Or this was the first attempt at Twitter -- but the format of only 1 character proved overly restrictive, even for teenage Neanderthals with limited communication skills. This poor sap only managed to get the hashtag marker down (#). It only took a few tens of thousands of years to try again with 140 characters -- and now we can communicate with fragmentary badly-formulated thoughts like Neanderthals again.
[/sarcasm]
In all seriousness, what's with calling this "art"? I get how early cave drawings of animals or whatever could be significant in attesting a new kind of representative thought process. But a few carved lines in a wall? I get the point of early 20th-century abstract artists who were trying to break away from Romanticist and Realist ideals of representation in painting, but I hardly think we can ascribe such ideas of "art" to Neanderthals.
TFA seems to imply that it's the apparent lack of functionality that makes it "art," but that itself is a definition of "art" that pretty much was made up by philosophers of aesthetics in the 19th century. Prior to that time, "art" was largely viewed in society as a general kind of craft -- "artists" were generally employed by patrons or had shops in towns where their work was seen to serve some sort of important social purpose, not just be some sort of generic outlet of egotistic creativity. (We still retain that meaning in words like "artisan" and phrases like "The Art of X" which often means something more like "Important Skills for X.") Again, it seems like a rather anachronistic idea.
Rather, what we have evidence of here is apparently some Neanderthals carving lines in a wall for a reason we can't ascertain yet. That is *interesting*. But just because we can't imagine why some primitive hominid might have a good reason to try something like this doesn't mean there's no possible reason. It could have been an elderly crazy Neanderthal whacking a stone tool into a wall. It could have been some young crazy kids doing something stupid. Moreover, anyone who has spent time with pet dogs and cats has surely seen all sorts of animal behavior that we humans can't comprehend and which seems to serve no "purpose," but could easily result in some sort of odd damage or scratch marks or whatever.
Don't get me wrong: this still seems really interesting, but the term "art" causes readers of TFA to make all kinds of potentially unwarranted assumptions about creativity or leisure time or intelligence or whatever. These kind of assumptions are really hard to sort out -- fundamentally, they amount to questions of "intelligent design"... literally. To all those who say that such questions are beyond the realm of science when we talk about evolution, here's a real example that requires us to consider in detail: (1) is this an example of something "designed," or a naturally occurring phenomenon caused by erosion or whatever, and (2) what level of intelligence or intention may have been required to create it, and for what purpose? These are questions archaeologists have to deal with all the time: is this a naturally occurring rock, or an arrowhead shaped and designed by an intelligent being.
(By the way, I'm absolutely NOT advocating the religious sham that goes by the name "intelligent design," which is usually less interested in these actual questions than in restoring creationism in schools. However, I think when debating that issue, it's helpful to realize that scientists do have to confront those exact kinds of questions -- where past events require interpretation and falsifiability is hard to quantify.)
Google has logged over 700,000 miles in those vehicles. Without a single robot-controlled accident.
Yeah, when Google started coming out with these stats a few years back (maybe when they were at 250k or 300k miles), I actually polled my immediate family members about number of accidents and estimate of total miles driven in their lives.
Basically, among my immediate family members I asked, there were a total of 3 accidents over at least 1.5 million miles driven (probably closer to 2 million). And all of these were situations where the other driver was at fault (actually, in one case the fault was actually poorly designed road signage, but the other driver was still deemed at fault). So, my family seems to average about 500k between accidents. On average, I've read stats that are around 150k for all drivers.
But that latter number is not reasonable to compare to Google, since most of Google's miles logged were highway miles. So, if we instead compare good drivers on highways, we might look at trucker stats. In that case, stats suggest 1 accident per at least 250k miles, but only 20% of those cases are the fault of the trucker. So, in real-world situations a professional driver who drives mostly highway miles will easily go over a million miles before causing an accident.
My point is: Google's car so far has barely outperformed my average family member in terms of safety, and it has done so by mostly driving in predictable highway situations, whereas most of my family doesn't tend to log a lot of predictable highway miles. And I'm actually more interested in situations where an AI's lack of adaptability ends up CAUSING accidents than the AI's ability to avoid accidents (which is probably a harder number to figure out, since my understanding is that much of Google's driving takes place in scenarios where a human driver will take over as necessary in complex situations or places where the AI can't do as well) -- it's easy for most people to avoid most accidents if they drive reasonably, which is why my family averages 500k between accidents, and truckers can go over a million miles without causing one.
I'm not saying Google's stats aren't an achievement. I'm just saying that I'm going to wait for an accident rate over at least a few tens of millions of miles logged in a greater variety of scenarios before I think we have enough data to assess safety -- and enough to say whether Google's AI actually drives better than my average family member.
I'm equally sure that there will be exponentially more situations where standard automation will make better decisions, and produce better outcomes, than average (or even well above-average) human drivers.
I absolutely agree with you that there are probably already "exponentially more situations where standard automation will make better decisions." Human drivers make stupid decisions all the time -- driving too fast, following too close, changing lanes abruptly without signaling, etc. But thankfully, humans are also adaptable enough to deal with a lot of bad unexpected things that come about because of those bad decisions.
I'm less certain whether I agree with you that AI will "produce better outcomes" in "exponentially more situations" anytime soon, mostly because of articles like this one. It sounds like AI is great for dealing with the expected, and it probably survives well by having detailed information about the route along with pointedly NOT making all those poor decisions that human drivers make (i.e., actually using a safe following distance, not weaving between lanes, etc.).
But the question is -- in real life where significant adaptability is required -- which factor will win out? Will AI perform better because all of those "better decisions" prevent more accidents, or will AI's lack of adaptability cause more accidents than all the "better decisions" prevent? What really matters is the number of serious and fatal accidents per X number of miles -- an AI may make "better decisions" 99% of a time than a human, but it's those 1% of cases where accident avoidance is critical where adaptability matters... and if AI doesn't have it, AI's stats may not be better than humans in terms of outcomes for a while.
I tend to agree with GP on this: it will be decades before AI will achieve adaptability to ALL roadway conditions on unknown roads (or at least roads with unknown novel hazards) that will outperform GOOD human drivers (not stupid humans who drive like maniacs).
That doesn't mean that AI won't be able to perform well under controlled conditions on well-known routes -- the question is just when that limited functionality becomes good enough for drivers, safe enough the regulatory agencies will allow them to be sold to anyone, and safe enough that the legal problems that could arise (liability issues, insurance issues, etc.) can be adequately resolved..
I'm sorry, but "there will always be situations where a human performs better than AI" sounds an awful lot like "I won't wear a seat belt because it might trap me in a burning car".
I really don't mean to be a jerk about this, but didn't you actually just utter pretty much those exact words?! -- from earlier in your post:
I'm sure that there will always be a few situations where a skilled human driver will make better decisions, and produce better outcomes, than standard automation.
So, given that you said that and that you were "sure" of that statement, does that mean you also don't wear a seat belt because you're afraid of dying in a car fire? Just wonderin'.:)
Yes, that's true too. Most people still think of watches as uniquely about checking the time (despite smartwatches, etc.). Glancing at your watch is probably the clearest signal you can give to others that you're worried about the time (e.g. may need to go, have another meeting, etc.). Checking your phone may just make you look rude or bored, since phones have so many other functions you could be monitoring.
I still wear a wristwatch. I've worn one constantly since I was 10. I'll probably be buried with one.
To me, a wristwatch is an essential tool. I give talks, teach classes, run meetings -- and I find it really annoying to do these things without bringing my analog watch.
Many rooms do not have visible clocks when I'm doing these things. But if I'm trying to run a class or give a talk or run a meeting on a schedule, I need to know what time it is. On the other hand, I don't want to make it look like I'm continuously checking the time, because that tends to make audiences nervous or anxious or feel bored or think you're bored or whatever.
Say I'm teaching a class. If the room doesn't have a visible clock, what are my options?
(1) Consult a classroom computer, if there is one. Well, some classrooms might not have one, but even if they do, usually a screensaver or something will turn off the monitor. So I need to go over and hit the spacebar (or worse, login) everytime I need to check the time. Yes, I could reconfigure the computer, but I may not have an account on it, it may be shared, etc.
(2) I could use my phone. But again we have the screen off problem. If I leave my phone on the desk, I'll still need to go turn it on to check the time, and it looks like I'm "checking my phone" (for messages, whatever). Not a good message to send to the students when I tell them I don't want to see *them* doing that. If it's in my pocket, I don't need to walk to it, but it's even more noticeable when I pull it from my pocket and turn the screen on briefly. I might be able to set my phone screen to stay on, but that wastes a lot of battery.
(3) I could bring along a tiny desk clock or something, but why do that when I already can just have one available on my wrist (which is probably even smaller and less obtrusive)?
(4) I can take my analog wristwatch off and set it down in a central location to where I'm presenting from. With an analog clockface, I can easily tell the time from just about any angle (not true of computer screens or phone screens), maybe 10-15 feet away (where I wouldn't necessarily be able to read a digital watch). And it's already on my wrist, so I don't need to remember to bring extra equipment. Even if I keep it on my wrist, it's usually less obtrusive to check the time than walking to some computer or pulling out a phone.
Basically, if you want to know what time it is in a room where there's no visible clock, but you don't want to necessarily signal to everyone else that you're constantly checking the time, a watch is a pretty ideal solution.
