This is a very interesting and well thought-out post. Thank you.
Most posts here miss the point that almost every event has multiple contributing factors. Obviously the driver was drunk. That's probably the most major contributing factor. But could a car with unusual acceleration characteristics also be a contributing factor? Possibly. Heck, the car ran into a tree. Maybe somebody planted that tree there 40 years ago. Did that person contribute something to this accident? Yes, obviously... maybe if that tree hadn't been there, everything would be okay.
The issue isn't whether or not there were hundreds of contributing factors to an event, or whether any one of them could have prevented it ("Darn that tree planting guy!"), but rather which contributing factors may have displayed negligence and created a "hazard" -- either legally or morally.
I haven't driven a Tesla, so I don't know how it handles. Clearly there are a lot of Tesla drivers who like how they drive and don't see a problem with them. But the parent here has a valid point that at some point we may get to a place where accelerating power and handling in some cars become more hazardous for the average driver.
And that's about the only part of this story that's worthy of debate.
Should this story be on Slashdot? NO. NO. NO. Clearly, it is an attempt by the editors to play off of the libertarian sympathies of many people here who are still pissed at how Tesla has had to do battle with car dealership laws, etc., and whose ire has already been inflamed by ridiculous charges about how the media seems to be attacking Tesla whenever it can... and now here comes a grieving father who is lashing out at something that really COULD have contributed something to this crash (in addition to the alcohol, etc.).
Let's all just take a deep breath, acknowledge that we all would not want to be in a place where we are grieving for a child and if we were, we'd likely want to find "someone to blame" too. And then let's move on from the the TROLL NAMED BeauHD WHO POSTED THIS STORY HERE TO GET EVERYONE YELLING.
However, I'd like to see some discussion of his statement.
Would a better connection between humans and machines be beneficial?
What would be the benefits/ problems?
How could this be achieved?
To discuss something meaningfully, you need to have a freakin' clue how it might work. At this point in time, we don't. We don't know how the brain works. We don't have anything close to strong AI. The best interfaces we're looking at now are stuff like moving artificial limbs or whatever. To speculate on what might happen IF we could all of this would be sort of like walking up to Isaac Newton in the 18th century and saying, "Sir Isaac, what problems do you think will occur with the internet next year? What will the major benefits/problems be of new advances?" Even if you explained the basic idea of the internet to Newton, I doubt he'd have enough perspective to meaningfully debate what might happen.
But, having put forth that disclaimer, I'll just note a few complete speculations in response to Musk. First is that his argument seems premised on the idea that a faster interface from brain to world would be beneficial to humans. Maybe it would. OR maybe our brains are somewhat limited in maximum input/output in ways that we can't really understand yet because we've never tried what he's proposing. Typing is about the right "speed of thought" for me to create coherent text. I've tried dictating, and I need to pause, correct, and reword too much for it to be useful to me. That seems to be how my brain works... although if I really needed to, I probably could retrain myself to dictate better.
But what if you increased my potential output by 10-fold, 100-fold, a million-fold. Would that actually be useful for me to interact with the world better or faster? Or would it just result in gibberish because my brain literally can't adapt to working much faster than it already does in USEFUL output? Or maybe the plasticity of the adult brain isn't enough to adapt -- so we try hooking up infants from birth with these things. Maybe it works... or maybe it just drives them to be insane or to have other brain development that effectively renders them LESS functional than "normal" humans. Not saying this WILL happen, but it's a possibility when you're talking about an interface with absolutely NO IDEA on what specs might work. Human brains have spent millions of years evolving into what they are to work efficiently at the speeds they do. Just because you could theoretically hook up a device to increase input/output doesn't mean the brain can actually change and adapt enough to make use of the throughput meaningfully.
Also, I think it's important to note in a discussion like this that one of the PRIMARY hallmarks of human intelligence is FORGETTING. One of the things that makes humans so much better than machines is our ability for abstraction -- finding larger patterns so we don't have to parse the "stream of consciousness" directly all the time. And then we sleep, and our brains revisit the memories of things that we've evolved to assimilate as "important" data, while we forget millions of random little details of our day at the same time.
Effectively, we take a very TINY percentage of the "noise" that is input into our brains and actually remember it in any detail, mostly through complex pattern-matching that we're only even beginning to emulate in specific cases with computer algorithms. But the point is that there's only so much that we CAN assimilate into our brains -- and that goes not just for memories, but for new skills or whatever. (Think about when you've tried to learn a skill by "cramming" for a full day or two vs. when you've done practice for a few minutes/day over weeks or months. Your brain needs the "downtime" to assimilate new skills... increasing input or output seems unlikely to make that process faster.)
My speculation is that Musk's idea is rather pointless for somehow keeping humans "relevant" or whatever. IF w
Kind of like the TIna Fey comments in an awards show setting against Bill Cosby years before serious accusations became public and widespread.
Just to note, the accusations WERE public and widespread back in 2004-2006 or so. It's just few people took them seriously... the "Cosby Show dad" mystique and years promoting kids Jell-O etc. seem to have protected him back then though. Tina Fey was one of many back then who DID pick up on it, but most of the media just forgot about it.
I don't remember that stuff in 2005 or whatever, but I distinctly remember when I myself discovered this stuff about Cosby when I somehow happened upon a story entitled something like, "How we all forgot out about how Bill Cosby is a rapist" -- and that was back in 2012, I think. And that was a couple years before it was plastered all over the news again -- but once I read about it somewhere, it was easy to find all sorts of stuff on it, even prior to when I was reading in 2012.
Tina Fey was reacting to something that was actually public knowledge and had been the subject of news stories at major media sites... it's just that the rest of the media didn't pick up on the "drumbeat" until a decade later.
Yup, and this essentially amounts to doing things the way that MS Office does them. The way you've already learnt to do things is the easy way, because doing things any other way first requires unlearning the way you've already learnt.
Your point would have greater import if Microsoft itself didn't have a history of upending the UI and forcing users to completely unlearn the way they used to do things and learn a whole new system -- see the "Ribbon" debacle.
I'll admit you have points otherwise, but at least with a FOSS solution, you're likely to see a fork if any development group attempts to change a major application so drastically. And even if they don't, with FOSS you can at least pay some developers to maintain the old code -- likely for a lot less than licensing for deploying commercial software across an entire city/corporation for decades.
I don't need formula and all the other reasons for using latex are no longer that relevant.
Word processors are not appropriate for large documents that need consistent formatting. They're not desktop publishing applications. Aside from a more "pretty" output with less work, LaTeX also ensures lots of consistency across your document without having to think about it... whereas Word tricks you into thinking you've done something right with the WYSIWYG environment... until you accidentally do something that messes up the formatting.
Also don't want to spend time learning what is essentially a new language with often cryptic build tools so I can write a document.
It's basically a GUI word processor of sorts, with LaTeX under the hood. Click a button to get a PDF.
Yes, if you need really specialized custom formatting or unusual features, you may need to dig around a bit to figure out how to do them. But the good news is once you solve a problem in LaTeX (and LyX), your solution usually "sticks." Solve a problem in MS Word with layout, and change some other random feature in your document, and suddenly your custom formatting screws up in all sorts of unpredictable ways. That's because MS Word is NOT a desktop publishing tool. If you want proper handling of large documents with consistent formatting, etc., you want to use something appropriate -- either LaTeX or something commercial like InDesign.
With LyX, you won't have the learning curve for LaTeX in pure text form. Mostly you just choose a document class appropriate to your task, select a few options from it to customize your formatting, and you're good to go. Even use a non-TeX font with built-in XeTeX/LuaTeX support. I'm not going to oversell this, though -- you will probably spend a couple days setting up a custom document preamble to get everything exactly the way you want it (if you care about typography... but if you care about typography, you wouldn't be using Word or any normal word processor).
But if you don't care about typography so much, you just need to conform your thesis to your university's requirements. Some schools actually have LaTeX templates available for use (officially or unofficially)... but if not, you may need to do some customizations. Luckily, you can often just ask in a TeX forum somewhere (e.g., on StackExchange) and people will frequently just give you the appropriate commands to include if you ask your question clearly.
As someone who went through the process of writing a thesis and also helped a couple others deal with last-minute formatting problems in MS Word, let me just say: you're going to spend at least a few days dealing with formatting issues no matter what. If you go with MS Word, unless you're a wizard who knows all the possible places Word will screw things up, you're going to spend several days at the end dealing with headaches where the text just doesn't flow properly or that figure/table/image/whatever simply disappears or completely ruins the formatting for an entire chapter for no apparent reason.
LyX isn't a perfect solution, since ideally you need to be familiar with the underlying LaTeX code to fix the few things that do go wrong. But if you're just doing one document like this, you can likely get the support you need on a forum. Chances are many of the questions you may have are already answered for you out there.
A lunar eclipse at full moon is a given ??? Are you crazy? No, its not!
I think you misunderstood GP, which admittedly was a bit poorly worded. I'm pretty sure GP meant that IF a lunar eclipse is happening, it IS a full moon. So two of the "triple features" mentioned in the summary are bound to be together anyway... all the nonsense about the "snow moon" notwithstanding. (What is the sudden obsession with old moon names in the past year or two? Very few people used these terms anymore outside of the Farmer's Almanac for years, and suddenly they're all over the news... and people keep acting like they're significant -- "Ooooh a 'SNOW moon'... ooooh a 'HARVEST moon'..." -- these happen every single year and mean nothing other than what month it is.)
