True, humans add multiplication to that exponential growth.
I am also pro GM research however, I do believe that GM knowledge can come in handy some day in different situations, and to be the devil's advocate, I wonder if we can reach that knowledge if we are rational enough about GM and use it only when justified. Kind of like, you need to play with fire and get burned a little in the process before you understand how to use it properly.
Maybe you'd be a good person to ask -- the collapse is the end of superposition, but where does it "begin"? We say that an electron passes through the double slit which sounds like it is a definitive single particle/wave, but I'm guessing that electron itself is one possible state of the part of the quantum system ie. of the cathode that emitted the electron or not, the cathode itself being a part of the larger system and so on. So the electron that may or may not have been emitted from the cathode may or may not have passed through the say left slit, and only when we look we can say yes there was an electron and it passed through the left slit. But when we are not looking, are there any "actual" electrons to begin with or is everything around us all superpositions of superpositions of states to infinity, appearing in one way or another only when measured?
Similar and maybe easier question to answer may be, how does entanglement begin? Or maybe these questions have no meaning at any time we are not looking/measuring?
Do the diff of the genetic material before and after, in the case of 1) "natural" mutations, 2) selective breeding, and 3) GM. And don't look for just the number of "lines" of code, but look at the structure and correlation among the changes. Then, apply exponential growth to the diffs -- and the fact that we cannot possibly predict the effect of either 10, 20 or 100 years downstream, and you'll see what's different.
The risk is (meaningfully, not formally) non-zero because GMOs ride the most potent distribution mechanism in existence for free -- natural replication and multiplication. An error in a nuclear reactor doesn't affect other nuclear reactors, but a "faulty" GM organism with potentially bad consequences (for us) can be everywhere just a few generations down. And unlike a computer virus for example, we may not be equipped to deal with the spread in the material worlds.
A fair question would be why that is different from "natural" mutations of living things. (Which could also wipe us out some day.) The answer, as I understand it, is that natural mutations introduce a small delta of change at once, so there is more opportunity for the entire biosystem to adapt to them or neutralize them if harmful for the system. With GMOs, the delta of change is large and very structured, and that delta propagates at the same speed as the small "natural" deltas.
"Natural" is btw only a statistical description. The processes we call natural have in the past occurred many orders of magnitude more times than those we call "artificial" and so their consequence is far more known.
And the other key part is that the danger of potential consequences should be weighed against the expected benefit. Eg. if we are about to starve because a disease is wiping out corn, it's better to risk with GMO corn that to have no corn. And likewise we shouldn't introduce potentially huge unknown risks that could take decades to show -- like trans fat, if we can even trace those back -- for small benefits like 10% lower price or slightly longer shelf life.
But you're right, we in the modern society are unable to see things deeper, even using our own logic. I was somewhat open before reading Antifragility and still felt shock and hostility to Taleb's ideas, took me quite some time to start digesting them. In some ways those aren't necessarily his ideas even, it is a wisdom of humanity that has been lost temporarily. But he gets the credit for reminding us of those despite the hate he gets.
I think in your question lies the essence of the problem: "What element in their test soda is so harmful that it has such a dramatic effect?" You are making an assumption that a food (as it were) can be reduced to its individual ingredients and studied that way. This has been shown many times to be false -- for example equal amounts of fructose in a fruit juice and in fresh fruit have been found to have different effects because (supposedly) fiber in fresh fruit slows down absorption of sugars. (Maybe that's how it works, maybe not -- all we have observed is that people who drink fruit juices tend to have larger waists than people who only eat fresh fruit.)
The system is too complex to understand. Soda is invented foodstuff, foreign to our evolutionary mechanisms. The only reasonable decision about it is to consume it only when it has a clear benefit (lifts spirits, prevents you from fainting if you are starved etc.), because we don't know what the potential unknown harms are. The harms become known (or suspected, as is the case here) only with time -- a long time.
Sorry but "could have been" is nonsense that only works with parallel universes. Strong, successful open-source projects are rare compared to the number of open-source projects in general, and Linus delivered on that front. That is the only valid point for comparison IMO, and from that point he deserves a thankyou.
Thank you for this -- I just assumed there's no AdBlock on Chrome because Google wouldn't allow it, and didn't even look, until now. Installed and running fine. My respect for Google just went up a notch.
