When I saw the title, I expected a study involving hundreds of separately adopted twins. 29 female monkeys in cages is a methodological joke. No conclusions can be made about genetics from this study, and the conclusions made should not necessarily be generalized to humans.
Have families of persons killed while drinking and driving successfully sued alcohol companies? Have families of victims of gun violence successfully sued gun manufacturers? What happened when McDonalds was sued for causing obesity?
The tobacco industry was successfully sued. What was different?
If the units were smaller and automated, they could prevent prison escapes. Whenever a prisoner leaves a certain area, it would direct him back or force him to stop walking.
Correlated maybe, but not causal. Steven Levitt's analysis shows that there are factors that may cause quality time and child intelligence, such as parents' intelligence and the mother's age at childbirth.
Mother spending time with the kid in early life was specifically shown to not be causal, as were taking kids to museums and reading to them.
Intelligence testing costs a couple hundred dollars per person. Maybe someone could finding funding for that study, but a meta-analysis is way easier. Some private schools require that their students get tested before admission, but then you have huge selection biases. On the other side, if you look at kids in the general population who get tested, you'll be looking at kids who are having some sort of problems.
In fact, I bet that most IRBs would judge IQ testing children for the sake of finding a correlation between IQ and head size to be unethical. There can be consequences for testing someone, unnecessary testing is bad for a few reasons, and the benefit of the study is negligable.
I had thought this correlation was old news, and that the direction of causality was that people who use their brains more develop more ganglia, etc.... Neural plasticity continues throughout one's life. People who don't use their brains experience faster brain shrinkage when their older, putting them at higher risk for dementia. This is why the elderly are advised to do crossword puzzles and whatnot (from the nun and related studies).
What's disturbing is the age at which our brains start to shrink and our cognitive functioning declines. I've done a lot of neuropsych assessment, and the norm tables for the instruments show turning points (depending on what is being measured) as early as age 17, and as late as the late 20s. I believe I remember reading that brain size significantly begins shrinking in the early 30s, and the rate is positively correlated with blood pressure.
At first confused, I then assumed that they meant the circle was the horizontal (XZ) plane (radius about a kilometer), and the 180 degrees referred to the vertical plane. So, each robot covers the top half of a sphere, but can't detect things underground.
I am proposing this exact thing to the American Psychological Association at their annual convention, August 18th. Doesn't it seem like a good idea? I only had time and support to throw together a poster presentation, but any awareness I can raise of what technology can do for the field will be a step to build upon. My only concern is selling the idea and possible business models to conservative technophobes, and overcoming the academic pressure to publish in selective journals (98%+ rejection rate).
I was talking with people recently about how the internet, or even just our modern culture, provides a faster rate of return on IP and a more urgent need to legally be able to build on existing IP, so copyright terms should be taken down to 10 years. Copyrights are supposed to encourage people to create. What could be more encouraging than a sudden drop in revenue? Innovate!
My forty-something dollar membership to the APA gets me a stack of journals every year, which promptly go on my shelf unless something I'm interested in is prominently displayed on the cover. My colleagues do the same. None of us are interested in everything, and when we're doing research on a topic, we turn to the online databases anyway. The journals are a waste perpetuated by the self-protecting, prestige-hungry bureaucracy.
I'm only on chapter 3, but this book seems to involve something similar to the idea of a flash mob security threat.
This far from justifies outlawing flash mobs, however. Making such an activity illegal because there's a chance that someone might do something violent would be an absurd knee-jerk reaction akin to suspending high school students who wear black trenchcoats.
Heh, next Congress will suddenly decide to reverse the Bill of Rights and make guns illegal because some people are using them to participate in illegal activities, but the technology itself is not the culprit.
Your post is one of the many compilations of misapplied anecdotes on this topic vitriolically recited in complete ignorance. As much as I would like to address everyone, I don't have all day.
A) Are you suggesting that since homosexuality was considered a disorder until over 30 years ago, schizophrenia may not be a disorder, or are you more specifically referring to its Axis I status? The post to which you are replying did not acurately describe the difference between Axis I (clinical disorders) and Axis II (personality disorders and mental retardation). Regardless, the old idea of homosexuality is not indicative of the trustworthiness of the DSM. If you're going to knock the DSM, the least you could do is argue dimensional over categorical diagnoses.
B) You don't seem to understand the difference between psychology and psychiatry, and between different fields of psychology. There are many hard facts in psychology, revealed by extensive experimentation and research. I personally wish there were more when it comes to therapy other than cognitive-behavioral, but there are still a good deal. You say "fluff is the norm," but you don't seem to have any understanding of the field other than a couple of events.