The fact that the summary doesn't acknowledge that full moons are just normal at lunar eclipses makes it sound silly at best, ignorant of basic astronomy at worst. Terms like "rare convergence" make it even worse. And lunar eclipses aren't exactly "rare" events to begin with, although there are some unusual features of this penumbral one... but the fact that it's penumbral will actually make it less interesting to look at to the average observer.
Is it just me, or has there been an increase in hyperbolic astronomy stories recently? There was all the "supermoon" nonsense last year -- again, mildly interesting for astronomy nerds, but not so impressive for the average Joe who barely looks up at the sky. (The moon really wasn't THAT much bigger.) Now we're billing a "triple feature" for a lackluster lunar eclipse coupled with a full moon (which would be there anyway if an eclipse is happening), and a comet that you need binoculars to see.
I'm all for getting people to look at the sky and to get interested in astronomy, but if you overbill the significance of such things, I don't think it helps.
No matter how many people use literally to mean figuratively, no matter how many dictionaries take note of the inverse usage, it is still wrong, and anyone trying to avoid looking like a moron would be wise to steer clear of incorrect uses. Ditto "begging the question".
While I absolutely agree with you that educated speakers/writers need to simply avoid "begging the question," I also absolutely disagree with you about your use of the word "wrong" here.
Language is about communication of meaning. It's not a "game" where you get to "win" if you check off enough of the "rules." I'm not sure there is ANY English speaker out there familiar with the phrase "begging the question" who is unfamiliar with its meaning to "raise the question," and generally it's clear from context if this is the meaning intended.
Meanwhile, I can guarantee you that outside of philosophical circles and wacko grammar pedants, NO ONE will understand you if you use "begging the question" to mean petitio principii.
Hence, 98% of people will understand the common meaning of the phrase "begging the question" to mean "raises the question," and of the remaining 2%, the 1% of philosophers won't much care which meaning you use. And the other 1% of wacko grammar pedants actually KNOW about the modern usage, so they'll understand it too, even if they mutter under their breath.
So, if we're looking at language as successful communication, using "begging the question" to mean "raising the question" has a near 100% success rate in communication, and a 1% failure rate among the lunatics who don't realize language isn't a weird game where you keep score. But if you use "begging the question" to mean petitio principii, you'll likely only communicate with 2% of your audience at best (and that's assuming an educated audience). Communication failure.
There are all sorts of reasons "begging the question" was doomed to failure as an English phrase from the start -- it was a bizarre and archaic attempt at a translation of the Latin phrase even when it was coined hundreds of years ago, and it was based on a poor Latin translation of the original Greek. The "modern" meaning of "raising the question" has been used in learned discourse and by good writers for well over a century -- in previous threads about this, I've posted an example of a debate in Parliament from the 1820s I think where the "new" meaning was already so well established that a representative could make a pun on the two meanings.
The battle has been lost. "Wrong" is meaningless here.
That said, I'll agree with you that "literally" is a different sort of beast, since it has much greater potential for confusion between the two meanings. That doesn't mean I would condemn the new meaning as illegitimate -- but I agree that there's a good reason to stick to the original meaning there. "Begging the question" is no longer even in the running. I avoid it everywhere not because of confusion (since EVERYONE knows what it means, i.e., what you declare to be "wrong"), but because of the tiny minority of self-righteous lunatics who can't understand that educated usage has already changed... about a century ago.
not because Trump is about to take away their cheap slave-labor pool and make them hire American workers.
You obviously have a point that many of these companies have an interest in getting cheaper workers, but I really wish you'd tone down the rhetoric of "slave labor." Slaves, typically, aren't paid at all. Yes, employers can be more abusive toward H1B workers, and that's a real problem, but "slave labor" is just hyperbole.
You want to talk about immigration and "slave labor"? Look toward what could happen under the Trump presidency and farm workers like pickers. Those are people who frequently work 12-16 hour days in fields, frequently in 100-degree weather. And get paid something like $10/hour (for SKILLED workers). Stats usually say that half of the U.S. farm labor force is illegal, and 3/4 of it is composed of immigrants -- because Americans simply refuse to work these jobs for that pay. There are actually other issues too -- because many of these jobs are really "skilled labor" in the sense that it can take a few years of picking a specific crop to get really good and fast at it, and these workers generally get paid per volume picked.
Not to go too off-topic here, but the U.S. is going to have to deal with some harsh realities if Trump actually tries to follow through with his immigration threats against Mexicans and Latin Americans. A number of states tried placing harsh restrictions on immigrants a few years ago, and farm owners ended up with worker shortages and crops that rotted on the fields. Without immigrants, we're looking at a future of either food shortages or significantly higher food prices... or both.
Anyhow, if you want to talk about "slave labor," there are plenty of jobs Americans get immigrants to do in much harsher conditions with backbreaking work often at significantly lower wages than any tech workers. I'm not saying tech workers aren't exploited too -- but the grand scheme of things, it's not "slave labor."
I don't necessarily have an objection to some form of coding requirement. However...
So, if you look at the foreign language requirement for what it is (an "expand your mind" requirement)
"Expand your mind"? That's really vague. Just a few things foreign language requirements help with that coding doesn't:
-- English grammar and usage. Many good writers and speakers have noted that they first really understand grammar and details of English usage when they study a foreign language. Now, of course it's possible to refine one's language use without formal grammar training, but the process of deconstructing a foreign language is often helpful to understand one's own.
-- English etymology and vocabulary use. Particularly if one studies Latin-based language like Spanish, French, or Italian, one gains knowledge of Latinate roots, which are often helpful in figuring out Latin-based English words. Frequently in the first few years of language instruction, you'll learn a lot more English vocabulary through relationships with the other language. Germanic languages also are helpful in learning new English words, due to common older roots.
-- Communication skills. A lot of students who just take a couple years of a language in high school or whatever don't really get a proficient speaking level, but that's largely due to lack of practice and subsequent failure to "keep up" the training. Nevertheless, for many students who do take the oral skills seriously, languages like Spanish can be incredibly helpful for communicating with customers/users and other job contacts in many professions. If you have an opportunity, doing something like Mandarin or Japanese can open yet other doors.
-- As one learns another language, generally one learns about other cultures too. Which again is often an introspective exercise in learning about your own culture -- you don't realize your assumptions about the word often until you contrast them with someone else's. This can be a very eye-opening exercise for young people.
None of this is an argument against coding. But there are more specific things language requirements do, aside from basic skills in that language or "expanding your mind" (whatever that means).
I think that it is not too much of a stretch to think that coding will eventually become the Latin and Greek of our culture.
Huh. I'm not sure even how to begin responding to this. The reason Latin and Greek were taught in schools commonly until the mid-20th century is because they not only served as a common communication system in many fields, were the basis of many modern languages, and were the most common languages of historical documents over a span of more than 2000 years, but also were the foundation of much of Western culture and political systems. There's still a vast amount of classical, medieval, and early modern literature unavailable in translation -- and when I saw "literature" I mean all documents, including scientific and technical advances, as well as cultural artifacts.
While I'm not arguing for a return to Latin or Greek requirements, I don't think it's a coincidence that the U.S. government started wildly straying from the original restrictions on federal power in the early to mid 20th century as knowledge of Latin/Greek and related Roman/Greek history (and political science) decreased. Sure, it's possible to read about these things in English in translation, but the widespread use of Latin led to a promotion of related cultural knowledge (see above), including political and philosophical questions. The Founders of the U.S. all knew their history very well and designed our government in various ways to prevent recurrence of problems that happened in ancient societies. All of this is largely forgotten these days, at best a marginal sidenote to history courses in many public school curricula.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Latin and Greek had even more benefits for learning about E
And yes, since the levels are likely so low its difficult to measure, that should be taken into account before jumping to the 'ban' gun as you suggest. We certainly don't ban everything that has potential health risks.
The problem with the chemicals in question is that they are known to accumulate in the environment, and there is increasing evidence that their presence in drinking water, etc. can cause serious problems. And the studies that had been used to create previous recommended drinking water standards were basically knowingly corrupted by DuPont, a primary manufacturer. You may want to look up the cases against DuPont and Rob Bilott, the primary attorney who has litigated these cases (who actually used to work as a defense attorney FOR big chemical companies, but who became convinced of the gross injustice and lies in the present case, so he "switched sides").
I'm not one of the typical "chemophobic" folks who worries about "chemicals," but in this particular case, the continued use of the chemicals in question is worrisome not just for any direct health effects from consumption of the food/packaging, but also from the large amount of fast food packaging waste and the future environmental lifespan of those chemicals. In case you haven't been paying attention over the past year or so, chemical testing is now going on in water systems around the country because of heightened concerns over PFAS chemicals -- the idea that we're still using them in something as common as fast-food packaging is a concern.
I'm sure what happened here is what seems to be happening on loads of other sites these days. Trolls and spam get worse every day, and at some point an exec or site owner does a cost/benefit analysis. What they inevitably see is that the vast majority of users on almost all sites never leave a comment, and the active commenters are generally a tiny fraction of the userbase. So the question inevitably comes up: "Why are we spending our time and money fighting trolls and spam just keep the forums going for 1% or whatever of our users?" Of course, generally these stats are exaggerated, and there's frequently less data or weight given to those who may just READ comments but rarely or never comment themselves. (I generally only comment on a handful of forums, but I frequently read comments on a dozen others at least occasionally.). But none of this seems to matter: all the site owners will see is "why are we paying people to delete troll posts again? Why do we even need these discussions?" What's unfortunate is that most established forums could easily adopt a moderation system that solves many of the problems just using volunteers... But for some reason site owners don't seem to want to do that most places.