Pre-industrially, those two blocks would have an hour or two of waking time between them
Indeed -- it was basically forgotten for about a century, but recently historians have been finding references EVERYWHERE to "first sleep" (or "early slumber" or "beauty sleep") and "second sleep" in many cultures around the world.
The first descriptions of "insomnia" come up only in the 19th century, just about the same time that the two sleep blocks really started to disappear.
And we should not forget the role of coffee in this transition. (From the link above:)
[A researcher] attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night.
Coffee may not just ruin your sleep sometimes if you drink too much -- it may have played a major role in divorcing our entire species from its most natural sleep patterns and convincing everyone that a solid 8-hour block is most "normal."
About ten years ago, I cut out caffeine altogether.
Yes, I did that too out of necessity about 5 years ago. Not that I was ever actually "addicted" like many people -- I would rarely have coffee more than a few times per week, though I used to brew a LOT of my own tea and iced tea.
But at some point my body seemed to become hypersensitive to it. Now, if I have a cup of coffee after 2pm, it will likely keep me awake until the middle of the night. So I just had to move to decaf tea and coffee.
Now, I'm more alert than I was when I was caffeinated
This is the thing about studies like this. Many of these studies are rather small (and I didn't read the full studies), but I really hope they'd measure the differences between those who are heavily addicted to caffeine vs. "a cup or two per day" vs. "rarely consume caffeine or never."
Especially when you have other studies like this one, which suggests that caffeine addicts actually normally are functioning on a lower level than non-addicts, and the best they can hope for is a return to "baseline" by drinking more caffeine.
If there were differences in the napping between groups, it would be very relevant for recommendations. The danger of such studies without these kinds of nuances is you get people thinking, "I just need to drink even more coffee! And take naps!" when a more realistic recommendation would perhaps be to stop the addiction, live most of your life at a higher functioning level overall, and when you're really tired and need it, do the "caffeine nap" trick only occasionally.
(By the way, so no one can accuse me of being misleading, Bradley's observation of stellar aberration in 1729 was seen by many as the first proof of the earth's motion. However, my point was that soon after that the church eased its restrictions, and it had eliminated them before all the other problems with heliocentric theories were finally resolved empirically.)
"While 87 per cent knowing that the earth goes around the sun is pretty good, that still leaves 13 per cent of Canadians that haven't absorbed the scientific knowledge of several centuries ago," Ingram said.
It was also a pretty tough question for the Catholic church for quite a long time.
Not as long as you might think. The church removed the general prohibition against books advocating heliocentrism in 1758, and the last precedents for prohibiting specific passages (e.g., of Copernicus) were effectively overturned by 1820.
Meanwhile, the first actual empirical proofs of the earth's motion occurred mostly in the 19th century, with the first measurement of stellar parallax occurring in 1838. (Parallax had been predicted since the 1500s if the earth were in motion, but never observed.) Coriolis forces in projectiles, which had been predicted since the 1600s if the earth were in motion, were first measured in the 1800s. The problem of seemingly fixed apparent diameters of stars was finally resolved in the 1800s as scientists realized that stars must be farther away than had previously been thought (related to the parallax measurements). (Since the 1500s, scientists had predicted that if the earth were in motion, stellar diameters should vary as the earth moved closer and farther away from a given star, but this effect was not observed empirically.)
I could go on, but you get the point. Before the 1800s, there was simply no empirical evidence that could say the earth was definitely in motion around the sun -- other than that the math got really hard after Newton if you wanted to try to adhere to geocentric model.
So, the Catholic Church dropped the prohibitions actually a bit before we actually had real "proof" of the earth's motion.
Don't get me wrong: I thoroughly agree that the church banning books or passages of books was a terrible blow against free speech and free expression. But in Galileo's time, there really just wasn't the kind of actual "proof" we assume there was about the earth's motion -- Galileo did NOT have a better model (his circular orbits still required a bunch of epicycles, and his proof of the earth's motion required there to be a single tide per day at noon). He should NOT have been censored or arrested for asserting his beliefs, but let's be clear that that's exactly what they were at the time: beliefs.
The church can rightly be accused of censoring free speech or being overly conservative in its scientific tenets, but it actually stopped being upset about this question before it was finally resolved empirically.
The science literacy part asked questions like:
Does the sun go around the earth or does the earth go around the sun?
Human beings as we know them today developed from earlier species of animals. True or false?
Electrons are smaller than atoms. True or false?
I will never understand why anyone thinks asking questions like this is some sort of credible test of "science literacy."
Basically, these surveys usually end up testing only two things: (1) how good are you at memorizing and recalling facts your middle-school science teacher told you? and (2) are you more likely to trust your middle-school science teacher over your priest/rabbi/shaman/psychic/New Age crystals dude/whoever else also tells you things about the world?
Why do we think that "science literary" should only correlate best with those who have good memorization skills and blindly accept the authority of their science teacher?
If you sat me down in a room to interview people, and you told me to evaluate their "science literacy," I'd probably start by posing a real-world scenario, present them with some empirical evidence, and then have them choose among some conclusions from that empirical evidence to see whether they can evaluate and follow rational arguments. For more advanced levels, I might throw some data or some basic stats or some graphs at them too -- nothing requiring any computation -- and see whether they get fooled by bad logic, or common reasoning pitfalls.
Frankly, like Sherlock Holmes, I don't give a CRAP whether someone has memorized some answer to whether the earth goes around the sun or the reverse. It's completely irrelevant to most people in their everyday lives, and it's contrary to common empirical evidence (the earth actually does feel "stationary" and the sun does "appear" to move in the sky). What I *would* care about in terms of "science literacy" is whether I could present a person with a set of further empirical observations about the sun and the earth which should lead them to a rational conclusion that the earth goes around the sun -- and if they can correctly follow that argument, then they might be "science literate."
Simply asking them to regurgitate facts based on their adherence and trust in some authority figure is NOT "scientific" in the least. (Note, by the way, that I'm NOT at all arguing that trusting in your preacher or something over a scientist is a good thing -- but blind faith without understanding is still blind faith, whether the memorized "beliefs" you're regurgitating conform to science or to some wacko religion.)
These kinds of tests are about as useful as trying to test "reading literacy" by asking someone to identify letters in different fonts, or testing "mathematical literacy" by having people read numbers aloud. Such activities tell you nothing about whether that person has the least bit of understanding about how to read or do math. They can identify some basic facts, but they can't actually use them or do anything with them.
I'm also NOT saying that we should expect the general public to have enough expertise to be professional scientists. Of course not. But if we actually want to test "science literacy," we should see whether they have a minimum understanding of how to interpret evidence and empirical data, and what sorts of conclusions can be drawn from it. If they can't do that, they really don't understand much about science at all... and we might as well be asking them questions about trivia concerning Shakespeare's plays, or other random science questions.
I mean, is it really that much more useful to memorize a fact about the earth's motion that's pretty much irrelevant to everyday life than it is to, say, memorize the atomic weight of carbon, or the first 100 digits of pi, or the number of species of known insects? (Of course, some scientific facts ARE really relevant, like understanding that vaccines actually work -- and being ignorant of some scientific facts can be danger
The clincher for me - which indisputably shows the authors' bias - is that Canada ranks #1 in people protesting GMOs and nuclear power, and the authors consider this a good sign that their population is scientifically literate!
The report says nothing of the kind. Did you read it? GMOs and nuclear power are mentioned as divisive issues, but there is no data on the ranking of people against them.
Well, for some reason the CBC's coverage of this seems to think that Canada is 3rd out of 33 countries in having high numbers protesting nuclear power. I haven't read the full report, but either (1) the CBC is wrong, (2) you're wrong, or (3) the CBC is reporting based on true information that isn't in the report you read.
Regardless, it sounds like SOMEBODY did a survey comparing attitudes about at least nuclear power and found Canadians were near the top in terms of objecting and protesting.
Science is intended more to adapt an actual "theory" over time to better suit the evidence that it is presented with until it increasingly encompasses all edge cases that relate to the topic in question. That "adaption" can be considered disproving with an immediate re-creation of an alternate theory moments later to encompass the changing circumstances.
Or, well... it "could be considered" exactly what it is: retaining an existing theory and all of its basic assumptions, while tacking on modifications or qualifiers to make it better fit the data. That's not "disproving" anything. That's improving an existing theory, and that's what the vast majority of everyday science is about. Most active scientists are working within existing paradigms and working out the details of theories by starting with all the assumed knowledge of their fields.
No actual scientist is walking around questioning every scientific "fact" on a daily basis. "Oh, you know what, I really don't believe that whole 'water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen' thing. That whole 'atomic elements build compounds' thing sounds potentially bogus and 'unproven,' so let's have my lab spend the next six months retesting that and finding out what water really is made of!"
No sane scientist thinks like that, and scientific progress would be practically impossible if we went out actually worrying about potentially falsifying everything.
Instead -- we accept much of scientific knowledge as "proven" (not in a formal logical/mathematical sense, but the normal everyday sense of "well-tested"), and we go on with our lives filling out the "edge cases" as you put it. Only if some major discrepancies arise repeatedly do we begin to wonder whether underlying assumptions may be at fault... and even then it would take a heck of a lot to overturn the idea that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, for example.
On the flip side, actually "proving" something is exceptionally hard work. It is saying that at no point, ever, under any circumstances in this or any conceivable universe, with any natural or unnatural influence could this situation *EVER* take place for *ANY* reason. These are the rules, these are how things behave, and this is how things will always, and forever behave; EXACTLY like this and there's not a damn thing that anyone including the hand of God himself could do to change that.
