your reply doesnt explain why US schools were winning the competition just a few years ago.
Like the other response says -- it is only over the last several years that the competition has gotten so serious in some areas. There has been relatively little corresponding change in how US teams approach the competition.
Or why one of the US teams looked like they had just walked out of "a minor car wreck" if they really went there just for fun and not expecting to win.
I never said that every US team realizes they will not win -- just that ours did. I would speculate that this team just assumed they were the best, since they were always the best in their region, and didn't realize how seriously some countries are taking it right now. Even if you don't work on it for hours a day, it can be jarring to go from being the best all the time to being soundly beaten. To drive my chess metaphor entirely into the ground, think of a highschool chess team that can beat anyone else at the school and thinks it is therefore hot shit. If you send that team to a serious tournament against some of the eastern highschool players that spend most of their days practicing chess, they will probably resemble a minor car wreck too... but this says nothing about the countries' respective math education programs.
The rest of your response descends quickly into troll territory, so I don't really want to respond to that. In short, the article gives no substantial evidence for its claim that US CS is declining (relying mostly on the programming contest), and neither do you.
I do agree that the US education system is not what it should be. But the article doesn't deal with any real issues of innovation or research productivity or even the less academic issue of industry productivity, or in fact any other relevant measure of "decline," which is why I call it FUD.
Seems like a lot of the responses think you're wrong, but just to add some support...
I also went to the ACM world finals. We didn't do that great, but we did alright, and we had fun. My university was one of the best in the US in CS, but there was never even a chance of our winning ACM overall, and we never thought there was.
The reason is exactly what you describe: the groups that are winning the contest right now are putting in immense effort, going over literally thousands of ACM-style problems. They spend hours a day on it. They have entire libraries of pre-coded functions and solutions that they can plug into all kinds of problems whenever necessary.
Now, in contrast, at my Big Name CS School, most student energy goes into our classwork and other CS-related areas, and the ACM contest is a hobby. The team is generally chosen by sending out a mass email to the CS department saying "Anyone want to be on our ACM team?" The first year I did it, they had to send out the email repeatedly because they couldn't actually find 6 people (two teams) to send to the regional contest. Once you're on the team, every 2 or 3 weeks we would meet to go over some problems. The ACM problems are fun and interesting, and require problem-solving and basic knowledge of algorithms, but they are not "computer science," and all of us knew it. You put code in those problems that you would be ashamed to put into a production system, because you're on a time limit and it works.
Bottom line, the US's "poor performance" in this contest is not indicative of poor education any more than the US's "poor performance" in the chess world during the cold war. Russia thought it was very valuable to have the best chess players be Russian (proving that Russians were smarter, etc.), so they threw money at it, and had their promising players study intensely, at the expense of a conventional education, focusing entirely on becoming the best chess players. American chess players, for the most part, still went through a normal highschool and frequently college education, and while some were very devoted to the game, hardly any studied it with the state-sponsored fervor of the typical Russian prodigy. And so what? If the goal of your life is to be good at chess, then the Russian model is better, and if the goal of your life is to be good at the ACM programming competition then you should spend hours a day studying old ACM problems, but if you want a good general education (or even a good CS education) that is probably not the best use of your time in college.
I've worked in industry, and now I'm in theoretical CS, and neither area requires thinking similar to the ACM competition. Those problems are great, and doing well in the contest requires knowledge and talent, but to be the best takes a very specific kind of knowledge that is not nearly as useful in any other area of CS.
Exactly. It bothers me when people excuse these ridiculous punishments under the justification of "Well, if you choose to break the law then you can't complain about the punishment." Yes you can. A just society should always have punishments appropriate and proportionate to the severity of the crime.
An example of this principle that is often misunderstood in modern times is the Old Testament rule of "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." This phrase is associated with brutality and revenge, but actually it is a limit on the severity of punishments that for its time (and for most times and places since then, unfortunately) was quite merciful. It explicitly rules out the example you give of executing someone for stealing bread, or even for stealing something much more expensive. By this standard, the penalty for "stealing" copyrighted material should be comparable to the value of the material stolen. The law right now is so far beyond that it's scary.
And there are the other objectors who say "Yes, but if the penalty was that minor then it wouldn't be enough of a disincentive to copyright violators" -- but the primary purpose of just laws is not to serve as a disincentive to bad behavior (let alone that more severe punishments doesn't even correlate directly with less crime, as in your example). Even if, by instituting an instant death sentence for copyright violation, we were able to lower copyright violation to 1% of its current levels, this would not be acceptable, because death is not a proportionate punishment for that crime. Similarly, 10 years in prison, though a good deal more lenient than death, is grossly disproportionate to the offense that will yield it.
