"Science in particular seems to draw some of those who are a little too wacky to do things that actually work. In a field where you create ideas that no one uses, you can get away with being crazier than in a field where your own ideas are subjected to reality. It's a lot more common to find a fundamentalist scientist than it is to find a fundamentalist engineer."
Consider a variation of the game, when you explicitly signal to the other player that you will not accept an offer worse than 50/50. In that case, (if you are convincing enough), the game changes drastically. To shamelessly copy-paste Wikipedia (from Chicken (game) article):
"Pre-commitment
One tactic in the game is for one party to signal their intentions convincingly before the game begins. For example, if one party were to ostentatiously disable their steering wheel just before the match, the other party would be compelled to swerve [12]. This shows that, in some circumstances, reducing one's own options can be a good strategy. One real-world example is a protester who handcuffs himself to an object, so that no threat can be made which would compel him to move (since he cannot move). Another example, taken from fiction, is found in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. In that film, the Russians sought to deter American attack by building a "doomsday machine," a device that would trigger world annihilation if Russia was hit by nuclear weapons. However, the Russians failed to signal — they deployed their doomsday machine covertly."
Also, there is the method of "Burning Up Bridges" when you deliberately limit your choices -- like Cortez scuttling his ships. While this seems as an irrational deed, it could be useful in cases. Game theoretically speaking, you eliminate some of the possible outcomes of the original game to force a new equilibrium.
Have it ever occurred to you, that we, practitioners of the software industry, simply DO NOT WANT PATENTS? We do not want to file patents, and we do not need the protection of the patent system, at all.
But still, we are forced to follow a system that the majority of us thinks is not useful.
Is it your job to decide whether software patents are useful or not, or is it ours, whose work you are supposed to protect?
"Nah, I wasn't taking it personally, though my tone did come off that way (for which I apologize)."
No worries, my initial post was a bit harsh, probably.
"Having said that, you have yet to address the second part of your thesis: "Most academics don't write with the goal to let others learn, they write to impress fellow academicians from the same field."
OK, let me give you an example from mathematics.
Take a mathematician working on proving theorem A. Over several month he tries to apply technique C, D, E, each of them failing. Finally, he modifies the original statement to be A2 and manages to prove it with the combinated technique C,E and F (the C and E technique comes from the previous experience trying to prove A). Now he has a fine theorem A2 and the necessary proof. Now he starts to revise the proof, and finally comes to a compressed (or using the notorious word: "elegant") proof G. At this point the mathematician publishes A2 and G.
Now, I as a reader I read A2 and G and find A2 interesting, but G is very hard to follow. In fact, I might understand each of the steps, but not grok the whole. I do not see the _strategy_ behind it. I might conclude that the mathematician is over my class, and I am real stupid. However in fact:
- A2 was not the original theorem
- G, however elegant, was not the original proof
- formulating A2 and then obtaining G was not the original order
Now I am impressed, because I only saw the final outcome A2, G, but I could not learn, because it is something "compiled". It is completely my burden to reverse engineer the thoughtwork behind it. It is like reading assembly code -- you understand each and every step (they are trivial!), but not see the whole picture -- or the source code.
Now the mathematician could have been published (even if omitting failed attempt A) the original proof C, E, F and adding the motivation why C and E were used (coming from attempt A). In this case however there would be not that much magic! publishing A2, G gives a much mystic aura to the whole result...
Maybe you feel insulted, because you are from academy.
Please do not take criticism as _personal_ criticism against _your_ work. I criticize people not because of fun, but to point out some issues in how academy works.
Where did you get the idea that I am talking about humanities?? In fact I talk about computer sciences and mathematics. There are many terribly written papers and books around, and no, I am not talking about the 2nd/3rd grade joke journals or publishers.
And no, this is not a new observation, nor I am the only one making this statement. See Edwin Thompson Jaynes or Morris Kline to name some. Also look in the works of György Pólya to see what I consider the good way.
Btw, as a hobby I study the history of mathematics and study some of the original texts, and by comparison I do not like the direction where we are heading in these days. While it seems that we are more precise and rigorous, we are still not precise enough, but we are abstract enough to lose a lot of comprehension. Also we try to weed out any intuitive explanations just because they are not strictly "true" -- whatever that means.
Also, today's textbooks follow an order that was not followed by history. Nowadays you start with an axiomatization and arrive at the useful stuff at the end (where students usually already gave up), while the actual history was with useful empirical stuff that was consolidated over time to become an axiomatic system.
