Part of my job a couple of years ago was handling university archives. I was exposed to a large number of essays written by college students from ~1890-1910. They were all on the level that I was expected to write freshman year of high school.
Hush. You're bringing relevant facts into a discussion of cherished golden-age mythology. You're supposed to join in the wailing and gnashing of teeth over our decline from those halcyon days (always conveniently just out of living memory) when people were upright and moral and true, before the rot set in and we declined to our present sad state of affairs. O tempora! O mores!
You're letting your bias get in the way of seeing the point I was making.
There's some bias here, all right, but it's not sribe who's exhibiting it. You seem bizarrely determined to find fault with a completely accurate statement.
Yeah. I don't know enough about his work to comment, but when I read the part about how all this computational stuff is just too confusing for those poor biologists, my bullshit alarms went off. Speaking as a bioinformaticist, whose job it is to bridge the bio/CS gap all the time, I've observed that computer scientists often have at least as hard a time grasping biology as biologists have grasping computer science. Endy's kind of smugness does no one any good.
You do not just get to handwave away the threats. You have to answer them -- even if it's just to say "Then that is the price we will pay."
Okay: then that is the price we will pay.
More precisely, that is the price we might pay. Personally, I think the price will be a lot lower than you say--but I'm willing to take that risk. Because there is nothing al-Qaeda or any other bunch of troglodytes is going to do to us that's worse than what we can do, and are doing, to ourselves.
Yes, it is. I suppose I was getting dangerously close to Poe's Law territory, wasn't I?
Also, as I read it the original insult wasn't about her sex, it was about her decision to go for cheap low hanging fruit, and "whore" as an epithet has been applied to loads of people - it can almost be considered gender neutral.
Maaaaybe. I'm inclined to go with AC: the editor might still have been insulting in dealing with a man, but probably would have used a different insult. And there are gender-neutral uses of "whore," but I don't think this is one of them.
If it was about her sex, then smack them down. If it wasn't, smack them down.
Indeed. It's startlingly unprofessional either way.
Yep. I remember one kid who kept asking, "Will it hurt? Will it hurt?" and his mother kept saying, "No, not a bit, honey" and the like, and the kid clearly wasn't buying it. So I looked him in the eye and said, "This is going to hurt worse than anything you've ever felt in your life. It's going to hurt worse than anything you've ever imagined in your life. It's terrible. You'll be screaming. It will feel like your arm is getting chewed off by a wolf..." While he was giggling, I gave him the shot and he barely even noticed it. I'm willing to bet he was a lot less fearful the next time he went in.
Since the topic of her blog is women in science, this actually seems to be right on topic. Do you think the editor would have used a comparable term for a male blogger?
Of course! Everyone knows there's no such thing as sexism any more (except for sexism directed against men, of course, thanks to the feminazis). This is just yet another example of a woman whining because she's being treated like one of the guys, and if she can't take the heat she should stay out of the kitchen! Or, er, get back into the kitchen. Whatever.
So I've learned by reading the Slashdot comments every time a "women in ___" story comes up, anyway.
It is impossible for anything posted to a Twitter feed to be spam, since seeing it requires you to follow that feed.
By that logic, it is impossible for anything posted in a newsgroup to be spam, since seeing it requires you to read that newsgroup. Which is a pretty silly interpretation, given the history involved.
You're not the only person here who "was on the Internet when the term was invented," you know.
Censorship is bad! NSA is evil! Facebook is for sheeple! Microsoft sucks! Apple sucks! Google sucks! Go Edward Snowden! Ooooh, I'm a rebel! Dancing on the edge!
the core of how cells work is directly analogous to the hardware/software distinction in a computer (in fact, they're Turing-complete)
I was just trying to make a joke, but it's an interesting question: are cells Turing machines? (To the degree anything in the real world can be called a Turing machine; if you know where to get a computer with infinite memory, please send me the manufacturer's URL.) They have the potential to be, else we couldn't build biological computers--which AFAICT are just lab curiosities for now, but may someday do real work--but it seems to me they don't really act like them in their day-to-day functions. Then again, neither do our computers, a lot of the time...
The more time I spend modeling gene regulation, the more skeptical I am of any attempt to draw any equivalence between computers and living organisms, or even parts of organisms, except in the very broad sense that we and our machines both process information. The collection of branching stochastic feedback loops necessary to carry out the processes of life, at every level from transcription to tissue function, is like nothing any sane engineer would ever try to build.
No, sorry, but this is a fractally wrong statement to make.
What do you mean by "fractally wrong"?
With sufficient curiousity, you will be dedicated to learning as much as you can. The drive to learn will push you where you need to go. Intelligence merely sets the speed by which you'll arrive.