That's the conclusion that the article makes. One of the authors of the article is also a co-author of the study, and together they don't just give information, they interpret it for you:
"Wouldn’t it be better to just act as if we are equal, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding? That way, no people will be discouraged from chasing their dreams—competing in the Olympics or performing at Carnegie Hall or winning a Nobel Prize. The answer is no"
As for the quality of the information -- the first cited study says "Argentinian chess players (N = 104), ranging from weak amateurs to grandmasters, completed a questionnaire measuring variables including individual and group practice, starting age, and handedness." Questionnaires are a terribly unreliable method for investigating objective reality, I think you would agree. But the main study (coauthored by the article coauthor) uses *meta-analysis*: it looks at an aggregation of data filled with all kinds of noise and self-reported "facts" in order to see the patterns the researchers are looking for. Take a look at http://scottbarrykaufman.com/w... and have fun.
I think the original 10,000 hours conclusion was probably no more scientific or applicable than this one; but it had an inspiring, useful message: work hard and that which interests you and something good will come out of it. This study/article, while being based on almost surely unreliable information, dares to say, "it may not matter if you work really hard at that which interests you, because you genetics may stand in the way." Like the Rorschach test, the way these researchers interpret essentially random data says more about the researchers than about the meaning of their interpretation.
(The second conclusion they listed at the end of the article is I'll admit not that bad. But it all just reinforces the idea this is all a waste of time -- both the 10,000 and the refuting of 10,000.)
One advantage of a mile is how you estimate time when driving on a freeway -- if your exit is 2 1/2 miles away, you know it's also roughly 2 1/2 minutes away, since you're driving roughly 60 miles per hour (in the US, 65 is the limit, mostly). If your exit is 4km away and you are driving around 110km/h, it takes some effort to do the math.
is doing more harm than good, is what I'm beginning to think. Even if it didn't make logical errors like other posters said, what is the point of their conclusion that we should pretend we're all equal and should not chase our dreams? Should one give up on their dream because their genetics *might* not be up to the task in a way that is not obvious to the person, according to one study? And even if the claim in the study is accurate, should one give up on the *process* of chasing their dreams because they may not become a master? Because no good can come up from opening new horizons in one's life unless some predetermined goal is achieved?
"But finally tonight, finally tonight I just want to talk about the future. The future. Where will the future be? Science Fiction writers, they write it down, they write it down in books. And then it becomes films, and then it all comes to pass, like those doors in Star Trek (makes whooshing sound) we've got them now! That's about it! But that's happened."
I agree. Someone said that the point of texts like the Bible is not to speak about the physical reality ie. the "objective truth" but about the psychological truth -- for example "let there be..." process of creation shows that in order for a concept to exist in our mind we have to have a word for it.
Hehe good one -- a scientific theory that supports the possibility of Biblical miracles hasn't been proven yet.:-) It keeps the original argument though, we can't in principle reject the accounts of miracles based on the current theory (like we can the 6,000 years old Earth), because those are not incompatible.
Technically, Jesus walking on the water is not impossible according to the current physics, just highly improbable. There's a nonzero possibility that the fundamental particles that made the water have spontaneously assumed a configuration in which a person can walk on the surface without sinking, and they kept that configuration for the duration of the walk.
Same goes for parting the seas, and pretty much any other "miracle" you can imagine.
Abolish patents. They were originally created to protect small companies from big ones and so simulate inventions. Today all signs point that small companies are more likely to be disadvantaged by patents held by big companies or trolls. Whatever inventing is happening seems to be despite the patent system, not because of it. So in ideal world, you'd make a poll of small companies -- those that the law intends to protect -- whether they would prefer to have the patent system preserved or not, then decide.
I can just say, playing Dooms and Quakes back in the 90s and having no idea about who was doing what at id, Doom I and II and Quake were incredible, and Quake II I wanted to like as it was visually awesome but it was dry somehow, something was missing; I don't think I even finished more than 4-5 levels. Years later I read in Masters of Doom that Romero quit after Quake. With Romero, the fun was gone too.
