(1) The behavioral interpretations are probabilistic, and that doesn't mean they're invalid. You may be one person who is against the war and also hated Fahrenheit 9/11. But I would bet that on average, people who liked the movie are substantially more likely to be antiwar than people who hated it. So you might not be able to determine somebody's politics with 100% accuracy based on their movie rating (and I doubt the authors think that's true); but an educated guess informed by the ratings would be much better (on average) than a guess that ignored the ratings.
(2) Above point notwithstanding, there are reasons this is a violation of privacy that go beyond any "real" relationship between your movie ratings and your actual attitudes or personality. What also matters is that people other people will draw conclusions and perhaps treat somebody accordingly. If somebody sees your low rating of the movie, they'll probably make the assumption that you're conservative. The whole point was that somebody might consider their politics nobody's business; other people's assumptions, even if incorrect, will violate that. If they get put on pro-war mailing lists; if their coworkers start asking if they're going to the Bush rally this weekend; if their liberal boss passes them over for a promotion -- all of these stem from a violation of privacy, even (maybe especially) if the information was incorrect.
So the lesson is, basically, don't post stuff that you don't want to be public to a website that makes it public, right?
Nope, it's more complicated than that.
Suppose that you want to keep your political attitudes private -- for whatever reason, you decided it's nobody else's business. On IMDb, linked to your real identity, you only rate movies with non-political content, which you don't mind anybody knowing your opinion about. On Netflix, you believe that your ratings will be kept private, and you want to take advantage of their recommendations. So you rate all the same movies that you rated on IMDb, but you also post your ratings of Fahrenheit 9/11, The Corporation, etc. With the method described in this paper, somebody could potentially link your supposedly anonymized political ratings back to your real identity.
Radiohead may or may not care if people redistribute their album. But there may be rational reasons for them to assert their rights, even with a product they are willing to give away for free. Here are a couple off the top of my head:
1. Even though listeners could get the album free from Radiohead website, users who are on the fence about whether to make a voluntary payment might become convinced when they go to the site. Limewire etc. does not make that possible.
2. The information gained from their server might be valuable or useful to them. Radiohead may want to know how many people have the album -- as a way, for example, of evaluating their novel pricing method to see if it's worth doing again for their next album. They might want the satisfaction of sticking it in the eye of record labels. Or they might want the solid data tell other artists, "We put our album in N million listeners' hands and made X million dollars at the same time, you should try this too." All those things might have some value to the band.
The bottom line is, a copyright is a right to control distribution, period. It is not dependent on price. It's Radiohead's call whether to assert or waive that right.
Your analogy to math/sociology rings false. Mathematics is not an empirical science; its relation to sociology (or any scientific field) is complementary rather than overlapping. A mathematician who works on the pure math underlying game theory is perfectly safe as long as he doesn't try to draw conclusions about human behavior. If he starts doing so, then yes, he has stepped into sociology, and his statements can and should be evaluated in light of sociological data and theory.
In this case, these neuroscientists aren't just talking about spikes in the nervous system. They are talking about cognitive functions of the brain - by your own argument, they are trying to tackle stimulus-response processing, attention, anticipation, etc. So they are very much trying to address psychological issues. And therefore, they can and should be called out for setting up a psychological strawman.
As I said, the narrower read of the article is scientifically interesting. Intertrial variability in behavior can be explained by left SMC activity. The controlling influence of left SMC activity can be partitioned not only into an effect of the experimentally-controlled stimuli (well-established), but also an effect of right SMC activity (which is what is new in this study). Right SMC activity is mostly independent of the experimental stimuli. They also try to demonstrate (through some indirect inferences from null significance tests) that right SMC is independent of attention or anticipation, and seem to do so with some degree of confidence.
So why is that scientifically interesting? The authors start the article by saying there's a debate about whether spontaneous brain activity is meaningful, and they claim to be speaking to that debate. That's a lot of hot air. Instead, they should have started by saying that it has been acknowledged for at least 127 years that spontaneous mental activity (which necessarily means brain activity as well) influences behavior over and above stimulus input, and hey look, we've identified a specific manifestation of that, and for the first time demonstrated it at a neurological level of analysis. That's new and important. But it's not what they said.