That is a completely and utterly BS definition of "proof" that no one EVER uses except in discussions like this. Seriously. It's not what the math or formal logic people mean by "proof," because actual math and formal logic people generally recognize that their claims are not directly relatable to the real world, let alone "any conceivable universe." Math and formal logic are abstract symbolic systems. While they may at times be very good models for talking about the real world, they do NOT have any exact correspondence with the real world.
Find me an exact "triangle," for example, in the real world. Not something that looks vaguely like a triangle -- something that fits the mathematical definition of one, with three exact points, precisely straight line segments, etc. Even if you came close, to create something that on a microscopic level still seemed to be a triangle, on the individual atomic level there would be irregularities -- and even if that were somehow "perfect," we could keep moving down until we got to the "quantum foam" level... a real EXACT triangle in the mathematical sense doesn't exist in the real world.
Does that mean all of Euclid and geometry and all the formal "proofs" are wrong or irrelevant? Of course not. But they are working with certain kinds of abstract assumptions that have no exact correspondence with the real world. They are a MODEL. So, when you try to apply that standard of "proof" to "this or any conceivable universe," you're doing something completely illogical. No one ever actual
Or we could just realize that "proof" in empirical science means something different than it does in pure mathematics.
THIS. By GP's standard, >99% of the uses of the word "proof" in the English language are invalid. Almost all uses of the word "proof" in thousands of legal statutes around the world are bogus and meaningless.
And, empirically, from looking at actual scientific methods as practiced, it's clear that scientists clearly do NOT treat all scientific theories as equally "falsifiable." Some are treated as "proven," if not in a strict mathematical-philosophical sense. It would take a LOT more to overturn a basic established law of physics than some off-the-cuff guess ("hypothesis") in a new experiment. So what exactly is it that we are doing when we verify and reverify and reverify a basic well-established tenet of basic science over centuries if not, in essence, proving "proof" of it (in any reasonable sense of the English word outside of the strange world of pure math and logic puzzles).
Meh. This is one of those language battles that is probably lost. We still refer to "films" too even when most are no longer watched on actual film stock (and many are increasingly shot and produced without film either).
There are lots of words like this. When's the last time you "dialed" a phone with an actual dial? For me, I'd say almost 20 years ago. When's the last time you "hung up" a phone, i.e., literally hung it up on the wall (not "put it down" on a tabletop phone), with the force of gravity pulling the little cradle down to cut the line? I'd say maybe 25 years or more for me, and that was only on my grandmother's old dial wall phone that was probably at least 20 years old.
So, I think we may be stuck with "tape" as a synonym for "record," probably for decades to come.
I know you're an AC, but it's really shocking to see something this ignorant. NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN voted for the ACA, not in the House, not in the Senate. I'm willing to blame Republicans for a lot of things, but this bill was the way it was solely to get support from Dems, and that's ALL it got. How and bill designed by Dems and only voted for by Dems (including the guy who signed it into law) somehow has problems that are solely the fault of Republicans is very confusing... even by AC logic.
It depends on what "the point" is. The "point" of this thread was the OP asking whether modern "paleo" diets are anything like actual ancient "paleo" diets. And the answer is "no." That's the "point" of this thread.
I was in no way passing judgment on whether some aspect of modern "paleo" approaches may be good or bad nutritionally -- only pointing out that they have very little in common with the foods eaten by people a hundred thousand years ago or whatever.
Yes a modern orange is excessively sweet (no seriously, they are far too bloody sweet, it tastes like sugar, not orange anymore) - apples too - however if you eat a diet of 95% unprocessed goods, green leafy vegetables (modern or not) - a sensible amount of fruit and some meat, it's still vastly vastly better for you than eating high processed garbage, including even "healthy" things like packaged breakfast cereals.
At no point did I imply that all aspects of the modern "paleo" approaches were necessarily bad nutritional advice. Obviously eating less processed food is a reasonable choice, but one doesn't need to go back 100,000 years to find less processed food. If you ate a diet only using foods found a couple HUNDERED years ago, you'd also be eating mostly "unprocessed" foods by today's standards, and those foods from a couple hundred years ago would be a lot more like today's supermarket "unprocessed foods" than trying to make some claim to approach a diet of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago.
It's the dogmatism about it that I see as the problem, not the general principles. There's no necessarily logical reason to exclude all foods that date from later than the dawn of agriculture if you're admitting a bunch of foods that have been selectively bred in agriculture for millennia. The issue should be about balancing the nutrients among different food sources, regardless of when those foods date from.
And frankly, if you watch the video I linked, at the end of her presentation, the speaker comes to similar conclusions -- conclusions that sound suspiciously similar to things that "paleo diet" proponents often say. The difference is whether you want to buy into a diet because of arbitrary distinctions created for marketing reasons, or because it actually is more balanced. Most of the paleo dogma about what always to eat and what never to eat is unfortunately about the former.
Maybe I just don't understand what paleo is all about, but trying to achieve a balance of macronutrients closer to those original diets seems like the point (or it should IMO) and not actually trying to eat foods that are 100% like what our ancestors ate.
I think you DO understand what the modern "Paleo" approaches are about. However, there's a common misconception that if you eat the modern "paleo" diet that you're actually eating something like humans would long ago. That's partly from the branding and marketing of the diet, more than anything else. From what I understand, those who actually promote it and have researched its effects tend to phrase it more like what you described than as an actual simulation of an ancient diet.
I was merely responding to a thread where someone posed the question about this misconception.
On the other hand, I think that the modern food differences ARE so vast that it's really not reasonable to achieve an accurate "balance of macronutrients" (as you put it) like ancient diets while eating modern foods. There's also a lot of dogmatism among many of the diet's proponents that takes the form of "Did people eat X before agriculture? If not, then we shouldn't eat X." My argument is that if we start going down that road and looking for exact equivalence, we immediately have to throw out almost all foods (even "raw, natural, whole" ones) from the modern supermarket.
So, rather than worrying about the dogmatism of what ancient people may have eaten, the more reasonable approach is actually to achieve a better nutrient balance -- in whatever way is best and using whatever foods will work best to achieve that goal, regardless of whether they're truly an ancient "wild" food or are some vastly different descendant of an ancient food or are a more modern food that also can serve to create dietary balance. The whole "paleo" thing, therefore, can end up standing in the way, because it's based on a misconception.
(Just to be clear, "paleo diets" may have some benefits for some people. I'm NOT saying the "paleo diet" ideas are necessarily bad. I'm just saying that in most cases they're NOT actually very much like true hunter-gatherer diets before the dawn of agriculture.)
Re:"Paleolithic diets" now vs then
on
The Evolution of Diet
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· Score: 4, Interesting
The article mentions "unrefined grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables" so your "for example" has holes in it.
What does that have to do with anything? The context of that quote is:
The foods we choose to eat in the coming decades will have dramatic ramifications for the planet. Simply put, a diet that revolves around meat and dairy, a way of eating thatâ(TM)s on the rise throughout the developing world, will take a greater toll on the worldâ(TM)s resources than one that revolves around unrefined grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables.
The article here does NOT imply that paleo diets revolved around MODERN "unrefined grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables." It instead merely hints that the environmental consequences of trying to raise more meat for billions of people requires a lot more resources than those MODERN foods.
The fact is that agriculture has selectively bred many of these things over the millennia to make them tastier, more nutrient dense, higher in sugar, etc. The kind of "unrefined grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables" that were actually around hundreds of thousands of years ago were vastly different (in most cases) from what we pick off plants in our gardens and fields today -- even the "unrefined" ones.
So, GP's absolutely correct on this point. Human selective breeding has significantly changed both plant and animal sources of nutrients. Thus, no matter how "unrefined" our food is, very few things at a modern supermarket would have been available to a hunter-gatherer hundreds of thousands of years ago... hence, the "paleo" diet is mostly wishful thinking.
Re:"Paleolithic diets" now vs then
on
The Evolution of Diet
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I doubt so-called "Paleolithic diets" are anything like people ate during that.
Yes. The classic debunking, from someone who is actually an expert on early human diets, is here.
Now, before all you Paleo fanatics get worked up, yes -- this speaker overemphasizes the carnivore aspect of many so-called "Paleo" diets. And there are some other details she gets wrong, but mostly in stereotyping modern "paleo diets," not in her knowledge of actual ancient diets.
For example, people ate fruit then, but it was seasonal, and very different from the fruit we eat today. Same with veggies. The stuff we eat is nothing like the stuff that grew in the wild.
Yes, and this is the critical thing from that video. Even if you dismiss all the stuff she says about overemphasizing meat, the reality is that our plant-based foods are completely different from the plants that would have been eaten before the dawn of agriculture. We've selectively bred fruits and vegetables for millennia to make them tastier to us, and more concentrated in sugars and other nutrients. (And we've likewise selectively bred our meat sources so that they are very different in composition from wild game.)
So, yeah, it's basically IMPOSSIBLE to eat "like a caveman did" with normal foods from the supermarket. The "paleo" diet might be a few steps closer to some sort of early hominid diet, but it's still significantly closer to the modern diet than it is to anything eaten hundreds of thousands of years ago.