FireFox with NoScript (and AdBlock) is the first line of checking -- any link I first open there, and if it's not in the handful of whitelisted and if the page is too bungled to read but seems legit, then I open it in Chrome. If it's at all suspect I just close the page, usually it's some crap anyway.
Although really would be best to use two Firefoxes -- one with NoScript and one without but still with Adblock etc., instead of Chrome.
Email is actually a tremendous, decentralized, open platform
Right, because people understand and care about that.
They're not that stupid. They have a feeling that email is owned by no one really, and that there can't be one person or institution to tell them "no email for you."
It's not illegal to say you're recording when you're not (you could have lost the recording). So just tell the Comcast person on the other side you're recording, if they object ask why what are they afraid of. I imagine the conversation will take a different direction when they "know" they are being recorded. And enough people will actually record that they likely won't dare assume you're bluffing.
Same here. When I buy a tablet it will be a Surface or similar. I had the 1st iPad and found the form factor to be pleasant but too limiting for the tablet to be much more than a time sink. My pattern of working with a computer is I have periods when I'm just consuming, in which case sitting on a sofa with a tablet is preferable, and then I have periods when I'm creating, for which I need a keyboard, a filesystem etc. The consuming periods are short -- 10-20 minutes -- but without the creation capability they just degenerate into time wasting.
Nonsense. Imagine Bilbo kills one of the dwarfs for no reason and they all laugh and continue with their business. That wouldn't make sense and you'd be immediately pulled back from the scene and think WTF am I watching? Why the director do that? The suspension of disbelief would be broken.
But it's a good question, how can disbelief be suspended in the first place while watching a fantasy with wizards and dragons? One thing that comes to mind is Jung's archetypes -- perhaps whatever we see that is congruent with psychological archetypes allows us to sink into it almost as if it were "real."
Talent is from what I understood really the drive and the natural attraction that would let the person endure the 10,000 hours of practice (and even enjoy it, for part of it anyway). The opportunity goes without saying (if you practice for 10,000 hours you have the opportunity). So I think it's not that much of a misperception that practicing something for 10,000 hours makes you very very good at it.
Slashdot Mirror
True, humans add multiplication to that exponential growth.
I am also pro GM research however, I do believe that GM knowledge can come in handy some day in different situations, and to be the devil's advocate, I wonder if we can reach that knowledge if we are rational enough about GM and use it only when justified. Kind of like, you need to play with fire and get burned a little in the process before you understand how to use it properly.
Maybe you'd be a good person to ask -- the collapse is the end of superposition, but where does it "begin"? We say that an electron passes through the double slit which sounds like it is a definitive single particle/wave, but I'm guessing that electron itself is one possible state of the part of the quantum system ie. of the cathode that emitted the electron or not, the cathode itself being a part of the larger system and so on. So the electron that may or may not have been emitted from the cathode may or may not have passed through the say left slit, and only when we look we can say yes there was an electron and it passed through the left slit. But when we are not looking, are there any "actual" electrons to begin with or is everything around us all superpositions of superpositions of states to infinity, appearing in one way or another only when measured?
Similar and maybe easier question to answer may be, how does entanglement begin? Or maybe these questions have no meaning at any time we are not looking/measuring?
Do the diff of the genetic material before and after, in the case of 1) "natural" mutations, 2) selective breeding, and 3) GM. And don't look for just the number of "lines" of code, but look at the structure and correlation among the changes. Then, apply exponential growth to the diffs -- and the fact that we cannot possibly predict the effect of either 10, 20 or 100 years downstream, and you'll see what's different.
The risk is (meaningfully, not formally) non-zero because GMOs ride the most potent distribution mechanism in existence for free -- natural replication and multiplication. An error in a nuclear reactor doesn't affect other nuclear reactors, but a "faulty" GM organism with potentially bad consequences (for us) can be everywhere just a few generations down. And unlike a computer virus for example, we may not be equipped to deal with the spread in the material worlds.
A fair question would be why that is different from "natural" mutations of living things. (Which could also wipe us out some day.) The answer, as I understand it, is that natural mutations introduce a small delta of change at once, so there is more opportunity for the entire biosystem to adapt to them or neutralize them if harmful for the system. With GMOs, the delta of change is large and very structured, and that delta propagates at the same speed as the small "natural" deltas.