First paragraph of the Neuron article (which is paraphrased in Ars Technica):
Historically, there have existed two alternate perspectives for understanding brain function (Llinas, 2001). The first conceptualizes the brain as an input-output system primarily driven by interaction with the external world. The second suggests that the brain operates on its own, intrinsically, with external factors modulating rather than determining the operation of the system. The former perspective has motivated the majority of neuroscience research, but accumulating evidence is emphasizing the importance of the latter.
Does anybody who has spent more than 2 minutes thinking about the human mind really believe that first argument? Somebody should introduce these guys to William James:
It is astonishing what havoc is wrought in psychology by admitting at the outset apparently innocent suppositions, that nevertheless contain a flaw. The bad consequences develop themselves later on, and are irremediable, being woven through the whole texture of the work. The notion that sensations, being the simplest things, are the first things to take up in psychology is one of these suppositions.
The experiment may well be scientifically interesting, but not for the reason advertised.
The grandparent post makes a theoretical argument about free markets. In a competitive market, one seller's choices about what to carry are not censorship. Sellers can decide what they will and won't carry, and buyers can simply go to other sellers. Competition insures that if there is demand for some product, a seller will emerge to provide it.
But that presumes a competitive market. If a market is dominated by a monopoly seller, and the monopoly seller uses non-market-based judgment to suppress certain products, then I think it is fair to call that censorship.
Reasonable analysts have raised the serious question of whether Wal-Mart has monopoly power. Not everyone agrees of course, but I don't think it's ridiculous to argue that in the music market, Wal-Mart is using its clout to enforce non-economic judgments about content.
As demand drives prices up, the incentive to illegally copy MP3s will increase; but large-scale infringement would lower demand. So eventually (at least in theory) the prices will hit some sort of equilibrium point. This could be a pretty interesting natural experiment.
Why do hotels charge $5 for a bottle of water in the minibar? Because it's right there in your room when you want it. Some people think it's worthwhile and will pay a premium for the convenience; other people think it's ridiculous & walk down to the lobby gift store to save three bucks (or the 7-11 next door to save $4).
It sounds like this service is the equivalent of a hotel minibar. If you have a regular cell phone (that cannot access eMusic's full website) and you don't know how to transfer MP3s to your phone from your computer, this service will give you music on your phone that you wouldn't otherwise have. You're paying extra for the service and convenience. Probably the reason this deal "excludes" the iPhone is that with a full web browser, you can just access eMusic's regular service, so what would be the point?
Oh, and apropos of nothing... eMusic rules. I've been a subscriber for 3 years. Ten bucks a month for 40 songs, all unencumbered DRM-free MP3s. They're not a full-service store like iTunes, but if you like indie rock, there's plenty to choose from.
I read somewhere (might've been in "Bringing Down the House") that in Atlantic City, the law regulating casino games is worded such that all casino games are considered "games of skill" (haha). As a result, they cannot boot you out for counting cards if you do it unassisted -- because to do so would open up a whole can of worms legally (i.e., they're ejecting you from a game of skill for using... skills). But if they figure out you're counting, they'll do all sorts of stuff to mess you up (i.e., shuffling at random intervals; having a 300 lb gorilla pit boss stand 2 ft away and give you the evil eye; etc.).
In Vegas, it's not technically illegal to count cards unassisted, but casinos are allowed to throw you out on a whim. So if you count cards, you'll get banned, and I'm pretty sure they'll tell every other casino in town to ban you too.
Just to flesh out the original (now thirded+) point... Google hires a lot more than just programmers. It seems entirely possible that the H1B-relevant shortage is in one sector (like programming) and the glut is in others (like marketing, sales, HR, product management, etc.).
Dunno about IQ (other than it being lower than firstborn's) but I recall a study showing that if you have an older and a younger brother you are more likely to be gay...
Such evidence does exist, but for different reasons. In the case of sexual orientation, the effect is because successive births change the hormonal environment of the womb. But for IQ it was social rank, not biological birth order. If someone had an elder brother who died young (making them biologically a secondborn but socially a firstborn), they looked like a firstborn.
This leads to an important point. All of the discussion has been about birth order, but the scientific importance of this study is broader than that. What's really exciting about this study (IMHO) is that it provides compelling evidence that family social environment affects intelligence. This flies in the face of recent arguments by Judith Rich Harris (who has been enthusiastically received by Steven Pinker, the Freakonomics guys, and others), claiming that parents don't matter.
maybe they value communication with their friends and family more than money...