C) Regarding agoraphobia: (1) If drugs are prescribed, the doctor is a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, (2) Only a psychoanalyst (rare) will do psychoanalysis, which is extremely expensive and time-consuming, and would not address the presenting problem for years, (3) The known treatment for Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia is cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is usually effective with 6-12 sessions, and has shown better long term results without medication, so the client should have seen a CBT therapist instead of either a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst. (4) Don't read any 'testimonial' books, ever. They are anecdotal rather than statistical. 'Overcoming the fear' might mean graduated exposure or 'immersion therapy,' the first of which is appropriate for some clients, and the latter of which usually traumatizes the clients.
D) It's not important when was the last time I heard of a single person doing anything. I read peer-reviewed research articles for my information. If you want fewer people on medication, tell your congressmen that you want more psychologists on hospital boards instead of medical doctors. Tell your insurance companies that 12 sessions of therapy isn't enough, and that more therapy will reduce long term costs by reducing drug prescriptions.
Even though the bill has requirements before violation can be shown, and has a list of permitted activities, I see it being used the same way as the DMCA, to bully people who can't afford defense lawyers and who don't fully understand the law into stopping what they're doing or into forking over money.
If I'm writing a book about something, and I expect to sell the book (so it isn't non-profit related), can it count as news reporting so I can use information from other people's databases? What is "news?"
What about databases that contain confidential information, like hospital records. I assume those are already and permanently protected from scrutiny without a warrant. What types of information are totally protected this way (like diagnosis), and what is the privacy cut-off (phone numbers are public unless you pay a fee)? I would say there's precedent for saying that people's information is private without a warrant, and the phone book is a violation of my privacy (though I agree to the company's terms by using their service).
Something similar happened with sponsored blogs, right? Whatever happened with those?
As a psychologist, I would love to see the info correlated with DNA.
On the direct marketing aspect, think of the application of the system for promoting independent artists. The RIAA is obsolete if quality music is spread to people of similar interests without monopolies on airways and shelfspace.
A previous post in this discussion remarked that culture is *transmitted* and not hardwired. Though the apis class structure is involunarily genetic/chemical, they do have language. A bee can do a dance that tells other bees where there is food. What is language except the ability to express the idea of something that isn't present/currently observable?
I don't know if bee language is learned or hardwired, though. My instinct is to say learned because a lot of things can go wrong with hardwiring "five steps counterclockwise means the flower is 60' to the southeast."
There are many organisms with larger brains and not nearly as much ability to transmit information. Ex: college math professors.
It bothers me that there's so much media coverage of people complaining about putting $12 billion towards going to Mars when it should be put to better use like education and health care when Bush just blew $500 billion (IIRC) on messing with Iraq, getting the rest of the world angry at us, and I still have to pay more for gasoline. He wasted more money every two weeks than he's proposing for NASA for the next five years, but people are whining about health care in our capitalist society, and education in our Republic government (schools are local jurisdiction).
What is the learning curve for tricking search engines? After an exploit is discovered by the engine programmers, and the search algorithms are tweaked, how long does it take for one big player to realize how to exploit the new algorithm, and how long does it take for the exploit to propogate?
What might be a long-term solution to preventing exploits? Could an AI learn how to recognize exploits and change its own algorithms accordingly?
The participants had to reveal their personal information to people who were present, and some of whom were known to the participants. Also, the nature of the information (age, weight, and finances) is potentially stigmatic in our culture.
These results should not be generalized to, for example, online data mining attempts for such practices as direct marketing. In nearly all requests for personal information, confidentiality is maintained, the information is anonymous, and some of the information requested (zip code, subscribed magazines, etc...) is not culturally stigmatic.
I question the applicability and usefulness of this study. Its specific results could have been predicted by existing social psychological research. A study measuring willingness to divulge non-stigmatic and anonymous information would be more useful.
I went to CMU. A great number of the CS and engineering students are from India and other Asian countries, and they take their American-trained skills back to their countries with them. I'm hardly surprised that India, with 5 times the US population, and who sends its best scholars to the US for college, has half of the best tech firms.
The Wired article is a pathetic string of anecdotes with too few token statistics relevant to the argument: "is it okay to outsource all these jobs?" Here's another anecdote: My friends are going into debt eating ramen with one of the best educations in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
When I saw the title, I expected a study involving hundreds of separately adopted twins. 29 female monkeys in cages is a methodological joke. No conclusions can be made about genetics from this study, and the conclusions made should not necessarily be generalized to humans.
Have families of persons killed while drinking and driving successfully sued alcohol companies? Have families of victims of gun violence successfully sued gun manufacturers? What happened when McDonalds was sued for causing obesity?