Does such a punishment deter crime? Not as much as you'd think. But who cares? The point is that it is an immoral punishment. The ends do not justify the means. People should be punished because of the wrongs that they committed, not as an example to scare other people out of misbehaving. People who break laws are still people, not some "criminal" class that becomes subhuman and is therefore unworthy of justice. And "justice" doesn't just mean "bad things happen to people who break laws." It should mean that those who break laws will receive a punishment appropriate to their specific actions, and it is poor sympathy for fellow human beings to ignore what happens to them because "they broke the law, so they had it coming."
Alright, rant over for now... suffice to say... I agree with you;)
Is increasingly advanced nautical technology creating a rift between yachting haves and have-nots? A new study shows that many lowly millionaires are unable to afford the latest accessories. Film at 11.
No. This is the TOS for journal owners (see another comment above giving the explicit quote). This doesn't say viewers can't use ad-blocking software, all it says is that you, the journal owner, cannot deliberately provide them with this software. How could it even be possible to enforce TOS for people who aren't journal owners? Of course this has no affect on viewers.
But, the fact that everyone who almost hit you was on a cell phone doesn't prove anything (cell phones are way too common now).
It doesn't prove anything, but since at any given time probably at least half of drivers are not currently talking on the phone (that's a guess, I would imagine even more), it is at least fairly suspicious that I never once had a near miss with one of these people. Also, "almost hitting me" isn't the only criteria on which I can say someone's driving is poor -- like I and the original post both said, there is an easily observable correlation between talking on a cell phone and weaving back and forth / reacting more slowly.
Obviously I didn't make a scientific study -- it's theoretically possible that it is only on one particular stretch of road between my former apartment and former university that cell phones are correlated with worse driving. Or maybe I just got an extremely skewed sample for years at a time. But when scientific studies also say the same thing, why are people so insistent that they couldn't possibly be driving any worse? Why is everyone saying "this clearly can't apply to me, so the studies must be flawed?" or "why should I be punished because everyone else is irresponsible with cell phones?" Odds are, it does apply to you, and just because there is other behavior that is also dangerous in the car doesn't mean there shouldn't be any rules. Some responses are equating the attention taken by talking on the phone to that taken by listening to the radio -- is this for real? That's just silly. How can anyone seriously claim that those are comparable in terms of distraction or reaction time? Yes, some people will be bad drivers no matter how many rules there are, but that is no excuse to oppose rules a priori...
That's exactly why I don't believe all the people saying "Oh, but those are just the irresponsible people, I know that I'm still a good driver!"
I used to ride a bike to school all the time. I was careful about it, and unlike most cyclists I actually obeyed traffic laws. Even so, there were several times that I had near misses. Every single one was a driver talking on a cell phone, and most of the times were at an intersection, and the driver wasn't paying enough attention to notice me -- maybe they would have noticed a car even though they're on the phone, but for a bike they wouldn't even stop.
I also noticed a lot of symptoms like the ones you describe -- you very quickly learn to spot and avoid the cell phone drivers, because they won't respond as quickly as a normal driver.
Maybe there are some people who can do it safely, just like maybe there are some people who can drive well after a few drinks. But you don't get to drive a dangerous machine because "maybe" you're one of the small minority that can do it without impairing your driving.
Wow -- alright, you've intrigued me:) I was never a prodigy or anything, just "pretty good at math."
higher level mathmatics has been difficult to aquire the ability to speak the language
Tell me about it! I'm a computer scientist by trade, but am trying to learn advanced algebraic geometry because of possible applications to theoretical computer science. Two years so far of ever-more-archaic vocabulary training, and no end in sight, and this is on top of a pretty good undergrad math education. (I share your frustration with vocabulary, and often have trouble remembering terms, but my poor memory is presumably of a much more minor and conventional variety than yours...)
But suffice to say that in my own small way I very much share your frustration with "breaking in" to mathematics (though theoretical computer science is "math" in a way, it isn't considered so by a lot of mathematicians, and it is still a much younger and shallower subject than most branches of mathematics, at least so far...)