They could at least zip up the archives and post them to the torrents for posterity.
Agreed. But this seems to be the common pattern in forums closing down these days: just delete it all. Frankly, aside from a couple of sites I visit frequently though, the ONLY time I read forums on other sites is when they're already inactive threads... But discussions are sometimes fascinating and sometimes informative or helpful. It seems those who make decisions to close down forums just want to "wash their hands" of the whole thing, but it points out the fragility of data in the information age. In an era when we generate terabytes of meaningless crap everyday that seems to be archived for years or decades, it's also easy to make terabytes of useful stuff disappear in one "poof!" with little warning... And because so much online data is in control of site owners, it can just disappear at any time.
It doesn't take math to build an arch. It doesn't take math to build a cathedral. What it initially takes for a civilization is some trial and error, and then often a sort of procedure is created. Yes, math can help and new architectural procedures did follow during the Renaissance along with more sophisticated mathematical analysis. But a lot of those problems can be overcome with the well-learned mechanical procedure after trial and error coupled with some factor of "overengineering" to prevent collapse, etc.
The Romans were very good at standardization. Read about who a legion would make camp at night if you haven't, and you'll realize how motivated they were to set up systems that were very efficient after centuries of experience.
Same thing with building arches and buildings, etc. Math is great if you want to make those structures more efficient or do something that doesn't seem "reasonable" with your building materials (but may be possible if you know stuff about engineering and the accompanying math of materials). But the Romans did a lot of amazing stuff with rather simple procedures. For example, if I recall correctly, in the Pantheon, they created this dome which has never been surpassed in size for an unreinforced concrete dome -- and they did it mostly through gradually changing the concrete mixture to use successively less dense (lighter) types of stone. Meanwhile, the thickness of the dome also decreases, and they left an "oculus" (hole) in the center which had the benefit of lightening the weight of the dome further in its most fragile part.
These sorts of procedures can be seen in other Roman architecture too, from centuries of trial and error in making better concrete and building larger structures -- they just happen to be combined in unique way here. Although the Pantheon is one of the greatest Roman architectural achievements, I sincerely doubt much advanced math was used in its construction... just patterns and procedures based off of long experience.
(None of this is to disparage the value of math. But if you study history, you realize how many people find solutions to complex problems without the abstraction of math. The solutions often aren't efficient and they are sometimes erroneous, but for a practical approximation, they were important for a lot of historical advances.)
Not getting any sleep is fatal. The theory that sleep's main function is "to forget" doesn't explain that. Of course, the post didn't claim that was its sole function, but I'd say it implied it.
Well, I'd say the summary implied that this may be sleep's primary function, probably not the "sole" one. But I take your point.
Scientific American had an article on sleep last year which favored the garbage removal theory.
Yes, the theory itself is hardly new. These two new studies seem to support it. It does seem to make intuitive sense, since a lot of our brain's activity has to do with getting rid of all the "noise." People who are working with AI these days realize how difficult it can be to get a system to sort out the patterns from the noise, particularly when it comes to greater abstraction.
And we know from numerous studies for decades that sleep is essential to memory formation. The idea that one aspect of that memory formation may be getting rid of less "important" mental traces of your day while reinforcing ones "that matter" makes a lot of intuitive sense... not that that's an argument for its scientific validity. But it's almost certainly an important brain function at some level and at some time -- so finding out it happens during sleep is interesting.
Since CNN wants to make him look bad, and you are so clueless you can't even be bothered to look for his comments, you obviously don't really care either.
I read the whole executive order. Did you?
Trump is giving those countries 90 days to come up with a vetting system that his State Department deems acceptable. If they do not comply, the ban will be extended.
That still doesn't answer my question, since we already have detailed vetting in place within the State Department and frequently including other agencies (depending on the type of visa or entry desired). What is wrong with our current procedures that justifies such a unilateral and sudden action, rather than simply reforming our vetting policies?
So you pitching a hissy fit over 90 days and giving a pass on a permanent ban shows again you don't really care, and are only really hear to bash Trump over bullshit that is meaningless because you have been fooled into thinking its valid.
Wow -- you really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Cuba had been granted a SPECIAL EXEMPTION that essentially allowed those who managed to sail into Florida and landed to be granted entry without a visa and allowed to apply for asylum -- this was a policy unique to Cuba and unfair to other immigrants, who needed to go through "normal" legal channels for entry.
And Obama did NOT ban immigration from Cuba "permanently" -- Cubans are still perfectly able to immigrate to the U.S. Now they just need to follow the rules that all other countries do to do so. You can argue about what the original rationale was for allowing Cubans special treatment to get into the U.S. without vetting, but given the fact that our relations have improved in recent years, it seems positively weird to continue such a bizarre exemption for Cubans. Nobody was "banned" in that case -- just required to use proper immigration channels like everyone else.
He claimed the audience (total number of people watching) was greater. And this was, according to Akami, the largest live streamed event ever. So Spicer was correct: the audience for Trump was bigger.
That is PART of what he claimed. Here's his actual quote:
This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in-person and around the globe
And if you look at the transcript of what he actually said, that sentence was prefaced by several other sentences going into detail about the IN PERSON CROWD.** He did NOT say anything else about internet streaming or whatever other than hinting at it in "around the globe" in that sentence there. So, claiming that he was entirely or even primarily talking about internet audience is simply wrong. Yes, it may be true that more people streamed this inauguration online than ever before, but more streaming devices are also available to people than ever before in history. On the other side of things, maybe crowd numbers were muted a bit due to the rain forecast. There are all sorts of things that could have played into the numbers here.
But two things are certain: Spicer was primarily making claims about the in-person crowd in his press conference, and the in-person crowd WAS NOT the largest ever at an inauguration.
"Alternative facts" are the things the media leaves out of their reports so they can lie by omission to create a false narrative ("lol no one likes Trump") instead of a true narrative ("Trump's audience was fine and he is supported by many people.")
This is truly ironic, because you are doing precisely what you're accusing the media of here.
I could just as easily say: Alternative facts are the things meta-monkey leaves out of his posts so he can lie by omission to create a false narrative ("lol Spicer was right") instead of a true narrative ("Spicer was actually wrong about the in-person crowd, but he mentioned the global audience in passing and might have been correct in terms of streaming, even if that wasn't his point at all.")
Remember, the mission of the media is to persuade with propaganda, not to inform with facts.
Remember, the mission of internet posts is to win an argument, not to inform with facts.
---
** P.S. In case you are going to claim Spicer was talking about something else, here's an extended quotation in context of what he said, which was later defended by Conway for the "alternative facts."
Secondly, photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall. This was the first time in our nation's history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall. That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual. This was also the first time that fencing and magnetometers went as far back on the Mall, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the Mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past.
Inaccurate numbers involving crowd size were also tweeted. No one had numbers, because the National Park Service, which controls the National Mall, does not put any out. By the way, this applies to any attempts to try to count the number of protestors today in the same fashion.
We do know a few things, so let's go through the facts. We know that from the platform where the President was sworn in, to 4th Street, it holds about 250,000 people. From 4th Street to the media tent is about another 220,000. And from the media tent to the Washington Monument, another 250,000 people. All of this space was full when the President took the Oath of Office. We know that 420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday, which actually c
Obama banned immigration from Cuba, and Carter banned immigration from Iran with no fanfare.
The "no fanfare" bit - was that because Obama and Carter were Democrat? Or was there some other difference(*) that no one has noticed?
First, there were some objections to the Obama action, but admittedly nothing like Trump. But the comparison is disingenuous, because what Obama did was end the "wet-foot dry-foot policy" that allowed Cubans who reached the US to get entry WITHOUT A VISA to request asylum. Trump, on the other hand, has banned people WITH VISAS, some of whom went through vetting processes for months or years.
In the equivalent case to Cuban refugees requesting asylum, the Cuban refugees were allowed entry with NO VETTING. In Trump's case, the vetting process for most refugees who now HAD VISAS has taken about TWO YEARS, including approvals from multiple security agencies.
As for Carter, we had an active hostage situation where diplomats from the US were being held by a foreign government. And even then, Carter did NOT CANCEL VISAS that had already been granted. He stopped new visa approvals and in some cases required recent Iranian immigrants to undergo additional screening upon arrival. There was no automatic cancellation of approved visas.
I've used this analogy before, but to take this into a different context, if Obama and Carter were running a business, what they effectively did was stop new applications for jobs, and perhaps require a bit of additional verification for those already hired. The equivalent for Trump in terms of many refugees would be if you were negotiating with a business for a new job for 2 years, underwent significant interviews for security clearances, had medical testing, etc., and you'd been approved for everything, bought your plane tickets to relocate, made arrangements for a new home where the company was... and then suddenly your hiring contract was summarily rescinded while you were in transit.
Add in the fact that this is a temporary ban
Yeah, a lot of people keep saying that as if it's some sort of minor inconvenience. Setting aside that some refugees are applying for such status while in FEAR for their lives, you also have all sorts of logistical issues that were simply tossed aside here. Many of the approvals for security or medical or whatever tests are done with a specific timeline in mind, and many of them expire over a period of a few months, essentially putting these people "back to the drawing board" after months or years. And what about all the refugee organizations in the U.S. who organized apartments and places to live for these people, etc.? There a hundreds of other little details that make this a MAJOR disruption within a system... not just a minor "temporary" inconvenience.
