Depends. In Norway, the age of consent is 12. If 12-year-olds in Norway suddenly developed large families (entirely possible, just very unlikely, as they actually have decent education), then all they need is to reproduce faster than they lose individuals through lemming-like behaviour. I could actually see this mutation becoming wide-spread in Scandanavia. Less so in the US, where although there are States with an age of consent of 14, those States are generally inhabited by cave dwellers and genetic throwbacks to other archaic humans.
Evolution, at the most basic level, is the introduction of a mutation into a system. If the mutation is advantageous under the conditions the mutant exists, it will be selected in. If the mutation is disadvantageous or neutral under the conditions the mutant exists, it will be selected out. (In all other cases, the mutant will appear in the next X-Men comic.) Not all mutations are advantageous under all conditions, which is why (for example) you find very few red-heads in Africa compared to the far north of Europe. The mutation is beneficial in the colder, darker climate but becomes disadvantageous under hotter, brighter climates. Thus, it is isolated by geographical constraints.
In this case, if Williams Syndrome has an advantage in some niche in modern society, it'll spread into that niche. Asperger's dominates the children in Silicon Valley because it's an advantageous mutation in that region. Many business leaders (CEOs, CTOs, etc) are sociopaths. Another mutation with a niche that is ideal for it. Artists appear to have some level of manic-depression, etc. If these traits didn't have a niche somewhere, the mutation would eventually die out. Natural Selection forbids the long-term, multi-generational transfer of traits that put those with those traits at a disadvantage. (By long-term, I'm talking thousands to tens of thousands of years.)
Because mutations can - and WILL - occur at every generation, not all mutations are inherited. Because the genes coded in DNA are filtered and processed according to the rules defined by proteins surrounding the DNA, genes that should be disadvantageous might be shut down by environmental factors and thus retained, but I know of no proof that this has actually happened, although there is plenty of proof it is theoretically possible. The same would also apply to advantageous mutations, then. In which case, advantageous mutations require BOTH an environment for them to be advantageous in AND an environment that enables them to operate advantageously. This is a very new field, although it's been around long enough for Slashdot to have covered it twice. (However, for those interested, Slashdot has been around many times longer than this branch of genetics.)
Now it gets really complicated. A trait is not necessarily linked to a single gene. ME (also known as Chronic Fatigue) has been linked to seven independent genes, where a mutation in any of them will cause ME. Other conditions (and you can check a lot of the genetic medical screening websites for examples) require mutations to exist in multiple genes. So you end up producing a complex boolean function to describe the relationship between genetics and traits/conditions. It's not trivial. Which is a big reason why such sites offer probabilities of a condition occurring but can't say if it actually ever will or under what circumstances. We simply don't know the whole function for the vast majority of conditions, so we cannot fully evaluate it. (And, as noted earlier, gene evaluation is dependent on environment, so the probability is only valid for specific environments, which may or may not be determinable for a given trait/condition. In most cases, the company will assume the default expression of a codon, rather than evaluate the metadata. Too complex and would push the prices still higher.)
And the worst news of all - genes don't code for single things and (because their values are determined by dynamic metadata) aren't guaranteed to code for the same thing at different times. This means that you may well have a series of mutations where two independent perfect subsets produce advantageous traits and another perfect subset (which is also a perfect subset of the union of the two advantageous subsets) produces a disadvantageous trait. So long as the two advantages outweigh the single disadvantage, the mutations will be retained. The illusion of the selecting for a disadvantageous trait is then created.
It is entirely possible, in the case of Xenophobia, that something like this has happened. Xenophobia
Partly familiarity, partly the really crappy shows. (You assume the headache is caused by Bullseye or Last Of The Summer Wine, rather than the television picture.)
Personally, I do like the higher line count in UK television. I can't see the refresh on US television but I can see the jaggies caused by low resolution.
I'd personally have preferred, instead of "high-def TV", for broadcasters to have adopted the PAL resolution and the NTSC frame rate. There'd be far more shows using such a scheme than are using HDTV today, it would have been much cheaper to roll out, and the technology for enhancing existing material to such a scheme was already widespread.
(Besides, the Japanese have already superseded HDTV, which means the standard won't have a long shelf-life for the investment.)
