Control of education is something that should squarely fall under the control of politicians and the political process.
On what basis are politician supposed to decide whats a proper science curriculum (assuming that they were not scientists before getting elected). I would think that they take the advice of scientists. So why not just let scientists decide what science should be taught in the first place?
Indeed, in the Indian culture it is often the custom to share accolades, especially when work is done jointly
I don't know about Indians in the US, but as far as I know, theres the usual degree of back stabbing and meanness etc. in Indian academia as anywhere else - if anything I'd say theres more chance of a Indian grad student not getting credit simply because the prof assumes that he's the prof so he should get the credit.
Being a LaTeX fan myself I agree with you for the most part. The problem is for some things like, say, writing a 1 page letter or memo, it is easier to pull up a word processor (in the style of Word/OO etc) and get it done with quickly.
The other problem, as always, is some people/places requiring Word. As a graduate student I had to supply some papers in Word format. I could'nt get away with doing it in LaTeX even though Word was a pain.
So, yes, there is a requirement for GUI based word processor, even though I think the effort required to learn LaTeX pays back a hundredfold in terms of efficiency (for anythjing more than 2 pages) and professional looking documents
Thats a pretty interesting excerpt. It always amazes me how financial systems are so interconnected and how seemingly non-related parties can have serious effects (and even control) over some part of an economy
And the answer to this could be that a lot of rules have been randomly tried out. It turns out that the rule(s) we are seeing/discovering are the ones that lasted - and if they are simple they are probably efficient in some way.
The creationist/ID policy is to avoid facing unknowns by passing the buck onto a designer. In the current example, just because something appears elegant and simple to some person, it does'nt mean that it could not have naturally occured.
Our jobs, as scientists, or in the more general case, as people with a scientific temperement, is to uncover how or why this simple and elegant thing is the way it is - not to say, 'It's too tough, lets pass the buck onto the designer'!
I'm not in the IT field per se and so I don't have any experience of certifications. But it seems to me (after reading a lot of rants and comments on/.) that it's what gets you noticed.
Now, if you are some IT superman, you probably will get noticed without it and this discussion is moot. But for the rest of us, I would think we'd just have to get a peice of paper which gets the foot in the door.
I fully agree with the submitter - a certification is no gaurantee of knowledge or skill and it sucks to have to get one because a job wants one or a promotion requires one:(
Seriously, Depression is a dissease that affects almost everyone at some point in our lives. Those who cant be helped with alternative methods could serously benefit from such.
I think the depression that this device is supposed to help is a more serious form that does not affect *everybody at some point*. Yes I've been depressed at times, but then I've been able to get over it without medication.
This is for people whom medication can't help - not for people who got depressed because they forgot to pay a credit card bill
Not being a compiler or chip guru, how does one work out that a compiler favors a specific chip? I can understand that it might be easy to detect code that looks for a specific chip, but then how do they determine that the resultant code is being optimized based on that detection?
and of course the feds want to hide details of it from the public
I have read of this before, but it is very strange that in a democracy (?) laws for the popluation can be discussed/made by not letting the population know about them.
Does'nt this seem *too* close to a dictatorship - not that the US is one, but it increasingly is seeming that certain aspects are going in that direction
This really seems like an interesting ratio that popped outof some calculations, i.e., nice, but not really meaningful.
I mean, how would somebodies profession really determine his/her childs' sex? I'm sure that mining other datasets would lead to similar 'interesting' ratios/facts.
As has been mentioned on/. and other places - correlation is not necessarily causation.
but students from Saudi Arabia -- home country for most of the participants in the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, and much of the financing and ideology behind Islamist terrorism -- will not.
Aside from making me wish I could mod the article -1, Flamebait, what does this matter? The only possible purpose to this statement is to inflame the debate.
I don't think its flamebait. If the legislation does go ahead with this type of differentiation, then the question does indeed arise - whats special about Saudia Arabia that they do not require a license? Is the list of countries requiring licenses based on a friend/foe distinction? (It would appear to be)
Of course, for people who are going to go by their knee jerk reactions,this is flamebait.
