Paranoid much? There are much smaller and more dangerous things that could end up in the "wrong hands". They're not planning to sell this at WalMart, you know. It'll be built at one super-secure facility and transported to another super-secure facility. If you're gonna be worried about that, why not worry that someone might get their hands on a vile of smallpox that's being kept somewhere in a vault?
Awesome post, thanks. And this is exactly why I think a sense of honor and duty in the press is probably much more important than in the military, or police, or any of the government branches.
Creating new content is a feature of the game itself in Minecraft (in fact it's pretty much the point), whereas traditionally it's been something that a person with special skills can do outside the game. Or at least that's my understanding.
I'm assuming you know the history of ancient Greek science well, and know for a fact that their view of fire as an "element" had absolutely no practically useful implications; otherwise I'm sure you wouldn't make that statement with such conviction.
Still though, what's your point? Good science is the process of proposing theories and verifying them with evidence. Of course the theories are going to end up being wrong eventually, and very often won't be practically useful. How would you propose evaluating the work of a modern day theoretical physicist? Based on how much people 2000 years from now agree with it? I think you'd find that metric to be rather unenlightening, as the answer almost always would be "not at all". Based on the practical applications of that work? The vast majority of theoretical physicists would be dead by the time you gave them any grade above F, including the good ones.
Then you never get any points, because you will pretty much always be wrong; or at least this is the view taken in science. You'd be hard pressed to find any serious scientist who thinks any sort of absolute truth can really be discovered. That makes your point system pointless (if you will forgive the pun).
multiple apes each independently evolving into human beings that have sufficiently equivalent DNA and reproductive systems compatible enough to themselves reproduce
I think this is a misleading view. Evolution is, IMO, better thought of in terms of populations, not individuals. It wasn't a bunch of apes independently evolving, it was a single bunch of apes jointly evolving, staying together over many many generations, etc. Does that maybe seem more believable to you, or make more sense?
The confidence levels... tell you very little directly about the probability that a result is correct.
More than that -- in frequentist statistics, there's no such concept as the "probability that a result is correct" once it's been observed; it is either correct or not. The probability only applies when observations haven't been made yet. Your explanation is probably the best way to think about p values and such, in that it is both correct and intuitive -- a 95% confidence means that before you did the experiment, that is the probability that the result you'd get after doing it would be correct.
Furthermore, the point you made about repeated experiments is extremely important and, unfortunately, often ignored in science of smaller profile. God only knows how many "high confidence" results in all manner of scientific or semi-scientific fields are simply the result of researchers using their data "too many times," so to speak, i.e. performing too many tests at once.
Re:Statistical fluctuations are where the magic is
on
No Higgs Just Yet
·
· Score: 1
What possible reason could there be for anyone to know that?
Now if I can just ignore/. and a few other Internet sites, I might get something done.
Maybe you could write a story about a person who's trying to write some stories, but keeps getting distracted by/. and a few other Internet sites. Then after just a little bit of soul-searching and suspenseful struggle, he manages to become more self-disciplined and writes some decently (but not wildly) successful stories.
Sounds like a story that is both quite mundane and discusses a topic many people can relate to. Look me up after you get that pulitzer.
"hyperbolic insanity", lol... Do you write? If not, have you ever considered it? Seems like you have an almost Douglas Adams-esque tone, something neat might come out if you try writing maybe a short story or something...
I don't think that was his point, I think he was saying "we're all fucked because we're all apathetic and jaded and only lift a finger when it directly benefits us."
Perhaps that is true in the short term, but I think the benefit of a revolution is that it makes more "stable" changes possible, i.e. creates a situation where there are necessarily less established powers, and hence more "freedom." This can be good or bad depending on who gets their hands on that freedom first, but at least it can be an opportunity.
E.g., the post-soviet countries (admittedly not your typical revolution, but still informative I think). True, in many aspects many of them are worse off today than in 1988. There's probably more extreme poverty, lack of education, crime (both violent and other), etc. Still though, if given the choice, how many people in those countries do you think would go back to the USSR? (The real one, not the idealized utopia it had a lot of people convinced it was through very effective propaganda.)
Maybe that's not so bad? Seems to me the best way to fix a screwed up system is to make it so much worse that even the most satisfied portion of society is ready to spill some blood in a real revolution.
DO WANT! Though, I lament the way the Predators idea has been treated. Since the first movie, we've pretty much just seen a sequence of B movies. It's sad. I think something really cool could've come of it, if someone had taken it more seriously. Especially the AvP idea...
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it was funny... When I got the joke, that is.
DUH! Still though, worth having evidence. Maybe the higher-ups will scapegoat some people, and things might get marginally better. Who knows.
We are no longer a country for the people. Now we are a country for the corporations.
Oblig: but corporations ARE people! The supreme court said so.
Paranoid much? There are much smaller and more dangerous things that could end up in the "wrong hands". They're not planning to sell this at WalMart, you know. It'll be built at one super-secure facility and transported to another super-secure facility. If you're gonna be worried about that, why not worry that someone might get their hands on a vile of smallpox that's being kept somewhere in a vault?