I initially expected just to agree with "this is deliberately skewed marketing dressed up as research," but that's actually an interesting point when you think about it. The survey asked people aged 16-24 "whether or not they would sacrifice being able to own or use a mobile phone ever again" according to TFA. If you are 16-24, then probably all of your friends communicate with each other by cell phone. By not having a phone, you'd miss out on a lot of social life. People are going to the movies? Oops, couldn't reach you, maybe next time. Meet a cute girl or boy? Give 'em your landline and hope they call when you're at home (and your parents don't answer and embarrass you, or your stoner roommate doesn't answer and forget to take a message). Hey, guys, what's everybody laughing about? What are you texting each other about? Etc.
Maybe the bigger surprise is that supposedly materialistic youngsters actually recognized the value of friendship over money.
We take a vote. I ask how we decide who is right, and then I do the experiment... I emphasize that science is not a democracy, it is not the majority but the experiment that decides what is correct.
You're a scientist and a researcher working at a (public??) university but can't speak about what you do.
That's an overstatement. The poster was referring to a specific study that has been submitted to a journal. Journals consider their mission to publish original data and findings, and won't accept stuff that has been previously published. Some interpret "prior publication" quite broadly to include many forms of dissemination of findings, including stuff posted on the web. (This is prevalent in psychology, where there is no equivalent to arXiv.org for preprints.) It's not right, and it's changing slowly, but until it gets better researchers have to play along.
Moreover, there are potential ethical issues with disseminating findings that have not yet been subjected to peer review. Many scientists consider peer review to be an integral part of the scientific process, because it provides a form of quality control and ensures a minimum standard for findings and conclusions that the scientific community will communicate the the public. Some publicity-hungry researchers violate this, but many others do care about it.
Once the study in question has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication, I'm sure the poster will be happy to tell you all about it.
Here's a link to the researchers' actual report. (Never trust a press account of any study of anything. Or a slashdot summary, for that matter.)
This was a controlled experiment, and I agree with your point about real-world relevance. It appears to me that the researchers are claiming that if privacy information was made more prominent and easily digestible (as it was in their experiment), people would pay more for privacy. I don't think they are claiming that privacy policies influence people in the current real world.
Science is simply confirming what has already been known for a very long while.
This is a fallacy on two levels. First of all, for every person who "already knew" this finding (altruism is intrinsically pleasurable), you can easily find someone else who "already knew" the opposite (altruism is learned; or alternatively, apparent altruism can be reduced to self-interest). Social and behavioral sciences get a lot of people committing this fallacy because they traffic in familiar concepts like altruism, but the fallacy has precedent elsewhere. The faulty chain of inference goes as follows:
Hear a social science finding.
Search memory for a personal observation or cultural truism that fits the finding, but not for contradictory observations or truisms.
Second of all, the value of studies like this isn't just in providing evidence to support a broad conclusion like "altruism is intrinsically pleasurable." A lot of the value of research comes in understanding how and why that is the case, which I promise you, you didn't already know.
In any case, he didn't go around giving out exploit code...
From TFA:
"I was planning on going to Cisco with the vulnerability this summer," Maass says. Maass' program was in use for approximately seven months before the University froze his UP account. Additionally, he gave the program to several friends and one professor.
Also from TFA:
Moreover, [fellow student] Vandermeulen said, many people are frustrated with CCA. CCA has sometimes taken up to 20 minutes to load on Vandermeulen's computer, he said. "I hear so many complaints (that) I'm not surprised that someone would go ahead and try to write something that would completely bypass it," he added.
I don't think this guy deserved the punishment he got. But the whole, "I was just trying to help them" argument sounds fishy. Seems more likely that the uni put cumbersome security requirements on students, this guy tried to circumvent them, and the IT folks caught him and overreacted.
The question is, are women "required" as in required by company policy and/or the way the job is structured? Or required as in, it's a fundamental and inevitable aspect of the job?
Think of it this way... What if an IT department didn't have women's bathrooms, because it was designed back when only men held IT jobs. So the job "requires" women to go to a different building to use the bathroom. If a women quits because she finds that annoying, it is literally correct to say that she isn't willing to accept the conditions of the job. But obviously no one would defend that situation.
Back to reality... If it's the case that IT work schedules and conditions happen to have been designed by guys who didn't mind being on call, and the company could change its conditions to make it possible for women (or any employee who's a primary caregiver for kids) to have the job and be effective, then they should change. That's not special treatment for women. That's putting an end to arbitrary conditions that create, in effect, special treatment for young, single men. (Because I'd say that not having to compete with women for your job constitutes special treatment.)
