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User: kruach+aum

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  1. Ignorance of the law on Restaurateur Loses Copyright Suit To BMI · · Score: 1

    is not an excuse. The law itself may be unjust, but I don't understand why this is so hard to understand. There may be a reason you run a restaurant instead of work as a quant, but still.

  2. What do you like about physics? on Interviews: Ask Stephen Wolfram a Question · · Score: 2

    To get a PhD at 20 I imagine you've spent a lot of your childhood reading and doing maths and physics. What is it about physics that draws you? Why does it keep you interested?

  3. Re:Consume fiction on Autism: Are Social Skills Groups and Social Communication Therapy Worthwhile? · · Score: 1

    Lack of interest in fiction is not a diagnostic criterium when it comes to being placed on the autism spectrum (also, Asperger's syndrome no longer exists as a separate classification but is now merely defined as being on the autism spectrum combined with normal language development and a few other criteria). In fact, an obsession with fiction would be one, just as a very strong interest in trains or squirrels or tarantulas or whatever else would be. Just look at comic con.

    Just wanted to make that clear.

  4. Re:That's because engineers are not smart on Low Vaccination Rates At Silicon Valley Daycare Facilities · · Score: 0

    Well that certainly sounds like a standard undergraduate engineering program to me. Don't most of them have students publishing widely in well-respected journals before they've even entered grad school?

    Oh wait, no they don't.

    I spoke about engineers in general. And as you know, as someone who apparently lives at the end of a bell curve, when speaking in general there are always edge-cases that can seemingly contradict the general statement being made, but that doesn't stop that statement from being true.

  5. Re:That's because engineers are not smart on Low Vaccination Rates At Silicon Valley Daycare Facilities · · Score: 1

    That's the point. When it comes to engineering, "in the real world" is the overriding concern, not "why is this this way rather than another?"

  6. Re:You don't say! on Low Vaccination Rates At Silicon Valley Daycare Facilities · · Score: 1

    It does seem to be the case here, because in the public imagination it is expected of Silicon Valley to be more science-literate than the rest of the nation (since there is a larger concentration of people with STEM education there than in the general population), which is why this is news, because its failure to match the standard set IS notable.

  7. Re:That's because engineers are not smart on Low Vaccination Rates At Silicon Valley Daycare Facilities · · Score: 1

    Also, you missed the s in the wikipedia description. "QuaterionS are a number system ..."

  8. Re:That's because engineers are not smart on Low Vaccination Rates At Silicon Valley Daycare Facilities · · Score: 1

    No, that's not how that works, because you assume a number of propositions to be true about me that aren't. Thank you, come again.

  9. Re:That's because engineers are not smart on Low Vaccination Rates At Silicon Valley Daycare Facilities · · Score: 1

    You know what a vector is, right? What is a quaternion?

  10. Re:Tough to generalize on Autism: Are Social Skills Groups and Social Communication Therapy Worthwhile? · · Score: 1

    I am an adult with autism. If you want I can contact you on the email address in the header of your post, and we can mail back and forth.

  11. Re:You don't say! on Low Vaccination Rates At Silicon Valley Daycare Facilities · · Score: 1

    Below average compared to the national average, not compared to the group of 12 daycare facilities.

  12. That's because engineers are not smart on Low Vaccination Rates At Silicon Valley Daycare Facilities · · Score: 0, Troll

    They're dogmatic. They spend their entire university career learning formulas and recipes (excuse me, algorithms) without questioning them the way physicists or philosophers do. They spend the time, and they know their science, but they don't know why what they know is right, they just know that what they know IS right. This is also why there is a far greater number of creationists among engineers than there is among any other STEM discipline.

    And because they only learn the results, not the history and argumentation that led up to the result, they're not as well prepared to deal with the barrage of idiocy that is spewed by people like anti-vaxxers. When you have a lesser idea of why what you know is the truth, you have a lesser resistance against people who argue that what you think is the truth is not the truth.

    This may be a controversial opinion here on slashdot, and I fully expect to be downvoted, but it is the truth nevertheless, borne out again and again in every study on the subject.

  13. Re:Immediate feedback on Autism: Are Social Skills Groups and Social Communication Therapy Worthwhile? · · Score: 1

    Re: stimming, yeah, I can confirm that anecdotally. I stopped things like rocking back and forth and repeating catchphrases and instead developed a massive anxiety disorder. Let your kid rock back and forth or shake his foot up and down when he's busy with something, it doesn't hurt anyone and really helps him, even if you don't understand why or how.

