I think it is quite rare that the amateur astronomer would know enough astrophysics to determine if a certain astroid would collide with the Earth. The only ones capable of doing so and having access to the software and instruments that predict this are what I woulnd't call amateur.
There is no doubt though, that there would be an astronomer on the other side of teh Earth who could find it though (not amateur but a real scientist). But due to the sheer number of astroids out there I wouldn't be surprised if many people did NOT spot it.
I also imagine that the scientists are under the scrutiny of govts and some scientists could be convinced that it would be better to not let the public know for their own good.
Lastly, I don't think it would be better to have as many people as possible working on solutions simply because there would be "too many chefs in the kitchen". Have as many OPINIONS as possible is a different case though.:)
However if youd RTFA you would notice that they had outlined a plan where you could theoretically build a device useful for moving an asteroid for less time and money than goes into putting on a public event.
Excuse you, but I actually did RTFA (actually STFA - skimmed the fucking article).
Anyway, you must've misunderstood my question. I wasn't asking if they would "put on a public event". I asked if they would announce it to the public due to the whole controversy of what should be public knowledge vs public safety. You seemed to have gotten that in your first line of your response which further confuses me.
Maybe I've watched too many movies, but if an asteroid were on direct path to hit the Earth and would likely cause the extinction of mankind, do you think the government(s) would let us know about it before they took a crack at pushing it off course? Or do you think due to civil unrest that they would wait until the problem was solved to tell everyone?
Perhaps the scientific community would let it out first.
Re:Structure of Information vs Search for Knowledg
on
Search Beyond Google
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· Score: 1
Ah, I see. That's some pretty interesting stuff.
I can't help but conclude that the current state of HTML is simply not advanced enough to provide an easy and apparent way for better searching (with my limited view of course). I suppose there would be ways around it, but after reading your comments I simply think that we need to improve our current infrastructure, in this case HTML, until we can implement more intelligent searching in a straightforward and reliable manner.
I find this to be illustrated by a simple case of looking at the sorts of links I might have on my personal website. Some links may be to products I bought, others may informational pages on a product I purchased, maybe I linked goatse but I told people that they shouldn't view it, perhaps I linked a site that I thought was crappy, etc. Either way, the importance of the link to me is essentially qualitative and, like you said, Google tries to draw a qualitative assessment based on a quantitative value (how many times you've linked the page and others have linked to this page).
I guess what I'm saying, other than restating the obvious, is that maybe Google is doing the best (or near best) that one possibly could do with the state of the web today. I'm inclined to think, with my shallow view of the history of AI in the past 30 years and its, imho, relatively unsuccessful path other than few blips here and there, that any other clever ways of parsing the web will provide questionable results at best. (Which is why I think Ask Jeeves never worked that well and which is why I'm further skeptical about Microsoft's new plans. Don't get me wrong; I think it will work fine for simple questions like "How many eggs are in a baker's dozen?" but I think it will fail when I ask it "What are the worldwide cultural consequences of World War 1 compared to World War 2 both in the economic and political context?")
Academia. I have no doubts on the intelligence of their PhDs. I'd immediately throw out any skepticism regarding taht.
Realistically, I'd say that the stifling by upper management sounds plausible. But, at a place like Google where the founders are well aware of such barriers, I'd say that this has been made as small an issue as possible (it will always be an issue).
If anything I'd say it's an option you left out. Perhaps the PhDs have TOO MUCH freedom and are busy pursuing more academic interests that may have little or no practical use. This is common in academia. And, therefore, they have nothing of real use in the commercial world.
As far as something huge in the works, I'm with the author of the article in that if they did have something huge, I doubt they would keep it under wraps for that long.
The problem is that it's so easy to switch between software/services where usability is transparent amongst the different choices.
Case in point: About 7 or 8 years ago I was "loyal" to Netscape until Internet Explorer 3 (I think). (The same went for Eudora, at the time, when I started using Outlook Express.) For the 7 years that followed, I used IE because, hey, it was free and it worked well. Half a year ago I came full circle and started using Firebird. It took me all of one day to totally drop IE and now I only use Firebird.
The point is is that in the Internet world, if there is no lock-in, if there's no overhead to switching, if it's painless, then the best product/option/service will win-out hands down. True loyalty is hard to come by.
Re:Structure of Information vs Search for Knowledg
on
Search Beyond Google
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· Score: 1
Interesting idea.
You said: "However the very nature of the web provides the opportunity for looking at the relationships between ideas, the synthasis of knowledge as opposed to just collections of information." How so?