But ignoring them for the moment, it is an interesting point.
IMHO, money (from oil) seems to be the deciding factor here
I note that you had posted elsewhere in this story about the scienc behind ID.
Can you provide links to examples of the science behind ID? I'm curious. I have'nt read the ID literatures in detail, but the few websites I did read, did not seem to be very firm about the science.
Maybe I've been reading the wrong sources. Pointers would be appreciated
I have none. The reason for my stance, is that I don't see a need for a god. Yes, there are unknowns. I just prefer to mark them as unknowns and wait for answers to come.
Certainly, if some God entity was shown to exist then I would have to change my stance.
My point is, its not that I'm not sure about the existence of God, its that I don't see a need for a god.
I think the original point of the story was that ID is not presented as somehting that people have used to try and explain shortcomings of current evolutionary theories but is presented as a viable alternative.
Certainly, I would agree with teachres presenting ID as an alternative theory - but then pointing out that its an example of a theory not developed by the scientific method.
In the end a science teachers' job is to inculcate the scientific method, by useing science as examples of what can be achieved by following this method
However, I think that you are missing the point - an Intelligent Design theorist (and the only one I take particularly seriously is Behe) would say that a designer is necessary precisely because it is simpler to postulate a designer than to postulate the world we know coming about without one
Hmm, I suppose that this would be digression, but it seems that bringing in a God (and all the associated questions) is more complex than what we have now - a process that explains things. How does a God simplify things? It seesm to me to lead to more questions (and recursive ones too!)
And I am convinced that the best account for this is a single, personal God
This is one of things that makes me think ID is more faith than application of the scientific technique. Since you have a background in theology maybe you could answer a question I had posted elsewhere in this story: You mention a single personal god, but Hinduism has multiple gods. Are you then referring to ID as a Christian/Muslim (since these religions have 1 God) theory? Or is it religion independent?
Occam's razor requires that that one infinitely improbable thing that was "first" be the thing most able to account for everything else
One common thing I have seen in the comments in this thread, is that ID appears to try and explain 'life, the universe and everything' (finally an apt usage of a great phrase!).
But evolution talks about life on earth. Since you mention 'infinitely improbably', remember that on geological time scales, there is effectively infinite time for a avriety of molecular interactions. If life did arise from the development of self reproducing proteins (I'm surely using the wrong terminology here) it might be improbably, but given the time scales, not infinitely so.
you want me to believe that the simplest explanation is that sex, butterflies, and Picasso "just happened
I don't think any of these 'just happened'. There were reasons for these things happening and a process for them to happen by.
Sex - still unanswered, but lots of good reasons for it to happen (efficiency, variety in the gene pool etc)
Butterflies - just one branch of the evolutionary tree
Picasso - lots of social factors leading to his paitnings.
None of these require statements on the lines of 'God made them and thats why'
But as I have said, the biggest drawback of ID is that, as far as I know, it does'nt follow the scientific method, but feel free to correct me with some examples.
Isn't it kind of arrogant of us to think we know so much. Does a fly know how a car runs? Could it be that the who and the how is just beyond us?
It would indeed be arrogant to say we know everything about everything.
My point is, that since we do not know everything about everything, there a lot of unanswered questions. Rather than solve the unknowns by placing a designer what is wrong with saying we don't know and leave it open till furtehr evidence comes in?
The immediate objection to this is that ID is an alternate view, so why not consider it? The problem with that is that the merits are very few.
I don't think ID really provides an explaination in the sense of how some thing works or has come to be. It's always seemed to me to be a placeholder or stop gap measure, filling in a void which people are uncomfartable with. The fact that it does'nt seem to follow the scientific technique very well is another line of argument entirely.
You mention: I do believe both sides should be taught on their merits and their questions
In a science class, I would assume that the teacher is duty bound to teach the scientific method and things that come about from the scientific method. Certainly, the fact that some people thought the sun went round the earth should be mentioned but I would'nt expect a teacher to spend 1 class on that.
