The following are my personal notes on the article, written and organized as I read it:
This is a really good article, though like past years, you can know the general lean (political, philosophical and scientific) of the participants before you begin. However, there are always answers that go up against the grain, and these are the ones I find most interesting. Some of the answers are pretty fascinating, like this one from Joseph Ledoux:
Like many scientists in the field of memory, I used to think that a memory is something stored in the brain and then accessed when used. Then, in 2000, a researcher in my lab, Karim Nader, did an experiment that convinced me, and many others, that our usual way of thinking was wrong. In a nutshell, what Karim showed was that each time a memory is used, it has to be restored as a new memory in order to be accessible later. The old memory is either not there or is inaccessible. In short, your memory about something is only as good as your last memory about it. This is why people who witness crimes testify about what they read in the paper rather than what they witnessed.
What's so fascinating about this answer to me is that it is something that's been clear to me, upon reflection, for many years. I have a clear "memory" of my second birthday, even though this is a time from which most persons don't have memories. Now, it's known that that being able to form sentences early (which I was able to do) helps in the creation of memory; being able to "narrate" thought allows us to construct some sort of record of events better. However, around the age of 11 or so, I began to realize that I was not remembering the event so much as my prior recollection of it. This meant I began to be very careful about my use of memory and how much I trusted my own mind, which I know to play tricks on me at times. It's known that, even for a mentally well person, a long-held falsehood can become true for the person simply because they create a memory of the false event. Also, philosophy has been aware of the importance of this sort of trick of the mind for some time. It's interesting to see science just now approach it, and it is instructive in how scientific paradigm (e.g., that memory functions like a hard drive) can override the obvious conclusions of self-reflection.
A lot of the answers touch on classic issues in the philosophy of science, a field some scientists love (most geologists, theoretical physicists) and others hate (most biologists). Karl Sabbagh's answer about expertise is right and wrong in equally interesting measures (yes, one should not trust experts unguarded, but, no, your judgement is not as good as an expert's in an area of their expertise, per se). Piet Hut's answer about explanations is sort of trivial for anyone who knows philosophy of science, but a good example of the problem (or explanation--hah!) for the neophyte. Colin Tudge's answer about the limits of science is simillarly instructive and worth repeating (in part):
I have changed my mind about the omniscience and omnipotence of science. I now realize that science is strictly limited, and that it is extremely dangerous not to appreciate this.
Science proceeds in general by being reductionist. This term is used in different ways in different contexts but here I take it to mean that scientists begin by observing a world that seems infinitely complex and inchoate, and in order to make sense of it they first "reduce" it to a series of bite-sized problems, each of which can then be made the subject of testable hypotheses which, as far as possible, take mathematical form.
Fair enough. The approach is obviously powerful, and it is hard to see how solid progress of a factual kind could be made in any other way. It produces answers of the kind known as "robust". "Robust" does not of course mean "unequivocally true" and still less does it meet the lawyers' criteria -- "the whole truth, and nothing but the truth". But robustness is pretty good;
Are you kidding? Without spoiling everything, the significant death in book three comes out of thin air because it violates what you know about the characters up to this point and happens far too flawlessly considering the large potential number of problems in pulling it off. (None of which Martin addresses.)
George R.R. Martin is hard to predict because his plots are determined by dice-rolls or attempts to seem "edgy" and "realistic." He is largely exciting and fun, but he does violate story structure for shock-value.
We're at a point where most non-hardcore gamers/mulitmedia types don't need to stay abreast of the upgrade cycle. This isn't the 1990s anymore, though a lot of us here like to imagine it is. There are a lot of things a PC does that no other machine does well (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.) that even average consumers need. Then we get to the fact that PCs can do a range of tasks that it would take half-a-dozen other machines to accomplish. "Death of the PC" stories are nice to get people riled, but they don't have much substance.
I have a confession to make: I'm a 21 year old from Kentucky and I started making authoritative statements around here when I was a 14 year old from Kentucky.
Religion is too dangerous? If there is any topic that will determine if two persons's world-views line up, it likely has to do with their opinions on religion. If you're looking to get laid, religion is dangerous; if you're looking to get to know someone, it's essential.
...the fact that, when you minimize a window and pull it up using Apple+Tab, it STILL doesn't reappear until you pull it up from the dock. Seriously. This causes 95% of my frustration when moving from Windows to Mac.