As I see it, it's just a very large collection of information. I guess I find it hard to see where the web unique defines the relationship of ideas. I suppose there's the linking that is unique to the web, but that's what PageRank is all about right? You are right in that the way PageRank currently seems to be used is precisely an "information sieve". But, as I see it, how could it be used any other way? Hyperlinks are, essentially, "dumb links". Each link just points to another page, but there are no specific characteristics to any link, so how does this actually "define a relationship between ideas"?
Re:Building the wrong mousetrap
on
Search Beyond Google
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· Score: 2, Insightful
One issue I see is the user experience context.
I'd say that 80-90% of the time when I want to do a search, I'm usually, at that point, doing something on the web. Having Google reachable at another website is convenient compared to having to fire up another client application to do a search.
I think one feature that would be awesome in a client-side app (but wouldnt' be limited so) would be a user history of Google searches. I'm looking random things up all day and it would be cool if I could have those searches logged and organized for later review in case I want to look back at the searches I've conducted.
The last thing I want to be is smelling an email from a software engineer who's been pulling all nighters, working day and night and has 5-day accumulated body funk.
Yeah, I guess that's a political statement. I think I'm somewhat numbed to the issue since I've read about the Bush administration doing this on many other issues (replacing panel members when disagreement is voiced).
To keep it short, yes, I acknowledge that these are scientific interpretations and observations and not necessarily "facts". With that said, I still stick by my statement.
Good point (and I was already aware of this). At this point it's up to the reader to read the document. I've personally chosen to assume that they've actually picked Nobel Laureates who are environmental scientists. Call me an optimist but if they chose otherwise then this document would look like a complete joke and somehow I dont' think they'd do that.
Bullshit. They can suffer from ideologies just as much as anyone.
You missed the point. I never said that Nobel Laureates are not ideological. Plus, you took my complete quote out of context. What it said was, "Nobel Laureates don't come a dime a dozen and they can't be bought out or created like special think tank groups out there." Now if you parse this statement carefully enough (and it's not too hard) you can see that I'm constrasting Nobel Laureates to think tanks. You completely missed that.
The reason why I do this is because plenty of papers are put out by think tanks with obvious political bias and I can understand the skepticism behind those because anybody can make their own think tank. Not anyone can hire 20 Nobel Laureates to sign on to a scientific paper.
You missed the point. The point I was that Carter is a political figure. The people who signed onto this reports are not all political figures. They are scientists, medical experts, university chairs, etc.
Second, because you seemed so bent on that point I did a bit of googling (sorry, dont' have all day to research the facts of your statements) and from a
CNN Article (10/11/2002)
I found this:
Asked if the selection of the former president was a criticism of Bush, Gunnar Berge, head of the Nobel committee, said: "With the position Carter has taken on this, it can and must also be seen as criticism of the line the current U.S. administration has taken on Iraq."
Now, if you read that carefully, it doesn't say that they awarded him the award to send a politcal message. They said "it can and must ALSO be seen as a criticism". That means that this award ALSO sends that message; it doesn't say that's why the award was granted to Carter.
If you have a quote that proves me wrong please feel free to show me.
While they may have a politically ideology that they share, it doesn't necessarily discredit the facts. That's up to you.
Perhaps this mean we should go through life believing nothing seeing that people have lied before.
Look, the point is that you have to look at things critically. This report is signed by "60 leading scientists--including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents". Verify each one if you want to. At some point you're going to have to decide for yourself what you want to believe.
I mean apply this same skepticism to Bush: ("Presidents have misused statistics to prove whatever point they had in mind.....")
I think we have a bit of miscommunication here. I'll just state how I feel and maybe you will understand.
Of course, this by itself suggests nothing about the trustworthiness of the report. I can easily see how a group of politically motivated Nobel laureates could (perhaps even unconsciously) allow some bias to creep into this report. How tempting would it be to use a little of the personal prestige you've earned to have things your way?
While this is a true statement, it seems to imply that my reaction is "just the reaction they wanted" and therefore it serves to slightly discredit the document (or should at least cause extreme skepticism). Maybe that's my fault.
Anyway, you're right regarding the difference of policy and science. I havent' read the paper yet. My assumption (yeah, yeah) was that this was a scientific paper more than it was a politically charged one.
1) Yeah, it's not like Carter did anything with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he was in office.
2) You notice that the report was signed by "60 leading scientists--including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents" not just politicians.
I guess that's besides the point. You seem to be saying that the Nobel is worth nothing. I guess that's your prerogative.
The "facts" of science are really just the observations.
That goes without saying.