Awesome post, thanks. And this is exactly why I think a sense of honor and duty in the press is probably much more important than in the military, or police, or any of the government branches.
Creating new content is a feature of the game itself in Minecraft (in fact it's pretty much the point), whereas traditionally it's been something that a person with special skills can do outside the game. Or at least that's my understanding.
I'm assuming you know the history of ancient Greek science well, and know for a fact that their view of fire as an "element" had absolutely no practically useful implications; otherwise I'm sure you wouldn't make that statement with such conviction.
Still though, what's your point? Good science is the process of proposing theories and verifying them with evidence. Of course the theories are going to end up being wrong eventually, and very often won't be practically useful. How would you propose evaluating the work of a modern day theoretical physicist? Based on how much people 2000 years from now agree with it? I think you'd find that metric to be rather unenlightening, as the answer almost always would be "not at all". Based on the practical applications of that work? The vast majority of theoretical physicists would be dead by the time you gave them any grade above F, including the good ones.
Then you never get any points, because you will pretty much always be wrong; or at least this is the view taken in science. You'd be hard pressed to find any serious scientist who thinks any sort of absolute truth can really be discovered. That makes your point system pointless (if you will forgive the pun).
I thought it was common sense that cancer kills. Why are we doing so much research on these things? And with taxpayer money, too!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2n3QqDrb12M/TIVcHQQQgII/AAAAAAAAADI/2BVsBcawamM/s1600/xzibit-happy.jpg
Wait, "tunnels" as in quantum tunneling? Ohhh, I think I'm starting to get it now...
multiple apes each independently evolving into human beings that have sufficiently equivalent DNA and reproductive systems compatible enough to themselves reproduce
I think this is a misleading view. Evolution is, IMO, better thought of in terms of populations, not individuals. It wasn't a bunch of apes independently evolving, it was a single bunch of apes jointly evolving, staying together over many many generations, etc. Does that maybe seem more believable to you, or make more sense?
Wait I'm confused, is this a really clever joke about grammar nazis, jews, and the word "Ashkenazi"? Probably not, but it'd be awesome if it were...
The confidence levels ... tell you very little directly about the probability that a result is correct.
More than that -- in frequentist statistics, there's no such concept as the "probability that a result is correct" once it's been observed; it is either correct or not. The probability only applies when observations haven't been made yet. Your explanation is probably the best way to think about p values and such, in that it is both correct and intuitive -- a 95% confidence means that before you did the experiment, that is the probability that the result you'd get after doing it would be correct.
Furthermore, the point you made about repeated experiments is extremely important and, unfortunately, often ignored in science of smaller profile. God only knows how many "high confidence" results in all manner of scientific or semi-scientific fields are simply the result of researchers using their data "too many times," so to speak, i.e. performing too many tests at once.
What possible reason could there be for anyone to know that?
Now if I can just ignore /. and a few other Internet sites, I might get something done.
Maybe you could write a story about a person who's trying to write some stories, but keeps getting distracted by /. and a few other Internet sites. Then after just a little bit of soul-searching and suspenseful struggle, he manages to become more self-disciplined and writes some decently (but not wildly) successful stories.
Sounds like a story that is both quite mundane and discusses a topic many people can relate to. Look me up after you get that pulitzer.
"hyperbolic insanity", lol... Do you write? If not, have you ever considered it? Seems like you have an almost Douglas Adams-esque tone, something neat might come out if you try writing maybe a short story or something...
This is amazing! Did you write this? Is it from somewhere?
I don't think that was his point, I think he was saying "we're all fucked because we're all apathetic and jaded and only lift a finger when it directly benefits us."
Perhaps that is true in the short term, but I think the benefit of a revolution is that it makes more "stable" changes possible, i.e. creates a situation where there are necessarily less established powers, and hence more "freedom." This can be good or bad depending on who gets their hands on that freedom first, but at least it can be an opportunity.
E.g., the post-soviet countries (admittedly not your typical revolution, but still informative I think). True, in many aspects many of them are worse off today than in 1988. There's probably more extreme poverty, lack of education, crime (both violent and other), etc. Still though, if given the choice, how many people in those countries do you think would go back to the USSR? (The real one, not the idealized utopia it had a lot of people convinced it was through very effective propaganda.)
Maybe that's not so bad? Seems to me the best way to fix a screwed up system is to make it so much worse that even the most satisfied portion of society is ready to spill some blood in a real revolution.
Or perhaps just a quick read afterwards... :]
"made up in part from materials delivered to Earth the planet by from space". Seriously?
If by "YOU" you mean a white christian male benefiting from established racist and misogynistic power structures, then I agree.
DO WANT! Though, I lament the way the Predators idea has been treated. Since the first movie, we've pretty much just seen a sequence of B movies. It's sad. I think something really cool could've come of it, if someone had taken it more seriously. Especially the AvP idea...