Much experimental evidence supports the idea that the neocortex is such a general-purpose learning machine.
I don't think that is anywhere close to representing the scientific consensus. A lot of scientists believe that the brain is specially adapted to solving specific problems that were important for our ancestors' survival. For example, humans seem to solve logic problems involving social exchange in very different ways, and using different neural circuitry, than problems that have the same formal-logical structure but that don't involve detecting social cheaters.
Neal Stephenson's slashdot interview frames this nicely as what he calls Beowulf writers (who write for a broader, popular audience) vs. Dante writers (who write for a narrower elite). In NS's terms, sci-fi is typically Beowulf writing, but Vonnegut was appreciated by Dante folks too.
According to the journal article, in 2 of the studies the participants were randomly assigned to play driving games vs. a control (other kinds of games). In the other study, gender and age were statistically controlled. So your criticism was completely ruled out.
The main dependent variable was a standardized and widely
accepted test called the Vienna Risk-Taking Test, which is a
module from the Vienna Test System (Schuhfried, 2006) and
measures--on the basis of reaction times--individual willingness
to take risks in road traffic. This test is mainly applied in traffic
psychology and requires a computer system with a monitor to be
conducted. The theoretical background for the test is provided by
Wilde's (1994) theory of risk homeostasis. Participants sit in front
of a computer monitor and learn that they will be confronted with
15 different videotaped risky situations in road traffic (driver's
perspective), such as planned overtaking maneuvers and arrival at
railroad crossings that have begun to close. First, the specific
traffic situation was described verbally. Then participants saw the
critical situation two times. The first time, participants were instructed
only to watch the situation. The second time, they decided
when they would abandon their maneuver by pressing a key. The
time that elapsed between the start of the sequence and the decision
to abandon it was used as the dependent variable as an
indicator of risk taking (the longer the reaction time, the higher the
risk taking). The whole test procedure lasted about 10 min. According
to its publisher, the reliability () of the basic test is.92.
The construct validity of the test has been shown in three independent
studies (e.g., Scheiblechner, 1985). A study by Sommer,
Arendasy, Schuhfried, and Litzenberger (2005) revealed that the
test correctly identified 89% of accident-free drivers and drivers
who had multiple accidents (criteria validity: R2.636). Unlike
the cars and traffic environments in racing games, these situations
were "real" videotaped situations, not produced by computer
graphics. Moreover, the task that the participants had to perform
was entirely different: Playing racing games involved using a
typical video console joypad, whereas responding to the risktaking
test involved pressing a button on the computer keyboard
So the environment as well as the task facing the participants and
the response action required in the risk-taking test were not so
similar to the gaming environment as to make transfer inevitable
and, thus, produce some kind of demand effect.
Slashdot Mirror
Two responses...
(1) The behavioral interpretations are probabilistic, and that doesn't mean they're invalid. You may be one person who is against the war and also hated Fahrenheit 9/11. But I would bet that on average, people who liked the movie are substantially more likely to be antiwar than people who hated it. So you might not be able to determine somebody's politics with 100% accuracy based on their movie rating (and I doubt the authors think that's true); but an educated guess informed by the ratings would be much better (on average) than a guess that ignored the ratings.
(2) Above point notwithstanding, there are reasons this is a violation of privacy that go beyond any "real" relationship between your movie ratings and your actual attitudes or personality. What also matters is that people other people will draw conclusions and perhaps treat somebody accordingly. If somebody sees your low rating of the movie, they'll probably make the assumption that you're conservative. The whole point was that somebody might consider their politics nobody's business; other people's assumptions, even if incorrect, will violate that. If they get put on pro-war mailing lists; if their coworkers start asking if they're going to the Bush rally this weekend; if their liberal boss passes them over for a promotion -- all of these stem from a violation of privacy, even (maybe especially) if the information was incorrect.
Nope, it's more complicated than that.
Suppose that you want to keep your political attitudes private -- for whatever reason, you decided it's nobody else's business. On IMDb, linked to your real identity, you only rate movies with non-political content, which you don't mind anybody knowing your opinion about. On Netflix, you believe that your ratings will be kept private, and you want to take advantage of their recommendations. So you rate all the same movies that you rated on IMDb, but you also post your ratings of Fahrenheit 9/11, The Corporation, etc. With the method described in this paper, somebody could potentially link your supposedly anonymized political ratings back to your real identity.
