I should also point out that geeks are not limited to computer geeks. There are all kinds of geeks: science geeks, math geeks, business geeks, political geeks, law geeks, medical geeks, car geeks, bike geeks, boat geeks, martial arts geeks, sports geeks etc...
The best people in their fields are typically geeks of one kind or another. Being a geek is not about the subject matter, it is about the approach.
IQ measures problem solving ability, various forms of reasoning, linguistic ability, and (sometimes) general knowledge. People who really understand something (a.k.a geeks) have tremendous reasoning and problem solving abilities compared to the average person. They have invested significant amounts of time and energy into ordering their minds, when lends itself to doing well on IQ tests. Geeks are also curious individuals, so they tend to be more informed than most. Naturally, geeks will do better on IQ tests than your average citizen. But if you're still skeptical I could try to convince somebody to perform a study.
And they get upset if a new requirement is added later.
Not us Agile programmers. We don't get upset if a new requirement is added, we expect it, and then we give you an estimate for how much longer the project will take.
We share the cost of military, police, travel, environmental protections, parks, fire and emergency services, medical services, governance, schools, utilities, and methods of information dissemination (postal services, libraries). Oh, and public defenders.
Exactly, if all of those services suddenly disappeared overnight we would find ourselves invaded, crime ridden, diseased, uneducated, and on fire. It's hard for people living in this day and age to fully appreciate just how important our public services are and why they need to be protected.
Um, you're the one making the claim that there is strong evidence that Jesus was a real person, so the burden of proof rests on your shoulders, not mine. Besides, how can I fix the Wikipedia article if I don't have access to the evidence you say exists?
...a few deaf parents who are stuck in their ways and want to sign with their children...
Sorry, this should read "...a few deaf parents who are stuck in their ways and ONLY want to sign with their children...". Naturally, in Ontario we prefer that hard of hearing children of deaf parents are bilingual, so that they can communicate with their parents and with the rest of society =)
My mother works as a home-visiting teacher for deaf and hard of hearing children in Ontario. Many hearing parents, who just are simply unfortunate to have a deaf child, want their children to have cochlear implants and lead relatively normal lives. There are, however, a few deaf parents who are stuck in their ways and want to sign with their children, but this is on the decline as the technology has gotten better, cheaper, and the benefits of having (mostly) hearing children have been made plainly obvious.
Science never has everything figured out. You should be skeptical of science. But most arguments I've seen against global warming have nothing to do with healthy skepticism; they generally use made up evidence or faulty reasoning. In any case, we will need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions no matter what, because fossil fuels will not last forever. The only question is how quickly should we reduce them. Personally, I think it makes sense to reduce fossil fuel now use simply to reduce demand and avoid energy prices spiraling out of control...
Not to mention that burning petroleum is such a terrible waste since it's far better used to create things like plastics, fertilizers,and pharmaceuticals.
If the Iranians want to use Molten Salt reactors I doubt the rest of the world would have anything to say about it since such reactors are incapable for producing plutonium or enriching uranium.
The Europeans are going to save us by switching from nukes back to coal.
Yeah that one's fucking brilliant!
Unless they intend on replacing all their nuclear with renewables (highly unlikely considering nuclear is base-load power generation), or buying lots of energy from other countries, then this is exactly what will happen.
Nuclear technology is already quite safe, and can be made even safer (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor) provided governments invest in the research. Unfortunately, most people's brains shut down when they hear the word "nuclear" since they only associate it with weapons, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima...
The reality of the situation, however, is that nuclear technology could be (and for the most part is) a safe, and environmentally friendly means of base-load power generation surpassed only by hydro; unfortunately, hydro doesn't scale all that well.
What happens when we start running out of oil (we're approaching peak oil production) and we start to rely more and more on electric vehicles for transportation? They'll need to get their energy from somewhere... The candidates for providing this additional energy are: coal (there's still lots of this, but you don't want it all in the atmosphere), natural gas (we'll run out of this eventually), hydro (you can only build so many dams), solar/wind (not suitable for base-load power generation), fusion (still twenty years away), and nuclear (which, if we switched to thorium as a fuel source, could last us for many thousands of years whilst having minimal environmental impacts). Are you absolutely sure you want to abandon nuclear technology?
College/university is to intellectual endeavors as a dojo is to martial arts. Sure you can do martial arts all alone and maybe you'll get somewhere... You might be able to figure out how to kick, punch, and perform some kata. You might even become quite good at these things, but you'll never learn how to block quite as effectively as you could if you had other people to practice with. You'll never learn more complex techniques like throwing, or locking, and you'll certainly never get to practice them. You also won't have the advice of mentors who have been practicing for way longer than you have (and learned from others as well); and therefore, you probably won't learn much of the theory behind the movements, their history, their proper application, common pitfalls, etc...
You also won't be able to experience the wonderful social atmosphere that accompanies a good dojo (which helps a lot with motivation). So yes, you could go off and be a martial artist all by yourself... but, it gets a whole lot better when you do it with others (assuming you go to a good dojo).
Okay, you proved that it is possible to get an intellectual out of a college with your example. You didn't prove that it takes college to make one.
