When has language NOT been used in less than straightforward ways? Doublespeak and revisionist history aren't new tactics. "The House Committee on Un-American Activities," prosecuting free speech and thoughts, dated back to 1947. And that's obviously not the first either.
If promotion, hiring or funding were largely based on indices (h-index, the model used here or any other measure), then some scientists would adapt their behaviour to maximize their chances of success. Models such as ours that take into account several dimensions of scientific careers should be more difficult for researchers to game than those that focus on a single measure.
Why not? Clearly no one involved, students, teachers, universities, value good teaching skills as highly as research grants and name brand recognition. If you want good teaching, look at Khan Academy or a smaller school.
Or better yet, teach yourself. Science classes are for memorizing facts, which is not exactly science. I'm skeptical that one can really teach a roomful of people how to think scientifically in 3 hours a week for a semester.
And what is stupid if not "simple." Most of the darwin winners are people who simply failed to think things through. Having no foresight = simpler or stupider.
There are also feasible mechanisms for how this could play out with human evolution: either failing to think out the consequences of unprotected sex, or thinking that their God wants them to have as many children as possible.
Fortunately, if that hypothesis was true, it would have occurred earlier in human history.
It would be nice if companies had good morals, and followed moral laws, while ignoring the immoral ones. I suppose there could be disagreement about whether censorship of things that offend religious people is moral or not. I also realize that corporations' morals in practice is "can I make money from it," and that wouldn't work out well for us.
Still, I agree with OP a bit on at least this case. Would be nice if google said "fuck you" to the law in this case. I don't pretend to know if India and/or Indonesia would change their minds if that were the case. It seems possible that such a move could backfire, with google being excluded from those markets, and some other company which was totally on board with limiting the marketplace of ideas would move in.
No one said natural selection was fair. Just ask all those dinosaurs whose only fault was adapting well to a time before the comet hit. Or all those other organisms we're driving to extinction now, who are well adapted to a world without humans.
Anyway, the darwin awards were always a joke. It started well after Eldrege and Gould came out with punctuated equalibrium: the founders of the Darwin Awards were probably aware that natural selection doesn't work like that, with individual animals taking themselves out of the gene pool. Stupid is usually preferred evolutionarily speaking anyway. Bacteria are winning at evolution. It's not even close.
You sure they're shills and not just one or two trolls who really know how to get under slashdotters' skins?
Paying someone to try to improve MS' image on slashdot seems like a really boneheaded move... which would not be surprising coming from MS...
Alright, you've convinced me that they're probably professionals and not basement dwellers. Still, shouldn't we be cheering them on for taking money from MS and giving them back very little in return?
And weighing against the will to cheat is the fact that most scientists are honest people who want to advance our knowledge. You generally don't become a scientist if you are just out to make money by any unethical means possible. If you're okay with lying in order to get fame and fortune, you are probably a lawyer, politician, salesperson, or executive. You might start off honest and then change, of course.
There's also the fact that few scientists are in a position to lie about their results and not have a colleague, collaborator, or someone else notice.
Think of it as a high bar we've set for ourselves that we have never actually been able to clear.
Keep in mind that we were talking big about freedom and equality and representation while still allowing slavery and denying the vote to women, african americans, and probably poor white men as well. So it was really hypocritical at first. Still, I'd guess had we been honest about it, had our nation been founded explicitly on "Freedom... for people who are already free basically" and "Equality! For rich white men" or "No taxation without representation of our DOMESTIC elites," then we never would have actually gotten to the point of giving everyone a vote, of ending segregation, of abolishing slavery, and likely wouldn't have inspired ourselves to actually break free from England at that time.
I'd prefer us be a nation that declares ourselves to be the land of the free even if it's hypocritical than declare ourselves the nation of basically being a police state, if for no other reason than it encourages us to make it so.
I'm sure some people will say that since these bacteria will eventually clean things up we can spill and not worry about it.
I think that's rather optimistic: I think most people had already moved onto not worrying about it while the well was still spewing at it's peak. Not because of bacteria or cleanup efforts, because they didn't live in the gulf and assume the environment won't ever change.
The bacteria digested the oil, but what did they excrete. If they multiplied and now have no meal, they starve, and their carcasses in turn become something else.
So... you're saying if we come up with something that eats said bacteria, everything will be fine right? EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE, RIGHT!?!?