You can buy all the "unrefined" and "natural" and "raw" crap you want, but unless you're seeking out the wild forms of ancient plants (and probably eating many times the amount of fiber even vegetarians eat today) and hunting wild game, chances are your "paleo diet" is as far from the "caveman" as the diet of a rich nobleman 200 years ago would be.
I hate to break it to you, but that is exactly what you are doing.
I hate to break it to you, but I think you might need to work on your reading comprehension skills.
You are also claiming that only woman without much brains or ability to think for themselves and plan ahead like to have a good time in public.
Actually, GP didn't say that AT ALL. At no point did he make assertions about intelligence ("without much brains") or "ability to think for themselves." That's entirely something you manufactured -- you may want to look into the mirror if you're worried about people making assumptions about others and stereotyping them.
What GP was specifically talking about was your third category -- people who don't "plan ahead." I know plenty of very intelligent people who make incredibly poor choices in social situations. I know plenty of very independent folks who can "think for themselves" who also make poor choices in planning. In fact, while I'd say that people who are a little above average in intelligence are better than average at these things, those who are very intelligent often get worse again.
GP said absolutely nothing about intelligence or independence -- he simply stated that some people don't plan ahead or think about all the "bad situations" they could get into in social situations, and that's simply a fact. Those people exist. Those are the people who really need this stuff. But I don't think it's at all a controversial claim to say that some people don't think about possible consequences in social situations, and they are more likely to fall victim to some bad scenario than others. And it's certainly not "blaming the victim" to provide advice that would aid in preventing date rape, as GP did.
And also, GP never said or implied that "only women without [X] like to have a good time in public." He said that women who plan ahead when they are having a good time are less likely to end up in scenario where they can be taken advantage of than women who DON'T plan ahead when they are having a good time.
Let's review the actual advice GP gave:
The best defense is, as always, for women to watch out for their friends when at bars and parties. Don't go wandering off alone after heavy drinking with a guy you don't know or trust.
Do you actually disagree with this advice? Or do you believe it's impossible "to have a good time in public" if you bother to make sure you're with some friends and not go wandering off alone (i.e., not "in public") with a guy you don't know?
Look -- random hook-ups are a risky business. Aside from STDs, you could be locking yourself up in room with an ax murderer, or a rapist, or... who knows? If I were a young woman, I would definitely follow GP's advice and go drinking with friends and never agree to go somewhere alone with a guy I just met.
But that's me. I'm cautious by nature. I also don't bet on horses or play in traffic, which is effectively what you're doing when you put your trust in being intimate with a person who is stronger and bigger than you without knowing a lot about him/her first. Sure, in an ideal world no one should have to worry about such things, but given that everyone knows it's not an ideal world, random hook-ups are inherently more risky than many other activities.
I also occasionally like to have a "good time in public," but I don't know why that means that a "good time in public" needs to include having a private session afterward with some unknown person.
But there are other people who are less cautious. I don't think it's a stretch to say (as GP did) that those people are also less likely to seek out all sorts of preventative items to warn them of date rape, if they haven't already taken other measures to do so. That's not "blaming the victim" -- that's lamenting the fact that there are terrible people in the world and realistically noting that some people take less precautions in general when confronting those terrible people than others.
Where is the push to get men to become primary school teachers?
Unfortunately, our mass media's ridiculous "pedophile" scares have taken care of that. Do a cursory internet search sometime for male teachers in elementary or daycare -- you'll inevitably find a bunch of articles about how parents are convinced that any man who might want to spend some time with small children MUST be a pedophile. Nevermind that pedophilia is incredibly rare, and your son or daughter is probably a hundred times more likely to be sexually abused by as a teenager by a high school teacher or coach than by a pedophile.
So, even if men wanted to get into this profession, we have huge hurdles -- and I agree it's really not right. (As a father, I've even occasionally seen the suspicious looks and odd concern when I would take my young child to the playground or even just for a walk around the neighborhood.)
All of that said, most primary school teachers I know would be happy to have more male colleagues. Most of them know the benefits of having male teachers around small kids -- unfortunately, for us to start a campaign for male teachers, we'd have to overcome the inaccurate media fear campaign about pedophiles... and "Think of the children!" always overrides logic or reason.
Same for healthcare. With the exception of doctors most healthcare is dominated by women yet men are a large number of patients.
I posted on this above with links, so I'll just briefly say that there are in fact organizations trying to get more men into nursing -- and given the growing nursing shortage, just about any place would be thrilled if the numbers of male nurses went up.
How come there aren't any people complaining that there are VASTLY more women in nursing than men.
There are. For example, have a look at organizations devoted to recruiting more men, like the American Assembly for Men in Nursing or the "Are you man enough to be a nurse?" campaign. Also see various studies and concerns about the issue on the Minority Nurse page. It's really a complicated issue, and organizations like this have really been trying to figure out recruitment efforts.
Maybe there should be more "people complaining" about this issue, but your assertion that "there aren't any" is just untrue. The fact is that we have a shortage of qualified nurses that is only projected to get worse, and many of these organizations, many hospitals, etc. would be extremely happy if they could get more male nurses, or get more men who are currently unemployed or in crappy jobs in this economy to go to nursing school. But it doesn't help the stereotype when just about every portrayal of a male nurse on television or film is usually made to be the butt of jokes and ridicule.
If there is a social cause, then society can work to undo it. If it is a biological cause, then we can stop wasting time and effort thinking it is a social cause.
First of all, we also need to consider the possibility that it could be BOTH. I.e., that certain gender stereotypes have some relationship to biological facts, and thus gender stereotypes end up having other effects which are not necessarily biological (but may be partly rooted in them).
The reason I bring this up is because it makes an interesting conundrum for these sorts of arguments. If something is entirely biological, there's supposedly no sense fighting it. (Of course, not all women are exactly the same, and some may have those "natural" biological elements emphasized to more or less degree in their talents and personalities.) But if something is entirely social, it's perceived as a gross injustice.
But what if we combine these? For example, someone earlier in this thread brought up the biological fact that women bear children and thus may need to take significant time off of work to have a kid and especially in the first year or two do things that only women can do (particularly nursing). If a woman wants to have more than one child, that can easily add up to 5-10 years of absence from the job force. In a fast-paced field, it may be difficult for women to then hop immediately back in to the job force with skills that are already starting to be outdated.
So, the issue here is not entirely biological (women could choose to forego children or dump their kid into daycare when he/she is a couple months old or women could actively try to keep up their skills even while not working full-time), but it's not entirely social either (men don't have the same hormones driving them to have children or nurse or be with infants). Yet we're still stuck with the problematic effects -- women will often get behind in their jobs or have trouble keeping up or returning to the workforce. We can't just blame it on biology, but it seems impossible to completely eliminate social issues that arise either.
But I bet that many women of her era would have convinced themselves that being a chemist was a foolish notion and wouldn't have pursued it at all. That's social self-regulation. That should be eliminated.
Obviously we need to eliminate actual ignorant prejudice. But the problems are often a lot more subtle than that these days. I know a lot of professional women who "came up through the ranks" in the 1970s, and they have horrific stories to tell about the kinds of indignities women suffered in the workforce back then. Let's not forget all the amazing progress we've made in a few decades... it's important to keep that in perspective.
Nowadays, we're mostly confronting those harder problems I mentioned earlier, like how to figure out a way to be "fair" in a workplace (and all the related decisions like salary, promotion, etc.) where one gender is more likely than the other to disappear from their career for 5-10 years at a time.
And we also have to deal with cases where "social self-regulation" actually does serve some important purpose. Sure, is it biologically possible for a woman to have a child and dump the infant in daycare almost immediately to be fed with formula? Yes, obviously. And lots of women do it because they have to.
But aren't there also psychological and perhaps social benefits to allowing women to choose to stay home and take care of a small child as they are biologically programmed to do? Moreover, aren't there also social benefits to having communities where children are raised by some parent (male or female) who can spend more time with them, rather than getting kids out of the home as quickly as possible and into large groups of kids often taken care of by people paid minimum wage? (Of course, some might argue the reverse -- that many parents are bad parents, and daycare may be helpful to the kids. Perhaps that's true
"So if you were interested in bioinformatics, or computational economics, or quantitative anthropology, you really needed to be part of the computer science world."
These weren't even things in 1984.
It depends on what you mean by "weren't even things." If you mean that most people didn't know about them, well, that's still true. If you mean that NO ONE -- even at research labs and in grad school projects, etc. -- was doing this stuff, well, you're wrong. Even if you just do some searches in Google Books restricting sources to 1984 or earlier, you'll find the use of the term "bioinformatics" going back to the early 1970s (the first shared protein databases go back to the early 70s, and gene sequencing software to the late 70s), and entire books devoted to mathematical programming and computational modeling in economics from the 1970s.
As for "quantitative anthropology," there are a few sources out there that mention applying quantitative methods back then, but I doubt there was as much computer use as in, say, economics. On the other hand, I know a number of people who did their doctoral dissertations in the humanities in the 1960s and early 1970s who were making use of computers to try things similar to what we'd called "digital humanities" today. And I've read papers in the humanities using computer-aided analysis going back to at least the early 1960s. Perhaps it was the "space race" era or something that influenced those projects, but computers were around particularly at universities.
Computers were not so pervasive that you were missing out on much if you didn't know anything about them.
I'd absolutely agree with that. But there's a difference between saying that "you weren't missing out on much" and "those ideas/fields didn't exist" (and sometimes made significant use of computers) in 1984.