There are a number of comments here talking about the current problems with municipal WiFi. Ok, this is obvious. But as wireless router power boosts, a greater variety of bandwidth opens for such use and so on, it seems reasonable to assume that municipal WiFi will become the primary way of accessing the internet for most internet users. With the amount of portable technologies exploiting wifi spreading (Nintendo's DS, Zune, etc.) city-dwellers will begin to expect such a service from someone in the way we now expect electricity or water. What Microsoft, Google, et al. are doing is jumping into the ring early in order to exploit it as a business advantage, which we can only hope works, because this may prevent wifi from becoming a utility in the classical sense.
The problem is not a dearth of math education--MOST high schools offer classes like AP Calculus--but low standards for entry into colleges. Furthermore, with AP Calculus, the test itself is often taught at the cost of actually teaching the concepts. This is done so "bad math students" who are otherwise intelligent can still take that all-important AP class to solidify their class rank. Just ask any student who has recently gone through AP calc at a traditional public school.
Despite being only 21, I still got to cut my programming teeth on BASIC in middle school and VB, Java, HTML and JavaScript in high school. Neither langauges that are highly admired, but I had fun taking the classes. (My school also offered C++, PASCAL and Flash.) I have no intention, however, of being a programmer; I'm not that kind of geek!
Prior to 1996, RPGs were niche titles outside of Japan anyhow.
I would have thought a/.er would think about the world outside of consoles... RPGs have been among the most popular and enduring computer titles since the early 80s. Which is a good point in your argument--American RPGs are very different from Japanese ones. Japanese RPGs bore me at best and annoy the hell out of me at worst (who ever dreamed up random battles should be shot), but I have loved American RPGs from a young age.
Well, uni students get a discount from Apple, so it may be closer to $800 after all is said and done.
Re:Kids have moved beyond the computer as a tool.
on
Do Kids Still Program?
·
· Score: 1
I'm sure our dads say the same thing about us young whipper-snappers not knowing the first thing about the cars we drive and nod knowingly to each other about what a tragedy that is.
That's beyond the classroom level at most high schools, though. What I did in that class that I actually found useful was above-and-beyond what was necessary. (I did program a database I still use, though.)
I was born in 1985, I started using computers at five. At the time, the options were mostly DOS or Mac. I learned both systems like the back of my hand--especially DOS. (I only had an opportunity to use Mac at school.) Because DOS involves a lot of "programming-lite" type syntax, the next natural step was for me to dabble in BASIC using some texts my dad had from his days at the Navy post-grad school.
I also was on the internet earlier than most persons my age. I started learning HTML immediately. With programs like Front Page, and most persons making their homepages with Blogger or LiveJournal or (*shudder*) MySpace, etc. there are fewer reasons to learn anything than the most basic HTML tags.
In any case, I have this collection of experiences that is more likely to be recognized by geeks a few years older than myself. I feel "computer ancient" compared to most my age. The idea of programming never enters most--even geeks--simply because it is no longer necessary to getting along with a computer. You don't have to go back into DOS anymore. Heck, I don't even mess with the terminal as much as I used to in most Linux distros I toy with. (I have never become anything more than a casual Linux-user.) However, this isn't the only problem...
Most high schools offer programming classes in older languages. Visual Basic. C++. PASCAL. And so on. One of the most popular programming classes at my school was the one that worked with JavaScript, simply because it was more useful day-to-day. Imagine what it would be like if high schools actually taught--lets's say--PHP. Or even LaTeX rather than Office. It's hard to see the worth of VB or C++ with what you learn in school. Many geek-inclined sorts I know my age didn't learn to program until they learned they could shortcut themselves in AP Calc by knowing their TI-83 inside and out. Let's face it: Basic C++ or VB has little application unless you're going to take it beyond the classroom level. Sure, my souped and super-violent version of "The Snake Game" was fun to make, but completely useless.
I'm not a programming geek. I'll even venture to say that many geeks aren't: the association of geeks with programming is largely an artifact of programming once being necessary to use a computer with any degree of competence. I saw little point to the programming classes I took in high school. I took them because they were "easy As" and left me with free time to read online. There are lots of persons like that my age, who didn't have my amount of early experience with computing.