Nah. Your eyes are too good, basically. If you watch an interlaced CRT with a very low refresh rate, you'll get exactly the same headaches for exactly the same reason - your eyes are able to see the flicker and it is causing you migraines as a result. You can get a similar effect from rapidly-flickering lightbulbs within the range your eyes can detect. Either the studios have to ramp up the refresh rate (they probably need to double the frames per second) or you need to give up watching such movies on the big screen.
Well, I doubt it seriously immerses anyone any more than Jaws 3D did. It's popular at the moment, but consider that How To Tame opened much much lower than expected and Titans slipped in profits by far more than expected. If 3D was "the thing" to save Hollywood, why are the numbers not showing it? There's also the fact that 3D shutter lenses (sometimes used for modern 3D films) will cause headaches/nausia in some people because of the flickering. Also, 3D projection is inherently limited - as you move away from the imaginary point the 3D image would have been seen by the observer from, the brain is less able to compensate for the discrepancy between what it is seeing and what it should be seeing if the image really was 3D. There is always an ideal spot, and a very rapid fall-off around it. It's a consequence of the way the image is done. Effective 3D can't be done that way for a large audience. It is only effective to do 3D that way for single observers, which is why you see this sort of 3D being used by engineers, biologists or chemists at individual workstations - much more practical than headset VR or a CAVE system. It's pointless to use it anywhere else.
Apples are good, yes. I suggest a glass of mead as well, as honey is believed to boost the immune system and act as an antibiotic in its own right. In fact, if you get really drunk on the stuff, you might never get sick again.
It's an impressive phrase, certainly, and one that might result in real change to the system. The problem is, I'm not sure anyone knows what to change the system to. The US system is diametrically opposite in style but identical in effect, encouraging actual harm by exactly the same sort of fringe groups that abuse the British system, also without really giving any effective protection to the voice of those being victimized. In some cases, this is individuals versus individuals (such as the woman who coaxed the girl into killing herself), but in far too many cases it is special interest groups (be it industries or religions) against scientists. There is a very effective censorship in both nations that permits these organizations to stifle opposing views. Although it won't solve the individual-vs-individual cases, I would argue that the best protection for scientific cases is to argue that science (like art) deserves special privileges that extend beyond any normal protections on speech. My thought there is that you could apply the scientific method itself as a tool in such cases.
Under this line of reasoning, the defendant would be asked to show that their speech follows the underlying principles of science (ie: is a theory, conjecture, or other form of testable hypothesis, rather than being a wholly subjective opinion) to show that this is the correct classification. The plaintiff would then be required to falsify the theory. This is not just a matter of showing that the theory isn't always perfect or exactly correct. For example, Copernicus' circular orbits weren't perfect or exactly correct and so should be a yardstick for the flexibility permitted scientific thought as it would be unthinkable that a solution to the problem would permit geocentrists suing Copernicus. The Leeds University microbiologist who reported Mad Cow Disease in the mid 1980s should also have complete immunity under such a system, as it was a perfectly valid hypothesis that turned out to be entirely correct. Those would be the benchmarks for ensuring the system would protect scientists when expounding unpopular and controversial theories that needed public dissemination
The plaintiff, to falsify the argument, must show by the scientific method that the theory is false, that it meets the requirements laid down for determining that a theory is not an acceptable description. If the theory was produced with malicious intent, but is actually correct in and of itself, then there should be a distinct mechanism separate from libel/slander to deal with that, as libel/slander is intended for untrue statements. I'd argue that a malicious attack for malicious purposes which is factually correct but intended to cause actual mental suffering/harm should fall under a classification such as "Grievous Mental Harm" (akin to the UK's Grievous Bodily Harm laws). I'd argue that a theory that is true as far as it goes but where evidence of incorrectness is deliberately suppressed with the intent to create an illusion of a theory that is false (as is alleged of a lot of the more questionable studies by the pharmaceutical industry and GM industry) is not protected as scientific speech, under the above description, as the presented theory is falsifiable regardless of the accuracy of the status of the theory it is based on.
