You're right of course, I have a high standard of living and I could afford to give more. I do give, but not enough. In any case I work in academia (in public health epidemiology) for nowhere near as much as I could easily make in industry, and part of the reason is that this way I am giving something to the world. Also its probably the case that as people we aren't predisposed to caring about things that aren't immediately aroud us, which in a globalised world is a shame and a problem.
That doesn't negate the good we can do for the people in our own communities though. And I'm not talking about philanthropy, just establishing a system that is fair and in which people are given the help to help themselves when they need it.
I would hate to live in your world. I value compassion as highly as intelligence, and letting somebody suffer and die while you are able to help, on some aloof philosophical or eugenic basis is simply inhumane. Is there anybody in your life that you care about? Would you try to help them if they were suffering? Would you care for them less if they'd made a mistake and their suffering was in some way self-inflicted?
You should value people based on what they are or what they can give, not on what they are not or what they lack.
Its not a case of 'expecting to do it for me', its a case of specialisation. Specialisation is essential for development of advanced functions. Just as each of the cells in my body relies on many of the others to work and survive, so do we all depend on the tools and knowledge, as you put it, of each other. This is not a sign of degeneracy. You could make everybody individually able to survive, but you'd take away their ability to do anything else.
My point is proven yet again, that the vast majority of humanity lacks the simple survival skills that would make us worthy of propagating and passing on our genes... evolving and surviving, if you would.
I'm afraid the evidence points to the contrary. As a species we don't seem to have any problems surviving.
Moreover the extraordinary success of the human species is mostly, or maybe entirely due to its incredible survival skills. These skills are also very widely adaptable, so we can thrive in whatever environment we find ourselves in. We are not limited by the environment in which we evolved (which certainly didn't include bots on irc) and as soon as a new threat is identfied, we quickly spread the information and all acquire the means to deal with it. How well would the average chimp do on www.ladymonkey.com?
Sorry for feeding the troll but it looked so pathetic I couldn't help it.
I really hope somebody does conduct a randomised trial, so we can have some proper evidence when debating this project. The UK managed to screw up the evaluation of Sure Start (a child development policy) by refusing to randomise the initial allocation, and now we'll never be able to properly evaluate the benefits. It probably falls to local governments to develop and implement these plans though, and not Negroponte, who would certainly be accused of a conflict of interest if the findings were positive.
Okay I stand corrected. That's quite shocking. I do more neurological/psychiatric stuff I suppose, which is bit more medical so the samples have to be more population representative, and our study staff spend a lot of time sampling electoral registers and randomly knocking on doors. We even worry sometimes when we see samples all recruited from the same town.
Considering that the majority of psychological studies are performed on college freshmen taking a Psych 101 class, the reality is that "getting an ubiased random sample" is an ideal that researchers rarely worry too much about living up to.
That's not really true. It might be true for toy studies for students or pilots where instruments are being tested (I've done a few myself in that context), but all serious psychological studies spend a good deal of time trying to get their sample right.
I understand these arguments, and they're important, but I don't think the answer lies in trying to hide things. The powerful guys will always find a way to get what they want, and its really just the smaller people with legitimate uses going through the correct procedures that you'll hinder.
People can't blackmail you with public domain information. And if the data on minor crimes is available on everybody, then you can point to the selective prosecution. Information is a powerful tool in the hands of both good and bad people.
From scanning those articles it looks as if they are just methods for defining levels of anonymity in a dataset, rather than providing any effective means of achieving it (please correct me if I'm wrong).
I can't see how, for example, if I am planning a study of small area (ie zip code level) variation in the levels of some disease or other, while adjusting for, say, age, sex, and ethnicity, that I could do so without a dataset that included all of these items. How could you make the records less unique without throwing away the data?
We have to accept that if we want meaningful research to happen, then we need some amount of data sharing and linking needs to occur. We need to rely, in medicine at least, on ethics committees to represent our best interests when it comes to striking the balance.
It seems to me that the trend for guarding personal data like its the family silver is a relatively modern thing. If it continues, then reliable unbiassed medical research, especially disease monitoring and control will become impossible.
For more insect related awesomeness the BBC made Life in the Undergrowth a documentary series presented by David Attenborough. There's some really incredible stuff in there. Wasps especially seem to have evolved lots of these rather sinister behaviours.
They were hoping that by giving the name of the movie they could pull in other sources of data (RottenTomatoes, IMDB) to make better guesses.
Are you sure? Are people using data from outside the training set? Because if what you say is true then they're essentially asking people to use some kind of probabilistic record linkage to include external databases, which would automatically include the personal identifiers. This would be highly dubious behaviour.
What NetFlix did that was stupid was include the names of the movies in their dataset. There was no need for this for the prize (unless anybody was using the names for prediction I suppose), anonynous identifiers would have been okay.
I mean, back in 1989, how many (few?) people could envision the Internet in its current form?
My dad did apparently. As well as inventing the fax machine, graphical user interfaces, the European Economic Community, doormats, capitalism, speed cameras, and gravity. He just forgot to go to the patent office.