You've got the wrong idea. Here's the right one: College/university is to intellectual endeavors as a dojo is to martial arts.
Sure you can do martial arts all alone and maybe you'll get somewhere... You might be able to figure out how to kick, punch, and perform some kata. You might even become quite good at these things, but you'll never learn how to block quite as effectively as you could if you had other people to practice with. You'll never learn more complex techniques like throwing, or locking, and you'll certainly never get to practice them. You also won't have the advice of mentors who have been practicing for way longer than you have (and learned from others as well); and therefore, you probably won't learn much of the theory behind the movements, their history, their proper application, common pitfalls, etc... You also won't be able to experience the wonderful social atmosphere a good dojo provides (which helps a lot with motivation).
So yes, you could go off and be a martial artist all by yourself... but, it gets a lot better when you do it with others.
Actually I was wondering if anyone would pick up on that. It's very difficult to pick a specific date where the Flat Earth Model vanished since it did so in different places and at different times, so I just picked the 17th century since that's when China finally abandoned the idea of a flat Earth.
Supposing common sense is correct most of the time, would it still be a good idea to base a scientific theory on it?
Consider the example of he Flat Earth Model. Up until about the 17th century, most people "knew" the Earth was flat. After all, it was common sense! Just go out onto the plains and stare at it: completely flat for as far as the eye can see... Or, how about the Geocentric Model of the relationship between the Earth and Sun? Just look up at the sky! Clearly, we are in the center of the solar system (indeed the entire universe!) because if we look up at the Sun, the Moon, and the planets, they appear to go around the sky in big circles with us at the center - it's common sense!
This is why common sense has to be tested, and is positively dangerous to scientific thinking!
We're talking about sub-atomic particles and something needs to interact with them in order for them to be detected. In the case of this experiment they were photons (the article mentioned using a laser). So in a manner of speaking they were "seeing" it.
An aside, and what I was getting at, is that technically when we touch something we're feeling the Coulomb force, and touching something is also a perfectly valid way of determining it's shape.
Does finding the ground state of a Hamiltonian mean computing it's spectrum and finding the eigenvector corresponding to the smallest eigenvalue, or is it more complicated than that?
Slashdot Mirror
Well you obviously know very little about Thorium Molten Salt Reactors if you don't think they can solve our energy problems (they can!)
I should also point out that geeks are not limited to computer geeks. There are all kinds of geeks: science geeks, math geeks, business geeks, political geeks, law geeks, medical geeks, car geeks, bike geeks, boat geeks, martial arts geeks, sports geeks etc... The best people in their fields are typically geeks of one kind or another. Being a geek is not about the subject matter, it is about the approach.
IQ measures problem solving ability, various forms of reasoning, linguistic ability, and (sometimes) general knowledge. People who really understand something (a.k.a geeks) have tremendous reasoning and problem solving abilities compared to the average person. They have invested significant amounts of time and energy into ordering their minds, when lends itself to doing well on IQ tests. Geeks are also curious individuals, so they tend to be more informed than most. Naturally, geeks will do better on IQ tests than your average citizen. But if you're still skeptical I could try to convince somebody to perform a study.
You need to visit: http://energyfromthorium.com/
Perhaps the release procedures are different for internal non-customer facing applications?
I don't think you understand market research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_research
And they get upset if a new requirement is added later.
Not us Agile programmers. We don't get upset if a new requirement is added, we expect it, and then we give you an estimate for how much longer the project will take.
We share the cost of military, police, travel, environmental protections, parks, fire and emergency services, medical services, governance, schools, utilities, and methods of information dissemination (postal services, libraries). Oh, and public defenders.
Exactly, if all of those services suddenly disappeared overnight we would find ourselves invaded, crime ridden, diseased, uneducated, and on fire. It's hard for people living in this day and age to fully appreciate just how important our public services are and why they need to be protected.
...is essentially what Kogan is saying...and they're right!
Um, you're the one making the claim that there is strong evidence that Jesus was a real person, so the burden of proof rests on your shoulders, not mine. Besides, how can I fix the Wikipedia article if I don't have access to the evidence you say exists?
The evidence that Jesus was a real person is pretty strong. The evidence for anything beyond that is nonexistent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus#Mythical_view
Could you point me to said evidence? The link you posted just doesn't cut it.
...a few deaf parents who are stuck in their ways and want to sign with their children...
Sorry, this should read "...a few deaf parents who are stuck in their ways and ONLY want to sign with their children...". Naturally, in Ontario we prefer that hard of hearing children of deaf parents are bilingual, so that they can communicate with their parents and with the rest of society =)
My mother works as a home-visiting teacher for deaf and hard of hearing children in Ontario. Many hearing parents, who just are simply unfortunate to have a deaf child, want their children to have cochlear implants and lead relatively normal lives. There are, however, a few deaf parents who are stuck in their ways and want to sign with their children, but this is on the decline as the technology has gotten better, cheaper, and the benefits of having (mostly) hearing children have been made plainly obvious.