Links without slashdotted anonymizer (really, if you think Gizmodo is tracking you maybe you shouldn't be on the Web) here and here.
Radiohead may or may not care if people redistribute their album. But there may be rational reasons for them to assert their rights, even with a product they are willing to give away for free. Here are a couple off the top of my head:
1. Even though listeners could get the album free from Radiohead website, users who are on the fence about whether to make a voluntary payment might become convinced when they go to the site. Limewire etc. does not make that possible.
2. The information gained from their server might be valuable or useful to them. Radiohead may want to know how many people have the album -- as a way, for example, of evaluating their novel pricing method to see if it's worth doing again for their next album. They might want the satisfaction of sticking it in the eye of record labels. Or they might want the solid data tell other artists, "We put our album in N million listeners' hands and made X million dollars at the same time, you should try this too." All those things might have some value to the band.
The bottom line is, a copyright is a right to control distribution, period. It is not dependent on price. It's Radiohead's call whether to assert or waive that right.
I typed "decline to state" into the fields I didn't want to fill out, and it worked fine for me.
Your analogy to math/sociology rings false. Mathematics is not an empirical science; its relation to sociology (or any scientific field) is complementary rather than overlapping. A mathematician who works on the pure math underlying game theory is perfectly safe as long as he doesn't try to draw conclusions about human behavior. If he starts doing so, then yes, he has stepped into sociology, and his statements can and should be evaluated in light of sociological data and theory.
In this case, these neuroscientists aren't just talking about spikes in the nervous system. They are talking about cognitive functions of the brain - by your own argument, they are trying to tackle stimulus-response processing, attention, anticipation, etc. So they are very much trying to address psychological issues. And therefore, they can and should be called out for setting up a psychological strawman.
As I said, the narrower read of the article is scientifically interesting. Intertrial variability in behavior can be explained by left SMC activity. The controlling influence of left SMC activity can be partitioned not only into an effect of the experimentally-controlled stimuli (well-established), but also an effect of right SMC activity (which is what is new in this study). Right SMC activity is mostly independent of the experimental stimuli. They also try to demonstrate (through some indirect inferences from null significance tests) that right SMC is independent of attention or anticipation, and seem to do so with some degree of confidence.
So why is that scientifically interesting? The authors start the article by saying there's a debate about whether spontaneous brain activity is meaningful, and they claim to be speaking to that debate. That's a lot of hot air. Instead, they should have started by saying that it has been acknowledged for at least 127 years that spontaneous mental activity (which necessarily means brain activity as well) influences behavior over and above stimulus input, and hey look, we've identified a specific manifestation of that, and for the first time demonstrated it at a neurological level of analysis. That's new and important. But it's not what they said.
First paragraph of the Neuron article (which is paraphrased in Ars Technica):
Does anybody who has spent more than 2 minutes thinking about the human mind really believe that first argument? Somebody should introduce these guys to William James:
The experiment may well be scientifically interesting, but not for the reason advertised.
Mod parent up!
The grandparent post makes a theoretical argument about free markets. In a competitive market, one seller's choices about what to carry are not censorship. Sellers can decide what they will and won't carry, and buyers can simply go to other sellers. Competition insures that if there is demand for some product, a seller will emerge to provide it.
But that presumes a competitive market. If a market is dominated by a monopoly seller, and the monopoly seller uses non-market-based judgment to suppress certain products, then I think it is fair to call that censorship.
Reasonable analysts have raised the serious question of whether Wal-Mart has monopoly power. Not everyone agrees of course, but I don't think it's ridiculous to argue that in the music market, Wal-Mart is using its clout to enforce non-economic judgments about content.
As demand drives prices up, the incentive to illegally copy MP3s will increase; but large-scale infringement would lower demand. So eventually (at least in theory) the prices will hit some sort of equilibrium point. This could be a pretty interesting natural experiment.
Why do hotels charge $5 for a bottle of water in the minibar? Because it's right there in your room when you want it. Some people think it's worthwhile and will pay a premium for the convenience; other people think it's ridiculous & walk down to the lobby gift store to save three bucks (or the 7-11 next door to save $4).
It sounds like this service is the equivalent of a hotel minibar. If you have a regular cell phone (that cannot access eMusic's full website) and you don't know how to transfer MP3s to your phone from your computer, this service will give you music on your phone that you wouldn't otherwise have. You're paying extra for the service and convenience. Probably the reason this deal "excludes" the iPhone is that with a full web browser, you can just access eMusic's regular service, so what would be the point?