I have not had to employ programming (outside of using LaTeX to type up my papers, and I hardly consider that programming in a "full" sense) in my work in either of the hard sciences I study: geology & physics. I've used programming in math and in philosophy, but not in the hard sciences. Also, considering the number of students who go into the hard sciences in hopes of a "good degree" rather than a love of the subject in-itself, it should not be surprising that many have found no reason to learn programming.
On the contrary, your argument is the assinine one. When sea levels start shooting up, we could spend trillions and not stop a thing. New Orleans would be nothing compared to the loss of blood & treasure that would go into something as futile as stopping global climate change. Rather, we should prepare for it and prepare for it intelligently. Humans have been dealing with the consequences of climate change since before the Pleistocene, and we seemed to have dealt intelligently with the vast range of temperatures we've dealt with before & since. We should come to grips with the fact that the area of habitable and arable land on Earth is not always static, rather than believing we have the power to change that.
4) You're making the geologist cry. "[B]ut the fact is that the last time on record there was a dramatic climate shift was when the dinosaurs went extinct"? Thank God! The Pleistocene never happened! Or the "Little Ice Age" of 1000-1850 (or so)! I mean, we can start rewriting history now!
It's important to remember that global temperatures have been much colder and much warmer than they are now in the past 100 million years--I figure that a the most recent ~2.2% of Earth's history is a good enough starting point for us. Furthermore, if we look at the Sloss [cratonic] sequences, there's been a vast variation in sea level during that time, also. A common rebuttal to pointing this out is that our current climate change is happening at an "above average" rate. However, these models assume a gradualist model of climate change. Furthermore, there is no reason--given human records--to assume climactic gradualism based on the principle of uniformitarianism. Also there is good paleoclimatic evidence for drastic, relatively sudden shifts before [http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics /climatechange_wef.html%5D.
From the "next Ice Age" scare of the 70's, to the billions-dead famines predicted for the 80's, environmental groups have relied on pseudo-science and scare tactics to effect policy change. Current climate change is not monolithic--global temperatures fell slightly in the 1990s, and for another example last year's unusually warm Atlantic Ocean was accompanied by an unusually cool Pacific. Furthermore, CO2 levels are only weakly correlated to climate change in the paleoclimate record.
He says that he talked to military folk and they mentioned there was "no effective defense." Bull. He's planning on using GPS guidance, GPS is in control of the US military, so when threat is imminent they can shut down the GPS bands in the area. This is, of course, assuming a tip-off- but it's still a defense (and you almost ALWAYS need a tip-off).
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, those Brits at the Creative Assembly, always taking the Americans's side!
If you had RTFA, you'd know that not all 20 pages are online, yet. So you really read all 16 pages. ;)
The following are my personal notes on the article, written and organized as I read it:
This is a really good article, though like past years, you can know the general lean (political, philosophical and scientific) of the participants before you begin. However, there are always answers that go up against the grain, and these are the ones I find most interesting. Some of the answers are pretty fascinating, like this one from Joseph Ledoux:
What's so fascinating about this answer to me is that it is something that's been clear to me, upon reflection, for many years. I have a clear "memory" of my second birthday, even though this is a time from which most persons don't have memories. Now, it's known that that being able to form sentences early (which I was able to do) helps in the creation of memory; being able to "narrate" thought allows us to construct some sort of record of events better. However, around the age of 11 or so, I began to realize that I was not remembering the event so much as my prior recollection of it. This meant I began to be very careful about my use of memory and how much I trusted my own mind, which I know to play tricks on me at times. It's known that, even for a mentally well person, a long-held falsehood can become true for the person simply because they create a memory of the false event. Also, philosophy has been aware of the importance of this sort of trick of the mind for some time. It's interesting to see science just now approach it, and it is instructive in how scientific paradigm (e.g., that memory functions like a hard drive) can override the obvious conclusions of self-reflection.
A lot of the answers touch on classic issues in the philosophy of science, a field some scientists love (most geologists, theoretical physicists) and others hate (most biologists). Karl Sabbagh's answer about expertise is right and wrong in equally interesting measures (yes, one should not trust experts unguarded, but, no, your judgement is not as good as an expert's in an area of their expertise, per se). Piet Hut's answer about explanations is sort of trivial for anyone who knows philosophy of science, but a good example of the problem (or explanation--hah!) for the neophyte. Colin Tudge's answer about the limits of science is simillarly instructive and worth repeating (in part):
Are you kidding? Without spoiling everything, the significant death in book three comes out of thin air because it violates what you know about the characters up to this point and happens far too flawlessly considering the large potential number of problems in pulling it off. (None of which Martin addresses.)