However, this should not be sufficient for libel. That should merely be what is required to determine if the speech is protected as scientific speech. In the event that it is scientific speech, it should be protected against all legal attacks until such time that falsification occurs. If it is not scientific speech, then it should be for the plaintiff to demonstrate that not only is the claim falsified in the scientific sense (which is a far higher standard than legal tests), but is also false in a legal sense AND is false in such a way as to cause non-scientists to become prejudice against the plaintiff or otherwise impact the plaintiff's standing in the community in a way that runs counter to the facts of the matter., or cause di
I have Asperger's and I love the true classic April Fools jokes, including some of the truly great ones that have appeared on Slashdot in the past. True, this year's batch aren't impressive in comparison, but don't blame others if you're not writing any.
Some of the classics fooled many people. The BBC's documentary on the spaghetti harvest, Patrick Moore's gravity reduction experiment, The Guardian's stories on the Outer Focus mountains and the Serif islands, etc. The Slashdot link-up with cuteoverload didn't so much fool people as amuse (and it amused many!)
If nobody is publishing any good April Fools jokes this year, just remember that "nobody" includes you. Where's your contribution?
There's a climate modeling package that works along the @home model. Think it uses BOINC now, but can't be sure. Far as I know, it's closed-source, although as this is probably the software getting the most exercise, this is one that really should be open-sourced for the sake of peer-review. (And, yes, for the purpose of Software Engineering, programmers ARE the peers. The climate scientists may be the peers on the actual underlying science, but ONLY Software Engineers are qualified to evaluate the implementation against the specification, no matter how good/bad the specification may be.)
Any time an industrial process produces waste, there is something being paid for as a raw material, whose processing is also being paid for, whose storage is again paid for, but which then produces nothing that returns anything for that investment. There is always going to be some waste, but some of that waste will actually be stuff intended for the primary product of that process, lost through (inevitable) inefficiencies. Since nobody is going to claim any industrial process is at peak efficiency, it is safe to conclude a better yield (and therefore less waste at LESS expense) is going to be possible. Other elements of that waste may be usable by other industries - the proverbial turning muck into brass. Again, this reduces pollution AND reduces expense.
The specific example - carbon emissions - is tougher, but I think it reasonable to say that power stations (a big source of carbon dioxide) and car engines (another big source of carbon dioxide) are highly inefficient at converting fuel into energy. Fuel is expensive (and will get ever more so, as no new uranium deposits are being found for nuke power and we're within 5 years of peak oil by some estimates). Titanium is theoretically as extractable from ore as aluminium (although nobody has developed a process that good yet). Titanium cars would need far less energy to reach or maintain a given speed than a car built out of a lump of iron. This is probably true for trucks and mass transit vehicles too. Blended-wing aircraft should also need less fuel than a traditional wing-and-cylinder body, so civilian aircraft (another big fuel consumer) could also be improved.
As for carbon being pollution, high CO2 levels reduce how efficient vegetation can photosynthesize (above a certain level which is really not that high). Since vegetation is a major part of the part of the carbon cycle that removes CO2, breaking that part of the carbon cycle is probably a Bad Idea. Carbon dioxide doesn't contribute nearly as much as sulpher dioxide to global warming, but it unquestionably contributes a fair bit. (I remember having this debate with my father, one of the pioneers in inorganic biochemistry - now called environmental chemistry - back in the 1970s, when he first introduced me to the science of Global Warming. Yes, the subject has been around for a while.)
The set of all infinite sequences of natural numbers is uncountable, although any given set of natural numbers in any given sequence is countable. Since you can produce one from the other, you have changed the aleph number by running one infinite task through another infinite task.
The set of all functions from R to R has a greater cardinality than R, and you likewise have changed the cardinality of the infinity.
I completely agree with you and have had similar experiences.
What you are describing is how the "normal world" is depicted in the British miniseries "Codename: Icarus". (Its depiction of how easy it would be for someone to abuse/misuse the "genius world" when geniuses are pushed to conform by the "normal world" is instructive.) It's a nice piece of dystopian speculative fiction that cuts rather closer to real life than I'd like.
Regardless of what an ideal solution might be, I'd argue that since conformity is what is "expected", the simplest solution is to simply make the granularity small enough that conformity ceases to be a problem. If schools split each year into 5 or 7 streams, where membership of a stream reflected both ability in the subject and who worked well with whom (including which kids worked well with which teacher), the variation in a stream should be sufficiently small that conformity within the stream isn't distinguishable from working one's preferred way at one's optimal pace.
