That's all interesting speculation, but it's way beyond the mainstream understanding of the contribution of biology to intelligence, which is to say, not much.
Also, IQ tests intentionally discriminate between ability and academic achievement. Speed of arithmetic computation can reduce performance, but it can never increase it. Have you ever taken an IQ test? Reducing this to absurdity, you can train a parrot on multiplication tables, but it will never score above chance on an IQ test.
I can't say it's impossible that intelligence can be improved or reduced with motivation or environment. Clearly environment has some role, and as I said before, individual IQ scores can be adversely affected by poor preparation or imperfect tests. Children may pick up test-taking skills at different rates, but by adulthood those skills become more difficult to pick up quickly. It is telling, then, that a recent study found parent to young child IQ heritability to be 50%, while parent to adult child heritability was closer to 80%. Telling, because parents have more opportunity to tip the scales for young children's performance.
Your hypothesis fails to explain the results of twin studies. If all humans have the same capacity for intellectual performance, but their development is completely moderated by environmental factors, then separated twins would have no correlation. While there is informed disagreement about how heritable intelligence is, there is no reasonable argument that it is not heritable at all.
IQ is correlated with education for several valid reasons. IQ is predictive of income, heritable, and correlated with smaller family size. So you might find that the educational opportunities parents are able to provide correlates with the IQ of their children. Especially so when you consider local control and funding of education and the regional disparities in IQ. Also IQ is predictive of educational attainment. Starting in elementary school students are sorted by academic ability and achievement. Those with IQ deficiencies tend to be held back and/or receive remedial instruction. Those with high and exceptional IQ are given accelerated coursework, advanced placement, and they stay in school for more years. None of this means that education improves IQ, though I agree some children score lower because of poor preparation and imperfect tests.
Yes, nuclear, because it is required for any realistic carbon-free economy. Sure, wind and solar have a role as well, but those are not sufficient on their own to displace coal and natural gas.
If climate change was as dire in reality as the activists have claimed, they would be protesting the construction of natural gas power plants and cheering for the nuclear ones. But obviously the reverse is true. Why do you think that is?
Nuclear power is expensive because of excessive regulation. NIMBY, LNT, and frivolous lawsuits are the reason for that, as opposed to any real risk or history of safety problems. All of that comes from the environmental activists. Ironic that if Dr. Hanson is correct, the people at fault for runaway AGW are the environmentalists themselves.
It does mean that the set of people who believe that the problem is real AND that it is worth fixing is extremely small. The vast majority seem to have ulterior motives.
The whole summary was disgusting. Roblimo kept trying to bait her into talking about sexism during the interview, and she wouldn't go for it. Then he turns the whole thing into a statement about ESR. If I was Liz I would be pissed.
How is it that Plait says no excess infrared means it isn't dust clouds and unlikely comets, but then he turns around and suggests Dyson sphere? One of the defining characteristics of Dyson spheres is excess infrared.
Here is a hypothesis that fits the data gathered so far: interstellar debris. It can be oddly shaped. It can block the star's light without generating excess infrared. A cloud of it passing between Earth and KIC 8462852 would produce non-periodic luminosity variations. If the debris was a light year away from Earth, the largest chunk would have a diameter of around 500 km. There would be no constraints due to orbital velocity, and no aliens.
It’s fair to ask, if NASA is getting 50% of the world’s funding and the rest of the world is going to the Moon, why is it unreasonable to expect that we would go as well? There are two possible answers. Perhaps the rest of the world has an unrealistic impression of the complexity of the problem and their own capabilities. Or, perhaps our own space agency has turned into a bureaucratic morass that is incapable of finishing large projects without spending ridiculous sums of money. For sure the former is a factor, but there is plenty of evidence that the latter dominates.
I think we are victims of the unstoppable hand of history in this case. NASA built the pyramids. They drove the golden spike. They defined the nation for all future generations. But once they were done, we could not throw the heroes out on the street, and we certainly could not let them keep the checkbook. So everything that has happened in human spaceflight since about 1970 has been one big retirement party and career transition program. It’s a colossal waste of time and money to pretend otherwise.
But hope is not lost. There are many bright and hungry people out there who can make the next giant leap given the right support structure and incentives.