"Natural" is btw only a statistical description. The processes we call natural have in the past occurred many orders of magnitude more times than those we call "artificial" and so their consequence is far more known.
And the other key part is that the danger of potential consequences should be weighed against the expected benefit. Eg. if we are about to starve because a disease is wiping out corn, it's better to risk with GMO corn that to have no corn. And likewise we shouldn't introduce potentially huge unknown risks that could take decades to show -- like trans fat, if we can even trace those back -- for small benefits like 10% lower price or slightly longer shelf life.
But you're right, we in the modern society are unable to see things deeper, even using our own logic. I was somewhat open before reading Antifragility and still felt shock and hostility to Taleb's ideas, took me quite some time to start digesting them. In some ways those aren't necessarily his ideas even, it is a wisdom of humanity that has been lost temporarily. But he gets the credit for reminding us of those despite the hate he gets.
I think in your question lies the essence of the problem: "What element in their test soda is so harmful that it has such a dramatic effect?" You are making an assumption that a food (as it were) can be reduced to its individual ingredients and studied that way. This has been shown many times to be false -- for example equal amounts of fructose in a fruit juice and in fresh fruit have been found to have different effects because (supposedly) fiber in fresh fruit slows down absorption of sugars. (Maybe that's how it works, maybe not -- all we have observed is that people who drink fruit juices tend to have larger waists than people who only eat fresh fruit.)
The system is too complex to understand. Soda is invented foodstuff, foreign to our evolutionary mechanisms. The only reasonable decision about it is to consume it only when it has a clear benefit (lifts spirits, prevents you from fainting if you are starved etc.), because we don't know what the potential unknown harms are. The harms become known (or suspected, as is the case here) only with time -- a long time.
Sorry but "could have been" is nonsense that only works with parallel universes. Strong, successful open-source projects are rare compared to the number of open-source projects in general, and Linus delivered on that front. That is the only valid point for comparison IMO, and from that point he deserves a thankyou.
Thank you for this -- I just assumed there's no AdBlock on Chrome because Google wouldn't allow it, and didn't even look, until now. Installed and running fine. My respect for Google just went up a notch.
That's the conclusion that the article makes. One of the authors of the article is also a co-author of the study, and together they don't just give information, they interpret it for you:
"Wouldn’t it be better to just act as if we are equal, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding? That way, no people will be discouraged from chasing their dreams—competing in the Olympics or performing at Carnegie Hall or winning a Nobel Prize. The answer is no"
As for the quality of the information -- the first cited study says "Argentinian chess players (N = 104), ranging from weak amateurs to grandmasters, completed a questionnaire measuring variables including individual and group practice, starting age, and handedness." Questionnaires are a terribly unreliable method for investigating objective reality, I think you would agree. But the main study (coauthored by the article coauthor) uses *meta-analysis*: it looks at an aggregation of data filled with all kinds of noise and self-reported "facts" in order to see the patterns the researchers are looking for. Take a look at http://scottbarrykaufman.com/w... and have fun.
I think the original 10,000 hours conclusion was probably no more scientific or applicable than this one; but it had an inspiring, useful message: work hard and that which interests you and something good will come out of it. This study/article, while being based on almost surely unreliable information, dares to say, "it may not matter if you work really hard at that which interests you, because you genetics may stand in the way." Like the Rorschach test, the way these researchers interpret essentially random data says more about the researchers than about the meaning of their interpretation.
(The second conclusion they listed at the end of the article is I'll admit not that bad. But it all just reinforces the idea this is all a waste of time -- both the 10,000 and the refuting of 10,000.)
One advantage of a mile is how you estimate time when driving on a freeway -- if your exit is 2 1/2 miles away, you know it's also roughly 2 1/2 minutes away, since you're driving roughly 60 miles per hour (in the US, 65 is the limit, mostly). If your exit is 4km away and you are driving around 110km/h, it takes some effort to do the math.
is doing more harm than good, is what I'm beginning to think. Even if it didn't make logical errors like other posters said, what is the point of their conclusion that we should pretend we're all equal and should not chase our dreams? Should one give up on their dream because their genetics *might* not be up to the task in a way that is not obvious to the person, according to one study? And even if the claim in the study is accurate, should one give up on the *process* of chasing their dreams because they may not become a master? Because no good can come up from opening new horizons in one's life unless some predetermined goal is achieved?