To completely abandon the original topic, if you ever wanted to email me you'd be welcome to, I'm notlrahcd@gmail.com, but with the username spelled backwards. Maybe it's presumptuous to think I could give helpful advice, but I have been working on math and CS theory for several years now, and I flatter myself that I'm a pretty decent teacher, so if your professors are unhelpful I could probably at least point you in the right direction, or suggest books that are more useful... at least until you get deeper in. But in any case, best of luck with your degree, and more importantly, with your learning:)
The position that since someone is educated knows more than
another and thus the other does not need have a voice in the matter is
known as elitism.
Partly true -- but there's a difference between saying someone
shouldn't have a voice, and saying you won't spend a substantial
amount of your own time reading the dozens of unsolicited "proofs" of
the millenium problems that most major mathematicians receive. Saying
you have a solution to one of these problems is truly an extraordinary
claim, and it is reasonable to expect extraordinary evidence, at least
in the form of a willingness to spend a lot of effort and time in
demonstrating that your approach is serious and rigorous. When your
first action is to post your unverified proof on your personal webpage
with a description of what you're going to do with the million dollars
(and this is how many of the proofs are presented), it's unsurprising
when you are not taken seriously.
And as I mentioned in the last comment, there's a big difference
between dismissing an amateur's result because you think their opinion
is worthless, and dismissing it because it has a serious flaw that is
obvious to a real expert in the field.
So to me, all the statement that the wiki shouldn't be started
because no one who uses it will be capable of doing anything that the
"closed" academic community cannot do, is just biogotry hidden behind
snobish superiority.
I'm not sure in what sense you mean the "closed" academic community
since most of the research on these problems is publicly available,
especially if you have an academic library nearby. If you mean that
contributions from outside academic circles are not given much weight,
that is perhaps true, but I'd argue that when it takes years of
serious effort to even properly understand a field, it's unsurprising
when most contributions to the field come from those who have chosen
to work in it full-time. Few others (though I certainly wouldn't say
none) would even have the time to really keep up with the field. I
would be interested if you know of any examples of people who
genuinely had a real academic contribution, but had difficulty getting
it accepted because they didn't go through the standard academic
channels. But at the very least, there are fewer of these cases than
are reported in the popular press (it's easy to convince a reporter
that the mathematical establishment is just being closed-minded, since
the reporter typically can't understand the mathematicians' objections
anyway).
Furthermore, the assumption that the community that has not been
able to formulate the solution to these problems will, by following
the same path, be able to answer these problems by using the same
tools that have been used the the past strikes me as absurd.
That assumes the community is following only one path. Any of the millenium problems is much more complicated than a simple boolean "We have solved it" / "We haven't solved it yet" situation. In all of them, many people have made substantial progress in understanding the problems, even though we haven't solved them completely yet, and in some cases we have very good ideas about what obstacles any proofs would need to overcome -- so yes, we will need new tools, but we have some idea about what those tools look like, and there are researchers actively working to develop such tools. Just because we need new tools doesn't mean they must come from ignorance -- they can also come from knowledge.
By your own admission, "these are problems that have consistently resisted "plain old ingenuity,"" and therefore will more than likely require a leap of intuition to solve.
I imagine most of them will require several leaps of intuition, possibly over many years. Every major result requires some leaps of intuition. But every major result in a well-developed field (an example in an undeveloped field would be Galois, who developed an astounding theory at a very young age -- but his insights were not in
Wow. A long couple of responses. I agree with some of what you're saying... let me try to clarify some of what I'm saying:
The fact is though, that an academic education is by no means a real education at least in the undergraduate levels.
Alright, I understand some of where you're coming from here. This is highly dependent on your particular school and particular professors, but on average, I agree with you. I was lucky enough to have a couple of professors as an undergraduate who were leaders in their field and great teachers, and it is because of them that I am pursuing academics (as you might have suspected, my personal stake in this discussion is that I'm a graduate student).
So you'll have to excuse me if I don't agree that the academics deserve to be placed on a pedistal merely because of the fact that they have put in years to answer the questions in a particular manner.
I agree with this -- however, the fact that there are many mediocre people within any given field does not mean that there are no real experts. It is not enough for someone to have worked in a field for years, they must also have a proven track record of results in order to be considered a real authority. And as you say, authority should not be accepted blindly, but neither should it be ignored merely because you don't understand it yet.
I believe that the true test of your knowledge is in the ability to explain the subject matter in a comprehensible manner to your students and I so far see that as a skill sadly lacking in computer science and mathmatics at the undergrad level.