Yeah I think you're probably right. I hadn't given extinction much thought. It does seem kind of inevitable that one system would become dominant. And the fossil record won't be much use either.
though honestly the chance of actually finding something like that isn't very great.
Why do say that? 'Life as we know it' arose on Earth just about as soon as we had running water. So it can't be all that unlikely an event. In which case life should have spontaneously arisen at least more than once, especially since Earth is supposedly such a good place for life to start.
If we don't find another instance of life starting on Earth, that'll be bad news for our chances of finding it anywhere else.
Yeah sorry I actually got that the wrong way around. Apparently the evidence is that more accidents would be prevented in the evenings than would be caused in the mornings.
Why would you demand Firefox from your vendor when you can install it yourself 30 seconds after you get home? The idea that having Firefox preinstalled would influence anybody's choice of vendor is nuts.
Being dark by 4pm in the Winter is a problem with GMT not BST. What you would advocate is BST all year round (so we'd be on Spanish/French time at the moment). The problem with that is that more accidents will happen in the darker mornings, when kids are on their way to school. For some reason this appears to be less of a problem in the afternoon/evenings.
If a "proof" is published with some steps or information excluded then it's not a proof, it's just an assertion.
I don't agree with this, because by that argument nothing is a proof. Every proof has steps left out, unless you reduce everything to axioms, which is plainly silly.
A proof is a proof if and only if it is enough to convince the person that is reading it. Of course this makes a proof a function of both the reader and the writer, but this is the only way it can be. If the person reading your proof is not convinced by any of the steps and wishes clarification, then you must be able to provide it. If however everbody is happy that the missing steps are okay, then the proof is good.
3. As a US citizen, I'm happy that the US has the best military in the world.
I take issue with this statement, because I know for a fact that the UK has the best military in the world.
More seriously though, everybody I know believes as a 'well known fact' that their own country's military is the worlds best. These are otherwise sensible and not particularly nationalisatic people usually capable of making objective judgements. That's a startlingly good piece of marketing however you look at it.
Seems to me that your chances of finding something interesting go up dramatically.
That depends very much on your belief about the distribution of the interestingness, and how much ground you expect each rover to be able to cover.
If you think that the interesting things are few and scattered, then I agree with you. But there is no real reason to think this, except possibly for the lack of interesting things found so far. A more reasonable hypothesis is that the whole place is interesting, especially if you have a particular location in mind, in which case a detailed look at one area with one rover would be more effective than repeating a more superficial look many times.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right of course, I have a high standard of living and I could afford to give more. I do give, but not enough. In any case I work in academia (in public health epidemiology) for nowhere near as much as I could easily make in industry, and part of the reason is that this way I am giving something to the world. Also its probably the case that as people we aren't predisposed to caring about things that aren't immediately aroud us, which in a globalised world is a shame and a problem.
That doesn't negate the good we can do for the people in our own communities though. And I'm not talking about philanthropy, just establishing a system that is fair and in which people are given the help to help themselves when they need it.
I would hate to live in your world. I value compassion as highly as intelligence, and letting somebody suffer and die while you are able to help, on some aloof philosophical or eugenic basis is simply inhumane. Is there anybody in your life that you care about? Would you try to help them if they were suffering? Would you care for them less if they'd made a mistake and their suffering was in some way self-inflicted?
You should value people based on what they are or what they can give, not on what they are not or what they lack.
Well you now appear to be a generalist to such an extent that you can have an flaming argument with yourself. Congratulations.
Its not a case of 'expecting to do it for me', its a case of specialisation. Specialisation is essential for development of advanced functions. Just as each of the cells in my body relies on many of the others to work and survive, so do we all depend on the tools and knowledge, as you put it, of each other. This is not a sign of degeneracy. You could make everybody individually able to survive, but you'd take away their ability to do anything else.
I'm afraid the evidence points to the contrary. As a species we don't seem to have any problems surviving.
Moreover the extraordinary success of the human species is mostly, or maybe entirely due to its incredible survival skills. These skills are also very widely adaptable, so we can thrive in whatever environment we find ourselves in. We are not limited by the environment in which we evolved (which certainly didn't include bots on irc) and as soon as a new threat is identfied, we quickly spread the information and all acquire the means to deal with it. How well would the average chimp do on www.ladymonkey.com?
Sorry for feeding the troll but it looked so pathetic I couldn't help it.
I really hope somebody does conduct a randomised trial, so we can have some proper evidence when debating this project. The UK managed to screw up the evaluation of Sure Start (a child development policy) by refusing to randomise the initial allocation, and now we'll never be able to properly evaluate the benefits. It probably falls to local governments to develop and implement these plans though, and not Negroponte, who would certainly be accused of a conflict of interest if the findings were positive.
I am interested in joining your war on the inappropriate use of the word 'war'.
Okay I stand corrected. That's quite shocking. I do more neurological/psychiatric stuff I suppose, which is bit more medical so the samples have to be more population representative, and our study staff spend a lot of time sampling electoral registers and randomly knocking on doors. We even worry sometimes when we see samples all recruited from the same town.