  14. Consume fiction on Autism: Are Social Skills Groups and Social Communication Therapy Worthwhile? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome (now high functioning autism) at the age of 19. I went through 2 or 3 years of therapy (though not the therapy you described, mine was just one on one with a therapist), but what helped me the most (in my experience) is that I read an ungodly amount of fiction between then and now (I'm 30 years old now). Books really describe how people think, and I've found that if I interpret what people do based on what authors say people think in books I'm usually not far off. That is, I'm close enough that interpreting people based on what I've read in books is close enough to the truth that it doesn't lead to major social fuck ups. When I was in high-school (ie., before I was diagnosed), teachers would sometimes get mad at me for what I thought then was 'no reason', but I now understand that it was caused by my behavior.

      For example, I remember one time when my 9th grade German teacher asked the class about our 8th grade German teacher, and I said that he was a huge asshole. This caused the teacher to flip his shit, but I had no idea why, because he and the 8th grade German teacher were clearly different people, so why would my opinion of the one affect the other? I now understand that my use of language was inappropriate, as well as that they were probably friends, or that it is inappropriate to shit on one teacher in front of another one in a classroom setting.

    I'm basing my interpretation of my memory of what happened then on what I've read in the (among others) Harry Potter series. Interactions with teachers and classmates are explained very well there. I may not be able to intuitively feel what is the right way to behave, but because I have a good memory and because I read so much I'm usually able to determine what's going on now. So, in my experience, reading has been more fruitful than therapy.

  15. Re:I concur on One Man's Quest To Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake · · Score: 1

    The error is that comprise does not take of, unlike compose and consist.

  16. Re:Painted target on Tech Companies Worried Over China's New Rules For Selling To Banks · · Score: 1

    Yes I really think that. Now you.

  17. Re:Blame politics on The Gap Between What The Public Thinks And What Scientists Know · · Score: 1

    I don't know if this is an option for you where you live, but here you can get a university library membership (without having to be enrolled) for ~60 euros a year, which gets you free access to an enormous amount of journals. If you can afford it and programs like that exist where you are, it's definitely something I'd recommend.

  18. Re:Blame politics on The Gap Between What The Public Thinks And What Scientists Know · · Score: 1, Troll

    Scientists don't push fear, scientists publish articles in journals, and then argue over methodology and interpretation. Politicians push fear, and then lord their position and power over the people who they nominally serve.

  19. Re:The Public - who cares? on The Gap Between What The Public Thinks And What Scientists Know · · Score: 1

    You should care BECAUSE they keep you locked in a 2 party system. It matters what the public thinks because you live in a democracy, meaning you are ruled by the people, people who are morons with no idea of how the world works. The only way to improve your situation is to 1) educate the public, or 2) install a dictator with a proper understanding of science and scientific results.

  20. Blame politics on The Gap Between What The Public Thinks And What Scientists Know · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's because the general public get most (all) of their information about science from sources that have a particular goal in mind when it comes to how that information should be interpreted. First a fear is created, because fear sells, and then they offer a politics based (rather than facts based) answer, because relief also sells.

    Further, people won't listen to scientists, but they will listen to news anchors and politicians, because fiction is far easier to understand than facts.

  21. Re:Who will get on North Korean Internet Is Down · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fallout 2 or Fallout 3? This will make a very big difference in who will get angry.

  22. Cormac McCarthy on Amazon "Suppresses" Book With Too Many Hyphens · · Score: 1

    Waiting for amazon to ban Blood Meridian for shitty interpunction.

  23. Re:yeah right on Cyberattack On German Steel Factory Causes 'Massive Damage' · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Did they teach you what to call someone who drives a train during your education?

  24. "sophisticated social engineering techniques" on Cyberattack On German Steel Factory Causes 'Massive Damage' · · Score: 1

    What, like, extra-lying? Doubleplusgood lying? I don't get it. There is only one way to not tell the truth.

  25. Re:Whether it was NK or not doesn't matter on North Korea Denies Responsibility for Sony Attack, Warns Against Retaliation · · Score: 2, Funny

    Except that English does work like that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

    It must suck when foreigners speak your native language better than you do.