I disagree with your first statement -- I don't think that explaining to students is the test of knowledge. However, you have hit on one of my pet peeves: I think that the general standard of mathematical exposition right now is terrible. I think that this is reflective of laziness and elitism within the mathematical community. Much of the elaborate mathematical machinery that has developed over the last century is very useful, and has proven itself by yielding important results. But it is taught terribly -- students are given little if any long-term motivation, no larger perspective, and the whole thing is a sort of trial-by-fire or multi-year gauntlet for those who really do want to be mathematicians. I think that this costs the field many students who otherwise have the potential to be excellent mathematicians, but instead grow frustrated and go into other areas.
But, as a counterexample to your first statement: one professor (who shall remain nameless) at my current school is one of the most brilliant people in the field. He has proven this many times, producing some of the most important results in his field for decades running. For those who have the knowledge and mental agility to follow him, he has some extremely elegant and unique perspectives on a lot of problems. But, he is possibly the worst teacher I have ever met. He cannot explain a complicated idea to an undergraduate (or even most graduate students) to save his life. Does this reflect poorly on him? Of course. But does it mean he isn't really an expert? I don't think anyone in the field would argue that. I think his behavior is a symptom of arrogance, but it's just too simplistic to say that the people who are really the best at a particular mathematical discipline will also be the best at explaining it.
If theories are disproven and it is demonstrated why they are incorrect, anyone in the world with an internet connection will be able to learn from what is happening on the wiki and that, my friend, is what education is all about. Given the opportunity to learn, the person that is really interested in learning will be able to.
I think this is partially true. As the Internet keeps spreading, a lot of information and even entire textbooks are available online, and the truly devoted amateur has a much better chance of keeping up with comparatively modern mathematics than at any other time in histo
Then we must assume that there is no reason for anyone to seek an education, because they are noting going to be able to learn anything that is not known. I guess it's time to stop investigating anythin if you are not an expert.
This is actually the opposite of the real conclusion from most of the negative posts... the claim is not that you can't discover anything new without an education. But we aren't just talking about "something new," we're talking about arguably the most difficult open problems in fields that have received intense scrutiny from very smart, well-educated researchers over the course of decades or centuries. While it might be possible for an amateur with only moderate education to discover "something new" in the fields, these are problems that have consistently resisted "plain old ingenuity," and in some cases (e.g. P vs. NP) there are solid theoretical reasons why. It's just like Fermat's Last Theorem -- somebody finally did solve it, but he was an expert in the field, who was familiar with prior lines of research and the subtleties of the problem that had developed over the centuries. I would argue that no one who does not have a good grounding in advanced number-theoretic developments of the late 20th century will ever find (or understand) a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. With work and training, perhaps they will, but your statement is saying "If I can't produce something at the cutting edge of the field without an education, then I won't be able to with one."
Since I am just now starting college after only 24 years of professional computer experience what right do I have to find any flaws with my instructors. After all some of them have had 4 years of academic computer experience.
You have every right to find flaws with your instructors. But there's a big difference between pointing out errors of your instructor (who is one person and can easily make mistakes, especially when speaking off the top of his head to a classroom) and completely surpassing the efforts of the best mathematicians of the last century, who devoted decades to these same problems, and made major discoveries about them.
To re-work a metaphor I've heard in another context: A group of completely untrained math enthusiasts solving (say) P vs. NP because they have some tremendous natural gift in mathematics is akin to a group of tall, athletic men who have never seen a basketball taking down the top team in the NBA. It just doesn't happen. Yes, maybe they'll score a basket or two, and maybe the untrained math enthusiasts will solve an open problem or two, but the biggest problems in the field? No. There is more to these problems than that.
Wait a sec, I came up with the question therefore I am an expert and since no one else is an expert I must be correct because only experts can solve problems.
I assume this part is tongue in cheek, but to give a real answer anyway: if this had been a real problem, and if you devoted decades of your life exclusively to the problem, consulting with all the top experts worldwide on areas relating to the problem and making major advances in understanding the problem beyond what anyone had done before, then you would be an expert, and your opinion would carry some weight. Experts aren't the only ones who can solve problems, but if anyone was seriously interested in solving that problem, the first thing they ought to do is see what work you've done on it, and what advances you've contributed to the field. It would be ridiculously presumptuous for someone to ignore all you've done and claim to have a solution, when you've already written a number of papers on why their naive approach doesn't work -- yet this is exactly what many of the amateur approaches to the millenium problems do.
The community on the wiki so far seems unwilling to devote time to the real experts, focusing almost exclusively on cranks who claim to already have proofs, and ignoring actual published, peer-reviewed papers that describe all the advances made so far.
