Although this is a long way off and we have neither the technology or the software to make this worthwhile, I agree with both of you.
In the meantime, we would be better off using software to teach us how to make good decisions. There are some areas eg statistics, where most people are appalling. And then there's decision making whilst under stress.
I did my own investigation of spam filters about a week ago. I didn't test the actual algorithms, just the features. SpamPal with the add-on Bayesian filter (search Google for it) came out top. It works as a proxy and also provides blacklist/whitelist/known Spammer list checking.
Take Myers-Briggs for what it is. If you could only know 4 bits of information about somebody, I would choose these, but it's still a ridiculously impoverished description of who somebody is.
In my experience low self esteem often occurs because someone cant be what
they think the rest of the world wants them to be. Personally I always find this
strange because I'm pretty sure the rest of world does not give a shit about me
so I dont really care what the world thinks anyway.
Self-esteem is a generalisation about oneself. Pretty stupid concept.
Is personality, or certain personality traits immutable? I would have thought
that with the right stimulation it would be highly mutable. Thats ignoring the
fact that we are intelligent enought to recognise our own patterns of behaviour
and can suppress our natural instincts if we make that choice.
But can you can tell the difference between a natural vs a learned instinct?
I know I can't and I'm a clinical psychotherapist.
On the same note, how can you tell the difference between science and marketing?
The research you indicated has nothing to do with brain chemistry. All he showed is a positive correlation between childhood inhibition and amygdala response to new faces.
Since it is already well-known that fear produces the same kind of amygdala response in everyone, his research simply shows that inhibited children are more likely to grow up as shy adults.
You're right. However, a touch typist looks at the screen to get feedback that not only have they typed something, but that they've typed what they meant to type.
Probably a waste of my time posting this -- I'll be amazed if you read this far;)
There are hundreds of ways to procrastinate and hundreds of reasons for doing so.
I'm going to give you the basics of motivation though.
We avoid feeling bad and we chase feeling good.
When you think about studying, you feel bad. When you think about doing something else you feel good.
Make sense?
So you have to condition yourself to feel good about studying. Try this:
Buy some REALLY NICE chocolates (or other momentary treats). Promise yourself one for simply sitting down. Another one for deciding what to study. Another one for preparing your books etc. Another one each for reading/writing a paragraph, then a page etc.
Each time you eat the chocolate, think about the benefits of having qualifications eg a cushy job for life vs working at McDonalds.
If that doesn't work, go and see an NLP-trained hypnotherapist who will refund your money if they don't help you.
Yeah, and smoking isn't addictive. How far did we have to push the tobacco
companies to admit that?
How do you explain that?
Pretty easily.
80% of so-called double-blind studies are transparent: the patients
can tell whether they are on the drug or the placebo. This more than accounts
for the 5-10% that any of these drugs outperforms the placebo.
I guess schizophrenia is just a matter of self discipline as well?
Your statement apparently demonstrates your ignorance. You know nothing
about schizophrenia, and assume that no-one else does - just for the sake of
an argument.
Schizophrenia has never been scientifically linked to a chemical imbalance.
If you want to get the inside story from somebody who actually successfully
treats schizophrenia start reading here.
Dave (clinical psychotherapist), http://www.deep-trance.com
The scientific benefits to space exploration are minimal. Maybe if the scientists make Earth uninhabitable, we'll need another planet pretty sharpish.
Apart from that, it's all about boyhood dreams of exploring space, fed by science fiction over the years.
Now maybe a human expedition to Mars would inspire a whole new generation of scientists. But this is social engineering and there are probably cheaper and more reliable ways to do this.
Basically, your mind is unique. There are gross similarities but eg your Broca's could be 4cm further over than mine. Even if it wasn't, how are you going to wire in new patterns? It has to fit into your existing neurology (displacing something else?) as well as being wired in such a way that you can use it.
Whilst such parameters are arbitrary measures of processing, if you can learn to control them, you can start to condition yourself to shift parameters appropriately for each situation. Here are a few more:
- Emotional vs Reasoned Intelligence. - Internal vs External Focus of Attention. - Action vs Planning.