The tobacco industry was successfully sued. What was different?
If the units were smaller and automated, they could prevent prison escapes. Whenever a prisoner leaves a certain area, it would direct him back or force him to stop walking.
Then the ACLU complains.
Correlated maybe, but not causal. Steven Levitt's analysis shows that there are factors that may cause quality time and child intelligence, such as parents' intelligence and the mother's age at childbirth.
Mother spending time with the kid in early life was specifically shown to not be causal, as were taking kids to museums and reading to them.
Intelligence testing costs a couple hundred dollars per person. Maybe someone could finding funding for that study, but a meta-analysis is way easier. Some private schools require that their students get tested before admission, but then you have huge selection biases. On the other side, if you look at kids in the general population who get tested, you'll be looking at kids who are having some sort of problems.
In fact, I bet that most IRBs would judge IQ testing children for the sake of finding a correlation between IQ and head size to be unethical. There can be consequences for testing someone, unnecessary testing is bad for a few reasons, and the benefit of the study is negligable.
I had thought this correlation was old news, and that the direction of causality was that people who use their brains more develop more ganglia, etc.... Neural plasticity continues throughout one's life. People who don't use their brains experience faster brain shrinkage when their older, putting them at higher risk for dementia. This is why the elderly are advised to do crossword puzzles and whatnot (from the nun and related studies).
What's disturbing is the age at which our brains start to shrink and our cognitive functioning declines. I've done a lot of neuropsych assessment, and the norm tables for the instruments show turning points (depending on what is being measured) as early as age 17, and as late as the late 20s. I believe I remember reading that brain size significantly begins shrinking in the early 30s, and the rate is positively correlated with blood pressure.
Use it or lose it. Avoid salt.
At first confused, I then assumed that they meant the circle was the horizontal (XZ) plane (radius about a kilometer), and the 180 degrees referred to the vertical plane. So, each robot covers the top half of a sphere, but can't detect things underground.
Or it's a really bad typo.
I am proposing this exact thing to the American Psychological Association at their annual convention, August 18th. Doesn't it seem like a good idea? I only had time and support to throw together a poster presentation, but any awareness I can raise of what technology can do for the field will be a step to build upon. My only concern is selling the idea and possible business models to conservative technophobes, and overcoming the academic pressure to publish in selective journals (98%+ rejection rate).
I was talking with people recently about how the internet, or even just our modern culture, provides a faster rate of return on IP and a more urgent need to legally be able to build on existing IP, so copyright terms should be taken down to 10 years. Copyrights are supposed to encourage people to create. What could be more encouraging than a sudden drop in revenue? Innovate!
My forty-something dollar membership to the APA gets me a stack of journals every year, which promptly go on my shelf unless something I'm interested in is prominently displayed on the cover. My colleagues do the same. None of us are interested in everything, and when we're doing research on a topic, we turn to the online databases anyway. The journals are a waste perpetuated by the self-protecting, prestige-hungry bureaucracy.
"Print is dead." -- Egon Spangler
Because Kerry is more likely to change his mind. Which is good.
I'm only on chapter 3, but this book seems to involve something similar to the idea of a flash mob security threat.
This far from justifies outlawing flash mobs, however. Making such an activity illegal because there's a chance that someone might do something violent would be an absurd knee-jerk reaction akin to suspending high school students who wear black trenchcoats.
InstantCrisis
Heh, next Congress will suddenly decide to reverse the Bill of Rights and make guns illegal because some people are using them to participate in illegal activities, but the technology itself is not the culprit.
http://www.bmezine.com
Fangs and horns are old news, though they're silicone and teflon instead of human. Retractable claws would be awesome...
Your post is one of the many compilations of misapplied anecdotes on this topic vitriolically recited in complete ignorance. As much as I would like to address everyone, I don't have all day.
A) Are you suggesting that since homosexuality was considered a disorder until over 30 years ago, schizophrenia may not be a disorder, or are you more specifically referring to its Axis I status? The post to which you are replying did not acurately describe the difference between Axis I (clinical disorders) and Axis II (personality disorders and mental retardation). Regardless, the old idea of homosexuality is not indicative of the trustworthiness of the DSM. If you're going to knock the DSM, the least you could do is argue dimensional over categorical diagnoses.
B) You don't seem to understand the difference between psychology and psychiatry, and between different fields of psychology. There are many hard facts in psychology, revealed by extensive experimentation and research. I personally wish there were more when it comes to therapy other than cognitive-behavioral, but there are still a good deal. You say "fluff is the norm," but you don't seem to have any understanding of the field other than a couple of events.