Can someone explain how this is anything to get worked up over?
Here's are a couple things, besides issues I already brought up above:
(1) What are Trump's actual problems with the vetting system right now? What are his suggestions for improvement? Is there ANYTHING specific he can point to that he intends to change about the vetting? If there were some major flaw in the two-year multiple-agency process for refugee approval we have now, I'd be right on board with you in saying, "Let's slow it down and see how to fix it." But Trump hasn't actually identified anything in our screening procedures he thinks are flawed or need reform. So why the sudden rush into this outright ban, disrupting a system that he doesn't have any specific criticisms of?... other than for the political capital with his supporters?
(2) If this REALLY were about fear of terrorism and proper "vetting," why are countries that actually have PRODUCED terrorists (e.g., Saudi Arabia) not on this list? If it were really so dire that we needed to cancel travel plans for thousands and thousands of people over the next few months, why aren't we looking int
Right! And what we call light bulbs are actually dark suckers.
You can joke if you wish, but in physics you may have heard of something called a "frame of reference," which specifies the default state you assume. That's not quite analogous to what TFA is doing, but it's something like that.
Newtonian physics assumes a default frame of reference that has no forces in it. Hence, we only talk about forces "existing" when they are non-zero.
But this "no forces" frame of reference doesn't really make sense when talking about the universe on large scales. Instead, the default state of the universe is a general curvature of space-time that galaxies exist within. You could perhaps think of it has a general "slope" on the rubber sheet model of spacetime. Or, if you insist on the tug-of-war analogy, the "default" state is with a certain level of tension. If you grew up as part of a "rope" within a universe like that, you'd probably develop a system of physics where the default "frame of reference" included tension forces pulling at you on both sides.
Anyhow, the "push" and "pull" and gravity doesn't quite make sense in terms of our normal analogy of grabbing onto something and physically pushing or pulling it. Rather, thinking of spacetime as curved, we change the slope. In the case of TFA, we have the default "slope" that pervades the universe, and previous research says our galaxy is moving in direction X more than the slope would suggest due to increased curvature in that direction. But it turns out there's also decreased curvature in another direction, which effectively decreases the threshold of the "default slope" in that direction.
If you lived as a "rope" in a continuous tug-of-war game since the beginning of time, which mostly had a default "tension" pulling at you from all sides... then you'd likely perceive a decreased tension as a "push" too. Since the whole "push/pull" thing is a bad analogy for gravitational spacetime curvature on a cosmic scale anyway, I'm not sure why everyone here is making fun of a bad analogy while upholding their bad analogy. They're both seriously flawed in this case.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the idea of a "repulsive force" makes some sense here if you are viewing things in relationship to the overall pattern of universe expansion and motion.
That is, we know the Milky Way is moving at some velocity in relationship to the cosmic background radiation. If the cosmic background radiation can be thought of as the "stable earth" or whatever as a frame of reference, our galaxy is moving in relationship to it.
If I understand this study correctly, it's been previously noted that our galaxy is moving in this manner partly because of a denser region of galaxies in the direction it's moving. But this study claims that the actual observed motion is ALSO due to the fact that there are FEWER galaxies than average (for the universe) pulling back from the other side.
So, to go to the tug-of-war analogy, if you had equal numbers of people on both sides of the rope, our galaxy would be "static" in relationship to the cosmic background. (Still in motion, as the universe is expanding, but moving in exact accordance with the general tendencies of the universe as a whole.)
Previously, we hypothesized that there's a cluster PULLING us and creating this other motion, equivalent to adding a few people on one side of the tug-of-war rope. But this paper is saying we ALSO have effectively taken away "people" from the other side of the rope, which results in an increase of net force toward the "more people" side.
Saying this is "repulsion" makes a bit of sense in this case, because the frame of reference is that general motion of the universe, i.e., there IS already an assumed "tug of war" with space pulling this way and that. Since stuff in the universe BY DEFAULT feels this tug equally in all directions, the absence of it is the aberration -- effectively, a "repeller" from the expected default force.
Actually, re-reading it, I assume that despite the fact that the link labels the whole first section as "Abstract" that actually the first paragraph is intended to be the abstract. The "second paragraph" is actually then the first paragraph of the introduction to the article. So they actually DO put the explanation after the first usage of the units in the article proper. Since abstracts are supposed to be short, they omitted this explanation -- as most people who would read such an article should understand it anyway.
This is what I read from the original article. To my very limited ability to understand, it seems that "Km s-1" is a speed, not a distance.
You may want to read up on the Hubble constant. When talking about large distances in the universe, there is no direct way to measure them. Instead, we measure red shift. Red shift is used to calculate velocity. Velocity is used to calculate distance. There are various assumptions at each stage of calculations.
And then there are other complexities about what you actually mean by "distance." Astronomers have various ways to calculate it, but it's complicated by relativistic effects, not to mention the problem of how to talk about distance in relationship to things where you only know where they were by light that left millions or billions of years ago. So, are you talking about distance "then" or "now" or something else? And there's the fact that space is actually expanding over time, so are you talking about "proper" distance or comoving distance. And your calculated "distance" could depend on the exact cosmological model you're using and assumptions about the future development of the universe.
To avoid some of those complications, it's more accurate to report the actual measurement you're taking when talking about "distance," which is redshift. Or you could go one step further and calculate the Hubble velocity based on the redshift, while ignoring the complications of "distance" mentioned above. That's what is being done here -- and it's quite common in astronomical literature. If you had bothered to read to the end of the second paragraph, you'll discover they actually explain this: "The Cosmicflows-2 dataset of galaxy distances provides reasonably dense coverage to R ~= 10,000 km s-1 (distances are expressed in terms of their equivalent Hubble velocity)."
I agree with you that it would probably have been clearer to people unfamiliar with this usage to put that explanation after the very first use of the Hubble velocity as distance... I assume they probably just didn't want to do that because stylistically it clutters the very first sentence of their article.
Exactly. It COULD be that this is what's happening (i.e., 40% of time reading accurately, the rest of the time just chance). But it could also be all sorts of other more complex relationships with data.
That division depends on a strict delineation between results which are KNOWN to be accurate vs. those subject to chance. But it could also be that measurements of brain activity only his a certain threshold in a subset of measurements.
For example, think of rolling a 10-sided die, and if you get 1 through 7, that's "success." 8 or above is "beyond the threshold." That would produce a 70% "success" rate. But it would be inaccurate to say that rolling the die had a 40% accuracy "within threshold" but 60% of it was "a coin flip." Which rolls of the die would be the "coin flip" ones exactly, and which ones the "guaranteed below threshold"? Now, if we had some way to measure the outcomes of a few "dice rolls" with 100% accuracy ahead of time (say, all rolls of 2, 3, 6, and 7), while you couldn't differentiate the rest (1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 -- all completely indistinguishable in advance), the GP's statement could be accurate. But that's not necessarily how this measurement system works in such cases.
Not saying this experiment worked like a 10-sided die either. I'm just saying there are all sorts of possible mechanisms here and ways to measure, and most of them can't just reduce a 70% success rate to a 40% "actual" success rate and a 60% "coin flip."
70% doesn't seem high enough to make any decisions.
To make legal decisions on care or something? Probably not. But it MIGHT be evidence that we're on the right track to communication.
And how was this controlled for confirmation bias, like has been discredited for other techniques where the person that reads the results also knows the answers, like e.g. dog training and lie detectors?
This is a valid question. I skimmed the actual study, but I don't have time right now to dig through the jargon and see how much these results are likely to be due to confirmation bias.
Here's the actual study. Does someone who knows more about these sorts of measurements want to sort out whether or not there were adequate procedural constraints to prevent confirmation bias?
Without doing double blinds, 70% seems like a horribly bad result, and no more than what would be expected from confirmation bias.
That's just nonsense. You can't tell whether confirmation bias is present by the level of success! That's not how stats work. In some cases, confirmation bias could easily produce a 95% or even 100% success rate. In other cases, it would be barely better than chance. You can only tell confirmation bias by looking at procedure and data analysis techniques.
And in any case, I'm surprised at the statistical ignorance shown by many posts in this thread. 70% success where 50% is chance may or may not be a significant finding -- if you do it with 10 questions (or coin flips or whatever), it's probably not significant. But if you ask a million questions or flip a coin a MILLION times and see 70% heads or whatever, it's pretty strong evidence of a pattern. (Would you place a 1:1 wager and gamble against heads on a coin after a million flips like that?)
But again, whether the result shows strong statistical significance from data analysis is a different question from whether confirmation bias could be present in the procedure.
The problem with your thesis is that your 97% isn't *my* 97%.
No, I'm talking about 97% of general office tasks, not MY tasks. MS Word is crap for many of the tasks **I** want to do.
Most people in offices use MS Word to do pretty basic stuff on an everyday basis -- crafting memos, simple short documents, etc. Outside of offices, the primary uses are probably people like students, who need to write short papers and such. All of these things could have been done with the features of MS Word decades ago.
For the majority of more complex common office tasks (e.g., making nicer brochures, newsletters, etc.), they'd be much better off using dedicated publishing or layout software.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a very interesting and well thought-out post. Thank you.