Oh, and apropos of nothing... eMusic rules. I've been a subscriber for 3 years. Ten bucks a month for 40 songs, all unencumbered DRM-free MP3s. They're not a full-service store like iTunes, but if you like indie rock, there's plenty to choose from.
I read somewhere (might've been in "Bringing Down the House") that in Atlantic City, the law regulating casino games is worded such that all casino games are considered "games of skill" (haha). As a result, they cannot boot you out for counting cards if you do it unassisted -- because to do so would open up a whole can of worms legally (i.e., they're ejecting you from a game of skill for using... skills). But if they figure out you're counting, they'll do all sorts of stuff to mess you up (i.e., shuffling at random intervals; having a 300 lb gorilla pit boss stand 2 ft away and give you the evil eye; etc.).
In Vegas, it's not technically illegal to count cards unassisted, but casinos are allowed to throw you out on a whim. So if you count cards, you'll get banned, and I'm pretty sure they'll tell every other casino in town to ban you too.
Just to flesh out the original (now thirded+) point... Google hires a lot more than just programmers. It seems entirely possible that the H1B-relevant shortage is in one sector (like programming) and the glut is in others (like marketing, sales, HR, product management, etc.).
Such evidence does exist, but for different reasons. In the case of sexual orientation, the effect is because successive births change the hormonal environment of the womb. But for IQ it was social rank, not biological birth order. If someone had an elder brother who died young (making them biologically a secondborn but socially a firstborn), they looked like a firstborn.
This leads to an important point. All of the discussion has been about birth order, but the scientific importance of this study is broader than that. What's really exciting about this study (IMHO) is that it provides compelling evidence that family social environment affects intelligence. This flies in the face of recent arguments by Judith Rich Harris (who has been enthusiastically received by Steven Pinker, the Freakonomics guys, and others), claiming that parents don't matter.
I stand corrected.
maybe they value communication with their friends and family more than money...
I initially expected just to agree with "this is deliberately skewed marketing dressed up as research," but that's actually an interesting point when you think about it. The survey asked people aged 16-24 "whether or not they would sacrifice being able to own or use a mobile phone ever again" according to TFA. If you are 16-24, then probably all of your friends communicate with each other by cell phone. By not having a phone, you'd miss out on a lot of social life. People are going to the movies? Oops, couldn't reach you, maybe next time. Meet a cute girl or boy? Give 'em your landline and hope they call when you're at home (and your parents don't answer and embarrass you, or your stoner roommate doesn't answer and forget to take a message). Hey, guys, what's everybody laughing about? What are you texting each other about? Etc.
Maybe the bigger surprise is that supposedly materialistic youngsters actually recognized the value of friendship over money.
A physicist explains science to third graders:
We take a vote. I ask how we decide who is right, and then I do the experiment... I emphasize that science is not a democracy, it is not the majority but the experiment that decides what is correct.
Sums it up pretty nicely.
You're a scientist and a researcher working at a (public??) university but can't speak about what you do.
That's an overstatement. The poster was referring to a specific study that has been submitted to a journal. Journals consider their mission to publish original data and findings, and won't accept stuff that has been previously published. Some interpret "prior publication" quite broadly to include many forms of dissemination of findings, including stuff posted on the web. (This is prevalent in psychology, where there is no equivalent to arXiv.org for preprints.) It's not right, and it's changing slowly, but until it gets better researchers have to play along.
Moreover, there are potential ethical issues with disseminating findings that have not yet been subjected to peer review. Many scientists consider peer review to be an integral part of the scientific process, because it provides a form of quality control and ensures a minimum standard for findings and conclusions that the scientific community will communicate the the public. Some publicity-hungry researchers violate this, but many others do care about it.
Once the study in question has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication, I'm sure the poster will be happy to tell you all about it.
Here's a link to the researchers' actual report. (Never trust a press account of any study of anything. Or a slashdot summary, for that matter.)
This was a controlled experiment, and I agree with your point about real-world relevance. It appears to me that the researchers are claiming that if privacy information was made more prominent and easily digestible (as it was in their experiment), people would pay more for privacy. I don't think they are claiming that privacy policies influence people in the current real world.
Science is simply confirming what has already been known for a very long while.