That's great that Google is going to enable device encryption by default. But are they going to fix the usability and security problems for Android L?
If you enable device encryption on Android, you can no longer back up and restore your data over USB or through third party tools. You can create encrypted backups over USB, but you can't restore them because of bugs in the ADB tools. The only way to back up and restore is by uploading your data to Google's cloud servers, where your data is much more likely to be purloined than if you had just left your device unencrypted in the first place.
When you enable encryption, you set a password. The encryption password becomes your lock screen PIN and there is no way to change it. So, which are you going to choose? A secure encryption password that you'll spend 15 seconds entering on the tiny keyboard every time you want to unlock your phone? Or a useable PIN that is trivial to crack if an attacker gets your encrypted data?
It's clear someone added device encryption to Android to check it off the list and didn't intend for anyone to use it. I hope their product team realizes this before they bring it to a wider audience.
It's also extremely dangerous for the future of NASA human spaceflight. If Boeing blows the budget and schedule again, C3PO is going to look very foolish. Meanwhile, SpaceX will finish their capsule but not to NASA's specifications.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The Nicaraguan govt spokesman says this was a meteorite that broke off 2014 RC. My claim requires only the presence of an over-excited and uninformed public servant.
If that's a meteor crater, where's the ejecta? It must have excavated ~200 m3 of dirt, which seems to have simply disappeared. None of the plants surrounding it show any evidence of violent impact, "shockwave", or explosion as reported. Maybe there is actually a crater somewhere, but this is just a photo of some sort of sinkhole?
Agreed. The right incentives applied slowly could fix the carbon problem efficiently and with minimal disruption, at least in the United States.
I am already lighting my house with LED bulbs, taking the bus, and turning off the AC. That reduced my annual consumption by probably 20 GJ. But 35 years down the road I want to be able to harness more energy than is available to me today, not less. More computers, faster and farther transportation, 3D printing, stuff I can't even imagine yet, it's all going to take more energy no matter how efficiently we use it.
Yes, I was using the term incorrectly. But the report recommends a significant reduction in per capita energy generation. The USA team shows primary energy at 86 EJ in 2010 which is 280 GJ/person. Then they recommend a reduction to 160 GJ/person by 2050, which is 40% less.
For sure there is waste to be excised from the system. But you are thinking in terms of 5-10 years, not 35. In the past 50 years per-capita energy reductions have coincided strongly with economic recession. Over the longer term humans have tended to massively increase their energy consumption, not reduce it. In the last hundred years, per capita energy usage has increased by about 70%. We could perhaps get by with a 50% decrease in energy intensity through efficiency gains, but that requires economic stagnation and a very pessimistic view of the future.
As much as I agree that we need to reduce carbon emissions, these recommendations are a recipe for disaster. The USA research team, for example, recommends something like a 50% reduction in per capita energy intensity by 2050. That is flat out incompatible with human nature in a healthy economy and society. I neither want my children to live in a world ravaged by carbon pollution, nor do I want them living a life of energy poverty. Any sensible solution would avoid both outcomes by greatly expanding the availability of clean energy generation. The fact that no one seems to be willing to chart a course of clean energy abundance makes me suspicious that other motives are at work here besides saving us from global warming.
The French team starts with the only healthy and clean energy infrastructure in the world and _completely_dismantles_it_. Apparently their current administration has recommended that the country phase out nuclear power by 2050, and the team takes this as gospel, replacing it with biofuels. The projected results are predictably disastrous.
The only team to make reasonable recommendations here was China, but they also had the easiest job since China has the most low-hanging fruit and the only serious build-out of clean energy generation.
If we're going to have to send a machine to do it anyway, why not start with a simpler organism? We can design a single-celled extremophile that would be viable on the target planet, then send a probe there to make them. Then all we have to do is wait a billion years or so for evolution to produce an organism that we could communicate with. Wouldn't the result be essentially the same?
Slashdot Mirror
That's all interesting speculation, but it's way beyond the mainstream understanding of the contribution of biology to intelligence, which is to say, not much.
Also, IQ tests intentionally discriminate between ability and academic achievement. Speed of arithmetic computation can reduce performance, but it can never increase it. Have you ever taken an IQ test? Reducing this to absurdity, you can train a parrot on multiplication tables, but it will never score above chance on an IQ test.