I think Escalante has demonstrated that the current solution is sub-optimal for everyone. It seems unreasonable (based on experience and common sense) to assume that the same optimization will work for everyone, ergo it would follow that some form of classification and selective optimization is the preferred path. His solution is clearly optimal for some of those classifications, but may not be optimal for all. If you like, apply the lessons learned from compilers and diffserv.
You're assuming literacy is a prerequisite for education. My knowledge of India is very limited, but based on what I know, I'd say that the knowledge level in India pre-1950 far exceeded that which would be estimated purely from a 13% literacy level.
What a strange approach. I would certainly not have gone for an approach in that direction, precisely because of the problems you describe (lack of computability, lack of direct usability, etc).
There are certainly other factors beyond merely the style of teaching. Schools that have adopted Jamie Oliver's suggested food program have shown test scores in exams and intelligence tests rise whilst illness levels fall. However, given that all other things remained essentially constant, Escalante certainly demonstrated the impact of teaching methods. If you add in effective streaming, sane textbooks and other refinements, one wonders just how far education could go. (If you go by the change in identified child prodigies as a fraction of world population, the number is about a third what it was in the 1700s. Given how much more we know about child psychology, how much more available textbooks are and how much better our ability to disseminate information on talented people is, I'd have expected the fraction of identified geniuses to have risen. Given that our knowledge of nutrition and its impact on the development of the brain has also improved, I'd have expected the level of talent as an absolute to have also risen.)
The number of integers is infinite, but it is a different infinity than the number of real numbers. The former is considered countable, the latter uncountable.
If you look up the proof of Fermat's Last Theorum, you'll see it was the comparison of the size of two infinite sets that allowed the proof to be completed.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends. In Norway, the age of consent is 12. If 12-year-olds in Norway suddenly developed large families (entirely possible, just very unlikely, as they actually have decent education), then all they need is to reproduce faster than they lose individuals through lemming-like behaviour. I could actually see this mutation becoming wide-spread in Scandanavia. Less so in the US, where although there are States with an age of consent of 14, those States are generally inhabited by cave dwellers and genetic throwbacks to other archaic humans.
Evolution, at the most basic level, is the introduction of a mutation into a system. If the mutation is advantageous under the conditions the mutant exists, it will be selected in. If the mutation is disadvantageous or neutral under the conditions the mutant exists, it will be selected out. (In all other cases, the mutant will appear in the next X-Men comic.) Not all mutations are advantageous under all conditions, which is why (for example) you find very few red-heads in Africa compared to the far north of Europe. The mutation is beneficial in the colder, darker climate but becomes disadvantageous under hotter, brighter climates. Thus, it is isolated by geographical constraints.
In this case, if Williams Syndrome has an advantage in some niche in modern society, it'll spread into that niche. Asperger's dominates the children in Silicon Valley because it's an advantageous mutation in that region. Many business leaders (CEOs, CTOs, etc) are sociopaths. Another mutation with a niche that is ideal for it. Artists appear to have some level of manic-depression, etc. If these traits didn't have a niche somewhere, the mutation would eventually die out. Natural Selection forbids the long-term, multi-generational transfer of traits that put those with those traits at a disadvantage. (By long-term, I'm talking thousands to tens of thousands of years.)
Because mutations can - and WILL - occur at every generation, not all mutations are inherited. Because the genes coded in DNA are filtered and processed according to the rules defined by proteins surrounding the DNA, genes that should be disadvantageous might be shut down by environmental factors and thus retained, but I know of no proof that this has actually happened, although there is plenty of proof it is theoretically possible. The same would also apply to advantageous mutations, then. In which case, advantageous mutations require BOTH an environment for them to be advantageous in AND an environment that enables them to operate advantageously. This is a very new field, although it's been around long enough for Slashdot to have covered it twice. (However, for those interested, Slashdot has been around many times longer than this branch of genetics.)