This is a fallacy on two levels. First of all, for every person who "already knew" this finding (altruism is intrinsically pleasurable), you can easily find someone else who "already knew" the opposite (altruism is learned; or alternatively, apparent altruism can be reduced to self-interest). Social and behavioral sciences get a lot of people committing this fallacy because they traffic in familiar concepts like altruism, but the fallacy has precedent elsewhere. The faulty chain of inference goes as follows:
Second of all, the value of studies like this isn't just in providing evidence to support a broad conclusion like "altruism is intrinsically pleasurable." A lot of the value of research comes in understanding how and why that is the case, which I promise you, you didn't already know.
In any case, he didn't go around giving out exploit code...
From TFA:
Also from TFA:
I don't think this guy deserved the punishment he got. But the whole, "I was just trying to help them" argument sounds fishy. Seems more likely that the uni put cumbersome security requirements on students, this guy tried to circumvent them, and the IT folks caught him and overreacted.
The question is, are women "required" as in required by company policy and/or the way the job is structured? Or required as in, it's a fundamental and inevitable aspect of the job?
Think of it this way... What if an IT department didn't have women's bathrooms, because it was designed back when only men held IT jobs. So the job "requires" women to go to a different building to use the bathroom. If a women quits because she finds that annoying, it is literally correct to say that she isn't willing to accept the conditions of the job. But obviously no one would defend that situation.
Back to reality... If it's the case that IT work schedules and conditions happen to have been designed by guys who didn't mind being on call, and the company could change its conditions to make it possible for women (or any employee who's a primary caregiver for kids) to have the job and be effective, then they should change. That's not special treatment for women. That's putting an end to arbitrary conditions that create, in effect, special treatment for young, single men. (Because I'd say that not having to compete with women for your job constitutes special treatment.)
Much experimental evidence supports the idea that the neocortex is such a general-purpose learning machine.
I don't think that is anywhere close to representing the scientific consensus. A lot of scientists believe that the brain is specially adapted to solving specific problems that were important for our ancestors' survival. For example, humans seem to solve logic problems involving social exchange in very different ways, and using different neural circuitry, than problems that have the same formal-logical structure but that don't involve detecting social cheaters.
Neal Stephenson's slashdot interview frames this nicely as what he calls Beowulf writers (who write for a broader, popular audience) vs. Dante writers (who write for a narrower elite). In NS's terms, sci-fi is typically Beowulf writing, but Vonnegut was appreciated by Dante folks too.
According to the journal article, in 2 of the studies the participants were randomly assigned to play driving games vs. a control (other kinds of games). In the other study, gender and age were statistically controlled. So your criticism was completely ruled out.
From the journal article:
The main dependent variable was a standardized and widely accepted test called the Vienna Risk-Taking Test, which is a module from the Vienna Test System (Schuhfried, 2006) and measures--on the basis of reaction times--individual willingness to take risks in road traffic. This test is mainly applied in traffic psychology and requires a computer system with a monitor to be conducted. The theoretical background for the test is provided by Wilde's (1994) theory of risk homeostasis. Participants sit in front of a computer monitor and learn that they will be confronted with 15 different videotaped risky situations in road traffic (driver's perspective), such as planned overtaking maneuvers and arrival at railroad crossings that have begun to close. First, the specific traffic situation was described verbally. Then participants saw the critical situation two times. The first time, participants were instructed only to watch the situation. The second time, they decided when they would abandon their maneuver by pressing a key. The time that elapsed between the start of the sequence and the decision to abandon it was used as the dependent variable as an indicator of risk taking (the longer the reaction time, the higher the risk taking). The whole test procedure lasted about 10 min. According to its publisher, the reliability () of the basic test is .92.
The construct validity of the test has been shown in three independent
studies (e.g., Scheiblechner, 1985). A study by Sommer,
Arendasy, Schuhfried, and Litzenberger (2005) revealed that the
test correctly identified 89% of accident-free drivers and drivers
who had multiple accidents (criteria validity: R2 .636). Unlike
the cars and traffic environments in racing games, these situations
were "real" videotaped situations, not produced by computer
graphics. Moreover, the task that the participants had to perform
was entirely different: Playing racing games involved using a
typical video console joypad, whereas responding to the risktaking
test involved pressing a button on the computer keyboard
So the environment as well as the task facing the participants and
the response action required in the risk-taking test were not so
similar to the gaming environment as to make transfer inevitable
and, thus, produce some kind of demand effect.