The number of Nobel laureates is mentioned specifically to induce the reaction that you are having. The majority of voters are laypeople who are incapable of understanding the science, but who can (and do) parse the word "Nobel" to mean "trustworthy."
1) There's nothing wrong with my reaction being predictable even if that's the intention of their document. That shouldn't automatically mean that their report is full of lies. Sure, it might warrant skepticism, but my obvious response doesn't automatically discredit this document.
2) I really doubt that this is going to change the election. I really doubt that the average lay person will even know this report exists. If anything, only intellectuals and scientists will take any interest in such a report. Needless to say, I'm sure they will be more critical when parsing this report.
Lastly, I believe their prestige is on the line. Scientists reputations are built on the papers they put out there. If Nobel Laureates start putting on purely biased papers with little, no, or fallacious scientific evidence they will surely be shunned and silently discredited by their colleagues. I suppose this is where we disagree.
The Bush administration has started to get into a bad habit of saying things it can't back up, when simply telling the truth would have been good enough.
But the obvious problem here is that he can't do that with his environmental policy.
Interesting. I, too, was skeptical about this whole mission to Mars idea that was proposed by Bush.
After reading the Wired articles from today's/. threads, it makes me think that Bush is something of a dot-con (dot-bomb, etc).. he's like the next Enron or the next Tickle-Me Elmo. What I mean is that he's able to draw all this hype (with WMDs, with tax cuts, with Mission to Mars) and I think it's all beginning to tumble down now.
I have to admit that both sides of the media, liberal and conservative, are guilty.
However, I've seen plenty of figures portrayed as you wish it were ($X per family, etc) in many popular newspapers and periodicals. That is nothing new.
The problem is how the math is done. It's like when you take an integration and you say "+ C(onstant". That "+ C" makes the biggest difference, sometimes, and it is often glossed over.
Let's take the deficit. Conservatives look at it as a percentage of our total GDP and say that it is low/average when looking historically. I think that's incomplete given our state of economy. Liberals assume that these tax rules will continue indefinitely and protract how big deficits will be 10 years from now. That's also misleading as tax rules do sunset in a limited time and there's no way (I hope) that the legislature would allow for spending to go that long.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it is quite rare that the amateur astronomer would know enough astrophysics to determine if a certain astroid would collide with the Earth. The only ones capable of doing so and having access to the software and instruments that predict this are what I woulnd't call amateur.
:)
There is no doubt though, that there would be an astronomer on the other side of teh Earth who could find it though (not amateur but a real scientist). But due to the sheer number of astroids out there I wouldn't be surprised if many people did NOT spot it.
I also imagine that the scientists are under the scrutiny of govts and some scientists could be convinced that it would be better to not let the public know for their own good.
Lastly, I don't think it would be better to have as many people as possible working on solutions simply because there would be "too many chefs in the kitchen". Have as many OPINIONS as possible is a different case though.
However if youd RTFA you would notice that they had outlined a plan where you could theoretically build a device useful for moving an asteroid for less time and money than goes into putting on a public event.
Excuse you, but I actually did RTFA (actually STFA - skimmed the fucking article).
Anyway, you must've misunderstood my question. I wasn't asking if they would "put on a public event". I asked if they would announce it to the public due to the whole controversy of what should be public knowledge vs public safety. You seemed to have gotten that in your first line of your response which further confuses me.
Maybe I've watched too many movies, but if an asteroid were on direct path to hit the Earth and would likely cause the extinction of mankind, do you think the government(s) would let us know about it before they took a crack at pushing it off course? Or do you think due to civil unrest that they would wait until the problem was solved to tell everyone?
Perhaps the scientific community would let it out first.
Ah, I see. That's some pretty interesting stuff.
I can't help but conclude that the current state of HTML is simply not advanced enough to provide an easy and apparent way for better searching (with my limited view of course). I suppose there would be ways around it, but after reading your comments I simply think that we need to improve our current infrastructure, in this case HTML, until we can implement more intelligent searching in a straightforward and reliable manner.
I find this to be illustrated by a simple case of looking at the sorts of links I might have on my personal website. Some links may be to products I bought, others may informational pages on a product I purchased, maybe I linked goatse but I told people that they shouldn't view it, perhaps I linked a site that I thought was crappy, etc. Either way, the importance of the link to me is essentially qualitative and, like you said, Google tries to draw a qualitative assessment based on a quantitative value (how many times you've linked the page and others have linked to this page).