Now it gets really complicated. A trait is not necessarily linked to a single gene. ME (also known as Chronic Fatigue) has been linked to seven independent genes, where a mutation in any of them will cause ME. Other conditions (and you can check a lot of the genetic medical screening websites for examples) require mutations to exist in multiple genes. So you end up producing a complex boolean function to describe the relationship between genetics and traits/conditions. It's not trivial. Which is a big reason why such sites offer probabilities of a condition occurring but can't say if it actually ever will or under what circumstances. We simply don't know the whole function for the vast majority of conditions, so we cannot fully evaluate it. (And, as noted earlier, gene evaluation is dependent on environment, so the probability is only valid for specific environments, which may or may not be determinable for a given trait/condition. In most cases, the company will assume the default expression of a codon, rather than evaluate the metadata. Too complex and would push the prices still higher.)
And the worst news of all - genes don't code for single things and (because their values are determined by dynamic metadata) aren't guaranteed to code for the same thing at different times. This means that you may well have a series of mutations where two independent perfect subsets produce advantageous traits and another perfect subset (which is also a perfect subset of the union of the two advantageous subsets) produces a disadvantageous trait. So long as the two advantages outweigh the single disadvantage, the mutations will be retained. The illusion of the selecting for a disadvantageous trait is then created.
It is entirely possible, in the case of Xenophobia, that something like this has happened. Xenophobia
And there's a problem with demanding more bandwidth from cable providers? It's about time they coughed up. :)
Partly familiarity, partly the really crappy shows. (You assume the headache is caused by Bullseye or Last Of The Summer Wine, rather than the television picture.)
Personally, I do like the higher line count in UK television. I can't see the refresh on US television but I can see the jaggies caused by low resolution.
I'd personally have preferred, instead of "high-def TV", for broadcasters to have adopted the PAL resolution and the NTSC frame rate. There'd be far more shows using such a scheme than are using HDTV today, it would have been much cheaper to roll out, and the technology for enhancing existing material to such a scheme was already widespread.
(Besides, the Japanese have already superseded HDTV, which means the standard won't have a long shelf-life for the investment.)
Nah. Your eyes are too good, basically. If you watch an interlaced CRT with a very low refresh rate, you'll get exactly the same headaches for exactly the same reason - your eyes are able to see the flicker and it is causing you migraines as a result. You can get a similar effect from rapidly-flickering lightbulbs within the range your eyes can detect. Either the studios have to ramp up the refresh rate (they probably need to double the frames per second) or you need to give up watching such movies on the big screen.
Well, I doubt it seriously immerses anyone any more than Jaws 3D did. It's popular at the moment, but consider that How To Tame opened much much lower than expected and Titans slipped in profits by far more than expected. If 3D was "the thing" to save Hollywood, why are the numbers not showing it? There's also the fact that 3D shutter lenses (sometimes used for modern 3D films) will cause headaches/nausia in some people because of the flickering. Also, 3D projection is inherently limited - as you move away from the imaginary point the 3D image would have been seen by the observer from, the brain is less able to compensate for the discrepancy between what it is seeing and what it should be seeing if the image really was 3D. There is always an ideal spot, and a very rapid fall-off around it. It's a consequence of the way the image is done. Effective 3D can't be done that way for a large audience. It is only effective to do 3D that way for single observers, which is why you see this sort of 3D being used by engineers, biologists or chemists at individual workstations - much more practical than headset VR or a CAVE system. It's pointless to use it anywhere else.
Depends on whether you are referring to the Linuxium or anti-Linuxium form of the particle.
The one after Yocto is Politico.
I think a yLoC is a character in a Shakespere play.
Apples are good, yes. I suggest a glass of mead as well, as honey is believed to boost the immune system and act as an antibiotic in its own right. In fact, if you get really drunk on the stuff, you might never get sick again.
Nah, more a pointed commentary on Microsoft's Witchfinder General and Apple's attempt to burn clones at the stake.
It's ok. It's just a Slashdot typo. They meant to say "Microsoft and Apple Creak Into The Middle Ages".
It's an impressive phrase, certainly, and one that might result in real change to the system. The problem is, I'm not sure anyone knows what to change the system to. The US system is diametrically opposite in style but identical in effect, encouraging actual harm by exactly the same sort of fringe groups that abuse the British system, also without really giving any effective protection to the voice of those being victimized. In some cases, this is individuals versus individuals (such as the woman who coaxed the girl into killing herself), but in far too many cases it is special interest groups (be it industries or religions) against scientists. There is a very effective censorship in both nations that permits these organizations to stifle opposing views. Although it won't solve the individual-vs-individual cases, I would argue that the best protection for scientific cases is to argue that science (like art) deserves special privileges that extend beyond any normal protections on speech. My thought there is that you could apply the scientific method itself as a tool in such cases.