But then again, we all know evolution has not been fully 'proved' and there are flaws. But is that an excuse to spend class hours on a theory that has not really been developed according to the scientific method? Evolution has holes and we don't know the full story - certainly true - but there are scientific ways to test aspects of evolution.
Can we apply the scientific method to aspects of ID?
I have no objection to a science teacher mentioning ID in a classroom, if only ot make students aware of other views. But to spend time on a theory that has not been developed on the basis of the scientific method and is more based on faith, would be a real disservice to the teaching of science and the inculcation of scientific thinking in students.
(Just as a side note, Carl Sagans, 'A Candle in the Dark' is an amazing book)
Good point. If we assume that the designer is not a God, how do we explain the evolution of the designers?
The problem with ID as far as I can see is that it seems to violate Occams Razor. Now, theres no hard and fast rule, that the simplest theory is the correct one. But by including a designer I think ID is adding a whole lot of complexity based on assumnptions which don't seem to be very valid.
The alternate approach is to admit that we don't know everything about how evolution works. Fine with me - it just means we have to do some more work to find out what its all about.
Not pass the buck of onto some God figure
(Thats always something that has bugged me a little about religion [I'm atheist]. People prefer to be able to blame/pass the buck of onto something/somebody else rather than just say 'I don't know'. But then again, thats their choice)
It doesn't necessarily propose a God figure, but SOME intelligence behind our design.
Having alternate theories is all very nice - but the the problem with ID as an alternate theory is it is recursive and infinitely so. If there is some 'intelligent design' behind our existence, there is a designer. So how does the designer come to be?
The only way I can see out of this is to have an arbitrary stopping point, viz., a God figure.
Slashdot Mirror
Control of education is something that should squarely fall under the control of politicians and the political process.
On what basis are politician supposed to decide whats a proper science curriculum (assuming that they were not scientists before getting elected). I would think that they take the advice of scientists. So why not just let scientists decide what science should be taught in the first place?
Indeed, in the Indian culture it is often the custom to share accolades, especially when work is done jointly
I don't know about Indians in the US, but as far as I know, theres the usual degree of back stabbing and meanness etc. in Indian academia as anywhere else - if anything I'd say theres more chance of a Indian grad student not getting credit simply because the prof assumes that he's the prof so he should get the credit.
I think the poster you replied to was joking....
How does pdftex support writing to a previously generated PDF? Does it allow annotations?
Being a LaTeX fan myself I agree with you for the most part. The problem is for some things like, say, writing a 1 page letter or memo, it is easier to pull up a word processor (in the style of Word/OO etc) and get it done with quickly.
The other problem, as always, is some people/places requiring Word. As a graduate student I had to supply some papers in Word format. I could'nt get away with doing it in LaTeX even though Word was a pain.
So, yes, there is a requirement for GUI based word processor, even though I think the effort required to learn LaTeX pays back a hundredfold in terms of efficiency (for anythjing more than 2 pages) and professional looking documents
Thats a pretty interesting excerpt. It always amazes me how financial systems are so interconnected and how seemingly non-related parties can have serious effects (and even control) over some part of an economy
And the answer to this could be that a lot of rules have been randomly tried out. It turns out that the rule(s) we are seeing/discovering are the ones that lasted - and if they are simple they are probably efficient in some way.
The creationist/ID policy is to avoid facing unknowns by passing the buck onto a designer. In the current example, just because something appears elegant and simple to some person, it does'nt mean that it could not have naturally occured.
Our jobs, as scientists, or in the more general case, as people with a scientific temperement, is to uncover how or why this simple and elegant thing is the way it is - not to say, 'It's too tough, lets pass the buck onto the designer'!
So what are we paying for with that $600 or so above the cost price? Are marketroids so expensive?
..then you probably need it!
/.) that it's what gets you noticed.
:(
I'm not in the IT field per se and so I don't have any experience of certifications. But it seems to me (after reading a lot of rants and comments on
Now, if you are some IT superman, you probably will get noticed without it and this discussion is moot. But for the rest of us, I would think we'd just have to get a peice of paper which gets the foot in the door.