While in no way wishing to make light of people's problems, I'd like to point out certain undeniable truths about ADHD:
1. It's a diagnosis, not a disease. As such, the underlying pathology varies from person to person, hence the ideal treatment should vary from person to person. Additionally, many people with ADHD view it as an advantage, myself included.
2. It is commonly assumed that ADHD is caused by a "chemical imbalance", yet such a thing has never been proved, nor is testing for it part of the diagnosis.
3. Taking Ritalin has much the same effect as taking speed. It is highly addictive although slightly safer.
4. Even when tested against sugar pills by the drug companies themselves, Ritalin barely outperforms. 80% of these trials are found to be unscientific because the double-blind is penetrated.
We expect the drug companies to behave better than tobacco companies yet their only incentive is to sell as many expensive drugs as possible. At least drugs can be tested against each other. There is no independent testing of therapists and word-of-mouth referrals are rare. There is no competition and consequently, most therapists are LESS effective than sugar pills.
Human beings process information in a variety of ways. One way (the misnamed "conscious mind") is generally dominant, narrow in focus, and keeps reasonable track of time (via explicit/declarative memory).
None of this proves consciousness. I believe that I am conscious... but I merely assume that everyone else is. There is no way of proving that somebody else is any more conscious than a sufficiently advanced robot (or a figment of my imagination for that matter;)
How do I know that my subconscious doesn't experience my life in a similar way to me? Seems farfetched, since most of what is subconscious can be made conscious.
Is consciousness more than an illusion then?
And if not, what is an illusion, if not an aspect of consciousness?
Fair enough. However, source code availability is not everybody's big concern.
A lot of us just want a browser with a good interface, and Opera provides just
that. It's certainly better than IE and arguably better than Mozilla.
Mozilla still lacks quite a few of Opera's best features and will always be
slow and fat in comparison. I'm happy to pay ten times the price of Opera
for being able to use the internet the way I want to.
Yet I welcome any competition for Internet Explorer. Between Opera and
Mozilla, Microsoft will lose control of the internet.
I can't believe I got modded down for my earlier comment about it.
But your comment criticised Slashdot's love-affair with Mozilla.
I'd have thought you'd see it coming...
There are two separate fields exploring this phenomenon. The synaesthesia
described by Ramachandran and Cytowic (The Man Who Tasted Shapes) generally
researches the kind that is both involuntary and consistent (eg the taste of
mint always feels like cold glass columns). These synaesethesias are quite
elementary: a particular pitch appears blue as opposed to some blue-winged fairy
flying past. The taste of chicken feels spiky. Mint feels like glassas
opposed to
The other field is part of Neuro-Linguistic
Programming which already provides a lot of useful applications for the
non-synesthete.
One example would be an automatic lie detector, based on the voice tone (and
body language) someone used. In response you could automatically see the
word LIE emblazoned across their forehead, or if you had a really good imagination,
you could even see their nose growing...
Here is a website
that seeks to bring the two fields together.
The principle is pretty simple. Go out of your way to demonstrate you understand and are willing to fulfil employee's individual needs.
Other suggestions: Hire a workforce who are likely to be good for morale eg optimistic, fun, good communicators. Make your employees shareholders. Train natural leaders for management.
Slashdot Mirror
Mediainfo (Win32 only)
Nice right click identify & drag n drop interface.
http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/
In a capitalist society, companies will always do anything they can get away with to get us to buy their product.
It's the job of government job to counterbalance that - including educating us to distinguish good info vs marketing as well as promoting the former.
Cool thread.
Although this is a long way off and we have neither the technology or the software to make this worthwhile, I agree with both of you.
In the meantime, we would be better off using software to teach us how to make good decisions. There are some areas eg statistics, where most people are appalling. And then there's decision making whilst under stress.
I did my own investigation of spam filters about a week ago. I didn't test the actual algorithms, just the features.