Under this line of reasoning, the defendant would be asked to show that their speech follows the underlying principles of science (ie: is a theory, conjecture, or other form of testable hypothesis, rather than being a wholly subjective opinion) to show that this is the correct classification. The plaintiff would then be required to falsify the theory. This is not just a matter of showing that the theory isn't always perfect or exactly correct. For example, Copernicus' circular orbits weren't perfect or exactly correct and so should be a yardstick for the flexibility permitted scientific thought as it would be unthinkable that a solution to the problem would permit geocentrists suing Copernicus. The Leeds University microbiologist who reported Mad Cow Disease in the mid 1980s should also have complete immunity under such a system, as it was a perfectly valid hypothesis that turned out to be entirely correct. Those would be the benchmarks for ensuring the system would protect scientists when expounding unpopular and controversial theories that needed public dissemination
The plaintiff, to falsify the argument, must show by the scientific method that the theory is false, that it meets the requirements laid down for determining that a theory is not an acceptable description. If the theory was produced with malicious intent, but is actually correct in and of itself, then there should be a distinct mechanism separate from libel/slander to deal with that, as libel/slander is intended for untrue statements. I'd argue that a malicious attack for malicious purposes which is factually correct but intended to cause actual mental suffering/harm should fall under a classification such as "Grievous Mental Harm" (akin to the UK's Grievous Bodily Harm laws). I'd argue that a theory that is true as far as it goes but where evidence of incorrectness is deliberately suppressed with the intent to create an illusion of a theory that is false (as is alleged of a lot of the more questionable studies by the pharmaceutical industry and GM industry) is not protected as scientific speech, under the above description, as the presented theory is falsifiable regardless of the accuracy of the status of the theory it is based on.
However, this should not be sufficient for libel. That should merely be what is required to determine if the speech is protected as scientific speech. In the event that it is scientific speech, it should be protected against all legal attacks until such time that falsification occurs. If it is not scientific speech, then it should be for the plaintiff to demonstrate that not only is the claim falsified in the scientific sense (which is a far higher standard than legal tests), but is also false in a legal sense AND is false in such a way as to cause non-scientists to become prejudice against the plaintiff or otherwise impact the plaintiff's standing in the community in a way that runs counter to the facts of the matter., or cause di
sqrt(-1)
I have Asperger's and I love the true classic April Fools jokes, including some of the truly great ones that have appeared on Slashdot in the past. True, this year's batch aren't impressive in comparison, but don't blame others if you're not writing any.
Some of the classics fooled many people. The BBC's documentary on the spaghetti harvest, Patrick Moore's gravity reduction experiment, The Guardian's stories on the Outer Focus mountains and the Serif islands, etc. The Slashdot link-up with cuteoverload didn't so much fool people as amuse (and it amused many!)
If nobody is publishing any good April Fools jokes this year, just remember that "nobody" includes you. Where's your contribution?
There's a climate modeling package that works along the @home model. Think it uses BOINC now, but can't be sure. Far as I know, it's closed-source, although as this is probably the software getting the most exercise, this is one that really should be open-sourced for the sake of peer-review. (And, yes, for the purpose of Software Engineering, programmers ARE the peers. The climate scientists may be the peers on the actual underlying science, but ONLY Software Engineers are qualified to evaluate the implementation against the specification, no matter how good/bad the specification may be.)
Any time an industrial process produces waste, there is something being paid for as a raw material, whose processing is also being paid for, whose storage is again paid for, but which then produces nothing that returns anything for that investment. There is always going to be some waste, but some of that waste will actually be stuff intended for the primary product of that process, lost through (inevitable) inefficiencies. Since nobody is going to claim any industrial process is at peak efficiency, it is safe to conclude a better yield (and therefore less waste at LESS expense) is going to be possible. Other elements of that waste may be usable by other industries - the proverbial turning muck into brass. Again, this reduces pollution AND reduces expense.