I can't say it's impossible that intelligence can be improved or reduced with motivation or environment. Clearly environment has some role, and as I said before, individual IQ scores can be adversely affected by poor preparation or imperfect tests. Children may pick up test-taking skills at different rates, but by adulthood those skills become more difficult to pick up quickly. It is telling, then, that a recent study found parent to young child IQ heritability to be 50%, while parent to adult child heritability was closer to 80%. Telling, because parents have more opportunity to tip the scales for young children's performance.
Your hypothesis fails to explain the results of twin studies. If all humans have the same capacity for intellectual performance, but their development is completely moderated by environmental factors, then separated twins would have no correlation. While there is informed disagreement about how heritable intelligence is, there is no reasonable argument that it is not heritable at all.
IQ is correlated with education for several valid reasons. IQ is predictive of income, heritable, and correlated with smaller family size. So you might find that the educational opportunities parents are able to provide correlates with the IQ of their children. Especially so when you consider local control and funding of education and the regional disparities in IQ. Also IQ is predictive of educational attainment. Starting in elementary school students are sorted by academic ability and achievement. Those with IQ deficiencies tend to be held back and/or receive remedial instruction. Those with high and exceptional IQ are given accelerated coursework, advanced placement, and they stay in school for more years. None of this means that education improves IQ, though I agree some children score lower because of poor preparation and imperfect tests.
Yes, nuclear, because it is required for any realistic carbon-free economy. Sure, wind and solar have a role as well, but those are not sufficient on their own to displace coal and natural gas.
If climate change was as dire in reality as the activists have claimed, they would be protesting the construction of natural gas power plants and cheering for the nuclear ones. But obviously the reverse is true. Why do you think that is?
Nuclear power is expensive because of excessive regulation. NIMBY, LNT, and frivolous lawsuits are the reason for that, as opposed to any real risk or history of safety problems. All of that comes from the environmental activists. Ironic that if Dr. Hanson is correct, the people at fault for runaway AGW are the environmentalists themselves.
It does mean that the set of people who believe that the problem is real AND that it is worth fixing is extremely small. The vast majority seem to have ulterior motives.
Well then I stand corrected.
The whole summary was disgusting. Roblimo kept trying to bait her into talking about sexism during the interview, and she wouldn't go for it. Then he turns the whole thing into a statement about ESR. If I was Liz I would be pissed.
Units 1-4 used LEU fuel. Why are you concerned about plutonium?
How is it that Plait says no excess infrared means it isn't dust clouds and unlikely comets, but then he turns around and suggests Dyson sphere? One of the defining characteristics of Dyson spheres is excess infrared.
Here is a hypothesis that fits the data gathered so far: interstellar debris. It can be oddly shaped. It can block the star's light without generating excess infrared. A cloud of it passing between Earth and KIC 8462852 would produce non-periodic luminosity variations. If the debris was a light year away from Earth, the largest chunk would have a diameter of around 500 km. There would be no constraints due to orbital velocity, and no aliens.
"The robots don't have workers' compensation, they don't take breaks."
And they absolutely will not stop! Ever! Until you are dead.
It’s fair to ask, if NASA is getting 50% of the world’s funding and the rest of the world is going to the Moon, why is it unreasonable to expect that we would go as well? There are two possible answers. Perhaps the rest of the world has an unrealistic impression of the complexity of the problem and their own capabilities. Or, perhaps our own space agency has turned into a bureaucratic morass that is incapable of finishing large projects without spending ridiculous sums of money. For sure the former is a factor, but there is plenty of evidence that the latter dominates.
I think we are victims of the unstoppable hand of history in this case. NASA built the pyramids. They drove the golden spike. They defined the nation for all future generations. But once they were done, we could not throw the heroes out on the street, and we certainly could not let them keep the checkbook. So everything that has happened in human spaceflight since about 1970 has been one big retirement party and career transition program. It’s a colossal waste of time and money to pretend otherwise.
But hope is not lost. There are many bright and hungry people out there who can make the next giant leap given the right support structure and incentives.
I appreciate the point you are trying to make, but you've fallen prey to the same fallacies that drove the F-35C cost to $337M in the first place.