George R.R. Martin is hard to predict because his plots are determined by dice-rolls or attempts to seem "edgy" and "realistic." He is largely exciting and fun, but he does violate story structure for shock-value.
We're at a point where most non-hardcore gamers/mulitmedia types don't need to stay abreast of the upgrade cycle. This isn't the 1990s anymore, though a lot of us here like to imagine it is. There are a lot of things a PC does that no other machine does well (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.) that even average consumers need. Then we get to the fact that PCs can do a range of tasks that it would take half-a-dozen other machines to accomplish. "Death of the PC" stories are nice to get people riled, but they don't have much substance.
I have a confession to make: I'm a 21 year old from Kentucky and I started making authoritative statements around here when I was a 14 year old from Kentucky.
From personal experience... I would assume so.
I have mild dyslexia, and I wrote an entire test in a Japanese language class once with all the characters in mirror-image. I didn't even notice.
Religion is too dangerous? If there is any topic that will determine if two persons's world-views line up, it likely has to do with their opinions on religion. If you're looking to get laid, religion is dangerous; if you're looking to get to know someone, it's essential.
...the fact that, when you minimize a window and pull it up using Apple+Tab, it STILL doesn't reappear until you pull it up from the dock. Seriously. This causes 95% of my frustration when moving from Windows to Mac.
There are a number of comments here talking about the current problems with municipal WiFi. Ok, this is obvious. But as wireless router power boosts, a greater variety of bandwidth opens for such use and so on, it seems reasonable to assume that municipal WiFi will become the primary way of accessing the internet for most internet users. With the amount of portable technologies exploiting wifi spreading (Nintendo's DS, Zune, etc.) city-dwellers will begin to expect such a service from someone in the way we now expect electricity or water. What Microsoft, Google, et al. are doing is jumping into the ring early in order to exploit it as a business advantage, which we can only hope works, because this may prevent wifi from becoming a utility in the classical sense.
Amen! to Alpha Centuari and Super Mario World.
SMAC is simply the slickest, most-fun, civ-type game ever developed. I love it to bits.
The problem is not a dearth of math education--MOST high schools offer classes like AP Calculus--but low standards for entry into colleges. Furthermore, with AP Calculus, the test itself is often taught at the cost of actually teaching the concepts. This is done so "bad math students" who are otherwise intelligent can still take that all-important AP class to solidify their class rank. Just ask any student who has recently gone through AP calc at a traditional public school.
Despite being only 21, I still got to cut my programming teeth on BASIC in middle school and VB, Java, HTML and JavaScript in high school. Neither langauges that are highly admired, but I had fun taking the classes. (My school also offered C++, PASCAL and Flash.) I have no intention, however, of being a programmer; I'm not that kind of geek!
Prior to 1996, RPGs were niche titles outside of Japan anyhow.
/.er would think about the world outside of consoles... RPGs have been among the most popular and enduring computer titles since the early 80s. Which is a good point in your argument--American RPGs are very different from Japanese ones. Japanese RPGs bore me at best and annoy the hell out of me at worst (who ever dreamed up random battles should be shot), but I have loved American RPGs from a young age.
I would have thought a
Well, uni students get a discount from Apple, so it may be closer to $800 after all is said and done.
I'm sure our dads say the same thing about us young whipper-snappers not knowing the first thing about the cars we drive and nod knowingly to each other about what a tragedy that is.
Someone needs to mod this post for insightful.
That's beyond the classroom level at most high schools, though. What I did in that class that I actually found useful was above-and-beyond what was necessary. (I did program a database I still use, though.)
I am sort of "on the edge", here, generationally.
I was born in 1985, I started using computers at five. At the time, the options were mostly DOS or Mac. I learned both systems like the back of my hand--especially DOS. (I only had an opportunity to use Mac at school.) Because DOS involves a lot of "programming-lite" type syntax, the next natural step was for me to dabble in BASIC using some texts my dad had from his days at the Navy post-grad school.
I also was on the internet earlier than most persons my age. I started learning HTML immediately. With programs like Front Page, and most persons making their homepages with Blogger or LiveJournal or (*shudder*) MySpace, etc. there are fewer reasons to learn anything than the most basic HTML tags.