Slashdot Mirror
its obvious they were playing tic-tac-toe
Or this was the first attempt at Twitter -- but the format of only 1 character proved overly restrictive, even for teenage Neanderthals with limited communication skills. This poor sap only managed to get the hashtag marker down (#). It only took a few tens of thousands of years to try again with 140 characters -- and now we can communicate with fragmentary badly-formulated thoughts like Neanderthals again.
[/sarcasm]
In all seriousness, what's with calling this "art"? I get how early cave drawings of animals or whatever could be significant in attesting a new kind of representative thought process. But a few carved lines in a wall? I get the point of early 20th-century abstract artists who were trying to break away from Romanticist and Realist ideals of representation in painting, but I hardly think we can ascribe such ideas of "art" to Neanderthals.
TFA seems to imply that it's the apparent lack of functionality that makes it "art," but that itself is a definition of "art" that pretty much was made up by philosophers of aesthetics in the 19th century. Prior to that time, "art" was largely viewed in society as a general kind of craft -- "artists" were generally employed by patrons or had shops in towns where their work was seen to serve some sort of important social purpose, not just be some sort of generic outlet of egotistic creativity. (We still retain that meaning in words like "artisan" and phrases like "The Art of X" which often means something more like "Important Skills for X.") Again, it seems like a rather anachronistic idea.
Rather, what we have evidence of here is apparently some Neanderthals carving lines in a wall for a reason we can't ascertain yet. That is *interesting*. But just because we can't imagine why some primitive hominid might have a good reason to try something like this doesn't mean there's no possible reason. It could have been an elderly crazy Neanderthal whacking a stone tool into a wall. It could have been some young crazy kids doing something stupid. Moreover, anyone who has spent time with pet dogs and cats has surely seen all sorts of animal behavior that we humans can't comprehend and which seems to serve no "purpose," but could easily result in some sort of odd damage or scratch marks or whatever.
Don't get me wrong: this still seems really interesting, but the term "art" causes readers of TFA to make all kinds of potentially unwarranted assumptions about creativity or leisure time or intelligence or whatever. These kind of assumptions are really hard to sort out -- fundamentally, they amount to questions of "intelligent design"... literally. To all those who say that such questions are beyond the realm of science when we talk about evolution, here's a real example that requires us to consider in detail: (1) is this an example of something "designed," or a naturally occurring phenomenon caused by erosion or whatever, and (2) what level of intelligence or intention may have been required to create it, and for what purpose? These are questions archaeologists have to deal with all the time: is this a naturally occurring rock, or an arrowhead shaped and designed by an intelligent being.
(By the way, I'm absolutely NOT advocating the religious sham that goes by the name "intelligent design," which is usually less interested in these actual questions than in restoring creationism in schools. However, I think when debating that issue, it's helpful to realize that scientists do have to confront those exact kinds of questions -- where past events require interpretation and falsifiability is hard to quantify.)
Google has logged over 700,000 miles in those vehicles. Without a single robot-controlled accident.
Yeah, when Google started coming out with these stats a few years back (maybe when they were at 250k or 300k miles), I actually polled my immediate family members about number of accidents and estimate of total miles driven in their lives.
Basically, among my immediate family members I asked, there were a total of 3 accidents over at least 1.5 million miles driven (probably closer to 2 million). And all of these were situations where the other driver was at fault (actually, in one case the fault was actually poorly designed road signage, but the other driver was still deemed at fault). So, my family seems to average about 500k between accidents. On average, I've read stats that are around 150k for all drivers.
But that latter number is not reasonable to compare to Google, since most of Google's miles logged were highway miles. So, if we instead compare good drivers on highways, we might look at trucker stats. In that case, stats suggest 1 accident per at least 250k miles, but only 20% of those cases are the fault of the trucker. So, in real-world situations a professional driver who drives mostly highway miles will easily go over a million miles before causing an accident.
My point is: Google's car so far has barely outperformed my average family member in terms of safety, and it has done so by mostly driving in predictable highway situations, whereas most of my family doesn't tend to log a lot of predictable highway miles. And I'm actually more interested in situations where an AI's lack of adaptability ends up CAUSING accidents than the AI's ability to avoid accidents (which is probably a harder number to figure out, since my understanding is that much of Google's driving takes place in scenarios where a human driver will take over as necessary in complex situations or places where the AI can't do as well) -- it's easy for most people to avoid most accidents if they drive reasonably, which is why my family averages 500k between accidents, and truckers can go over a million miles without causing one.
I'm not saying Google's stats aren't an achievement. I'm just saying that I'm going to wait for an accident rate over at least a few tens of millions of miles logged in a greater variety of scenarios before I think we have enough data to assess safety -- and enough to say whether Google's AI actually drives better than my average family member.
I'm equally sure that there will be exponentially more situations where standard automation will make better decisions, and produce better outcomes, than average (or even well above-average) human drivers.
I absolutely agree with you that there are probably already "exponentially more situations where standard automation will make better decisions." Human drivers make stupid decisions all the time -- driving too fast, following too close, changing lanes abruptly without signaling, etc. But thankfully, humans are also adaptable enough to deal with a lot of bad unexpected things that come about because of those bad decisions.
I'm less certain whether I agree with you that AI will "produce better outcomes" in "exponentially more situations" anytime soon, mostly because of articles like this one. It sounds like AI is great for dealing with the expected, and it probably survives well by having detailed information about the route along with pointedly NOT making all those poor decisions that human drivers make (i.e., actually using a safe following distance, not weaving between lanes, etc.).
But the question is -- in real life where significant adaptability is required -- which factor will win out? Will AI perform better because all of those "better decisions" prevent more accidents, or will AI's lack of adaptability cause more accidents than all the "better decisions" prevent? What really matters is the number of serious and fatal accidents per X number of miles -- an AI may make "better decisions" 99% of a time than a human, but it's those 1% of cases where accident avoidance is critical where adaptability matters... and if AI doesn't have it, AI's stats may not be better than humans in terms of outcomes for a while.
I tend to agree with GP on this: it will be decades before AI will achieve adaptability to ALL roadway conditions on unknown roads (or at least roads with unknown novel hazards) that will outperform GOOD human drivers (not stupid humans who drive like maniacs).
That doesn't mean that AI won't be able to perform well under controlled conditions on well-known routes -- the question is just when that limited functionality becomes good enough for drivers, safe enough the regulatory agencies will allow them to be sold to anyone, and safe enough that the legal problems that could arise (liability issues, insurance issues, etc.) can be adequately resolved..
I'm sorry, but "there will always be situations where a human performs better than AI" sounds an awful lot like "I won't wear a seat belt because it might trap me in a burning car".
I really don't mean to be a jerk about this, but didn't you actually just utter pretty much those exact words?! -- from earlier in your post:
I'm sure that there will always be a few situations where a skilled human driver will make better decisions, and produce better outcomes, than standard automation.
So, given that you said that and that you were "sure" of that statement, does that mean you also don't wear a seat belt because you're afraid of dying in a car fire? Just wonderin'. :)
Yes, that's true too. Most people still think of watches as uniquely about checking the time (despite smartwatches, etc.). Glancing at your watch is probably the clearest signal you can give to others that you're worried about the time (e.g. may need to go, have another meeting, etc.). Checking your phone may just make you look rude or bored, since phones have so many other functions you could be monitoring.
I still wear a wristwatch. I've worn one constantly since I was 10. I'll probably be buried with one.
To me, a wristwatch is an essential tool. I give talks, teach classes, run meetings -- and I find it really annoying to do these things without bringing my analog watch.
Many rooms do not have visible clocks when I'm doing these things. But if I'm trying to run a class or give a talk or run a meeting on a schedule, I need to know what time it is. On the other hand, I don't want to make it look like I'm continuously checking the time, because that tends to make audiences nervous or anxious or feel bored or think you're bored or whatever.
Say I'm teaching a class. If the room doesn't have a visible clock, what are my options?
(1) Consult a classroom computer, if there is one. Well, some classrooms might not have one, but even if they do, usually a screensaver or something will turn off the monitor. So I need to go over and hit the spacebar (or worse, login) everytime I need to check the time. Yes, I could reconfigure the computer, but I may not have an account on it, it may be shared, etc.
(2) I could use my phone. But again we have the screen off problem. If I leave my phone on the desk, I'll still need to go turn it on to check the time, and it looks like I'm "checking my phone" (for messages, whatever). Not a good message to send to the students when I tell them I don't want to see *them* doing that. If it's in my pocket, I don't need to walk to it, but it's even more noticeable when I pull it from my pocket and turn the screen on briefly. I might be able to set my phone screen to stay on, but that wastes a lot of battery.
(3) I could bring along a tiny desk clock or something, but why do that when I already can just have one available on my wrist (which is probably even smaller and less obtrusive)?
(4) I can take my analog wristwatch off and set it down in a central location to where I'm presenting from. With an analog clockface, I can easily tell the time from just about any angle (not true of computer screens or phone screens), maybe 10-15 feet away (where I wouldn't necessarily be able to read a digital watch). And it's already on my wrist, so I don't need to remember to bring extra equipment. Even if I keep it on my wrist, it's usually less obtrusive to check the time than walking to some computer or pulling out a phone.
Basically, if you want to know what time it is in a room where there's no visible clock, but you don't want to necessarily signal to everyone else that you're constantly checking the time, a watch is a pretty ideal solution.