Most posts here miss the point that almost every event has multiple contributing factors. Obviously the driver was drunk. That's probably the most major contributing factor. But could a car with unusual acceleration characteristics also be a contributing factor? Possibly. Heck, the car ran into a tree. Maybe somebody planted that tree there 40 years ago. Did that person contribute something to this accident? Yes, obviously... maybe if that tree hadn't been there, everything would be okay.
The issue isn't whether or not there were hundreds of contributing factors to an event, or whether any one of them could have prevented it ("Darn that tree planting guy!"), but rather which contributing factors may have displayed negligence and created a "hazard" -- either legally or morally.
I haven't driven a Tesla, so I don't know how it handles. Clearly there are a lot of Tesla drivers who like how they drive and don't see a problem with them. But the parent here has a valid point that at some point we may get to a place where accelerating power and handling in some cars become more hazardous for the average driver.
And that's about the only part of this story that's worthy of debate.
Should this story be on Slashdot? NO. NO. NO. Clearly, it is an attempt by the editors to play off of the libertarian sympathies of many people here who are still pissed at how Tesla has had to do battle with car dealership laws, etc., and whose ire has already been inflamed by ridiculous charges about how the media seems to be attacking Tesla whenever it can... and now here comes a grieving father who is lashing out at something that really COULD have contributed something to this crash (in addition to the alcohol, etc.).
Let's all just take a deep breath, acknowledge that we all would not want to be in a place where we are grieving for a child and if we were, we'd likely want to find "someone to blame" too. And then let's move on from the the TROLL NAMED BeauHD WHO POSTED THIS STORY HERE TO GET EVERYONE YELLING.
However, I'd like to see some discussion of his statement.
Would a better connection between humans and machines be beneficial?
What would be the benefits/ problems?
How could this be achieved?
To discuss something meaningfully, you need to have a freakin' clue how it might work. At this point in time, we don't. We don't know how the brain works. We don't have anything close to strong AI. The best interfaces we're looking at now are stuff like moving artificial limbs or whatever. To speculate on what might happen IF we could all of this would be sort of like walking up to Isaac Newton in the 18th century and saying, "Sir Isaac, what problems do you think will occur with the internet next year? What will the major benefits/problems be of new advances?" Even if you explained the basic idea of the internet to Newton, I doubt he'd have enough perspective to meaningfully debate what might happen.
But, having put forth that disclaimer, I'll just note a few complete speculations in response to Musk. First is that his argument seems premised on the idea that a faster interface from brain to world would be beneficial to humans. Maybe it would. OR maybe our brains are somewhat limited in maximum input/output in ways that we can't really understand yet because we've never tried what he's proposing. Typing is about the right "speed of thought" for me to create coherent text. I've tried dictating, and I need to pause, correct, and reword too much for it to be useful to me. That seems to be how my brain works... although if I really needed to, I probably could retrain myself to dictate better.
But what if you increased my potential output by 10-fold, 100-fold, a million-fold. Would that actually be useful for me to interact with the world better or faster? Or would it just result in gibberish because my brain literally can't adapt to working much faster than it already does in USEFUL output? Or maybe the plasticity of the adult brain isn't enough to adapt -- so we try hooking up infants from birth with these things. Maybe it works... or maybe it just drives them to be insane or to have other brain development that effectively renders them LESS functional than "normal" humans. Not saying this WILL happen, but it's a possibility when you're talking about an interface with absolutely NO IDEA on what specs might work. Human brains have spent millions of years evolving into what they are to work efficiently at the speeds they do. Just because you could theoretically hook up a device to increase input/output doesn't mean the brain can actually change and adapt enough to make use of the throughput meaningfully.
Also, I think it's important to note in a discussion like this that one of the PRIMARY hallmarks of human intelligence is FORGETTING. One of the things that makes humans so much better than machines is our ability for abstraction -- finding larger patterns so we don't have to parse the "stream of consciousness" directly all the time. And then we sleep, and our brains revisit the memories of things that we've evolved to assimilate as "important" data, while we forget millions of random little details of our day at the same time.
Effectively, we take a very TINY percentage of the "noise" that is input into our brains and actually remember it in any detail, mostly through complex pattern-matching that we're only even beginning to emulate in specific cases with computer algorithms. But the point is that there's only so much that we CAN assimilate into our brains -- and that goes not just for memories, but for new skills or whatever. (Think about when you've tried to learn a skill by "cramming" for a full day or two vs. when you've done practice for a few minutes/day over weeks or months. Your brain needs the "downtime" to assimilate new skills... increasing input or output seems unlikely to make that process faster.)
My speculation is that Musk's idea is rather pointless for somehow keeping humans "relevant" or whatever. IF w
Kind of like the TIna Fey comments in an awards show setting against Bill Cosby years before serious accusations became public and widespread.
Just to note, the accusations WERE public and widespread back in 2004-2006 or so. It's just few people took them seriously... the "Cosby Show dad" mystique and years promoting kids Jell-O etc. seem to have protected him back then though. Tina Fey was one of many back then who DID pick up on it, but most of the media just forgot about it.
I don't remember that stuff in 2005 or whatever, but I distinctly remember when I myself discovered this stuff about Cosby when I somehow happened upon a story entitled something like, "How we all forgot out about how Bill Cosby is a rapist" -- and that was back in 2012, I think. And that was a couple years before it was plastered all over the news again -- but once I read about it somewhere, it was easy to find all sorts of stuff on it, even prior to when I was reading in 2012.
Tina Fey was reacting to something that was actually public knowledge and had been the subject of news stories at major media sites... it's just that the rest of the media didn't pick up on the "drumbeat" until a decade later.
Yup, and this essentially amounts to doing things the way that MS Office does them. The way you've already learnt to do things is the easy way, because doing things any other way first requires unlearning the way you've already learnt.
Your point would have greater import if Microsoft itself didn't have a history of upending the UI and forcing users to completely unlearn the way they used to do things and learn a whole new system -- see the "Ribbon" debacle.
I'll admit you have points otherwise, but at least with a FOSS solution, you're likely to see a fork if any development group attempts to change a major application so drastically. And even if they don't, with FOSS you can at least pay some developers to maintain the old code -- likely for a lot less than licensing for deploying commercial software across an entire city/corporation for decades.
I don't need formula and all the other reasons for using latex are no longer that relevant.
Word processors are not appropriate for large documents that need consistent formatting. They're not desktop publishing applications. Aside from a more "pretty" output with less work, LaTeX also ensures lots of consistency across your document without having to think about it... whereas Word tricks you into thinking you've done something right with the WYSIWYG environment... until you accidentally do something that messes up the formatting.
Also don't want to spend time learning what is essentially a new language with often cryptic build tools so I can write a document.
One word -- LyX.
It's basically a GUI word processor of sorts, with LaTeX under the hood. Click a button to get a PDF.
Yes, if you need really specialized custom formatting or unusual features, you may need to dig around a bit to figure out how to do them. But the good news is once you solve a problem in LaTeX (and LyX), your solution usually "sticks." Solve a problem in MS Word with layout, and change some other random feature in your document, and suddenly your custom formatting screws up in all sorts of unpredictable ways. That's because MS Word is NOT a desktop publishing tool. If you want proper handling of large documents with consistent formatting, etc., you want to use something appropriate -- either LaTeX or something commercial like InDesign.
With LyX, you won't have the learning curve for LaTeX in pure text form. Mostly you just choose a document class appropriate to your task, select a few options from it to customize your formatting, and you're good to go. Even use a non-TeX font with built-in XeTeX/LuaTeX support. I'm not going to oversell this, though -- you will probably spend a couple days setting up a custom document preamble to get everything exactly the way you want it (if you care about typography... but if you care about typography, you wouldn't be using Word or any normal word processor).
But if you don't care about typography so much, you just need to conform your thesis to your university's requirements. Some schools actually have LaTeX templates available for use (officially or unofficially)... but if not, you may need to do some customizations. Luckily, you can often just ask in a TeX forum somewhere (e.g., on StackExchange) and people will frequently just give you the appropriate commands to include if you ask your question clearly.
As someone who went through the process of writing a thesis and also helped a couple others deal with last-minute formatting problems in MS Word, let me just say: you're going to spend at least a few days dealing with formatting issues no matter what. If you go with MS Word, unless you're a wizard who knows all the possible places Word will screw things up, you're going to spend several days at the end dealing with headaches where the text just doesn't flow properly or that figure/table/image/whatever simply disappears or completely ruins the formatting for an entire chapter for no apparent reason.
LyX isn't a perfect solution, since ideally you need to be familiar with the underlying LaTeX code to fix the few things that do go wrong. But if you're just doing one document like this, you can likely get the support you need on a forum. Chances are many of the questions you may have are already answered for you out there.
A lunar eclipse at full moon is a given ??? Are you crazy? No, its not!
I think you misunderstood GP, which admittedly was a bit poorly worded. I'm pretty sure GP meant that IF a lunar eclipse is happening, it IS a full moon. So two of the "triple features" mentioned in the summary are bound to be together anyway... all the nonsense about the "snow moon" notwithstanding. (What is the sudden obsession with old moon names in the past year or two? Very few people used these terms anymore outside of the Farmer's Almanac for years, and suddenly they're all over the news... and people keep acting like they're significant -- "Ooooh a 'SNOW moon'... ooooh a 'HARVEST moon'..." -- these happen every single year and mean nothing other than what month it is.)