When I read the headline and skimmed the site, I was at first slightly optimistic that it might develop into a good resource that, if nothing more, would give a good idea of the problems and their context to a non-specialist audience. Probably not discover anything new, but quality exposition is badly needed in a lot of mathematics, so that's still a net gain.
Now I've looked at the site more thoroughly, and I don't believe it anymore.
Context: I'm a graduate student in Theoretical Computer Science, so I do know something about P vs. NP and the current obstacles to solving it.
The first information (beyond the basic definitions) that anyone should know if they hope to approach the P vs. NP question is 1. The Baker-Gill-Solovay result that P vs. NP does not relativize and 2. The Razborov-Rudich result that "natural proofs" can't show P != NP. Both of these are fairly technical results, but still explainable to a relatively broad audience. Between the two of them, they rule out every currently known lower bound proof technique as a method of proving P != NP, which means that if we hope to prove P != NP we need some radically new ideas. If someone claims to have a viable approach to proving P != NP, the first (well, maybe second or third) thing any trained theoretician will ask is how the approach works around these two papers, particularly the second. (I went to a talk at Harvard by someone presenting a new approach, and that was in fact one of the major questions he was asked.)
These two results are summed up as two bullet points on the wiki.
Now, on the other side of things, more focused on cranks who give bogus proofs of P vs. NP one way or the other -- the wiki has links to dozens of them, and discussion pages about several of them. One page says, regarding a particular "proof" that P = NP, that it "seems like a very reasonable approach that will require a high level of scrutiny." Here's a hint: No it won't. Studying these claims is a waste of time. I looked at the pdf of the paper in question, and there are about a dozen warning flags that the author is a crank (in addition to the major one that the author publicly claims to have resolved P vs. NP but hasn't gotten any major computer scientists to believe him). These people are a terrible source of "ideas" for resolving P vs. NP, especially when I can't even find links on the wiki to some of the possibly legitimate, peer-reviewed approaches for resolving the question (e.g. the Mulmuley-Sohoni approach via algebraic geometry, or Joel Friedman's ideas about cohomology and topos theory).
Please don't respond saying "Well it's a wiki, you should add that information yourself!" I'll look more at the site and might add some things, but my point is that the site's community as a whole is devoting a lot of time and effort to dead-ends, and none to actual published academic papers. My fixing a few pages or adding information about one or two things is not going to change the direction of the entire site...
I wish my mod points hadn't expired -- your story does a great job illustrating (a small part of) the gap between amateurs who think they know what P vs. NP (or any of the millenium problems, really) means, and the professionals who actually attempt to resolve it. I am very much in favor of amateur efforts, and occasionally they produce new results, but too often they are wasted trying to solve the major, field-defining questions without a real understanding of the subtleties involved. I would suggest that major, field-defining questions have never been solved by amateurs -- certainly not since the late 19th century, when the complexity of mathematical specializations started skyrocketing. (If I'm wrong about this, I'd be delighted to hear about a counterexample.)
As for the wiki, I'm cautiously optimistic. I very much doubt that any new results will come out of it, but if it can eventually give clear expositions of the various problems and their contexts in their various fields, with good references to supplementary reading, it could be a great resource. Being in CS theory, I'm only really familiar with P vs. NP, and I'd love to see where the major efforts in other branches of mathematics are going...
Yes, the original post did say "Given the fact that this guy is a national security threat," and in this case I agree that the guy is probably guilty (whether using brainless hacking scripts to look for UFOs makes you a national security threat is another question, I rather suspect terrorists are smart enough to use those scripts themselves and so any "piggybacking" (from the OP) probably isn't a real danger). But right after that "given," the OP proceeded to say he was lucky to get tried in court. And that's a line of reasoning we aren't allowed to use in our justice system. We use it anyway right now, but we should stop.
Yes, the argument was about how he should be dealt with, not what was his crime, but there are no circumstances under which the first step of that answer should not be "a fair public trial." Nor should those who receive a fair public trial be the "lucky ones," regardless of the severity of their alleged offense, and regardless of how obvious it may be that they're guilty. If it's obvious that they're guilty, there should be no problem convicting them, and the only reason not to would be 1. The evidence isn't really there (not an issue in the current situation, it seems), 2. The government wants to hold him indefinitely or treat him in some way that they could not do legally via a conviction, or 3. The government doesn't want a public trial for some other reason, which is never okay. There are situations where it is alright for some people (e.g. in the government) to decide the fate of another, but it can never be without accountability.