In fact, I could write _pages_ about this matter. Maybe you feel insulted, because you are from academy.
Funny, it was the Aspell dictionary that corrected it, and I have not double checked. Anyway, my spelling does not imply anything about the truth in my comment, especially considering that it is not my mother language.
Also, Wikipedia's clear advantage is that you can SEE the discussion part, as it is documented in the "Talk" section. It is quite usual that I look into these sections to assess the reliability of an article.
Before anybody misrepresents my statement to mean "most rape accusations are false", what I exactly stated is that we don't know nothing about the details of the Assange case, and my personal experience shows how women can use accusations like this to take vengeance on a man. So let's assume someone is innocent until proven otherwise.
And again, I do not think that MOST women are like this, just that there are evil women out there. This latter is not surprising as males and females are all the same kind of animal: humans.
In my close circle I witnessed the "work" of two psychopathic women, so my faith is somewhat shaken. However, you must understand that I am not saying that women are worse than men. In fact, my opinion is that all humans independent of sex could do exactly the same amount of grief.
Raping someone is usually done by males. Accusing an innocent about rape is usually done by females.
To be honest, we don't know shit about this. I am really disgusted with rape, even rape-fiction, fantasies of rape or anything like that. That said, I am also skeptical about rape accusations. Women use rape accusations all the time to take revenge on someone. In our university we have the policy that we do not consult any student (especially female) without having many eyewitnesses around. Just in case.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course cart before the horse. Whatever.
Again, a project that was way overhyped before any code became available.
No, but -- although I am not an engineer -- I found your argument insulting. In my experience engineers are less wacky than most of the scientists.
"you can get away with being crazier than in a field where your own ideas are subjected to peer-review"
This is false. Peer-review is nothing. It is nothing more than opinions. Implementation (reality) matters.
"Science in particular seems to draw some of those who are a little too wacky to do things that actually work. In a field where you create ideas that no one uses, you can get away with being crazier than in a field where your own ideas are subjected to reality. It's a lot more common to find a fundamentalist scientist than it is to find a fundamentalist engineer."
There, fixed that for you.
Consider a variation of the game, when you explicitly signal to the other player that you will not accept an offer worse than 50/50. In that case, (if you are convincing enough), the game changes drastically. To shamelessly copy-paste Wikipedia (from Chicken (game) article):
"Pre-commitment
One tactic in the game is for one party to signal their intentions convincingly before the game begins. For example, if one party were to ostentatiously disable their steering wheel just before the match, the other party would be compelled to swerve [12]. This shows that, in some circumstances, reducing one's own options can be a good strategy. One real-world example is a protester who handcuffs himself to an object, so that no threat can be made which would compel him to move (since he cannot move). Another example, taken from fiction, is found in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. In that film, the Russians sought to deter American attack by building a "doomsday machine," a device that would trigger world annihilation if Russia was hit by nuclear weapons. However, the Russians failed to signal — they deployed their doomsday machine covertly."
Also, there is the method of "Burning Up Bridges" when you deliberately limit your choices -- like Cortez scuttling his ships. While this seems as an irrational deed, it could be useful in cases. Game theoretically speaking, you eliminate some of the possible outcomes of the original game to force a new equilibrium.
Ok, that was probably a stupid comment from me. Consider it cancelled.
The summary is exactly the same as the first "review" in amazon. What a coincidence. I call BS.
Have it ever occurred to you, that we, practitioners of the software industry, simply DO NOT WANT PATENTS? We do not want to file patents, and we do not need the protection of the patent system, at all.
But still, we are forced to follow a system that the majority of us thinks is not useful.
Is it your job to decide whether software patents are useful or not, or is it ours, whose work you are supposed to protect?
I wanted to indicate that somehow, but I don't know the ASCII code for sparkles.
They turn into -- Butterflies!!
Well, sorry the real site is:
http://www.cookingissues.com/
The wordpress site is no longer updated.
And some really cool stuff:
http://cookingissues.wordpress.com/
(The French Culinary Institute's Tech'N Stuff Blog)
The best scientific cooking articles I've ever read!
Also, another cool one is:
http://blog.khymos.org/
with its fine hydrocolloid recipe collection:
http://blog.khymos.org/recipe-collection/
"Nah, I wasn't taking it personally, though my tone did come off that way (for which I apologize)."
No worries, my initial post was a bit harsh, probably.