I don't think so. Even assuming nucleotides are inevitably the preferred way to store genetic information given chemistry, the chances that they'd use the exact same 3 nucleotide to amino acid translation system that nearly everything else on earth uses is probably pretty low.
There's no reason that I can see why ATG would always have to translate into a methionine and the start of translation, for example. If aliens followed the central dogma (DNA--> RNA --> amino acids) there's an equal chance their tRNAs would translate ATG as some other amino acid. The only reason most life on earth uses that same translation system is because the chances of changing which 3 letter code corresponds to which amino acid isn't something that can be changed without having catastrophic effects.
Oh, and as a bonus point, personally I'd make the assumption that tiny eight legged bears that scientists finds fascinating enough to pay to bring to fucking space for experiments have probably been researched quite a lot in every other possible way, and found to be quite in line with current understanding of what a terrestrial being is
Not only that, but I've seen talks by labs that do biology research on tardigrades. They're funded by the national institute of health (NIH) like many other basic research programs that use "lower" organisms. The idea is that with these simpler organisms, it's easier to do experiments on them and learn something about their genetics, cell biology, physiology, or evolution that will be applicable to us. If you find a gene and what it does in fruit flies, for example, that might be useful to human health because we're all related, and evolution tends to keep useful basic features. And that does turn out to be the case fairly often. A good number of genes found to be useful to us higher vertebrates have been conserved since before we split off from fruit flies.
If tardigrades are of completely different origins, then there's little point in studying them for that reason: any lessons learned in an alien species, there's no reason why we should share any common features if we didn't have a common ancestor at any point. NIH is going to want millions of dollars back in funding.
Plus, why would it use the same DNA -->RNA --> codons --> amino acid -->protein scheme and language that the rest of us use?
I can suspend my disbelief for Star Trek etc that all these other alien races would breathe 79% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and some trace CO2, would be humanoid, and could all speak English. When they started talking about aliens having DNA sequences, that was really questionable. But I could ignore it for the episode.
Trying to pretend it's possibly real though for real species and acting like that's real science? Get the fuck out.
I find it much easier to understand that CentOS 6.1 is a newer version than CentOS 6.0, for example, than trying to remember that "Killer Kangaroo" is newer than "Sloppy Sloth".
Isn't that why they also usually put the numbers in? I remember that Ice Cream came after Gingerbread, and Jelly Bean is next, but if you really wanted to, you could refer to it as "Android 2.3, Android 4.0, and Android 4.1."
And of course, different designations are useful to different people. For instance, most people are merely concerned whether they have an iphone or an android, in which case it's safe to assume they mean android 2.3.
What's that? No, we will not spot you airfare to come over here and arrest Larry and Sergei. And don't even try to mail that wooden horse to Mountain View.
Is competition heating up there despite the fact that google isn't coming there yet? I was wondering if comcrap or anyone else would be trying to up their offer and keep customers from being lured away. Maybe you'll get some of that?
Also a lot of tree-lined streets in KC. I doubt that would actually impede things, but I'd imagine some concerned neighborhoods association would make a lot of FUD about that regardless of the truth. When I lived there, Kansas City defeated a light-rail proposal largely due to suburban concerns that it would bring people from downtown to the suburbs to rape, pillage, and murder. I wouldn't say as a city, they're particularly ignorant or paranoid, but they're not perfect obviously.
In some alternate universe, the government is ACTUALLY trying to prevent terrorism.
The department of "Posting cute pictures of kittens everywhere" is easily the most effective government organization ever. "Keep calm and don't worry about spiders" becomes a national phrase. The president's weekly radio address consists of Obama singing lullabies. George Washington is replaced on the dollar bill with that smiley face from the 80's. E plubris unum is replaced with "Don't Worry Be Happy!" Police are tasked with making sure every doctor's office is stocked with lollipops. The NRA effectively lobbied against a rule requiring all guns to have electronic devices that replace the "Bang" sound with the sound of children laughing.
Slashdot Mirror
When has language NOT been used in less than straightforward ways? Doublespeak and revisionist history aren't new tactics. "The House Committee on Un-American Activities," prosecuting free speech and thoughts, dated back to 1947. And that's obviously not the first either.
If promotion, hiring or funding were largely based on indices (h-index, the model used here or any other measure), then some scientists would adapt their behaviour to maximize their chances of success. Models such as ours that take into account several dimensions of scientific careers should be more difficult for researchers to game than those that focus on a single measure.