SpamPal with the add-on Bayesian filter (search Google for it) came out top. It works as a proxy and also provides blacklist/whitelist/known Spammer list checking.
Bet it's the good old serotonin transporter gene. Is there any trait it hasn't been linked with?
It sounds like you weren't temperamentally an introvert. You were just a schmuck with poor social skills.
What makes you think you know the difference?
Can you come up with an experiment to differentiate between the two groups.
Amen.
Take Myers-Briggs for what it is. If you could only know 4 bits of information about somebody, I would choose these, but it's still a ridiculously impoverished description of who somebody is.
Self-esteem is a generalisation about oneself. Pretty stupid concept.
Is personality, or certain personality traits immutable? I would have thought that with the right stimulation it would be highly mutable. Thats ignoring the fact that we are intelligent enought to recognise our own patterns of behaviour and can suppress our natural instincts if we make that choice.
But can you can tell the difference between a natural vs a learned instinct? I know I can't and I'm a clinical psychotherapist.
On the same note, how can you tell the difference between science and marketing?
The research you indicated has nothing to do with brain chemistry.
All he showed is a positive correlation between childhood inhibition and amygdala response to new faces.
Since it is already well-known that fear produces the same kind of amygdala response in everyone, his research simply shows that inhibited children are more likely to grow up as shy adults.
Not really newsworthy IMO.
You're right. However, a touch typist looks at the screen to get feedback that not only have they typed something, but that they've typed what they meant to type.
What makes you think visual feedback isn't fast enough? Personally, I think the more senses you get feedback in, the better.
Probably a waste of my time posting this -- I'll be amazed if you read this far ;)
There are hundreds of ways to procrastinate and hundreds of reasons for doing so.
I'm going to give you the basics of motivation though.
We avoid feeling bad and we chase feeling good.
When you think about studying, you feel bad. When you think about doing something else you feel good.
Make sense?
So you have to condition yourself to feel good about studying. Try this:
Buy some REALLY NICE chocolates (or other momentary treats). Promise yourself one for simply sitting down. Another one for deciding what to study. Another one for preparing your books etc. Another one each for reading/writing a paragraph, then a page etc.
Each time you eat the chocolate, think about the benefits of having qualifications eg a cushy job for life vs working at McDonalds.
If that doesn't work, go and see an NLP-trained hypnotherapist who will refund your money if they don't help you.
Yeah, and smoking isn't addictive. How far did we have to push the tobacco companies to admit that?
How do you explain that?
Pretty easily. 80% of so-called double-blind studies are transparent: the patients can tell whether they are on the drug or the placebo. This more than accounts for the 5-10% that any of these drugs outperforms the placebo.
I guess schizophrenia is just a matter of self discipline as well?
Your statement apparently demonstrates your ignorance. You know nothing about schizophrenia, and assume that no-one else does - just for the sake of an argument.
Schizophrenia has never been scientifically linked to a chemical imbalance. If you want to get the inside story from somebody who actually successfully treats schizophrenia start reading here.
Dave (clinical psychotherapist), http://www.deep-trance.com
I agree, Speex sounds better for voice even at bitrates half of WMA.
I notice Liquid Audio AAC wasn't tested. I wonder why not.
I'd mod you up if I had any points...
The scientific benefits to space exploration are minimal. Maybe if the scientists make Earth uninhabitable, we'll need another planet pretty sharpish.
Apart from that, it's all about boyhood dreams of exploring space, fed by science fiction over the years.
Now maybe a human expedition to Mars would inspire a whole new generation of scientists. But this is social engineering and there are probably cheaper and more reliable ways to do this.
Basically, your mind is unique. There are gross similarities but eg your Broca's could be 4cm further over than mine. Even if it wasn't, how are you going to wire in new patterns? It has to fit into your existing neurology (displacing something else?) as well as being wired in such a way that you can use it.
Whilst such parameters are arbitrary measures of processing, if you can learn to control them, you can start to condition yourself to shift parameters appropriately for each situation. Here are a few more:
- Emotional vs Reasoned Intelligence.