Pre-industrially, those two blocks would have an hour or two of waking time between them
Indeed -- it was basically forgotten for about a century, but recently historians have been finding references EVERYWHERE to "first sleep" (or "early slumber" or "beauty sleep") and "second sleep" in many cultures around the world.
The first descriptions of "insomnia" come up only in the 19th century, just about the same time that the two sleep blocks really started to disappear.
And we should not forget the role of coffee in this transition. (From the link above:)
[A researcher] attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night.
Coffee may not just ruin your sleep sometimes if you drink too much -- it may have played a major role in divorcing our entire species from its most natural sleep patterns and convincing everyone that a solid 8-hour block is most "normal."
About ten years ago, I cut out caffeine altogether.
Yes, I did that too out of necessity about 5 years ago. Not that I was ever actually "addicted" like many people -- I would rarely have coffee more than a few times per week, though I used to brew a LOT of my own tea and iced tea.
But at some point my body seemed to become hypersensitive to it. Now, if I have a cup of coffee after 2pm, it will likely keep me awake until the middle of the night. So I just had to move to decaf tea and coffee.
Now, I'm more alert than I was when I was caffeinated
This is the thing about studies like this. Many of these studies are rather small (and I didn't read the full studies), but I really hope they'd measure the differences between those who are heavily addicted to caffeine vs. "a cup or two per day" vs. "rarely consume caffeine or never."
Especially when you have other studies like this one, which suggests that caffeine addicts actually normally are functioning on a lower level than non-addicts, and the best they can hope for is a return to "baseline" by drinking more caffeine.
If there were differences in the napping between groups, it would be very relevant for recommendations. The danger of such studies without these kinds of nuances is you get people thinking, "I just need to drink even more coffee! And take naps!" when a more realistic recommendation would perhaps be to stop the addiction, live most of your life at a higher functioning level overall, and when you're really tired and need it, do the "caffeine nap" trick only occasionally.
(By the way, so no one can accuse me of being misleading, Bradley's observation of stellar aberration in 1729 was seen by many as the first proof of the earth's motion. However, my point was that soon after that the church eased its restrictions, and it had eliminated them before all the other problems with heliocentric theories were finally resolved empirically.)
"While 87 per cent knowing that the earth goes around the sun is pretty good, that still leaves 13 per cent of Canadians that haven't absorbed the scientific knowledge of several centuries ago," Ingram said.
It was also a pretty tough question for the Catholic church for quite a long time.
Not as long as you might think. The church removed the general prohibition against books advocating heliocentrism in 1758, and the last precedents for prohibiting specific passages (e.g., of Copernicus) were effectively overturned by 1820.
Meanwhile, the first actual empirical proofs of the earth's motion occurred mostly in the 19th century, with the first measurement of stellar parallax occurring in 1838. (Parallax had been predicted since the 1500s if the earth were in motion, but never observed.) Coriolis forces in projectiles, which had been predicted since the 1600s if the earth were in motion, were first measured in the 1800s. The problem of seemingly fixed apparent diameters of stars was finally resolved in the 1800s as scientists realized that stars must be farther away than had previously been thought (related to the parallax measurements). (Since the 1500s, scientists had predicted that if the earth were in motion, stellar diameters should vary as the earth moved closer and farther away from a given star, but this effect was not observed empirically.)
I could go on, but you get the point. Before the 1800s, there was simply no empirical evidence that could say the earth was definitely in motion around the sun -- other than that the math got really hard after Newton if you wanted to try to adhere to geocentric model.
So, the Catholic Church dropped the prohibitions actually a bit before we actually had real "proof" of the earth's motion.
Don't get me wrong: I thoroughly agree that the church banning books or passages of books was a terrible blow against free speech and free expression. But in Galileo's time, there really just wasn't the kind of actual "proof" we assume there was about the earth's motion -- Galileo did NOT have a better model (his circular orbits still required a bunch of epicycles, and his proof of the earth's motion required there to be a single tide per day at noon). He should NOT have been censored or arrested for asserting his beliefs, but let's be clear that that's exactly what they were at the time: beliefs.
The church can rightly be accused of censoring free speech or being overly conservative in its scientific tenets, but it actually stopped being upset about this question before it was finally resolved empirically.
The science literacy part asked questions like:
Does the sun go around the earth or does the earth go around the sun?
Human beings as we know them today developed from earlier species of animals. True or false?
Electrons are smaller than atoms. True or false?
I will never understand why anyone thinks asking questions like this is some sort of credible test of "science literacy."
Basically, these surveys usually end up testing only two things: (1) how good are you at memorizing and recalling facts your middle-school science teacher told you? and (2) are you more likely to trust your middle-school science teacher over your priest/rabbi/shaman/psychic/New Age crystals dude/whoever else also tells you things about the world?
Why do we think that "science literary" should only correlate best with those who have good memorization skills and blindly accept the authority of their science teacher?
If you sat me down in a room to interview people, and you told me to evaluate their "science literacy," I'd probably start by posing a real-world scenario, present them with some empirical evidence, and then have them choose among some conclusions from that empirical evidence to see whether they can evaluate and follow rational arguments. For more advanced levels, I might throw some data or some basic stats or some graphs at them too -- nothing requiring any computation -- and see whether they get fooled by bad logic, or common reasoning pitfalls.
Frankly, like Sherlock Holmes, I don't give a CRAP whether someone has memorized some answer to whether the earth goes around the sun or the reverse. It's completely irrelevant to most people in their everyday lives, and it's contrary to common empirical evidence (the earth actually does feel "stationary" and the sun does "appear" to move in the sky). What I *would* care about in terms of "science literacy" is whether I could present a person with a set of further empirical observations about the sun and the earth which should lead them to a rational conclusion that the earth goes around the sun -- and if they can correctly follow that argument, then they might be "science literate."
Simply asking them to regurgitate facts based on their adherence and trust in some authority figure is NOT "scientific" in the least. (Note, by the way, that I'm NOT at all arguing that trusting in your preacher or something over a scientist is a good thing -- but blind faith without understanding is still blind faith, whether the memorized "beliefs" you're regurgitating conform to science or to some wacko religion.)
These kinds of tests are about as useful as trying to test "reading literacy" by asking someone to identify letters in different fonts, or testing "mathematical literacy" by having people read numbers aloud. Such activities tell you nothing about whether that person has the least bit of understanding about how to read or do math. They can identify some basic facts, but they can't actually use them or do anything with them.
I'm also NOT saying that we should expect the general public to have enough expertise to be professional scientists. Of course not. But if we actually want to test "science literacy," we should see whether they have a minimum understanding of how to interpret evidence and empirical data, and what sorts of conclusions can be drawn from it. If they can't do that, they really don't understand much about science at all... and we might as well be asking them questions about trivia concerning Shakespeare's plays, or other random science questions.
I mean, is it really that much more useful to memorize a fact about the earth's motion that's pretty much irrelevant to everyday life than it is to, say, memorize the atomic weight of carbon, or the first 100 digits of pi, or the number of species of known insects? (Of course, some scientific facts ARE really relevant, like understanding that vaccines actually work -- and being ignorant of some scientific facts can be danger
The clincher for me - which indisputably shows the authors' bias - is that Canada ranks #1 in people protesting GMOs and nuclear power, and the authors consider this a good sign that their population is scientifically literate!
The report says nothing of the kind. Did you read it? GMOs and nuclear power are mentioned as divisive issues, but there is no data on the ranking of people against them.
Well, for some reason the CBC's coverage of this seems to think that Canada is 3rd out of 33 countries in having high numbers protesting nuclear power. I haven't read the full report, but either (1) the CBC is wrong, (2) you're wrong, or (3) the CBC is reporting based on true information that isn't in the report you read.
Regardless, it sounds like SOMEBODY did a survey comparing attitudes about at least nuclear power and found Canadians were near the top in terms of objecting and protesting.
Science is intended more to adapt an actual "theory" over time to better suit the evidence that it is presented with until it increasingly encompasses all edge cases that relate to the topic in question. That "adaption" can be considered disproving with an immediate re-creation of an alternate theory moments later to encompass the changing circumstances.
Or, well... it "could be considered" exactly what it is: retaining an existing theory and all of its basic assumptions, while tacking on modifications or qualifiers to make it better fit the data. That's not "disproving" anything. That's improving an existing theory, and that's what the vast majority of everyday science is about. Most active scientists are working within existing paradigms and working out the details of theories by starting with all the assumed knowledge of their fields.
No actual scientist is walking around questioning every scientific "fact" on a daily basis. "Oh, you know what, I really don't believe that whole 'water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen' thing. That whole 'atomic elements build compounds' thing sounds potentially bogus and 'unproven,' so let's have my lab spend the next six months retesting that and finding out what water really is made of!"
No sane scientist thinks like that, and scientific progress would be practically impossible if we went out actually worrying about potentially falsifying everything.
Instead -- we accept much of scientific knowledge as "proven" (not in a formal logical/mathematical sense, but the normal everyday sense of "well-tested"), and we go on with our lives filling out the "edge cases" as you put it. Only if some major discrepancies arise repeatedly do we begin to wonder whether underlying assumptions may be at fault... and even then it would take a heck of a lot to overturn the idea that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, for example.