I guess what I'm saying, other than restating the obvious, is that maybe Google is doing the best (or near best) that one possibly could do with the state of the web today. I'm inclined to think, with my shallow view of the history of AI in the past 30 years and its, imho, relatively unsuccessful path other than few blips here and there, that any other clever ways of parsing the web will provide questionable results at best. (Which is why I think Ask Jeeves never worked that well and which is why I'm further skeptical about Microsoft's new plans. Don't get me wrong; I think it will work fine for simple questions like "How many eggs are in a baker's dozen?" but I think it will fail when I ask it "What are the worldwide cultural consequences of World War 1 compared to World War 2 both in the economic and political context?")
Exactly.
I'd say a useful thing would be basic moderation on Search Results.
Then again, I take a look at Slashdot and sometimes wonder about user moderation and then it makes me think twice.
Academia. I have no doubts on the intelligence of their PhDs. I'd immediately throw out any skepticism regarding taht.
Realistically, I'd say that the stifling by upper management sounds plausible. But, at a place like Google where the founders are well aware of such barriers, I'd say that this has been made as small an issue as possible (it will always be an issue).
If anything I'd say it's an option you left out. Perhaps the PhDs have TOO MUCH freedom and are busy pursuing more academic interests that may have little or no practical use. This is common in academia. And, therefore, they have nothing of real use in the commercial world.
As far as something huge in the works, I'm with the author of the article in that if they did have something huge, I doubt they would keep it under wraps for that long.
The problem is that it's so easy to switch between software/services where usability is transparent amongst the different choices.
Case in point: About 7 or 8 years ago I was "loyal" to Netscape until Internet Explorer 3 (I think). (The same went for Eudora, at the time, when I started using Outlook Express.) For the 7 years that followed, I used IE because, hey, it was free and it worked well. Half a year ago I came full circle and started using Firebird. It took me all of one day to totally drop IE and now I only use Firebird.
The point is is that in the Internet world, if there is no lock-in, if there's no overhead to switching, if it's painless, then the best product/option/service will win-out hands down. True loyalty is hard to come by.
Interesting idea.
You said: "However the very nature of the web provides the opportunity for looking at the relationships between ideas, the synthasis of knowledge as opposed to just collections of information." How so?
As I see it, it's just a very large collection of information. I guess I find it hard to see where the web unique defines the relationship of ideas. I suppose there's the linking that is unique to the web, but that's what PageRank is all about right? You are right in that the way PageRank currently seems to be used is precisely an "information sieve". But, as I see it, how could it be used any other way? Hyperlinks are, essentially, "dumb links". Each link just points to another page, but there are no specific characteristics to any link, so how does this actually "define a relationship between ideas"?
One issue I see is the user experience context.
I'd say that 80-90% of the time when I want to do a search, I'm usually, at that point, doing something on the web. Having Google reachable at another website is convenient compared to having to fire up another client application to do a search.
I think one feature that would be awesome in a client-side app (but wouldnt' be limited so) would be a user history of Google searches. I'm looking random things up all day and it would be cool if I could have those searches logged and organized for later review in case I want to look back at the searches I've conducted.
Is this the same thing as the magnetic fields by power lines and/or transformers?
The last thing I want to be is smelling an email from a software engineer who's been pulling all nighters, working day and night and has 5-day accumulated body funk.
Yeah, I guess that's a political statement. I think I'm somewhat numbed to the issue since I've read about the Bush administration doing this on many other issues (replacing panel members when disagreement is voiced).
To keep it short, yes, I acknowledge that these are scientific interpretations and observations and not necessarily "facts". With that said, I still stick by my statement.
Yes, but at what point is everybody wrong and you're right. This isnt' just one Nobel Laureate but 20.
Laureates in what, though?
Good point (and I was already aware of this). At this point it's up to the reader to read the document. I've personally chosen to assume that they've actually picked Nobel Laureates who are environmental scientists. Call me an optimist but if they chose otherwise then this document would look like a complete joke and somehow I dont' think they'd do that.
Bullshit. They can suffer from ideologies just as much as anyone.
You missed the point. I never said that Nobel Laureates are not ideological. Plus, you took my complete quote out of context. What it said was, "Nobel Laureates don't come a dime a dozen and they can't be bought out or created like special think tank groups out there." Now if you parse this statement carefully enough (and it's not too hard) you can see that I'm constrasting Nobel Laureates to think tanks. You completely missed that.
The reason why I do this is because plenty of papers are put out by think tanks with obvious political bias and I can understand the skepticism behind those because anybody can make their own think tank. Not anyone can hire 20 Nobel Laureates to sign on to a scientific paper.
