Sure mate, you're entitled to your opinion and let's face it, nearly all parents think they do a good job. Even the ones who smoke infront of their kids (I know of such morons). Most of what you say might seem commonsense to one parent, yet bizzare for others. I'll tell you what I think of your suggestions and you tell me if off base.
Take your kids to day care. Not often, but not never. From my observations, kids are like little sponges. The kids I know that have been exposed to day care at young ages (in limited doses) are less shy (more confident) and appear better adjusted to meeting new people (whether it be toddlers or grownups) than those that socialize nearly exclusively with familiar faces. Could be wrong about this, but it's my observation that, in the very least, day care in moderation is certainly not harmful.
I'm not sure if the "classical music == smarter kids" notion is scientific or urban myth. Just to be sure, I'll let the kid listen to some of Radiohead's "OK Computer". I'll let you know if my kid becomes a drug addict.
Have to agree about the TV. Piece of shit it is. But I don't think that non-exposure is going to teach anything. Maybe let them watch a couple of hours a week. I prefer letting kids watch "older" movies. I defined old by the fact that I can't find any merchandise in the stores. They love the movies still, but you just don't have to [read: can't] buy the toys.
I agree that when they are old enough to rationalise (you decide), they need to be exposed to advertising so you can tell them what it's about and how ridiculous it is. Actually, now is the time to educate educate educate.
I could ramble on about my thoughts on parenting, but I just wanted to point out that we all have our ideas about how to be a good parent. I'd suggest that a lot of what we would consider good parenting would have to do with the way we raised. I had an argument with a neighbour who flogged his 2 month old puppy. His justification : "I had three dogs when I was a kid" (implying that this "experience" justifies his violence) !!!!????? Do you think his father taught him how to "teach" a dog? It's right to strive to be a good father. Just be open to suggestions and look for advice (books, friends, family, etc.).
And how long will this one last? They have prematurely dropped support on the Mega-CD (Sega-CD), 32X, Saturn, GameGear, Nomad, and now Dreamcast. I'm sure they will thank Sony for single handedly expanding the console market so that there are plenty suckers left to prey on. That is, of course, if the rumours are true.
Sega make great games, but it's been a long time since they have had a successful (in terms of long-lived) console.
I think you are mistaken by the header of the link. "The Australian" is a national newspaper (owned by Rupert Murdoch) hence "Australian IT" is just a title of a section of this newspaper (the Information Technology section available in Tuesday's editions in fact).
It is certainly not a promotion of the state of the art in Australian Information Technology.
If you are in fact referring to the IT section of the Australian being a bit naff, then I would wholeheartedly agree. Along with nearly all mass media in this country (with the exception of SBS and ABC) and Murdoch's crud in particular.
Your right... it has nothing to do with logic. The field of artificial intelligence has two opposing views. In the red corner, are the logicists. These are the old-school guys who believe that humans solve problems essentially by symbolic manipulation. The blue is the new-school corner. They study things such as neural-networks, and statistical methods. Both are looking for an appropriate representation of knowledge so that we can reason with it efficiently (at suitable level of abstraction to hide irrelevant details).
Classical logic has its roots with the Greek philosophers. Essentially, they looked for a formal description for human reasoning. This logic is very simple yet offers an extremely powerful tool for Knowledge Representation and Reasoning(KR). It has very clean semantics and is the basis for the entire IT revolution. It is not perfect, however. Classical logic is monotonic (single meaning), although it has provided the basis for many non-monotonic formalisms. What classical logic does provide, is provability (soundness and completeness). Essentially we can guarantee (with the exception of hardware failure) that a program, with a certain input, will provide a certain output. These neural methods cannot give these assurances. A neural network may calculate that 5+1=6 fifty times in succession. We cannot be sure of the output produced the next time it is asked the same question (5+1=?). There are applications such as image processing where these methods are providing fantastic results.
As they note, they are 7 years away from even completing simple arithmetic problems. So, while this may end up being useful for things other than science fiction and drumming up investment dollars, I might refrain from getting too excited until some real results are out.
For three weeks, my postgrad class in constraint satisfaction has been debating the question "what is intelligence?". It has been a very thought provoking and satisfying debate which has left us all with differing opinions and thoughts on the matter. It is important to note that such debates are commonplace in the AI field (just mention the Turing Test) because AI is a combination of philosophy, psychology, biology and computer science disciplines.