I fully agree with the submitter - a certification is no gaurantee of knowledge or skill and it sucks to have to get one because a job wants one or a promotion requires one
Seriously, Depression is a dissease that affects almost everyone at some point in our lives. Those who cant be helped with alternative methods could serously benefit from such.
I think the depression that this device is supposed to help is a more serious form that does not affect *everybody at some point*. Yes I've been depressed at times, but then I've been able to get over it without medication.
This is for people whom medication can't help - not for people who got depressed because they forgot to pay a credit card bill
Not being a compiler or chip guru, how does one work out that a compiler favors a specific chip? I can understand that it might be easy to detect code that looks for a specific chip, but then how do they determine that the resultant code is being optimized based on that detection?
No, strcmp() returns 0 if the 2 strings match (assuming he was using the C languages' strcmp())
Would'nt this approach cause MS to loose its lock-in ability based on file format?
Of course this assumes that lock-in was one of their goals with a propietary format
and of course the feds want to hide details of it from the public
I have read of this before, but it is very strange that in a democracy (?) laws for the popluation can be discussed/made by not letting the population know about them.
Does'nt this seem *too* close to a dictatorship - not that the US is one, but it increasingly is seeming that certain aspects are going in that direction
This really seems like an interesting ratio that popped outof some calculations, i.e., nice, but not really meaningful.
/. and other places - correlation is not necessarily causation.
I mean, how would somebodies profession really determine his/her childs' sex? I'm sure that mining other datasets would lead to similar 'interesting' ratios/facts.
As has been mentioned on
but students from Saudi Arabia -- home country for most of the participants in the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, and much of the financing and ideology behind Islamist terrorism -- will not.
Aside from making me wish I could mod the article -1, Flamebait, what does this matter? The only possible purpose to this statement is to inflame the debate.
I don't think its flamebait. If the legislation does go ahead with this type of differentiation, then the question does indeed arise - whats special about Saudia Arabia that they do not require a license? Is the list of countries requiring licenses based on a friend/foe distinction? (It would appear to be)
Of course, for people who are going to go by their knee jerk reactions,this is flamebait.
But ignoring them for the moment, it is an interesting point.
IMHO, money (from oil) seems to be the deciding factor here
This sounds very close to a joke. But I think its not :(
I've been using SVN mainly for my documents, but hope to start using it for my code.
Right now I've been using the CLI and I was wondering if anybody knew of GUI frontends (especially for diff'ing).
I note that you had posted elsewhere in this story about the scienc behind ID.
Can you provide links to examples of the science behind ID? I'm curious. I have'nt read the ID literatures in detail, but the few websites I did read, did not seem to be very firm about the science.
Maybe I've been reading the wrong sources. Pointers would be appreciated
Also, what's your proof that a god does not exist
I have none. The reason for my stance, is that I don't see a need for a god. Yes, there are unknowns. I just prefer to mark them as unknowns and wait for answers to come.
Certainly, if some God entity was shown to exist then I would have to change my stance.
My point is, its not that I'm not sure about the existence of God, its that I don't see a need for a god.
I think the original point of the story was that ID is not presented as somehting that people have used to try and explain shortcomings of current evolutionary theories but is presented as a viable alternative.
Certainly, I would agree with teachres presenting ID as an alternative theory - but then pointing out that its an example of a theory not developed by the scientific method.
In the end a science teachers' job is to inculcate the scientific method, by useing science as examples of what can be achieved by following this method
However, I think that you are missing the point - an Intelligent Design theorist (and the only one I take particularly seriously is Behe) would say that a designer is necessary precisely because it is simpler to postulate a designer than to postulate the world we know coming about without one
Hmm, I suppose that this would be digression, but it seems that bringing in a God (and all the associated questions) is more complex than what we have now - a process that explains things. How does a God simplify things? It seesm to me to lead to more questions (and recursive ones too!)