True, but I'd argue that "mere" speed is pretty important. There are only so many hours in the day. A particular problem with modern science--bad enough in Einstein's day, worse now--is that there's a whole lot you have to learn before you can hope to make meaningful new contributions to any field. To refer back to an earlier famous scientist, standing on the shoulders of giants is great, but a lot of times you reach the shoulder of the giant only to realize that you're staring at the feet of the next giant. The climb will take you a long time even if you're very smart; if you're not, it may well take more than a lifetime to complete. Having just finished a PhD that took [mumble mumble] more years to complete than I expected at the outset, I'm acutely aware of this problem...
Your over-emphasis on intelligence is elitism; It's suggesting that if you can't be "smart enough", you shouldn't be in science.
Hardly. No one really knows at the outset if they've got what it takes, and everyone who wants to do so should certainly give it a try. Even if they don't reach the top, they'll learn a lot along the way. But not everyone will reach the top, just as (mixing metaphors a bit) a whole lot of people who set out to climb the world's highest mountains don't succeed, and often die trying.
Anyone can be a scientist. It is a method, a way of learning about the world.
In that sense, sure--anyone can, and everyone should. But that's not the same thing as "doing science" the way Einstein did, making major discoveries that change the way we look at the world. Hell, it's not even the same thing as publishing a few highly cited articles, which is a fair accomplishment for any working scientist to aim for.
The problem is that "average" in common usage usually refers to the mean, except when it doesn't. Which is why statisticians avoid the word as much as possible.;) It was the use of "Statistically speaking..." that caught my eye; practically every time someone starts out that way, they're going to say something that needs calling out. (Other examples include "I'm opposed to censorship, but..." and "I'll probably get modded down for this...")
Slashdot Mirror
The established publications -- often denounced as "greedy" for having the audacity of wanting to get paid -- do add value, after all?
We have no idea if they do or not, because the "study" deliberately omitted traditional journals. Congratulations, you got played for a sucker.
Part of my job a couple of years ago was handling university archives. I was exposed to a large number of essays written by college students from ~1890-1910. They were all on the level that I was expected to write freshman year of high school.
Hush. You're bringing relevant facts into a discussion of cherished golden-age mythology. You're supposed to join in the wailing and gnashing of teeth over our decline from those halcyon days (always conveniently just out of living memory) when people were upright and moral and true, before the rot set in and we declined to our present sad state of affairs. O tempora! O mores!
You're letting your bias get in the way of seeing the point I was making.
There's some bias here, all right, but it's not sribe who's exhibiting it. You seem bizarrely determined to find fault with a completely accurate statement.
Sure, there are incompetent coders but they usually wind up moving into management or the fast food industry.
Apparently Page and Brin chose Door #1. That worked out okay. ;)
Yeah. I don't know enough about his work to comment, but when I read the part about how all this computational stuff is just too confusing for those poor biologists, my bullshit alarms went off. Speaking as a bioinformaticist, whose job it is to bridge the bio/CS gap all the time, I've observed that computer scientists often have at least as hard a time grasping biology as biologists have grasping computer science. Endy's kind of smugness does no one any good.
"The universe is fucked up" is something pretty much all scientists can agree on.
You do not just get to handwave away the threats. You have to answer them -- even if it's just to say "Then that is the price we will pay."
Okay: then that is the price we will pay.
More precisely, that is the price we might pay. Personally, I think the price will be a lot lower than you say--but I'm willing to take that risk. Because there is nothing al-Qaeda or any other bunch of troglodytes is going to do to us that's worse than what we can do, and are doing, to ourselves.
Happy now?
Yet Julian Simons won the bet.
You might want to read down a little further in the article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager#The_proposed_second_wager
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager#Other_wagers (especially the last sentence of this section)
Simon got lucky once. His track record overall isn't so hot.
Oh no, you're supposed to grow old gracefully, and accept the infirmity of age as the price of wisdom. Or some crap like that.
Yeah, sorry about that.
I'm hoping this is sarcasm.
Yes, it is. I suppose I was getting dangerously close to Poe's Law territory, wasn't I?
Also, as I read it the original insult wasn't about her sex, it was about her decision to go for cheap low hanging fruit, and "whore" as an epithet has been applied to loads of people - it can almost be considered gender neutral.
Maaaaybe. I'm inclined to go with AC: the editor might still have been insulting in dealing with a man, but probably would have used a different insult. And there are gender-neutral uses of "whore," but I don't think this is one of them.
If it was about her sex, then smack them down. If it wasn't, smack them down.
Indeed. It's startlingly unprofessional either way.
Yep. I remember one kid who kept asking, "Will it hurt? Will it hurt?" and his mother kept saying, "No, not a bit, honey" and the like, and the kid clearly wasn't buying it. So I looked him in the eye and said, "This is going to hurt worse than anything you've ever felt in your life. It's going to hurt worse than anything you've ever imagined in your life. It's terrible. You'll be screaming. It will feel like your arm is getting chewed off by a wolf ..." While he was giggling, I gave him the shot and he barely even noticed it. I'm willing to bet he was a lot less fearful the next time he went in.