The fact that the summary doesn't acknowledge that full moons are just normal at lunar eclipses makes it sound silly at best, ignorant of basic astronomy at worst. Terms like "rare convergence" make it even worse. And lunar eclipses aren't exactly "rare" events to begin with, although there are some unusual features of this penumbral one... but the fact that it's penumbral will actually make it less interesting to look at to the average observer.
Is it just me, or has there been an increase in hyperbolic astronomy stories recently? There was all the "supermoon" nonsense last year -- again, mildly interesting for astronomy nerds, but not so impressive for the average Joe who barely looks up at the sky. (The moon really wasn't THAT much bigger.) Now we're billing a "triple feature" for a lackluster lunar eclipse coupled with a full moon (which would be there anyway if an eclipse is happening), and a comet that you need binoculars to see.
I'm all for getting people to look at the sky and to get interested in astronomy, but if you overbill the significance of such things, I don't think it helps.
Woosh....
No matter how many people use literally to mean figuratively, no matter how many dictionaries take note of the inverse usage, it is still wrong, and anyone trying to avoid looking like a moron would be wise to steer clear of incorrect uses. Ditto "begging the question".
While I absolutely agree with you that educated speakers/writers need to simply avoid "begging the question," I also absolutely disagree with you about your use of the word "wrong" here.
Language is about communication of meaning. It's not a "game" where you get to "win" if you check off enough of the "rules." I'm not sure there is ANY English speaker out there familiar with the phrase "begging the question" who is unfamiliar with its meaning to "raise the question," and generally it's clear from context if this is the meaning intended.
Meanwhile, I can guarantee you that outside of philosophical circles and wacko grammar pedants, NO ONE will understand you if you use "begging the question" to mean petitio principii.
Hence, 98% of people will understand the common meaning of the phrase "begging the question" to mean "raises the question," and of the remaining 2%, the 1% of philosophers won't much care which meaning you use. And the other 1% of wacko grammar pedants actually KNOW about the modern usage, so they'll understand it too, even if they mutter under their breath.
So, if we're looking at language as successful communication, using "begging the question" to mean "raising the question" has a near 100% success rate in communication, and a 1% failure rate among the lunatics who don't realize language isn't a weird game where you keep score. But if you use "begging the question" to mean petitio principii, you'll likely only communicate with 2% of your audience at best (and that's assuming an educated audience). Communication failure.
There are all sorts of reasons "begging the question" was doomed to failure as an English phrase from the start -- it was a bizarre and archaic attempt at a translation of the Latin phrase even when it was coined hundreds of years ago, and it was based on a poor Latin translation of the original Greek. The "modern" meaning of "raising the question" has been used in learned discourse and by good writers for well over a century -- in previous threads about this, I've posted an example of a debate in Parliament from the 1820s I think where the "new" meaning was already so well established that a representative could make a pun on the two meanings.
The battle has been lost. "Wrong" is meaningless here.
That said, I'll agree with you that "literally" is a different sort of beast, since it has much greater potential for confusion between the two meanings. That doesn't mean I would condemn the new meaning as illegitimate -- but I agree that there's a good reason to stick to the original meaning there. "Begging the question" is no longer even in the running. I avoid it everywhere not because of confusion (since EVERYONE knows what it means, i.e., what you declare to be "wrong"), but because of the tiny minority of self-righteous lunatics who can't understand that educated usage has already changed... about a century ago.
not because Trump is about to take away their cheap slave-labor pool and make them hire American workers.
You obviously have a point that many of these companies have an interest in getting cheaper workers, but I really wish you'd tone down the rhetoric of "slave labor." Slaves, typically, aren't paid at all. Yes, employers can be more abusive toward H1B workers, and that's a real problem, but "slave labor" is just hyperbole.
You want to talk about immigration and "slave labor"? Look toward what could happen under the Trump presidency and farm workers like pickers. Those are people who frequently work 12-16 hour days in fields, frequently in 100-degree weather. And get paid something like $10/hour (for SKILLED workers). Stats usually say that half of the U.S. farm labor force is illegal, and 3/4 of it is composed of immigrants -- because Americans simply refuse to work these jobs for that pay. There are actually other issues too -- because many of these jobs are really "skilled labor" in the sense that it can take a few years of picking a specific crop to get really good and fast at it, and these workers generally get paid per volume picked.
Not to go too off-topic here, but the U.S. is going to have to deal with some harsh realities if Trump actually tries to follow through with his immigration threats against Mexicans and Latin Americans. A number of states tried placing harsh restrictions on immigrants a few years ago, and farm owners ended up with worker shortages and crops that rotted on the fields. Without immigrants, we're looking at a future of either food shortages or significantly higher food prices... or both.
Anyhow, if you want to talk about "slave labor," there are plenty of jobs Americans get immigrants to do in much harsher conditions with backbreaking work often at significantly lower wages than any tech workers. I'm not saying tech workers aren't exploited too -- but the grand scheme of things, it's not "slave labor."
So, if you look at the foreign language requirement for what it is (an "expand your mind" requirement)
"Expand your mind"? That's really vague. Just a few things foreign language requirements help with that coding doesn't:
-- English grammar and usage. Many good writers and speakers have noted that they first really understand grammar and details of English usage when they study a foreign language. Now, of course it's possible to refine one's language use without formal grammar training, but the process of deconstructing a foreign language is often helpful to understand one's own.
-- English etymology and vocabulary use. Particularly if one studies Latin-based language like Spanish, French, or Italian, one gains knowledge of Latinate roots, which are often helpful in figuring out Latin-based English words. Frequently in the first few years of language instruction, you'll learn a lot more English vocabulary through relationships with the other language. Germanic languages also are helpful in learning new English words, due to common older roots.
-- Communication skills. A lot of students who just take a couple years of a language in high school or whatever don't really get a proficient speaking level, but that's largely due to lack of practice and subsequent failure to "keep up" the training. Nevertheless, for many students who do take the oral skills seriously, languages like Spanish can be incredibly helpful for communicating with customers/users and other job contacts in many professions. If you have an opportunity, doing something like Mandarin or Japanese can open yet other doors.
-- As one learns another language, generally one learns about other cultures too. Which again is often an introspective exercise in learning about your own culture -- you don't realize your assumptions about the word often until you contrast them with someone else's. This can be a very eye-opening exercise for young people.
None of this is an argument against coding. But there are more specific things language requirements do, aside from basic skills in that language or "expanding your mind" (whatever that means).
I think that it is not too much of a stretch to think that coding will eventually become the Latin and Greek of our culture.
Huh. I'm not sure even how to begin responding to this. The reason Latin and Greek were taught in schools commonly until the mid-20th century is because they not only served as a common communication system in many fields, were the basis of many modern languages, and were the most common languages of historical documents over a span of more than 2000 years, but also were the foundation of much of Western culture and political systems. There's still a vast amount of classical, medieval, and early modern literature unavailable in translation -- and when I saw "literature" I mean all documents, including scientific and technical advances, as well as cultural artifacts.
While I'm not arguing for a return to Latin or Greek requirements, I don't think it's a coincidence that the U.S. government started wildly straying from the original restrictions on federal power in the early to mid 20th century as knowledge of Latin/Greek and related Roman/Greek history (and political science) decreased. Sure, it's possible to read about these things in English in translation, but the widespread use of Latin led to a promotion of related cultural knowledge (see above), including political and philosophical questions. The Founders of the U.S. all knew their history very well and designed our government in various ways to prevent recurrence of problems that happened in ancient societies. All of this is largely forgotten these days, at best a marginal sidenote to history courses in many public school curricula.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Latin and Greek had even more benefits for learning about E
And yes, since the levels are likely so low its difficult to measure, that should be taken into account before jumping to the 'ban' gun as you suggest. We certainly don't ban everything that has potential health risks.
The problem with the chemicals in question is that they are known to accumulate in the environment, and there is increasing evidence that their presence in drinking water, etc. can cause serious problems. And the studies that had been used to create previous recommended drinking water standards were basically knowingly corrupted by DuPont, a primary manufacturer. You may want to look up the cases against DuPont and Rob Bilott, the primary attorney who has litigated these cases (who actually used to work as a defense attorney FOR big chemical companies, but who became convinced of the gross injustice and lies in the present case, so he "switched sides").
I'm not one of the typical "chemophobic" folks who worries about "chemicals," but in this particular case, the continued use of the chemicals in question is worrisome not just for any direct health effects from consumption of the food/packaging, but also from the large amount of fast food packaging waste and the future environmental lifespan of those chemicals. In case you haven't been paying attention over the past year or so, chemical testing is now going on in water systems around the country because of heightened concerns over PFAS chemicals -- the idea that we're still using them in something as common as fast-food packaging is a concern.
I'm sure what happened here is what seems to be happening on loads of other sites these days. Trolls and spam get worse every day, and at some point an exec or site owner does a cost/benefit analysis. What they inevitably see is that the vast majority of users on almost all sites never leave a comment, and the active commenters are generally a tiny fraction of the userbase. So the question inevitably comes up: "Why are we spending our time and money fighting trolls and spam just keep the forums going for 1% or whatever of our users?" Of course, generally these stats are exaggerated, and there's frequently less data or weight given to those who may just READ comments but rarely or never comment themselves. (I generally only comment on a handful of forums, but I frequently read comments on a dozen others at least occasionally.). But none of this seems to matter: all the site owners will see is "why are we paying people to delete troll posts again? Why do we even need these discussions?" What's unfortunate is that most established forums could easily adopt a moderation system that solves many of the problems just using volunteers... But for some reason site owners don't seem to want to do that most places.
