are unwilling to do so. It is these people to whom I am speaking---if they don't want to write a textbook, at least they could record their lectures, and it would be very valuable.
Professors, teachers, please start recording your lectures and putting them online. It is invaluable for a student to be able to press pause, in order to think over a difficult point, or to rewind to see a difficult argument explained again. It is inefficient for thousands of mediocre teachers to give the same lectures all across the world, year after year. It would be much more efficient for the best teachers to give the lectures once, and for everyone else to watch them on video. Professors/teachers would then have much more time for their greatest contribution--answering questions, providing feedback on work, and mentoring students. With video lectures, those words and explanations you prepared so carefully are not simply lost forever the moment you deliver them. A lecture series can now be a lasting contribution to society, like a great novel or great textbook. This makes it much more worthwhile and provides more motivation to prepare excellent lectures, at those times when you do give lectures. If only the Feynman Lectures on Physics had been videotaped and we could see them on youtube...
Considering the fundamental role Einstein played in the eventual invention of nuclear reactors, and his role as one of the pioneers of Quantum Mechanics, couldn't you argue that Einstein was one of the greatest wealth creators of all time?
One of the best ways to get kids into math is to expose them to contest math. There are lots of great books about contest math for middle schoolers. Check out www.artofproblemsolving.com to learn more about that.
You can't be a Randian Objectivist and an anarchist. Ayn Rand wanted a minimal government, which would only use force in retaliation against people who had initiated the use of force (including fraud), and otherwise left people alone to live their own lives.