Moving on topic (slightly), my current thoughts are along the lines of there being some kind of "mystery" (among other factors) attached to the term intelligence. For example, if we showed a calculator to someone fifty years ago, they would have had no problem calling this device "intelligent" amazed at its problem solving ability (in math). Yet today, because we know the principles involved in making such a device, we would hardly brand it so. Many times I have thought of a search technique as smart when it has been described at a high-level, but when you look under the hood, it becomes a bit "oh really, is that all".
Personally, I'm not sure if there is a difference between mechanical and biological intelligence. I think a major difference is in the knowing of how it works. (Which begs the question of what will we think of ourselves if we nut out how the brain works. eg. Intelligent?... no just better connected).
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Take your kids to day care. Not often, but not never. From my observations, kids are like little sponges. The kids I know that have been exposed to day care at young ages (in limited doses) are less shy (more confident) and appear better adjusted to meeting new people (whether it be toddlers or grownups) than those that socialize nearly exclusively with familiar faces. Could be wrong about this, but it's my observation that, in the very least, day care in moderation is certainly not harmful.
I'm not sure if the "classical music == smarter kids" notion is scientific or urban myth. Just to be sure, I'll let the kid listen to some of Radiohead's "OK Computer". I'll let you know if my kid becomes a drug addict.
Have to agree about the TV. Piece of shit it is. But I don't think that non-exposure is going to teach anything. Maybe let them watch a couple of hours a week. I prefer letting kids watch "older" movies. I defined old by the fact that I can't find any merchandise in the stores. They love the movies still, but you just don't have to [read: can't] buy the toys.
I agree that when they are old enough to rationalise (you decide), they need to be exposed to advertising so you can tell them what it's about and how ridiculous it is. Actually, now is the time to educate educate educate.
I could ramble on about my thoughts on parenting, but I just wanted to point out that we all have our ideas about how to be a good parent. I'd suggest that a lot of what we would consider good parenting would have to do with the way we raised. I had an argument with a neighbour who flogged his 2 month old puppy. His justification : "I had three dogs when I was a kid" (implying that this "experience" justifies his violence) !!!!????? Do you think his father taught him how to "teach" a dog? It's right to strive to be a good father. Just be open to suggestions and look for advice (books, friends, family, etc.).
And finally, teach your kids soccer :)
Sega make great games, but it's been a long time since they have had a successful (in terms of long-lived) console.
If you are in fact referring to the IT section of the Australian being a bit naff, then I would wholeheartedly agree. Along with nearly all mass media in this country (with the exception of SBS and ABC) and Murdoch's crud in particular.
Classical logic has its roots with the Greek philosophers. Essentially, they looked for a formal description for human reasoning. This logic is very simple yet offers an extremely powerful tool for Knowledge Representation and Reasoning(KR). It has very clean semantics and is the basis for the entire IT revolution. It is not perfect, however. Classical logic is monotonic (single meaning), although it has provided the basis for many non-monotonic formalisms. What classical logic does provide, is provability (soundness and completeness). Essentially we can guarantee (with the exception of hardware failure) that a program, with a certain input, will provide a certain output. These neural methods cannot give these assurances. A neural network may calculate that 5+1=6 fifty times in succession. We cannot be sure of the output produced the next time it is asked the same question (5+1=?). There are applications such as image processing where these methods are providing fantastic results.
As they note, they are 7 years away from even completing simple arithmetic problems. So, while this may end up being useful for things other than science fiction and drumming up investment dollars, I might refrain from getting too excited until some real results are out.
Moving on topic (slightly), my current thoughts are along the lines of there being some kind of "mystery" (among other factors) attached to the term intelligence. For example, if we showed a calculator to someone fifty years ago, they would have had no problem calling this device "intelligent" amazed at its problem solving ability (in math). Yet today, because we know the principles involved in making such a device, we would hardly brand it so. Many times I have thought of a search technique as smart when it has been described at a high-level, but when you look under the hood, it becomes a bit "oh really, is that all".
Personally, I'm not sure if there is a difference between mechanical and biological intelligence. I think a major difference is in the knowing of how it works. (Which begs the question of what will we think of ourselves if we nut out how the brain works. eg. Intelligent? ... no just better connected).