This "science" is worse than useless.
"But finally tonight, finally tonight I just want to talk about the future. The future. Where will the future be? Science Fiction writers, they write it down, they write it down in books. And then it becomes films, and then it all comes to pass, like those doors in Star Trek (makes whooshing sound) we've got them now! That's about it! But that's happened."
I agree. Someone said that the point of texts like the Bible is not to speak about the physical reality ie. the "objective truth" but about the psychological truth -- for example "let there be ..." process of creation shows that in order for a concept to exist in our mind we have to have a word for it.
Hehe good one -- a scientific theory that supports the possibility of Biblical miracles hasn't been proven yet. :-) It keeps the original argument though, we can't in principle reject the accounts of miracles based on the current theory (like we can the 6,000 years old Earth), because those are not incompatible.
Technically, Jesus walking on the water is not impossible according to the current physics, just highly improbable. There's a nonzero possibility that the fundamental particles that made the water have spontaneously assumed a configuration in which a person can walk on the surface without sinking, and they kept that configuration for the duration of the walk.
Same goes for parting the seas, and pretty much any other "miracle" you can imagine.
Excellent documentary (free with Amazon Prime), shows why they went so many times. Also leaves no trace of doubt how it was done.
I stop paying attention to what they say and start paying attention to the person and think what their motivation may be.
Abolish patents. They were originally created to protect small companies from big ones and so simulate inventions. Today all signs point that small companies are more likely to be disadvantaged by patents held by big companies or trolls. Whatever inventing is happening seems to be despite the patent system, not because of it. So in ideal world, you'd make a poll of small companies -- those that the law intends to protect -- whether they would prefer to have the patent system preserved or not, then decide.
I can just say, playing Dooms and Quakes back in the 90s and having no idea about who was doing what at id, Doom I and II and Quake were incredible, and Quake II I wanted to like as it was visually awesome but it was dry somehow, something was missing; I don't think I even finished more than 4-5 levels. Years later I read in Masters of Doom that Romero quit after Quake. With Romero, the fun was gone too.
FireFox with NoScript (and AdBlock) is the first line of checking -- any link I first open there, and if it's not in the handful of whitelisted and if the page is too bungled to read but seems legit, then I open it in Chrome. If it's at all suspect I just close the page, usually it's some crap anyway.
Although really would be best to use two Firefoxes -- one with NoScript and one without but still with Adblock etc., instead of Chrome.
Email is actually a tremendous, decentralized, open platform
Right, because people understand and care about that.
They're not that stupid. They have a feeling that email is owned by no one really, and that there can't be one person or institution to tell them "no email for you."
It's not illegal to say you're recording when you're not (you could have lost the recording). So just tell the Comcast person on the other side you're recording, if they object ask why what are they afraid of. I imagine the conversation will take a different direction when they "know" they are being recorded. And enough people will actually record that they likely won't dare assume you're bluffing.
Same here. When I buy a tablet it will be a Surface or similar. I had the 1st iPad and found the form factor to be pleasant but too limiting for the tablet to be much more than a time sink. My pattern of working with a computer is I have periods when I'm just consuming, in which case sitting on a sofa with a tablet is preferable, and then I have periods when I'm creating, for which I need a keyboard, a filesystem etc. The consuming periods are short -- 10-20 minutes -- but without the creation capability they just degenerate into time wasting.
Nonsense. Imagine Bilbo kills one of the dwarfs for no reason and they all laugh and continue with their business. That wouldn't make sense and you'd be immediately pulled back from the scene and think WTF am I watching? Why the director do that? The suspension of disbelief would be broken.
But it's a good question, how can disbelief be suspended in the first place while watching a fantasy with wizards and dragons? One thing that comes to mind is Jung's archetypes -- perhaps whatever we see that is congruent with psychological archetypes allows us to sink into it almost as if it were "real."
Talent is from what I understood really the drive and the natural attraction that would let the person endure the 10,000 hours of practice (and even enjoy it, for part of it anyway). The opportunity goes without saying (if you practice for 10,000 hours you have the opportunity). So I think it's not that much of a misperception that practicing something for 10,000 hours makes you very very good at it.