Since the topic of her blog is women in science, this actually seems to be right on topic. Do you think the editor would have used a comparable term for a male blogger?
Of course! Everyone knows there's no such thing as sexism any more (except for sexism directed against men, of course, thanks to the feminazis). This is just yet another example of a woman whining because she's being treated like one of the guys, and if she can't take the heat she should stay out of the kitchen! Or, er, get back into the kitchen. Whatever.
So I've learned by reading the Slashdot comments every time a "women in ___" story comes up, anyway.
It is impossible for anything posted to a Twitter feed to be spam, since seeing it requires you to follow that feed.
By that logic, it is impossible for anything posted in a newsgroup to be spam, since seeing it requires you to read that newsgroup. Which is a pretty silly interpretation, given the history involved.
You're not the only person here who "was on the Internet when the term was invented," you know.
Yes, I just burned Karma.
Currently modded to +5.
Censorship is bad! NSA is evil! Facebook is for sheeple! Microsoft sucks! Apple sucks! Google sucks! Go Edward Snowden! Ooooh, I'm a rebel! Dancing on the edge!
We've had so many wacko right-wing conspiracy trolls on /. lately, it's nice to see a wacko left-wing conspiracy troll instead. Refreshing, you know?
I make a pretty good funny, and your retort is this? I'm disappointed.
Long week at work.
Thanks, that helps clear things up.
the core of how cells work is directly analogous to the hardware/software distinction in a computer (in fact, they're Turing-complete)
I was just trying to make a joke, but it's an interesting question: are cells Turing machines? (To the degree anything in the real world can be called a Turing machine; if you know where to get a computer with infinite memory, please send me the manufacturer's URL.) They have the potential to be, else we couldn't build biological computers--which AFAICT are just lab curiosities for now, but may someday do real work--but it seems to me they don't really act like them in their day-to-day functions. Then again, neither do our computers, a lot of the time ...
The more time I spend modeling gene regulation, the more skeptical I am of any attempt to draw any equivalence between computers and living organisms, or even parts of organisms, except in the very broad sense that we and our machines both process information. The collection of branching stochastic feedback loops necessary to carry out the processes of life, at every level from transcription to tissue function, is like nothing any sane engineer would ever try to build.
Computer analogies available for most topics! (Cars retired.)
It's like when you send your old server to the junkyard to be parted out ... ahhh, crap.
Ah, the ad hominid with a side of snark. The time-tested way of letting everyone on the internet know you just went full retard.
Have you actually read your own posts in this thread?
Huh. It's like you're having an argument with someone who made a post vaguely similar to mine. Well, have fun with that.
No, sorry, but this is a fractally wrong statement to make.
What do you mean by "fractally wrong"?
With sufficient curiousity, you will be dedicated to learning as much as you can. The drive to learn will push you where you need to go. Intelligence merely sets the speed by which you'll arrive.
True, but I'd argue that "mere" speed is pretty important. There are only so many hours in the day. A particular problem with modern science--bad enough in Einstein's day, worse now--is that there's a whole lot you have to learn before you can hope to make meaningful new contributions to any field. To refer back to an earlier famous scientist, standing on the shoulders of giants is great, but a lot of times you reach the shoulder of the giant only to realize that you're staring at the feet of the next giant. The climb will take you a long time even if you're very smart; if you're not, it may well take more than a lifetime to complete. Having just finished a PhD that took [mumble mumble] more years to complete than I expected at the outset, I'm acutely aware of this problem ...
Your over-emphasis on intelligence is elitism; It's suggesting that if you can't be "smart enough", you shouldn't be in science.
Hardly. No one really knows at the outset if they've got what it takes, and everyone who wants to do so should certainly give it a try. Even if they don't reach the top, they'll learn a lot along the way. But not everyone will reach the top, just as (mixing metaphors a bit) a whole lot of people who set out to climb the world's highest mountains don't succeed, and often die trying.
Anyone can be a scientist. It is a method, a way of learning about the world.
In that sense, sure--anyone can, and everyone should. But that's not the same thing as "doing science" the way Einstein did, making major discoveries that change the way we look at the world. Hell, it's not even the same thing as publishing a few highly cited articles, which is a fair accomplishment for any working scientist to aim for.
The problem is that "average" in common usage usually refers to the mean, except when it doesn't. Which is why statisticians avoid the word as much as possible. ;) It was the use of "Statistically speaking ..." that caught my eye; practically every time someone starts out that way, they're going to say something that needs calling out. (Other examples include "I'm opposed to censorship, but ..." and "I'll probably get modded down for this ...")
Statistically speaking, half the population has a corups callosum larger than the average.
So, you've studied the distribution of corpus callosum size enough to be sure the median is equal to the mean?