-1 Trust No One. (X-Files)
You missed the point. The point I was that Carter is a political figure. The people who signed onto this reports are not all political figures. They are scientists, medical experts, university chairs, etc.
Second, because you seemed so bent on that point I did a bit of googling (sorry, dont' have all day to research the facts of your statements) and from a CNN Article (10/11/2002) I found this:
Asked if the selection of the former president was a criticism of Bush, Gunnar Berge, head of the Nobel committee, said: "With the position Carter has taken on this, it can and must also be seen as criticism of the line the current U.S. administration has taken on Iraq."
Now, if you read that carefully, it doesn't say that they awarded him the award to send a politcal message. They said "it can and must ALSO be seen as a criticism". That means that this award ALSO sends that message; it doesn't say that's why the award was granted to Carter.
If you have a quote that proves me wrong please feel free to show me.
While they may have a politically ideology that they share, it doesn't necessarily discredit the facts. That's up to you.
People have lied before.
Perhaps this mean we should go through life believing nothing seeing that people have lied before.
Look, the point is that you have to look at things critically. This report is signed by "60 leading scientists--including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents". Verify each one if you want to. At some point you're going to have to decide for yourself what you want to believe.
I mean apply this same skepticism to Bush: ("Presidents have misused statistics to prove whatever point they had in mind.....")
I think we have a bit of miscommunication here. I'll just state how I feel and maybe you will understand.
Of course, this by itself suggests nothing about the trustworthiness of the report. I can easily see how a group of politically motivated Nobel laureates could (perhaps even unconsciously) allow some bias to creep into this report. How tempting would it be to use a little of the personal prestige you've earned to have things your way? While this is a true statement, it seems to imply that my reaction is "just the reaction they wanted" and therefore it serves to slightly discredit the document (or should at least cause extreme skepticism). Maybe that's my fault.
Anyway, you're right regarding the difference of policy and science. I havent' read the paper yet. My assumption (yeah, yeah) was that this was a scientific paper more than it was a politically charged one.
1) Yeah, it's not like Carter did anything with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he was in office.
2) You notice that the report was signed by "60 leading scientists--including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents" not just politicians.
I guess that's besides the point. You seem to be saying that the Nobel is worth nothing. I guess that's your prerogative.
The "facts" of science are really just the observations.
That goes without saying.
The number of Nobel laureates is mentioned specifically to induce the reaction that you are having. The majority of voters are laypeople who are incapable of understanding the science, but who can (and do) parse the word "Nobel" to mean "trustworthy."
1) There's nothing wrong with my reaction being predictable even if that's the intention of their document. That shouldn't automatically mean that their report is full of lies. Sure, it might warrant skepticism, but my obvious response doesn't automatically discredit this document.
2) I really doubt that this is going to change the election. I really doubt that the average lay person will even know this report exists. If anything, only intellectuals and scientists will take any interest in such a report. Needless to say, I'm sure they will be more critical when parsing this report.
Lastly, I believe their prestige is on the line. Scientists reputations are built on the papers they put out there. If Nobel Laureates start putting on purely biased papers with little, no, or fallacious scientific evidence they will surely be shunned and silently discredited by their colleagues. I suppose this is where we disagree.
The Bush administration has started to get into a bad habit of saying things it can't back up, when simply telling the truth would have been good enough.
But the obvious problem here is that he can't do that with his environmental policy.
Interesting. I, too, was skeptical about this whole mission to Mars idea that was proposed by Bush.
/. threads, it makes me think that Bush is something of a dot-con (dot-bomb, etc).. he's like the next Enron or the next Tickle-Me Elmo. What I mean is that he's able to draw all this hype (with WMDs, with tax cuts, with Mission to Mars) and I think it's all beginning to tumble down now.
After reading the Wired articles from today's
I have to admit that both sides of the media, liberal and conservative, are guilty.
However, I've seen plenty of figures portrayed as you wish it were ($X per family, etc) in many popular newspapers and periodicals. That is nothing new.
The problem is how the math is done. It's like when you take an integration and you say "+ C(onstant". That "+ C" makes the biggest difference, sometimes, and it is often glossed over.
Let's take the deficit. Conservatives look at it as a percentage of our total GDP and say that it is low/average when looking historically. I think that's incomplete given our state of economy. Liberals assume that these tax rules will continue indefinitely and protract how big deficits will be 10 years from now. That's also misleading as tax rules do sunset in a limited time and there's no way (I hope) that the legislature would allow for spending to go that long.
I think you should look into how Nobel prizes are given. We are not just talking about some scientists from Podunk University.
Obviously you have no grasp on how prestigious and respected this prize is.