The specific example - carbon emissions - is tougher, but I think it reasonable to say that power stations (a big source of carbon dioxide) and car engines (another big source of carbon dioxide) are highly inefficient at converting fuel into energy. Fuel is expensive (and will get ever more so, as no new uranium deposits are being found for nuke power and we're within 5 years of peak oil by some estimates). Titanium is theoretically as extractable from ore as aluminium (although nobody has developed a process that good yet). Titanium cars would need far less energy to reach or maintain a given speed than a car built out of a lump of iron. This is probably true for trucks and mass transit vehicles too. Blended-wing aircraft should also need less fuel than a traditional wing-and-cylinder body, so civilian aircraft (another big fuel consumer) could also be improved.
As for carbon being pollution, high CO2 levels reduce how efficient vegetation can photosynthesize (above a certain level which is really not that high). Since vegetation is a major part of the part of the carbon cycle that removes CO2, breaking that part of the carbon cycle is probably a Bad Idea. Carbon dioxide doesn't contribute nearly as much as sulpher dioxide to global warming, but it unquestionably contributes a fair bit. (I remember having this debate with my father, one of the pioneers in inorganic biochemistry - now called environmental chemistry - back in the 1970s, when he first introduced me to the science of Global Warming. Yes, the subject has been around for a while.)
The set of all infinite sequences of natural numbers is uncountable, although any given set of natural numbers in any given sequence is countable. Since you can produce one from the other, you have changed the aleph number by running one infinite task through another infinite task.
The set of all functions from R to R has a greater cardinality than R, and you likewise have changed the cardinality of the infinity.
I completely agree with you and have had similar experiences.
What you are describing is how the "normal world" is depicted in the British miniseries "Codename: Icarus". (Its depiction of how easy it would be for someone to abuse/misuse the "genius world" when geniuses are pushed to conform by the "normal world" is instructive.) It's a nice piece of dystopian speculative fiction that cuts rather closer to real life than I'd like.
Regardless of what an ideal solution might be, I'd argue that since conformity is what is "expected", the simplest solution is to simply make the granularity small enough that conformity ceases to be a problem. If schools split each year into 5 or 7 streams, where membership of a stream reflected both ability in the subject and who worked well with whom (including which kids worked well with which teacher), the variation in a stream should be sufficiently small that conformity within the stream isn't distinguishable from working one's preferred way at one's optimal pace.
I think Escalante has demonstrated that the current solution is sub-optimal for everyone. It seems unreasonable (based on experience and common sense) to assume that the same optimization will work for everyone, ergo it would follow that some form of classification and selective optimization is the preferred path. His solution is clearly optimal for some of those classifications, but may not be optimal for all. If you like, apply the lessons learned from compilers and diffserv.
You're assuming literacy is a prerequisite for education. My knowledge of India is very limited, but based on what I know, I'd say that the knowledge level in India pre-1950 far exceeded that which would be estimated purely from a 13% literacy level.
What a strange approach. I would certainly not have gone for an approach in that direction, precisely because of the problems you describe (lack of computability, lack of direct usability, etc).
Oh, that part is easy, but there's no known mathematical formula to represent the randomness of hot grit remarks.
There are certainly other factors beyond merely the style of teaching. Schools that have adopted Jamie Oliver's suggested food program have shown test scores in exams and intelligence tests rise whilst illness levels fall. However, given that all other things remained essentially constant, Escalante certainly demonstrated the impact of teaching methods. If you add in effective streaming, sane textbooks and other refinements, one wonders just how far education could go. (If you go by the change in identified child prodigies as a fraction of world population, the number is about a third what it was in the 1700s. Given how much more we know about child psychology, how much more available textbooks are and how much better our ability to disseminate information on talented people is, I'd have expected the fraction of identified geniuses to have risen. Given that our knowledge of nutrition and its impact on the development of the brain has also improved, I'd have expected the level of talent as an absolute to have also risen.)
The number of integers is infinite, but it is a different infinity than the number of real numbers. The former is considered countable, the latter uncountable.
If you look up the proof of Fermat's Last Theorum, you'll see it was the comparison of the size of two infinite sets that allowed the proof to be completed.