They could at least zip up the archives and post them to the torrents for posterity.
Agreed. But this seems to be the common pattern in forums closing down these days: just delete it all. Frankly, aside from a couple of sites I visit frequently though, the ONLY time I read forums on other sites is when they're already inactive threads... But discussions are sometimes fascinating and sometimes informative or helpful. It seems those who make decisions to close down forums just want to "wash their hands" of the whole thing, but it points out the fragility of data in the information age. In an era when we generate terabytes of meaningless crap everyday that seems to be archived for years or decades, it's also easy to make terabytes of useful stuff disappear in one "poof!" with little warning... And because so much online data is in control of site owners, it can just disappear at any time.
I think they had plenty of math to build an arch.
It doesn't take math to build an arch. It doesn't take math to build a cathedral. What it initially takes for a civilization is some trial and error, and then often a sort of procedure is created. Yes, math can help and new architectural procedures did follow during the Renaissance along with more sophisticated mathematical analysis. But a lot of those problems can be overcome with the well-learned mechanical procedure after trial and error coupled with some factor of "overengineering" to prevent collapse, etc.
The Romans were very good at standardization. Read about who a legion would make camp at night if you haven't, and you'll realize how motivated they were to set up systems that were very efficient after centuries of experience.
Same thing with building arches and buildings, etc. Math is great if you want to make those structures more efficient or do something that doesn't seem "reasonable" with your building materials (but may be possible if you know stuff about engineering and the accompanying math of materials). But the Romans did a lot of amazing stuff with rather simple procedures. For example, if I recall correctly, in the Pantheon, they created this dome which has never been surpassed in size for an unreinforced concrete dome -- and they did it mostly through gradually changing the concrete mixture to use successively less dense (lighter) types of stone. Meanwhile, the thickness of the dome also decreases, and they left an "oculus" (hole) in the center which had the benefit of lightening the weight of the dome further in its most fragile part.
These sorts of procedures can be seen in other Roman architecture too, from centuries of trial and error in making better concrete and building larger structures -- they just happen to be combined in unique way here. Although the Pantheon is one of the greatest Roman architectural achievements, I sincerely doubt much advanced math was used in its construction... just patterns and procedures based off of long experience.
(None of this is to disparage the value of math. But if you study history, you realize how many people find solutions to complex problems without the abstraction of math. The solutions often aren't efficient and they are sometimes erroneous, but for a practical approximation, they were important for a lot of historical advances.)
Not getting any sleep is fatal. The theory that sleep's main function is "to forget" doesn't explain that. Of course, the post didn't claim that was its sole function, but I'd say it implied it.
Well, I'd say the summary implied that this may be sleep's primary function, probably not the "sole" one. But I take your point.
Scientific American had an article on sleep last year which favored the garbage removal theory.
Yes, the theory itself is hardly new. These two new studies seem to support it. It does seem to make intuitive sense, since a lot of our brain's activity has to do with getting rid of all the "noise." People who are working with AI these days realize how difficult it can be to get a system to sort out the patterns from the noise, particularly when it comes to greater abstraction.
And we know from numerous studies for decades that sleep is essential to memory formation. The idea that one aspect of that memory formation may be getting rid of less "important" mental traces of your day while reinforcing ones "that matter" makes a lot of intuitive sense... not that that's an argument for its scientific validity. But it's almost certainly an important brain function at some level and at some time -- so finding out it happens during sleep is interesting.
Since CNN wants to make him look bad, and you are so clueless you can't even be bothered to look for his comments, you obviously don't really care either.
I read the whole executive order. Did you?
Trump is giving those countries 90 days to come up with a vetting system that his State Department deems acceptable. If they do not comply, the ban will be extended.
That still doesn't answer my question, since we already have detailed vetting in place within the State Department and frequently including other agencies (depending on the type of visa or entry desired). What is wrong with our current procedures that justifies such a unilateral and sudden action, rather than simply reforming our vetting policies?
So you pitching a hissy fit over 90 days and giving a pass on a permanent ban shows again you don't really care, and are only really hear to bash Trump over bullshit that is meaningless because you have been fooled into thinking its valid.
Wow -- you really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Cuba had been granted a SPECIAL EXEMPTION that essentially allowed those who managed to sail into Florida and landed to be granted entry without a visa and allowed to apply for asylum -- this was a policy unique to Cuba and unfair to other immigrants, who needed to go through "normal" legal channels for entry.
And Obama did NOT ban immigration from Cuba "permanently" -- Cubans are still perfectly able to immigrate to the U.S. Now they just need to follow the rules that all other countries do to do so. You can argue about what the original rationale was for allowing Cubans special treatment to get into the U.S. without vetting, but given the fact that our relations have improved in recent years, it seems positively weird to continue such a bizarre exemption for Cubans. Nobody was "banned" in that case -- just required to use proper immigration channels like everyone else.
He claimed the audience (total number of people watching) was greater. And this was, according to Akami, the largest live streamed event ever. So Spicer was correct: the audience for Trump was bigger.
That is PART of what he claimed. Here's his actual quote:
This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in-person and around the globe
And if you look at the transcript of what he actually said, that sentence was prefaced by several other sentences going into detail about the IN PERSON CROWD.** He did NOT say anything else about internet streaming or whatever other than hinting at it in "around the globe" in that sentence there. So, claiming that he was entirely or even primarily talking about internet audience is simply wrong. Yes, it may be true that more people streamed this inauguration online than ever before, but more streaming devices are also available to people than ever before in history. On the other side of things, maybe crowd numbers were muted a bit due to the rain forecast. There are all sorts of things that could have played into the numbers here.
But two things are certain: Spicer was primarily making claims about the in-person crowd in his press conference, and the in-person crowd WAS NOT the largest ever at an inauguration.
"Alternative facts" are the things the media leaves out of their reports so they can lie by omission to create a false narrative ("lol no one likes Trump") instead of a true narrative ("Trump's audience was fine and he is supported by many people.")
This is truly ironic, because you are doing precisely what you're accusing the media of here. I could just as easily say: Alternative facts are the things meta-monkey leaves out of his posts so he can lie by omission to create a false narrative ("lol Spicer was right") instead of a true narrative ("Spicer was actually wrong about the in-person crowd, but he mentioned the global audience in passing and might have been correct in terms of streaming, even if that wasn't his point at all.")
Remember, the mission of the media is to persuade with propaganda, not to inform with facts.
Remember, the mission of internet posts is to win an argument, not to inform with facts.
--- ** P.S. In case you are going to claim Spicer was talking about something else, here's an extended quotation in context of what he said, which was later defended by Conway for the "alternative facts."
Secondly, photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall. This was the first time in our nation's history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall. That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual. This was also the first time that fencing and magnetometers went as far back on the Mall, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the Mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past.
Inaccurate numbers involving crowd size were also tweeted. No one had numbers, because the National Park Service, which controls the National Mall, does not put any out. By the way, this applies to any attempts to try to count the number of protestors today in the same fashion.
We do know a few things, so let's go through the facts. We know that from the platform where the President was sworn in, to 4th Street, it holds about 250,000 people. From 4th Street to the media tent is about another 220,000. And from the media tent to the Washington Monument, another 250,000 people. All of this space was full when the President took the Oath of Office. We know that 420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday, which actually c
Obama banned immigration from Cuba, and Carter banned immigration from Iran with no fanfare.
The "no fanfare" bit - was that because Obama and Carter were Democrat? Or was there some other difference(*) that no one has noticed?
First, there were some objections to the Obama action, but admittedly nothing like Trump. But the comparison is disingenuous, because what Obama did was end the "wet-foot dry-foot policy" that allowed Cubans who reached the US to get entry WITHOUT A VISA to request asylum. Trump, on the other hand, has banned people WITH VISAS, some of whom went through vetting processes for months or years.
In the equivalent case to Cuban refugees requesting asylum, the Cuban refugees were allowed entry with NO VETTING. In Trump's case, the vetting process for most refugees who now HAD VISAS has taken about TWO YEARS, including approvals from multiple security agencies.
As for Carter, we had an active hostage situation where diplomats from the US were being held by a foreign government. And even then, Carter did NOT CANCEL VISAS that had already been granted. He stopped new visa approvals and in some cases required recent Iranian immigrants to undergo additional screening upon arrival. There was no automatic cancellation of approved visas.
I've used this analogy before, but to take this into a different context, if Obama and Carter were running a business, what they effectively did was stop new applications for jobs, and perhaps require a bit of additional verification for those already hired. The equivalent for Trump in terms of many refugees would be if you were negotiating with a business for a new job for 2 years, underwent significant interviews for security clearances, had medical testing, etc., and you'd been approved for everything, bought your plane tickets to relocate, made arrangements for a new home where the company was... and then suddenly your hiring contract was summarily rescinded while you were in transit.
Add in the fact that this is a temporary ban
Yeah, a lot of people keep saying that as if it's some sort of minor inconvenience. Setting aside that some refugees are applying for such status while in FEAR for their lives, you also have all sorts of logistical issues that were simply tossed aside here. Many of the approvals for security or medical or whatever tests are done with a specific timeline in mind, and many of them expire over a period of a few months, essentially putting these people "back to the drawing board" after months or years. And what about all the refugee organizations in the U.S. who organized apartments and places to live for these people, etc.? There a hundreds of other little details that make this a MAJOR disruption within a system... not just a minor "temporary" inconvenience.