And I am convinced that the best account for this is a single, personal God
This is one of things that makes me think ID is more faith than application of the scientific technique. Since you have a background in theology maybe you could answer a question I had posted elsewhere in this story: You mention a single personal god, but Hinduism has multiple gods. Are you then referring to ID as a Christian/Muslim (since these religions have 1 God) theory? Or is it religion independent?
Occam's razor requires that that one infinitely improbable thing that was "first" be the thing most able to account for everything else
One common thing I have seen in the comments in this thread, is that ID appears to try and explain 'life, the universe and everything' (finally an apt usage of a great phrase!).
But evolution talks about life on earth. Since you mention 'infinitely improbably', remember that on geological time scales, there is effectively infinite time for a avriety of molecular interactions. If life did arise from the development of self reproducing proteins (I'm surely using the wrong terminology here) it might be improbably, but given the time scales, not infinitely so.
you want me to believe that the simplest explanation is that sex, butterflies, and Picasso "just happened
I don't think any of these 'just happened'. There were reasons for these things happening and a process for them to happen by.
Sex - still unanswered, but lots of good reasons for it to happen (efficiency, variety in the gene pool etc)
Butterflies - just one branch of the evolutionary tree
Picasso - lots of social factors leading to his paitnings.
None of these require statements on the lines of 'God made them and thats why'
But as I have said, the biggest drawback of ID is that, as far as I know, it does'nt follow the scientific method, but feel free to correct me with some examples.
Isn't it kind of arrogant of us to think we know so much. Does a fly know how a car runs? Could it be that the who and the how is just beyond us?
It would indeed be arrogant to say we know everything about everything.
My point is, that since we do not know everything about everything, there a lot of unanswered questions. Rather than solve the unknowns by placing a designer what is wrong with saying we don't know and leave it open till furtehr evidence comes in?
The immediate objection to this is that ID is an alternate view, so why not consider it? The problem with that is that the merits are very few.
I don't think ID really provides an explaination in the sense of how some thing works or has come to be. It's always seemed to me to be a placeholder or stop gap measure, filling in a void which people are uncomfartable with. The fact that it does'nt seem to follow the scientific technique very well is another line of argument entirely.
You mention: I do believe both sides should be taught on their merits and their questions
In a science class, I would assume that the teacher is duty bound to teach the scientific method and things that come about from the scientific method. Certainly, the fact that some people thought the sun went round the earth should be mentioned but I would'nt expect a teacher to spend 1 class on that.
But then again, we all know evolution has not been fully 'proved' and there are flaws. But is that an excuse to spend class hours on a theory that has not really been developed according to the scientific method? Evolution has holes and we don't know the full story - certainly true - but there are scientific ways to test aspects of evolution.
Can we apply the scientific method to aspects of ID?
I have no objection to a science teacher mentioning ID in a classroom, if only ot make students aware of other views. But to spend time on a theory that has not been developed on the basis of the scientific method and is more based on faith, would be a real disservice to the teaching of science and the inculcation of scientific thinking in students.
(Just as a side note, Carl Sagans, 'A Candle in the Dark' is an amazing book)
my point is, Integgegant Design != God
Good point. If we assume that the designer is not a God, how do we explain the evolution of the designers?
The problem with ID as far as I can see is that it seems to violate Occams Razor. Now, theres no hard and fast rule, that the simplest theory is the correct one. But by including a designer I think ID is adding a whole lot of complexity based on assumnptions which don't seem to be very valid.
The alternate approach is to admit that we don't know everything about how evolution works. Fine with me - it just means we have to do some more work to find out what its all about.
Not pass the buck of onto some God figure
(Thats always something that has bugged me a little about religion [I'm atheist]. People prefer to be able to blame/pass the buck of onto something/somebody else rather than just say 'I don't know'. But then again, thats their choice)
It doesn't necessarily propose a God figure, but SOME intelligence behind our design.
:-/
Having alternate theories is all very nice - but the the problem with ID as an alternate theory is it is recursive and infinitely so. If there is some 'intelligent design' behind our existence, there is a designer. So how does the designer come to be?
The only way I can see out of this is to have an arbitrary stopping point, viz., a God figure.
After that, the flames start