Considering that the majority of psychological studies are performed on college freshmen taking a Psych 101 class, the reality is that "getting an ubiased random sample" is an ideal that researchers rarely worry too much about living up to.
That's not really true. It might be true for toy studies for students or pilots where instruments are being tested (I've done a few myself in that context), but all serious psychological studies spend a good deal of time trying to get their sample right.I understand these arguments, and they're important, but I don't think the answer lies in trying to hide things. The powerful guys will always find a way to get what they want, and its really just the smaller people with legitimate uses going through the correct procedures that you'll hinder.
People can't blackmail you with public domain information. And if the data on minor crimes is available on everybody, then you can point to the selective prosecution. Information is a powerful tool in the hands of both good and bad people.
From scanning those articles it looks as if they are just methods for defining levels of anonymity in a dataset, rather than providing any effective means of achieving it (please correct me if I'm wrong).
I can't see how, for example, if I am planning a study of small area (ie zip code level) variation in the levels of some disease or other, while adjusting for, say, age, sex, and ethnicity, that I could do so without a dataset that included all of these items. How could you make the records less unique without throwing away the data?
We have to accept that if we want meaningful research to happen, then we need some amount of data sharing and linking needs to occur. We need to rely, in medicine at least, on ethics committees to represent our best interests when it comes to striking the balance.
It seems to me that the trend for guarding personal data like its the family silver is a relatively modern thing. If it continues, then reliable unbiassed medical research, especially disease monitoring and control will become impossible.
For more insect related awesomeness the BBC made Life in the Undergrowth a documentary series presented by David Attenborough. There's some really incredible stuff in there. Wasps especially seem to have evolved lots of these rather sinister behaviours.
Are you sure? Are people using data from outside the training set? Because if what you say is true then they're essentially asking people to use some kind of probabilistic record linkage to include external databases, which would automatically include the personal identifiers. This would be highly dubious behaviour.
What NetFlix did that was stupid was include the names of the movies in their dataset. There was no need for this for the prize (unless anybody was using the names for prediction I suppose), anonynous identifiers would have been okay.
My guess is that the high volume would only be used as a screen, so they could identify people for further investigation.
My dad did apparently. As well as inventing the fax machine, graphical user interfaces, the European Economic Community, doormats, capitalism, speed cameras, and gravity. He just forgot to go to the patent office.
Yeah I think you're probably right. I hadn't given extinction much thought. It does seem kind of inevitable that one system would become dominant. And the fossil record won't be much use either.
though honestly the chance of actually finding something like that isn't very great.
Why do say that? 'Life as we know it' arose on Earth just about as soon as we had running water. So it can't be all that unlikely an event. In which case life should have spontaneously arisen at least more than once, especially since Earth is supposedly such a good place for life to start.
If we don't find another instance of life starting on Earth, that'll be bad news for our chances of finding it anywhere else.
Um....
Yeah sorry I actually got that the wrong way around. Apparently the evidence is that more accidents would be prevented in the evenings than would be caused in the mornings.
Why would you demand Firefox from your vendor when you can install it yourself 30 seconds after you get home? The idea that having Firefox preinstalled would influence anybody's choice of vendor is nuts.
Being dark by 4pm in the Winter is a problem with GMT not BST. What you would advocate is BST all year round (so we'd be on Spanish/French time at the moment). The problem with that is that more accidents will happen in the darker mornings, when kids are on their way to school. For some reason this appears to be less of a problem in the afternoon/evenings.
cuz you can study those bees all day long and it won't make you a better web programmer.
No, but you'll be a web programmer who knows a lot about bees. Think of the possibilities!
If a "proof" is published with some steps or information excluded then it's not a proof, it's just an assertion.
I don't agree with this, because by that argument nothing is a proof. Every proof has steps left out, unless you reduce everything to axioms, which is plainly silly.
A proof is a proof if and only if it is enough to convince the person that is reading it. Of course this makes a proof a function of both the reader and the writer, but this is the only way it can be. If the person reading your proof is not convinced by any of the steps and wishes clarification, then you must be able to provide it. If however everbody is happy that the missing steps are okay, then the proof is good.
3. As a US citizen, I'm happy that the US has the best military in the world.
I take issue with this statement, because I know for a fact that the UK has the best military in the world.
More seriously though, everybody I know believes as a 'well known fact' that their own country's military is the worlds best. These are otherwise sensible and not particularly nationalisatic people usually capable of making objective judgements. That's a startlingly good piece of marketing however you look at it.
Seems to me that your chances of finding something interesting go up dramatically.
That depends very much on your belief about the distribution of the interestingness, and how much ground you expect each rover to be able to cover.
If you think that the interesting things are few and scattered, then I agree with you. But there is no real reason to think this, except possibly for the lack of interesting things found so far. A more reasonable hypothesis is that the whole place is interesting, especially if you have a particular location in mind, in which case a detailed look at one area with one rover would be more effective than repeating a more superficial look many times.