Science never has everything figured out. You should be skeptical of science. But most arguments I've seen against global warming have nothing to do with healthy skepticism; they generally use made up evidence or faulty reasoning. In any case, we will need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions no matter what, because fossil fuels will not last forever. The only question is how quickly should we reduce them. Personally, I think it makes sense to reduce fossil fuel now use simply to reduce demand and avoid energy prices spiraling out of control...
Not to mention that burning petroleum is such a terrible waste since it's far better used to create things like plastics, fertilizers,and pharmaceuticals.
If the Iranians want to use Molten Salt reactors I doubt the rest of the world would have anything to say about it since such reactors are incapable for producing plutonium or enriching uranium.
The Europeans are going to save us by switching from nukes back to coal.
Yeah that one's fucking brilliant!
Unless they intend on replacing all their nuclear with renewables (highly unlikely considering nuclear is base-load power generation), or buying lots of energy from other countries, then this is exactly what will happen.
Nuclear technology is already quite safe, and can be made even safer (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor) provided governments invest in the research. Unfortunately, most people's brains shut down when they hear the word "nuclear" since they only associate it with weapons, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima...
The reality of the situation, however, is that nuclear technology could be (and for the most part is) a safe, and environmentally friendly means of base-load power generation surpassed only by hydro; unfortunately, hydro doesn't scale all that well.
What happens when we start running out of oil (we're approaching peak oil production) and we start to rely more and more on electric vehicles for transportation? They'll need to get their energy from somewhere... The candidates for providing this additional energy are: coal (there's still lots of this, but you don't want it all in the atmosphere), natural gas (we'll run out of this eventually), hydro (you can only build so many dams), solar/wind (not suitable for base-load power generation), fusion (still twenty years away), and nuclear (which, if we switched to thorium as a fuel source, could last us for many thousands of years whilst having minimal environmental impacts). Are you absolutely sure you want to abandon nuclear technology?
You've got it all wrong...
College/university is to intellectual endeavors as a dojo is to martial arts. Sure you can do martial arts all alone and maybe you'll get somewhere... You might be able to figure out how to kick, punch, and perform some kata. You might even become quite good at these things, but you'll never learn how to block quite as effectively as you could if you had other people to practice with. You'll never learn more complex techniques like throwing, or locking, and you'll certainly never get to practice them. You also won't have the advice of mentors who have been practicing for way longer than you have (and learned from others as well); and therefore, you probably won't learn much of the theory behind the movements, their history, their proper application, common pitfalls, etc...
You also won't be able to experience the wonderful social atmosphere that accompanies a good dojo (which helps a lot with motivation). So yes, you could go off and be a martial artist all by yourself... but, it gets a whole lot better when you do it with others (assuming you go to a good dojo).
Okay, you proved that it is possible to get an intellectual out of a college with your example. You didn't prove that it takes college to make one.
You've got the wrong idea. Here's the right one: College/university is to intellectual endeavors as a dojo is to martial arts. Sure you can do martial arts all alone and maybe you'll get somewhere... You might be able to figure out how to kick, punch, and perform some kata. You might even become quite good at these things, but you'll never learn how to block quite as effectively as you could if you had other people to practice with. You'll never learn more complex techniques like throwing, or locking, and you'll certainly never get to practice them. You also won't have the advice of mentors who have been practicing for way longer than you have (and learned from others as well); and therefore, you probably won't learn much of the theory behind the movements, their history, their proper application, common pitfalls, etc... You also won't be able to experience the wonderful social atmosphere a good dojo provides (which helps a lot with motivation). So yes, you could go off and be a martial artist all by yourself... but, it gets a lot better when you do it with others.
Actually I was wondering if anyone would pick up on that. It's very difficult to pick a specific date where the Flat Earth Model vanished since it did so in different places and at different times, so I just picked the 17th century since that's when China finally abandoned the idea of a flat Earth.
Supposing common sense is correct most of the time, would it still be a good idea to base a scientific theory on it?
Consider the example of he Flat Earth Model. Up until about the 17th century, most people "knew" the Earth was flat. After all, it was common sense! Just go out onto the plains and stare at it: completely flat for as far as the eye can see... Or, how about the Geocentric Model of the relationship between the Earth and Sun? Just look up at the sky! Clearly, we are in the center of the solar system (indeed the entire universe!) because if we look up at the Sun, the Moon, and the planets, they appear to go around the sky in big circles with us at the center - it's common sense!
This is why common sense has to be tested, and is positively dangerous to scientific thinking!
Thank goodness. That is exceptionally good forward thinking on the part of the founders. I almost hope Nokia goes dumps Qt.
We're talking about sub-atomic particles and something needs to interact with them in order for them to be detected. In the case of this experiment they were photons (the article mentioned using a laser). So in a manner of speaking they were "seeing" it. An aside, and what I was getting at, is that technically when we touch something we're feeling the Coulomb force, and touching something is also a perfectly valid way of determining it's shape.
Does finding the ground state of a Hamiltonian mean computing it's spectrum and finding the eigenvector corresponding to the smallest eigenvalue, or is it more complicated than that?
Thank you that was excellent. Any chance you could answer my question?
I was wondering if it had a deeper theoretical meaning, not a religious one...