In any case, I have this collection of experiences that is more likely to be recognized by geeks a few years older than myself. I feel "computer ancient" compared to most my age. The idea of programming never enters most--even geeks--simply because it is no longer necessary to getting along with a computer. You don't have to go back into DOS anymore. Heck, I don't even mess with the terminal as much as I used to in most Linux distros I toy with. (I have never become anything more than a casual Linux-user.) However, this isn't the only problem...
Most high schools offer programming classes in older languages. Visual Basic. C++. PASCAL. And so on. One of the most popular programming classes at my school was the one that worked with JavaScript, simply because it was more useful day-to-day. Imagine what it would be like if high schools actually taught--lets's say--PHP. Or even LaTeX rather than Office. It's hard to see the worth of VB or C++ with what you learn in school. Many geek-inclined sorts I know my age didn't learn to program until they learned they could shortcut themselves in AP Calc by knowing their TI-83 inside and out. Let's face it: Basic C++ or VB has little application unless you're going to take it beyond the classroom level. Sure, my souped and super-violent version of "The Snake Game" was fun to make, but completely useless.
I'm not a programming geek. I'll even venture to say that many geeks aren't: the association of geeks with programming is largely an artifact of programming once being necessary to use a computer with any degree of competence. I saw little point to the programming classes I took in high school. I took them because they were "easy As" and left me with free time to read online. There are lots of persons like that my age, who didn't have my amount of early experience with computing.
I have not had to employ programming (outside of using LaTeX to type up my papers, and I hardly consider that programming in a "full" sense) in my work in either of the hard sciences I study: geology & physics. I've used programming in math and in philosophy, but not in the hard sciences. Also, considering the number of students who go into the hard sciences in hopes of a "good degree" rather than a love of the subject in-itself, it should not be surprising that many have found no reason to learn programming.
On the contrary, your argument is the assinine one. When sea levels start shooting up, we could spend trillions and not stop a thing. New Orleans would be nothing compared to the loss of blood & treasure that would go into something as futile as stopping global climate change. Rather, we should prepare for it and prepare for it intelligently. Humans have been dealing with the consequences of climate change since before the Pleistocene, and we seemed to have dealt intelligently with the vast range of temperatures we've dealt with before & since. We should come to grips with the fact that the area of habitable and arable land on Earth is not always static, rather than believing we have the power to change that.
4) You're making the geologist cry. "[B]ut the fact is that the last time on record there was a dramatic climate shift was when the dinosaurs went extinct"? Thank God! The Pleistocene never happened! Or the "Little Ice Age" of 1000-1850 (or so)! I mean, we can start rewriting history now!
It's important to remember that global temperatures have been much colder and much warmer than they are now in the past 100 million years--I figure that a the most recent ~2.2% of Earth's history is a good enough starting point for us. Furthermore, if we look at the Sloss [cratonic] sequences, there's been a vast variation in sea level during that time, also. A common rebuttal to pointing this out is that our current climate change is happening at an "above average" rate. However, these models assume a gradualist model of climate change. Furthermore, there is no reason--given human records--to assume climactic gradualism based on the principle of uniformitarianism. Also there is good paleoclimatic evidence for drastic, relatively sudden shifts before [http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics /climatechange_wef.html%5D.
From the "next Ice Age" scare of the 70's, to the billions-dead famines predicted for the 80's, environmental groups have relied on pseudo-science and scare tactics to effect policy change. Current climate change is not monolithic--global temperatures fell slightly in the 1990s, and for another example last year's unusually warm Atlantic Ocean was accompanied by an unusually cool Pacific. Furthermore, CO2 levels are only weakly correlated to climate change in the paleoclimate record.
In any case, I've had my geologist rant out.
How about reading the article so you understand the terminology before you go on a rant that makes you look like a fool?
Certainly! A version called "Life Genesis" mesmerized me for hours when I was a dorky little kid. Try it sometime.
Sad memories of being a nine year old loser are flooding my brain at the mere mention of "The Game of Life".
Couldn't, with tip-off, the FM signals just be shut off?
He says that he talked to military folk and they mentioned there was "no effective defense." Bull. He's planning on using GPS guidance, GPS is in control of the US military, so when threat is imminent they can shut down the GPS bands in the area. This is, of course, assuming a tip-off- but it's still a defense (and you almost ALWAYS need a tip-off).