- Internal vs External Focus of Attention.
- Action vs Planning.
While in no way wishing to make light of people's problems, I'd like to point out certain undeniable truths about ADHD:
1. It's a diagnosis, not a disease. As such, the underlying pathology varies from person to person, hence the ideal treatment should vary from person to person. Additionally, many people with ADHD view it as an advantage, myself included.
2. It is commonly assumed that ADHD is caused by a "chemical imbalance", yet such a thing has never been proved, nor is testing for it part of the diagnosis.
3. Taking Ritalin has much the same effect as taking speed. It is highly addictive although slightly safer.
4. Even when tested against sugar pills by the drug companies themselves, Ritalin barely outperforms. 80% of these trials are found to be unscientific because the double-blind is penetrated.
We expect the drug companies to behave better than tobacco companies yet their only incentive is to sell as many expensive drugs as possible.
At least drugs can be tested against each other. There is no independent testing of therapists and word-of-mouth referrals are rare. There is no competition and consequently, most therapists are LESS effective than sugar pills.
Caveat emptor.
Hmm, what can we agree upon here?
;)
Human beings process information in a variety of ways. One way (the misnamed "conscious mind") is generally dominant, narrow in focus, and keeps reasonable track of time (via explicit/declarative memory).
None of this proves consciousness. I believe that I am conscious... but I merely assume that everyone else is. There is no way of proving that somebody else is any more conscious than a sufficiently advanced robot (or a figment of my imagination for that matter
How do I know that my subconscious doesn't experience my life in a similar way to me? Seems farfetched, since most of what is subconscious can be made conscious.
Is consciousness more than an illusion then?
And if not, what is an illusion, if not an aspect of consciousness?
Just something to stimulate some thought.
Fair enough. However, source code availability is not everybody's big concern. A lot of us just want a browser with a good interface, and Opera provides just that. It's certainly better than IE and arguably better than Mozilla.
Mozilla still lacks quite a few of Opera's best features and will always be slow and fat in comparison. I'm happy to pay ten times the price of Opera for being able to use the internet the way I want to.
Yet I welcome any competition for Internet Explorer. Between Opera and Mozilla, Microsoft will lose control of the internet.
I can't believe I got modded down for my earlier comment about it.
But your comment criticised Slashdot's love-affair with Mozilla. I'd have thought you'd see it coming...
There are two separate fields exploring this phenomenon. The synaesthesia described by Ramachandran and Cytowic (The Man Who Tasted Shapes) generally researches the kind that is both involuntary and consistent (eg the taste of mint always feels like cold glass columns). These synaesethesias are quite elementary: a particular pitch appears blue as opposed to some blue-winged fairy flying past. The taste of chicken feels spiky. Mint feels like glassas opposed to
One of the most famous synesthetes was S, a photographic memory expert.
The other field is part of Neuro-Linguistic Programming which already provides a lot of useful applications for the non-synesthete.
One example would be an automatic lie detector, based on the voice tone (and body language) someone used. In response you could automatically see the word LIE emblazoned across their forehead, or if you had a really good imagination, you could even see their nose growing...
Here is a website that seeks to bring the two fields together.
Give the people candidates who are actually worth voting for.
How do we motivate worthwhile candidates to stand?
Start at the top. Make politics honourable again.
How do you filter out those who seek power and self-importance?
Erm, lie detection machines?
How do you stop voters falling for the spin?
Impossible. The spin is designed to take advantage of human susceptibility and humans will always be susceptible in one way or another.
Life imitating art or something like that.
From here in Bristol, UK, I couldn't access the DNS at this time yesterday, before it was Slashdotted.
;)
A friend in Australia could though.
Hope that helps, not sure why this interests anyone
The principle is pretty simple. Go out of your way to demonstrate you understand and are willing to fulfil employee's individual needs.
Other suggestions:
Hire a workforce who are likely to be good for morale eg optimistic, fun, good communicators.
Make your employees shareholders. Train natural leaders for management.