On the flip side, actually "proving" something is exceptionally hard work. It is saying that at no point, ever, under any circumstances in this or any conceivable universe, with any natural or unnatural influence could this situation *EVER* take place for *ANY* reason. These are the rules, these are how things behave, and this is how things will always, and forever behave; EXACTLY like this and there's not a damn thing that anyone including the hand of God himself could do to change that.
That is a completely and utterly BS definition of "proof" that no one EVER uses except in discussions like this. Seriously. It's not what the math or formal logic people mean by "proof," because actual math and formal logic people generally recognize that their claims are not directly relatable to the real world, let alone "any conceivable universe." Math and formal logic are abstract symbolic systems. While they may at times be very good models for talking about the real world, they do NOT have any exact correspondence with the real world.
Find me an exact "triangle," for example, in the real world. Not something that looks vaguely like a triangle -- something that fits the mathematical definition of one, with three exact points, precisely straight line segments, etc. Even if you came close, to create something that on a microscopic level still seemed to be a triangle, on the individual atomic level there would be irregularities -- and even if that were somehow "perfect," we could keep moving down until we got to the "quantum foam" level... a real EXACT triangle in the mathematical sense doesn't exist in the real world.
Does that mean all of Euclid and geometry and all the formal "proofs" are wrong or irrelevant? Of course not. But they are working with certain kinds of abstract assumptions that have no exact correspondence with the real world. They are a MODEL. So, when you try to apply that standard of "proof" to "this or any conceivable universe," you're doing something completely illogical. No one ever actual
Or we could just realize that "proof" in empirical science means something different than it does in pure mathematics.
THIS. By GP's standard, >99% of the uses of the word "proof" in the English language are invalid. Almost all uses of the word "proof" in thousands of legal statutes around the world are bogus and meaningless.
And, empirically, from looking at actual scientific methods as practiced, it's clear that scientists clearly do NOT treat all scientific theories as equally "falsifiable." Some are treated as "proven," if not in a strict mathematical-philosophical sense. It would take a LOT more to overturn a basic established law of physics than some off-the-cuff guess ("hypothesis") in a new experiment. So what exactly is it that we are doing when we verify and reverify and reverify a basic well-established tenet of basic science over centuries if not, in essence, proving "proof" of it (in any reasonable sense of the English word outside of the strange world of pure math and logic puzzles).
It's 2014 and nobody uses tape to record
Meh. This is one of those language battles that is probably lost. We still refer to "films" too even when most are no longer watched on actual film stock (and many are increasingly shot and produced without film either).
There are lots of words like this. When's the last time you "dialed" a phone with an actual dial? For me, I'd say almost 20 years ago. When's the last time you "hung up" a phone, i.e., literally hung it up on the wall (not "put it down" on a tabletop phone), with the force of gravity pulling the little cradle down to cut the line? I'd say maybe 25 years or more for me, and that was only on my grandmother's old dial wall phone that was probably at least 20 years old.
So, I think we may be stuck with "tape" as a synonym for "record," probably for decades to come.
I know you're an AC, but it's really shocking to see something this ignorant. NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN voted for the ACA, not in the House, not in the Senate. I'm willing to blame Republicans for a lot of things, but this bill was the way it was solely to get support from Dems, and that's ALL it got. How and bill designed by Dems and only voted for by Dems (including the guy who signed it into law) somehow has problems that are solely the fault of Republicans is very confusing... even by AC logic.
You might be right but you're missing the point.
It depends on what "the point" is. The "point" of this thread was the OP asking whether modern "paleo" diets are anything like actual ancient "paleo" diets. And the answer is "no." That's the "point" of this thread.
I was in no way passing judgment on whether some aspect of modern "paleo" approaches may be good or bad nutritionally -- only pointing out that they have very little in common with the foods eaten by people a hundred thousand years ago or whatever.
Yes a modern orange is excessively sweet (no seriously, they are far too bloody sweet, it tastes like sugar, not orange anymore) - apples too - however if you eat a diet of 95% unprocessed goods, green leafy vegetables (modern or not) - a sensible amount of fruit and some meat, it's still vastly vastly better for you than eating high processed garbage, including even "healthy" things like packaged breakfast cereals.
At no point did I imply that all aspects of the modern "paleo" approaches were necessarily bad nutritional advice. Obviously eating less processed food is a reasonable choice, but one doesn't need to go back 100,000 years to find less processed food. If you ate a diet only using foods found a couple HUNDERED years ago, you'd also be eating mostly "unprocessed" foods by today's standards, and those foods from a couple hundred years ago would be a lot more like today's supermarket "unprocessed foods" than trying to make some claim to approach a diet of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago.
It's the dogmatism about it that I see as the problem, not the general principles. There's no necessarily logical reason to exclude all foods that date from later than the dawn of agriculture if you're admitting a bunch of foods that have been selectively bred in agriculture for millennia. The issue should be about balancing the nutrients among different food sources, regardless of when those foods date from.
And frankly, if you watch the video I linked, at the end of her presentation, the speaker comes to similar conclusions -- conclusions that sound suspiciously similar to things that "paleo diet" proponents often say. The difference is whether you want to buy into a diet because of arbitrary distinctions created for marketing reasons, or because it actually is more balanced. Most of the paleo dogma about what always to eat and what never to eat is unfortunately about the former.
Maybe I just don't understand what paleo is all about, but trying to achieve a balance of macronutrients closer to those original diets seems like the point (or it should IMO) and not actually trying to eat foods that are 100% like what our ancestors ate.
I think you DO understand what the modern "Paleo" approaches are about. However, there's a common misconception that if you eat the modern "paleo" diet that you're actually eating something like humans would long ago. That's partly from the branding and marketing of the diet, more than anything else. From what I understand, those who actually promote it and have researched its effects tend to phrase it more like what you described than as an actual simulation of an ancient diet.
I was merely responding to a thread where someone posed the question about this misconception.
On the other hand, I think that the modern food differences ARE so vast that it's really not reasonable to achieve an accurate "balance of macronutrients" (as you put it) like ancient diets while eating modern foods. There's also a lot of dogmatism among many of the diet's proponents that takes the form of "Did people eat X before agriculture? If not, then we shouldn't eat X." My argument is that if we start going down that road and looking for exact equivalence, we immediately have to throw out almost all foods (even "raw, natural, whole" ones) from the modern supermarket.
So, rather than worrying about the dogmatism of what ancient people may have eaten, the more reasonable approach is actually to achieve a better nutrient balance -- in whatever way is best and using whatever foods will work best to achieve that goal, regardless of whether they're truly an ancient "wild" food or are some vastly different descendant of an ancient food or are a more modern food that also can serve to create dietary balance. The whole "paleo" thing, therefore, can end up standing in the way, because it's based on a misconception.
(Just to be clear, "paleo diets" may have some benefits for some people. I'm NOT saying the "paleo diet" ideas are necessarily bad. I'm just saying that in most cases they're NOT actually very much like true hunter-gatherer diets before the dawn of agriculture.)
The article mentions "unrefined grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables" so your "for example" has holes in it.
What does that have to do with anything? The context of that quote is:
The foods we choose to eat in the coming decades will have dramatic ramifications for the planet. Simply put, a diet that revolves around meat and dairy, a way of eating thatâ(TM)s on the rise throughout the developing world, will take a greater toll on the worldâ(TM)s resources than one that revolves around unrefined grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables.
The article here does NOT imply that paleo diets revolved around MODERN "unrefined grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables." It instead merely hints that the environmental consequences of trying to raise more meat for billions of people requires a lot more resources than those MODERN foods.
The fact is that agriculture has selectively bred many of these things over the millennia to make them tastier, more nutrient dense, higher in sugar, etc. The kind of "unrefined grains, nuts, fruits, and vegetables" that were actually around hundreds of thousands of years ago were vastly different (in most cases) from what we pick off plants in our gardens and fields today -- even the "unrefined" ones.
So, GP's absolutely correct on this point. Human selective breeding has significantly changed both plant and animal sources of nutrients. Thus, no matter how "unrefined" our food is, very few things at a modern supermarket would have been available to a hunter-gatherer hundreds of thousands of years ago... hence, the "paleo" diet is mostly wishful thinking.
I doubt so-called "Paleolithic diets" are anything like people ate during that.
Yes. The classic debunking, from someone who is actually an expert on early human diets, is here.
Now, before all you Paleo fanatics get worked up, yes -- this speaker overemphasizes the carnivore aspect of many so-called "Paleo" diets. And there are some other details she gets wrong, but mostly in stereotyping modern "paleo diets," not in her knowledge of actual ancient diets.
For example, people ate fruit then, but it was seasonal, and very different from the fruit we eat today. Same with veggies. The stuff we eat is nothing like the stuff that grew in the wild.
Yes, and this is the critical thing from that video. Even if you dismiss all the stuff she says about overemphasizing meat, the reality is that our plant-based foods are completely different from the plants that would have been eaten before the dawn of agriculture. We've selectively bred fruits and vegetables for millennia to make them tastier to us, and more concentrated in sugars and other nutrients. (And we've likewise selectively bred our meat sources so that they are very different in composition from wild game.)
So, yeah, it's basically IMPOSSIBLE to eat "like a caveman did" with normal foods from the supermarket. The "paleo" diet might be a few steps closer to some sort of early hominid diet, but it's still significantly closer to the modern diet than it is to anything eaten hundreds of thousands of years ago.