Why not? Clearly no one involved, students, teachers, universities, value good teaching skills as highly as research grants and name brand recognition. If you want good teaching, look at Khan Academy or a smaller school.
Or better yet, teach yourself. Science classes are for memorizing facts, which is not exactly science. I'm skeptical that one can really teach a roomful of people how to think scientifically in 3 hours a week for a semester.
And what is stupid if not "simple." Most of the darwin winners are people who simply failed to think things through. Having no foresight = simpler or stupider.
There are also feasible mechanisms for how this could play out with human evolution: either failing to think out the consequences of unprotected sex, or thinking that their God wants them to have as many children as possible.
Fortunately, if that hypothesis was true, it would have occurred earlier in human history.
It would be nice if companies had good morals, and followed moral laws, while ignoring the immoral ones. I suppose there could be disagreement about whether censorship of things that offend religious people is moral or not. I also realize that corporations' morals in practice is "can I make money from it," and that wouldn't work out well for us.
Still, I agree with OP a bit on at least this case. Would be nice if google said "fuck you" to the law in this case. I don't pretend to know if India and/or Indonesia would change their minds if that were the case. It seems possible that such a move could backfire, with google being excluded from those markets, and some other company which was totally on board with limiting the marketplace of ideas would move in.
No one said natural selection was fair. Just ask all those dinosaurs whose only fault was adapting well to a time before the comet hit. Or all those other organisms we're driving to extinction now, who are well adapted to a world without humans.
Anyway, the darwin awards were always a joke. It started well after Eldrege and Gould came out with punctuated equalibrium: the founders of the Darwin Awards were probably aware that natural selection doesn't work like that, with individual animals taking themselves out of the gene pool. Stupid is usually preferred evolutionarily speaking anyway. Bacteria are winning at evolution. It's not even close.
You sure they're shills and not just one or two trolls who really know how to get under slashdotters' skins?
Paying someone to try to improve MS' image on slashdot seems like a really boneheaded move... which would not be surprising coming from MS...
Alright, you've convinced me that they're probably professionals and not basement dwellers. Still, shouldn't we be cheering them on for taking money from MS and giving them back very little in return?
And weighing against the will to cheat is the fact that most scientists are honest people who want to advance our knowledge. You generally don't become a scientist if you are just out to make money by any unethical means possible. If you're okay with lying in order to get fame and fortune, you are probably a lawyer, politician, salesperson, or executive. You might start off honest and then change, of course.
There's also the fact that few scientists are in a position to lie about their results and not have a colleague, collaborator, or someone else notice.
Think of it as a high bar we've set for ourselves that we have never actually been able to clear.
Keep in mind that we were talking big about freedom and equality and representation while still allowing slavery and denying the vote to women, african americans, and probably poor white men as well. So it was really hypocritical at first. Still, I'd guess had we been honest about it, had our nation been founded explicitly on "Freedom... for people who are already free basically" and "Equality! For rich white men" or "No taxation without representation of our DOMESTIC elites," then we never would have actually gotten to the point of giving everyone a vote, of ending segregation, of abolishing slavery, and likely wouldn't have inspired ourselves to actually break free from England at that time.
I'd prefer us be a nation that declares ourselves to be the land of the free even if it's hypocritical than declare ourselves the nation of basically being a police state, if for no other reason than it encourages us to make it so.
So because a disaster COULD have been natural, the only reason one would try to prevent it from happening again is greed?
Interesting. You could die naturally at any time, therefore you must be greedy. Hurry up and die please.
I'm sure some people will say that since these bacteria will eventually clean things up we can spill and not worry about it.
I think that's rather optimistic: I think most people had already moved onto not worrying about it while the well was still spewing at it's peak. Not because of bacteria or cleanup efforts, because they didn't live in the gulf and assume the environment won't ever change.
The bacteria digested the oil, but what did they excrete. If they multiplied and now have no meal, they starve, and their carcasses in turn become something else.
So... you're saying if we come up with something that eats said bacteria, everything will be fine right? EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE, RIGHT!?!?
I don't think so. Even assuming nucleotides are inevitably the preferred way to store genetic information given chemistry, the chances that they'd use the exact same 3 nucleotide to amino acid translation system that nearly everything else on earth uses is probably pretty low.