C) Regarding agoraphobia: (1) If drugs are prescribed, the doctor is a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, (2) Only a psychoanalyst (rare) will do psychoanalysis, which is extremely expensive and time-consuming, and would not address the presenting problem for years, (3) The known treatment for Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia is cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is usually effective with 6-12 sessions, and has shown better long term results without medication, so the client should have seen a CBT therapist instead of either a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst. (4) Don't read any 'testimonial' books, ever. They are anecdotal rather than statistical. 'Overcoming the fear' might mean graduated exposure or 'immersion therapy,' the first of which is appropriate for some clients, and the latter of which usually traumatizes the clients.
D) It's not important when was the last time I heard of a single person doing anything. I read peer-reviewed research articles for my information. If you want fewer people on medication, tell your congressmen that you want more psychologists on hospital boards instead of medical doctors. Tell your insurance companies that 12 sessions of therapy isn't enough, and that more therapy will reduce long term costs by reducing drug prescriptions.
InstantCrisis
Even though the bill has requirements before violation can be shown, and has a list of permitted activities, I see it being used the same way as the DMCA, to bully people who can't afford defense lawyers and who don't fully understand the law into stopping what they're doing or into forking over money.
If I'm writing a book about something, and I expect to sell the book (so it isn't non-profit related), can it count as news reporting so I can use information from other people's databases? What is "news?"
What about databases that contain confidential information, like hospital records. I assume those are already and permanently protected from scrutiny without a warrant. What types of information are totally protected this way (like diagnosis), and what is the privacy cut-off (phone numbers are public unless you pay a fee)? I would say there's precedent for saying that people's information is private without a warrant, and the phone book is a violation of my privacy (though I agree to the company's terms by using their service).
Something similar happened with sponsored blogs, right? Whatever happened with those?
As a psychologist, I would love to see the info correlated with DNA.
On the direct marketing aspect, think of the application of the system for promoting independent artists. The RIAA is obsolete if quality music is spread to people of similar interests without monopolies on airways and shelfspace.
InstantCrisis
A previous post in this discussion remarked that culture is *transmitted* and not hardwired. Though the apis class structure is involunarily genetic/chemical, they do have language. A bee can do a dance that tells other bees where there is food. What is language except the ability to express the idea of something that isn't present/currently observable?
I don't know if bee language is learned or hardwired, though. My instinct is to say learned because a lot of things can go wrong with hardwiring "five steps counterclockwise means the flower is 60' to the southeast."
There are many organisms with larger brains and not nearly as much ability to transmit information. Ex: college math professors.
InstantCrisis
It bothers me that there's so much media coverage of people complaining about putting $12 billion towards going to Mars when it should be put to better use like education and health care when Bush just blew $500 billion (IIRC) on messing with Iraq, getting the rest of the world angry at us, and I still have to pay more for gasoline. He wasted more money every two weeks than he's proposing for NASA for the next five years, but people are whining about health care in our capitalist society, and education in our Republic government (schools are local jurisdiction).
Not that Fox News is going to educate anyone.
InstantCrisis
What is the learning curve for tricking search engines? After an exploit is discovered by the engine programmers, and the search algorithms are tweaked, how long does it take for one big player to realize how to exploit the new algorithm, and how long does it take for the exploit to propogate?
What might be a long-term solution to preventing exploits? Could an AI learn how to recognize exploits and change its own algorithms accordingly?
InstantCrisis
Cite a reference.
The participants had to reveal their personal information to people who were present, and some of whom were known to the participants. Also, the nature of the information (age, weight, and finances) is potentially stigmatic in our culture.
These results should not be generalized to, for example, online data mining attempts for such practices as direct marketing. In nearly all requests for personal information, confidentiality is maintained, the information is anonymous, and some of the information requested (zip code, subscribed magazines, etc...) is not culturally stigmatic.
I question the applicability and usefulness of this study. Its specific results could have been predicted by existing social psychological research. A study measuring willingness to divulge non-stigmatic and anonymous information would be more useful.
InstantCrisis
Of course, it's not all India's fault. I blame George W. Bush, too.
I went to CMU. A great number of the CS and engineering students are from India and other Asian countries, and they take their American-trained skills back to their countries with them. I'm hardly surprised that India, with 5 times the US population, and who sends its best scholars to the US for college, has half of the best tech firms.
The Wired article is a pathetic string of anecdotes with too few token statistics relevant to the argument: "is it okay to outsource all these jobs?" Here's another anecdote:
My friends are going into debt eating ramen with one of the best educations in the world.
InstantCrisis
After I got my BS in Psych from a reputable university, [personal anecdote].
Moral: Don't major in Psych unless you're going all the way, or have no interest in it.
InstantCrisis