You can buy all the "unrefined" and "natural" and "raw" crap you want, but unless you're seeking out the wild forms of ancient plants (and probably eating many times the amount of fiber even vegetarians eat today) and hunting wild game, chances are your "paleo diet" is as far from the "caveman" as the diet of a rich nobleman 200 years ago would be.
"I'm not "blaming the victim""
I hate to break it to you, but that is exactly what you are doing.
I hate to break it to you, but I think you might need to work on your reading comprehension skills.
You are also claiming that only woman without much brains or ability to think for themselves and plan ahead like to have a good time in public.
Actually, GP didn't say that AT ALL. At no point did he make assertions about intelligence ("without much brains") or "ability to think for themselves." That's entirely something you manufactured -- you may want to look into the mirror if you're worried about people making assumptions about others and stereotyping them.
What GP was specifically talking about was your third category -- people who don't "plan ahead." I know plenty of very intelligent people who make incredibly poor choices in social situations. I know plenty of very independent folks who can "think for themselves" who also make poor choices in planning. In fact, while I'd say that people who are a little above average in intelligence are better than average at these things, those who are very intelligent often get worse again.
GP said absolutely nothing about intelligence or independence -- he simply stated that some people don't plan ahead or think about all the "bad situations" they could get into in social situations, and that's simply a fact. Those people exist. Those are the people who really need this stuff. But I don't think it's at all a controversial claim to say that some people don't think about possible consequences in social situations, and they are more likely to fall victim to some bad scenario than others. And it's certainly not "blaming the victim" to provide advice that would aid in preventing date rape, as GP did.
And also, GP never said or implied that "only women without [X] like to have a good time in public." He said that women who plan ahead when they are having a good time are less likely to end up in scenario where they can be taken advantage of than women who DON'T plan ahead when they are having a good time.
Let's review the actual advice GP gave:
The best defense is, as always, for women to watch out for their friends when at bars and parties. Don't go wandering off alone after heavy drinking with a guy you don't know or trust.
Do you actually disagree with this advice? Or do you believe it's impossible "to have a good time in public" if you bother to make sure you're with some friends and not go wandering off alone (i.e., not "in public") with a guy you don't know?
Look -- random hook-ups are a risky business. Aside from STDs, you could be locking yourself up in room with an ax murderer, or a rapist, or... who knows? If I were a young woman, I would definitely follow GP's advice and go drinking with friends and never agree to go somewhere alone with a guy I just met.
But that's me. I'm cautious by nature. I also don't bet on horses or play in traffic, which is effectively what you're doing when you put your trust in being intimate with a person who is stronger and bigger than you without knowing a lot about him/her first. Sure, in an ideal world no one should have to worry about such things, but given that everyone knows it's not an ideal world, random hook-ups are inherently more risky than many other activities.
I also occasionally like to have a "good time in public," but I don't know why that means that a "good time in public" needs to include having a private session afterward with some unknown person.
But there are other people who are less cautious. I don't think it's a stretch to say (as GP did) that those people are also less likely to seek out all sorts of preventative items to warn them of date rape, if they haven't already taken other measures to do so. That's not "blaming the victim" -- that's lamenting the fact that there are terrible people in the world and realistically noting that some people take less precautions in general when confronting those terrible people than others.
Where is the push to get men to become primary school teachers?
Unfortunately, our mass media's ridiculous "pedophile" scares have taken care of that. Do a cursory internet search sometime for male teachers in elementary or daycare -- you'll inevitably find a bunch of articles about how parents are convinced that any man who might want to spend some time with small children MUST be a pedophile. Nevermind that pedophilia is incredibly rare, and your son or daughter is probably a hundred times more likely to be sexually abused by as a teenager by a high school teacher or coach than by a pedophile.
So, even if men wanted to get into this profession, we have huge hurdles -- and I agree it's really not right. (As a father, I've even occasionally seen the suspicious looks and odd concern when I would take my young child to the playground or even just for a walk around the neighborhood.)
All of that said, most primary school teachers I know would be happy to have more male colleagues. Most of them know the benefits of having male teachers around small kids -- unfortunately, for us to start a campaign for male teachers, we'd have to overcome the inaccurate media fear campaign about pedophiles... and "Think of the children!" always overrides logic or reason.
Same for healthcare. With the exception of doctors most healthcare is dominated by women yet men are a large number of patients.
I posted on this above with links, so I'll just briefly say that there are in fact organizations trying to get more men into nursing -- and given the growing nursing shortage, just about any place would be thrilled if the numbers of male nurses went up.
How come there aren't any people complaining that there are VASTLY more women in nursing than men.
There are. For example, have a look at organizations devoted to recruiting more men, like the American Assembly for Men in Nursing or the "Are you man enough to be a nurse?" campaign. Also see various studies and concerns about the issue on the Minority Nurse page. It's really a complicated issue, and organizations like this have really been trying to figure out recruitment efforts.
Maybe there should be more "people complaining" about this issue, but your assertion that "there aren't any" is just untrue. The fact is that we have a shortage of qualified nurses that is only projected to get worse, and many of these organizations, many hospitals, etc. would be extremely happy if they could get more male nurses, or get more men who are currently unemployed or in crappy jobs in this economy to go to nursing school. But it doesn't help the stereotype when just about every portrayal of a male nurse on television or film is usually made to be the butt of jokes and ridicule.
If there is a social cause, then society can work to undo it. If it is a biological cause, then we can stop wasting time and effort thinking it is a social cause.
First of all, we also need to consider the possibility that it could be BOTH. I.e., that certain gender stereotypes have some relationship to biological facts, and thus gender stereotypes end up having other effects which are not necessarily biological (but may be partly rooted in them).
The reason I bring this up is because it makes an interesting conundrum for these sorts of arguments. If something is entirely biological, there's supposedly no sense fighting it. (Of course, not all women are exactly the same, and some may have those "natural" biological elements emphasized to more or less degree in their talents and personalities.) But if something is entirely social, it's perceived as a gross injustice.
But what if we combine these? For example, someone earlier in this thread brought up the biological fact that women bear children and thus may need to take significant time off of work to have a kid and especially in the first year or two do things that only women can do (particularly nursing). If a woman wants to have more than one child, that can easily add up to 5-10 years of absence from the job force. In a fast-paced field, it may be difficult for women to then hop immediately back in to the job force with skills that are already starting to be outdated.
So, the issue here is not entirely biological (women could choose to forego children or dump their kid into daycare when he/she is a couple months old or women could actively try to keep up their skills even while not working full-time), but it's not entirely social either (men don't have the same hormones driving them to have children or nurse or be with infants). Yet we're still stuck with the problematic effects -- women will often get behind in their jobs or have trouble keeping up or returning to the workforce. We can't just blame it on biology, but it seems impossible to completely eliminate social issues that arise either.
But I bet that many women of her era would have convinced themselves that being a chemist was a foolish notion and wouldn't have pursued it at all. That's social self-regulation. That should be eliminated.
Obviously we need to eliminate actual ignorant prejudice. But the problems are often a lot more subtle than that these days. I know a lot of professional women who "came up through the ranks" in the 1970s, and they have horrific stories to tell about the kinds of indignities women suffered in the workforce back then. Let's not forget all the amazing progress we've made in a few decades... it's important to keep that in perspective.
Nowadays, we're mostly confronting those harder problems I mentioned earlier, like how to figure out a way to be "fair" in a workplace (and all the related decisions like salary, promotion, etc.) where one gender is more likely than the other to disappear from their career for 5-10 years at a time.
And we also have to deal with cases where "social self-regulation" actually does serve some important purpose. Sure, is it biologically possible for a woman to have a child and dump the infant in daycare almost immediately to be fed with formula? Yes, obviously. And lots of women do it because they have to.
But aren't there also psychological and perhaps social benefits to allowing women to choose to stay home and take care of a small child as they are biologically programmed to do? Moreover, aren't there also social benefits to having communities where children are raised by some parent (male or female) who can spend more time with them, rather than getting kids out of the home as quickly as possible and into large groups of kids often taken care of by people paid minimum wage? (Of course, some might argue the reverse -- that many parents are bad parents, and daycare may be helpful to the kids. Perhaps that's true
"So if you were interested in bioinformatics, or computational economics, or quantitative anthropology, you really needed to be part of the computer science world."
These weren't even things in 1984.
It depends on what you mean by "weren't even things." If you mean that most people didn't know about them, well, that's still true. If you mean that NO ONE -- even at research labs and in grad school projects, etc. -- was doing this stuff, well, you're wrong. Even if you just do some searches in Google Books restricting sources to 1984 or earlier, you'll find the use of the term "bioinformatics" going back to the early 1970s (the first shared protein databases go back to the early 70s, and gene sequencing software to the late 70s), and entire books devoted to mathematical programming and computational modeling in economics from the 1970s.
As for "quantitative anthropology," there are a few sources out there that mention applying quantitative methods back then, but I doubt there was as much computer use as in, say, economics. On the other hand, I know a number of people who did their doctoral dissertations in the humanities in the 1960s and early 1970s who were making use of computers to try things similar to what we'd called "digital humanities" today. And I've read papers in the humanities using computer-aided analysis going back to at least the early 1960s. Perhaps it was the "space race" era or something that influenced those projects, but computers were around particularly at universities.
Computers were not so pervasive that you were missing out on much if you didn't know anything about them.
I'd absolutely agree with that. But there's a difference between saying that "you weren't missing out on much" and "those ideas/fields didn't exist" (and sometimes made significant use of computers) in 1984.