"Having said that, you have yet to address the second part of your thesis: "Most academics don't write with the goal to let others learn, they write to impress fellow academicians from the same field."
OK, let me give you an example from mathematics.
Take a mathematician working on proving theorem A. Over several month he tries to apply technique C, D, E, each of them failing. Finally, he modifies the original statement to be A2 and manages to prove it with the combinated technique C,E and F (the C and E technique comes from the previous experience trying to prove A). Now he has a fine theorem A2 and the necessary proof. Now he starts to revise the proof, and finally comes to a compressed (or using the notorious word: "elegant") proof G. At this point the mathematician publishes A2 and G.
Now, I as a reader I read A2 and G and find A2 interesting, but G is very hard to follow. In fact, I might understand each of the steps, but not grok the whole. I do not see the _strategy_ behind it. I might conclude that the mathematician is over my class, and I am real stupid. However in fact:
- A2 was not the original theorem
- G, however elegant, was not the original proof
- formulating A2 and then obtaining G was not the original order
Now I am impressed, because I only saw the final outcome A2, G, but I could not learn, because it is something "compiled". It is completely my burden to reverse engineer the thoughtwork behind it. It is like reading assembly code -- you understand each and every step (they are trivial!), but not see the whole picture -- or the source code.
Now the mathematician could have been published (even if omitting failed attempt A) the original proof C, E, F and adding the motivation why C and E were used (coming from attempt A). In this case however there would be not that much magic! publishing A2, G gives a much mystic aura to the whole result...
Dammit, I deleted the last line, so correctly:
Maybe you feel insulted, because you are from academy.
Please do not take criticism as _personal_ criticism against _your_ work. I criticize people not because of fun, but to point out some issues in how academy works.
Where did you get the idea that I am talking about humanities?? In fact I talk about computer sciences and mathematics. There are many terribly written papers and books around, and no, I am not talking about the 2nd/3rd grade joke journals or publishers.
And no, this is not a new observation, nor I am the only one making this statement. See Edwin Thompson Jaynes or Morris Kline to name some. Also look in the works of György Pólya to see what I consider the good way.
Btw, as a hobby I study the history of mathematics and study some of the original texts, and by comparison I do not like the direction where we are heading in these days. While it seems that we are more precise and rigorous, we are still not precise enough, but we are abstract enough to lose a lot of comprehension. Also we try to weed out any intuitive explanations just because they are not strictly "true" -- whatever that means.
Also, today's textbooks follow an order that was not followed by history. Nowadays you start with an axiomatization and arrive at the useful stuff at the end (where students usually already gave up), while the actual history was with useful empirical stuff that was consolidated over time to become an axiomatic system.
In fact, I could write _pages_ about this matter. Maybe you feel insulted, because you are from academy.
Funny, it was the Aspell dictionary that corrected it, and I have not double checked. Anyway, my spelling does not imply anything about the truth in my comment, especially considering that it is not my mother language.
Also, Wikipedia's clear advantage is that you can SEE the discussion part, as it is documented in the "Talk" section. It is quite usual that I look into these sections to assess the reliability of an article.
It's the same everywhere. Most academics don't write with the goal to let others learn, they write to impress fellow academicians from the same field.
Yeah, I just discovered Dwarf Fortress and almost missed a deadline :) That game is insane, still, it is just a bunch of ASCII on your sceen.
Before anybody misrepresents my statement to mean "most rape accusations are false", what I exactly stated is that we don't know nothing about the details of the Assange case, and my personal experience shows how women can use accusations like this to take vengeance on a man. So let's assume someone is innocent until proven otherwise.
And again, I do not think that MOST women are like this, just that there are evil women out there. This latter is not surprising as males and females are all the same kind of animal: humans.
In my close circle I witnessed the "work" of two psychopathic women, so my faith is somewhat shaken. However, you must understand that I am not saying that women are worse than men. In fact, my opinion is that all humans independent of sex could do exactly the same amount of grief.
Raping someone is usually done by males.
Accusing an innocent about rape is usually done by females.
Two sides of the same coin.
To be honest, we don't know shit about this. I am really disgusted with rape, even rape-fiction, fantasies of rape or anything like that. That said, I am also skeptical about rape accusations. Women use rape accusations all the time to take revenge on someone. In our university we have the policy that we do not consult any student (especially female) without having many eyewitnesses around. Just in case.
Yeah, and computers are _so good_ in driving cars, too.
Blizzard -> Starcraft
Almost 10 years of patches