No. RTFA.
I'd be interested to know how that was done.
The cryptfs password/lock PIN issue is an open bug reported here.
My complaints only apply to non-rooted devices.
That's great that Google is going to enable device encryption by default. But are they going to fix the usability and security problems for Android L?
If you enable device encryption on Android, you can no longer back up and restore your data over USB or through third party tools. You can create encrypted backups over USB, but you can't restore them because of bugs in the ADB tools. The only way to back up and restore is by uploading your data to Google's cloud servers, where your data is much more likely to be purloined than if you had just left your device unencrypted in the first place.
When you enable encryption, you set a password. The encryption password becomes your lock screen PIN and there is no way to change it. So, which are you going to choose? A secure encryption password that you'll spend 15 seconds entering on the tiny keyboard every time you want to unlock your phone? Or a useable PIN that is trivial to crack if an attacker gets your encrypted data?
It's clear someone added device encryption to Android to check it off the list and didn't intend for anyone to use it. I hope their product team realizes this before they bring it to a wider audience.
It's also extremely dangerous for the future of NASA human spaceflight. If Boeing blows the budget and schedule again, C3PO is going to look very foolish. Meanwhile, SpaceX will finish their capsule but not to NASA's specifications.
Yes, the better photos do show more effect on the plants.
SpaceWeather.com is "skeptical", says it looks more like a hole dug by a backhoe than a meteor crater.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The Nicaraguan govt spokesman says this was a meteorite that broke off 2014 RC. My claim requires only the presence of an over-excited and uninformed public servant.
Coward.
If that's a meteor crater, where's the ejecta? It must have excavated ~200 m3 of dirt, which seems to have simply disappeared. None of the plants surrounding it show any evidence of violent impact, "shockwave", or explosion as reported. Maybe there is actually a crater somewhere, but this is just a photo of some sort of sinkhole?
Agreed. The right incentives applied slowly could fix the carbon problem efficiently and with minimal disruption, at least in the United States.
I am already lighting my house with LED bulbs, taking the bus, and turning off the AC. That reduced my annual consumption by probably 20 GJ. But 35 years down the road I want to be able to harness more energy than is available to me today, not less. More computers, faster and farther transportation, 3D printing, stuff I can't even imagine yet, it's all going to take more energy no matter how efficiently we use it.
Yes, I was using the term incorrectly. But the report recommends a significant reduction in per capita energy generation. The USA team shows primary energy at 86 EJ in 2010 which is 280 GJ/person. Then they recommend a reduction to 160 GJ/person by 2050, which is 40% less.
For sure there is waste to be excised from the system. But you are thinking in terms of 5-10 years, not 35. In the past 50 years per-capita energy reductions have coincided strongly with economic recession. Over the longer term humans have tended to massively increase their energy consumption, not reduce it. In the last hundred years, per capita energy usage has increased by about 70%. We could perhaps get by with a 50% decrease in energy intensity through efficiency gains, but that requires economic stagnation and a very pessimistic view of the future.
As much as I agree that we need to reduce carbon emissions, these recommendations are a recipe for disaster. The USA research team, for example, recommends something like a 50% reduction in per capita energy intensity by 2050. That is flat out incompatible with human nature in a healthy economy and society. I neither want my children to live in a world ravaged by carbon pollution, nor do I want them living a life of energy poverty. Any sensible solution would avoid both outcomes by greatly expanding the availability of clean energy generation. The fact that no one seems to be willing to chart a course of clean energy abundance makes me suspicious that other motives are at work here besides saving us from global warming.
The French team starts with the only healthy and clean energy infrastructure in the world and _completely_dismantles_it_. Apparently their current administration has recommended that the country phase out nuclear power by 2050, and the team takes this as gospel, replacing it with biofuels. The projected results are predictably disastrous.
The only team to make reasonable recommendations here was China, but they also had the easiest job since China has the most low-hanging fruit and the only serious build-out of clean energy generation.
If we're going to have to send a machine to do it anyway, why not start with a simpler organism? We can design a single-celled extremophile that would be viable on the target planet, then send a probe there to make them. Then all we have to do is wait a billion years or so for evolution to produce an organism that we could communicate with. Wouldn't the result be essentially the same?