There's no reason that I can see why ATG would always have to translate into a methionine and the start of translation, for example. If aliens followed the central dogma (DNA--> RNA --> amino acids) there's an equal chance their tRNAs would translate ATG as some other amino acid. The only reason most life on earth uses that same translation system is because the chances of changing which 3 letter code corresponds to which amino acid isn't something that can be changed without having catastrophic effects.
Oh, and as a bonus point, personally I'd make the assumption that tiny eight legged bears that scientists finds fascinating enough to pay to bring to fucking space for experiments have probably been researched quite a lot in every other possible way, and found to be quite in line with current understanding of what a terrestrial being is
Not only that, but I've seen talks by labs that do biology research on tardigrades. They're funded by the national institute of health (NIH) like many other basic research programs that use "lower" organisms. The idea is that with these simpler organisms, it's easier to do experiments on them and learn something about their genetics, cell biology, physiology, or evolution that will be applicable to us. If you find a gene and what it does in fruit flies, for example, that might be useful to human health because we're all related, and evolution tends to keep useful basic features. And that does turn out to be the case fairly often. A good number of genes found to be useful to us higher vertebrates have been conserved since before we split off from fruit flies.
If tardigrades are of completely different origins, then there's little point in studying them for that reason: any lessons learned in an alien species, there's no reason why we should share any common features if we didn't have a common ancestor at any point. NIH is going to want millions of dollars back in funding.
Plus, why would it use the same DNA -->RNA --> codons --> amino acid -->protein scheme and language that the rest of us use?
I can suspend my disbelief for Star Trek etc that all these other alien races would breathe 79% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and some trace CO2, would be humanoid, and could all speak English. When they started talking about aliens having DNA sequences, that was really questionable. But I could ignore it for the episode.
Trying to pretend it's possibly real though for real species and acting like that's real science? Get the fuck out.
I find it much easier to understand that CentOS 6.1 is a newer version than CentOS 6.0, for example, than trying to remember that "Killer Kangaroo" is newer than "Sloppy Sloth".
Isn't that why they also usually put the numbers in? I remember that Ice Cream came after Gingerbread, and Jelly Bean is next, but if you really wanted to, you could refer to it as "Android 2.3, Android 4.0, and Android 4.1."
And of course, different designations are useful to different people. For instance, most people are merely concerned whether they have an iphone or an android, in which case it's safe to assume they mean android 2.3.
Illegal eh? Hey Greece: ever hear of Google?
What's that? No, we will not spot you airfare to come over here and arrest Larry and Sergei. And don't even try to mail that wooden horse to Mountain View.
Ah, I see it's "Restate the joke parent was making, but less subtly and get modded up for it" day.
(ahem)
YES, BECAUSE ACTUAL CRIMINALS ARE MORE MORAL THAN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY! LOL! IT'S A JOKE!!!
Didn't Obama JUST sign an executive order that was basically CISPA? Is that maybe the reason for the timing?
I was wondering what the "+5 funny" mod was about...
Good for you. Many of us can't get anything faster than the 3G connection on my phone. I guess that makes me stupid for not living wherever you live.
Is competition heating up there despite the fact that google isn't coming there yet? I was wondering if comcrap or anyone else would be trying to up their offer and keep customers from being lured away. Maybe you'll get some of that?
Also a lot of tree-lined streets in KC. I doubt that would actually impede things, but I'd imagine some concerned neighborhoods association would make a lot of FUD about that regardless of the truth. When I lived there, Kansas City defeated a light-rail proposal largely due to suburban concerns that it would bring people from downtown to the suburbs to rape, pillage, and murder. I wouldn't say as a city, they're particularly ignorant or paranoid, but they're not perfect obviously.
In some alternate universe, the government is ACTUALLY trying to prevent terrorism.
The department of "Posting cute pictures of kittens everywhere" is easily the most effective government organization ever. "Keep calm and don't worry about spiders" becomes a national phrase. The president's weekly radio address consists of Obama singing lullabies. George Washington is replaced on the dollar bill with that smiley face from the 80's. E plubris unum is replaced with "Don't Worry Be Happy!" Police are tasked with making sure every doctor's office is stocked with lollipops. The NRA effectively lobbied against a rule requiring all guns to have electronic devices that replace the "Bang" sound with the sound of children laughing.
Who said it was surprising to anyone worth mentioning? Predictable greed is still greed.