Can someone explain how this is anything to get worked up over?
Here's are a couple things, besides issues I already brought up above:
(1) What are Trump's actual problems with the vetting system right now? What are his suggestions for improvement? Is there ANYTHING specific he can point to that he intends to change about the vetting? If there were some major flaw in the two-year multiple-agency process for refugee approval we have now, I'd be right on board with you in saying, "Let's slow it down and see how to fix it." But Trump hasn't actually identified anything in our screening procedures he thinks are flawed or need reform. So why the sudden rush into this outright ban, disrupting a system that he doesn't have any specific criticisms of?... other than for the political capital with his supporters?
(2) If this REALLY were about fear of terrorism and proper "vetting," why are countries that actually have PRODUCED terrorists (e.g., Saudi Arabia) not on this list? If it were really so dire that we needed to cancel travel plans for thousands and thousands of people over the next few months, why aren't we looking int
Right! And what we call light bulbs are actually dark suckers.
You can joke if you wish, but in physics you may have heard of something called a "frame of reference," which specifies the default state you assume. That's not quite analogous to what TFA is doing, but it's something like that.
Newtonian physics assumes a default frame of reference that has no forces in it. Hence, we only talk about forces "existing" when they are non-zero.
But this "no forces" frame of reference doesn't really make sense when talking about the universe on large scales. Instead, the default state of the universe is a general curvature of space-time that galaxies exist within. You could perhaps think of it has a general "slope" on the rubber sheet model of spacetime. Or, if you insist on the tug-of-war analogy, the "default" state is with a certain level of tension. If you grew up as part of a "rope" within a universe like that, you'd probably develop a system of physics where the default "frame of reference" included tension forces pulling at you on both sides.
Anyhow, the "push" and "pull" and gravity doesn't quite make sense in terms of our normal analogy of grabbing onto something and physically pushing or pulling it. Rather, thinking of spacetime as curved, we change the slope. In the case of TFA, we have the default "slope" that pervades the universe, and previous research says our galaxy is moving in direction X more than the slope would suggest due to increased curvature in that direction. But it turns out there's also decreased curvature in another direction, which effectively decreases the threshold of the "default slope" in that direction.
If you lived as a "rope" in a continuous tug-of-war game since the beginning of time, which mostly had a default "tension" pulling at you from all sides... then you'd likely perceive a decreased tension as a "push" too. Since the whole "push/pull" thing is a bad analogy for gravitational spacetime curvature on a cosmic scale anyway, I'm not sure why everyone here is making fun of a bad analogy while upholding their bad analogy. They're both seriously flawed in this case.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the idea of a "repulsive force" makes some sense here if you are viewing things in relationship to the overall pattern of universe expansion and motion.
That is, we know the Milky Way is moving at some velocity in relationship to the cosmic background radiation. If the cosmic background radiation can be thought of as the "stable earth" or whatever as a frame of reference, our galaxy is moving in relationship to it.
If I understand this study correctly, it's been previously noted that our galaxy is moving in this manner partly because of a denser region of galaxies in the direction it's moving. But this study claims that the actual observed motion is ALSO due to the fact that there are FEWER galaxies than average (for the universe) pulling back from the other side.
So, to go to the tug-of-war analogy, if you had equal numbers of people on both sides of the rope, our galaxy would be "static" in relationship to the cosmic background. (Still in motion, as the universe is expanding, but moving in exact accordance with the general tendencies of the universe as a whole.)
Previously, we hypothesized that there's a cluster PULLING us and creating this other motion, equivalent to adding a few people on one side of the tug-of-war rope. But this paper is saying we ALSO have effectively taken away "people" from the other side of the rope, which results in an increase of net force toward the "more people" side.
Saying this is "repulsion" makes a bit of sense in this case, because the frame of reference is that general motion of the universe, i.e., there IS already an assumed "tug of war" with space pulling this way and that. Since stuff in the universe BY DEFAULT feels this tug equally in all directions, the absence of it is the aberration -- effectively, a "repeller" from the expected default force.
Actually, re-reading it, I assume that despite the fact that the link labels the whole first section as "Abstract" that actually the first paragraph is intended to be the abstract. The "second paragraph" is actually then the first paragraph of the introduction to the article. So they actually DO put the explanation after the first usage of the units in the article proper. Since abstracts are supposed to be short, they omitted this explanation -- as most people who would read such an article should understand it anyway.
This is what I read from the original article. To my very limited ability to understand, it seems that "Km s-1" is a speed, not a distance.
You may want to read up on the Hubble constant. When talking about large distances in the universe, there is no direct way to measure them. Instead, we measure red shift. Red shift is used to calculate velocity. Velocity is used to calculate distance. There are various assumptions at each stage of calculations.
And then there are other complexities about what you actually mean by "distance." Astronomers have various ways to calculate it, but it's complicated by relativistic effects, not to mention the problem of how to talk about distance in relationship to things where you only know where they were by light that left millions or billions of years ago. So, are you talking about distance "then" or "now" or something else? And there's the fact that space is actually expanding over time, so are you talking about "proper" distance or comoving distance. And your calculated "distance" could depend on the exact cosmological model you're using and assumptions about the future development of the universe.
To avoid some of those complications, it's more accurate to report the actual measurement you're taking when talking about "distance," which is redshift. Or you could go one step further and calculate the Hubble velocity based on the redshift, while ignoring the complications of "distance" mentioned above. That's what is being done here -- and it's quite common in astronomical literature. If you had bothered to read to the end of the second paragraph, you'll discover they actually explain this: "The Cosmicflows-2 dataset of galaxy distances provides reasonably dense coverage to R ~= 10,000 km s-1 (distances are expressed in terms of their equivalent Hubble velocity)."
I agree with you that it would probably have been clearer to people unfamiliar with this usage to put that explanation after the very first use of the Hubble velocity as distance... I assume they probably just didn't want to do that because stylistically it clutters the very first sentence of their article.
That's not how probabilities work
Exactly. It COULD be that this is what's happening (i.e., 40% of time reading accurately, the rest of the time just chance). But it could also be all sorts of other more complex relationships with data.
That division depends on a strict delineation between results which are KNOWN to be accurate vs. those subject to chance. But it could also be that measurements of brain activity only his a certain threshold in a subset of measurements.
For example, think of rolling a 10-sided die, and if you get 1 through 7, that's "success." 8 or above is "beyond the threshold." That would produce a 70% "success" rate. But it would be inaccurate to say that rolling the die had a 40% accuracy "within threshold" but 60% of it was "a coin flip." Which rolls of the die would be the "coin flip" ones exactly, and which ones the "guaranteed below threshold"? Now, if we had some way to measure the outcomes of a few "dice rolls" with 100% accuracy ahead of time (say, all rolls of 2, 3, 6, and 7), while you couldn't differentiate the rest (1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 -- all completely indistinguishable in advance), the GP's statement could be accurate. But that's not necessarily how this measurement system works in such cases.
Not saying this experiment worked like a 10-sided die either. I'm just saying there are all sorts of possible mechanisms here and ways to measure, and most of them can't just reduce a 70% success rate to a 40% "actual" success rate and a 60% "coin flip."
70% doesn't seem high enough to make any decisions.
To make legal decisions on care or something? Probably not. But it MIGHT be evidence that we're on the right track to communication.
And how was this controlled for confirmation bias, like has been discredited for other techniques where the person that reads the results also knows the answers, like e.g. dog training and lie detectors?
This is a valid question. I skimmed the actual study, but I don't have time right now to dig through the jargon and see how much these results are likely to be due to confirmation bias.
Here's the actual study. Does someone who knows more about these sorts of measurements want to sort out whether or not there were adequate procedural constraints to prevent confirmation bias?
Without doing double blinds, 70% seems like a horribly bad result, and no more than what would be expected from confirmation bias.
That's just nonsense. You can't tell whether confirmation bias is present by the level of success! That's not how stats work. In some cases, confirmation bias could easily produce a 95% or even 100% success rate. In other cases, it would be barely better than chance. You can only tell confirmation bias by looking at procedure and data analysis techniques.
And in any case, I'm surprised at the statistical ignorance shown by many posts in this thread. 70% success where 50% is chance may or may not be a significant finding -- if you do it with 10 questions (or coin flips or whatever), it's probably not significant. But if you ask a million questions or flip a coin a MILLION times and see 70% heads or whatever, it's pretty strong evidence of a pattern. (Would you place a 1:1 wager and gamble against heads on a coin after a million flips like that?)
But again, whether the result shows strong statistical significance from data analysis is a different question from whether confirmation bias could be present in the procedure.
The problem with your thesis is that your 97% isn't *my* 97%.
No, I'm talking about 97% of general office tasks, not MY tasks. MS Word is crap for many of the tasks **I** want to do.
Most people in offices use MS Word to do pretty basic stuff on an everyday basis -- crafting memos, simple short documents, etc. Outside of offices, the primary uses are probably people like students, who need to write short papers and such. All of these things could have been done with the features of MS Word decades ago.
For the majority of more complex common office tasks (e.g., making nicer brochures, newsletters, etc.), they'd be much better off using dedicated publishing or layout software.