Probably the lawyer is just pulling a publicity stunt to help his client, sure. But the appalling thing is that his arguments are not easily dismissed. At other (not all, but some) times in our history, this wouldn't even be an issue, but right now the government is pretty open about ignoring civil rights and fair trials and all that, and won't even clearly condemn torture of people who are not even convicted, and some of whom are almost certainly innocent.
I won't go so far as to say the OP didn't care whether the guy was guilty or not, but he came dangerously close to saying he should face the consequences of his alleged actions before his trial. After the trial, go ahead, that's what the law is for, but until then he should not have to worry about whether he will mysteriously vanish and never stand trial...
he should be lucky to get tried in court and NOT be going straight to Guantanamo.
"Lucky?" Funny... I thought that fundamental human rights were supposed to be accorded to all humans, not just the ones who aren't suspected of being a national security threat... I know it doesn't work that way anymore, but does that mean we should talk about it like somebody shouldn't be tried before being punished? Cause I still think that a fair trial is an ideal worth shooting for...
If he were to get off easy the message will be sent to our enemy...
So, screw whether he's actually guilty, we will punish him severely to make an example of him to our enemies. Or wait, maybe we should just punish people who were actually proven guilty in court, and punish them by law, according to the severity of their crime, rather than to make them an example? You know, treat them like actual human beings instead of messages to the rest of the world about our superiority.
The researchers say the findings, published today in the journal Science, offer a counterargument to doubters of evolution who question how a progression of small changes could produce the intricate mechanisms found in living cells.'
Or, in other terms, "The researchers want to generate hype, so instead of letting a great result stand on its own they have decided to legitimize their ascientific opponents (who will not change their minds anyway) by claiming that their discovery, of all the thousands of fundamental discoveries made in biology, is the one that will shut down this illogical and uninformed ID talking point."
Stop feeding the trolls. If (and this is a big if) ID adherents are convinced that a particular aspect of evolution actually does make sense, they'll just shift to the next gap in our far-from-complete understanding and say that that one is the problem. Talking about real, important discoveries as though their significance is to confirm evolution, rather than explain it, is to play into the hands of IDers and creationists by accepting implicitly that evolution still has holes that need confirmation, and by falsely suggesting that serious biologists are relieved to have this new discovery, since before that they had no answer for the current batch of ID talking points.
There are many holes in our understanding, and many points at which we don't know exactly how certain aspects of evolution work. This does not mean we are uncertain that it works, any more than extremely small oddities in general relativity experiments make us uncertain that gravity works. The precise how we're still nailing down, but no scientist doubts that masses attract each other. Stop letting the other side make this seem like a legitimate scientific conflict, and emphasize what's really important here -- that we have made another step towards explaining the how.
But I would have aimed at a lesser, more like 50-100k, settlement.
If I read correctly, the settlement easily could have been in that range -- the higher amount was just what they were seeking in court, right? A settlement would invariably be lower, if only because it saves the trouble and expense of following through on the court case. Or maybe it actually mentioned the settlement amount and I just didn't read it carefully enough.
Though I don't know how one puts a realistic price tag on something like this, either way...
I'll bet that secretly you wished you were cool too and if you had the social tools to pick on them back again you would have.
Good lord, what is with people that they keep believing this nonsense? Why do extroverted people insist on believing that introverted people are deeply unhappy about their state, and would be able to have a normal happy life if only they could learn to socialize the way all the extroverts do? Why is there this persistent myth that if only we could learn to socialize and act normally, we would be popular and happy, too? Many of us are happy with our lives and our friends, and don't want to live our lives like you. People like different things. Go figure.
To answer your accusation: No, I did not secretly wish anything like that. I wished, and not at all secretly, that the popular kids would leave me the hell alone.
I'm not ordinarily bitter about my experiences back then -- they were terrible at the time, but I'm over them. If I sound bitter, it's a product of these threads, which are reminding me again that people really don't (care to) understand what a lot of kids go through.
In any case, I can function socially these days, and have on the whole recovered from my "awkward stage" -- I'm even comfortable giving talks in front of crowds, something I understand even "normal" people often dislike -- but I am not an extrovert and have no wish to be, and I will never be one of the cool kids. This is fine with me. I wish people would stop thinking that people like me would be happy if only they could fix us.
I don't know if its exactly a lack of sympathy though, so much as people thinking, "when I was in school, the legal system didn't come rushing to help me out, why is everyone so concerned about this guy's problems?"
Perhaps -- it wouldn't bother me as much if people were just complaining about the stupidity of the lawsuit and/or legal system (though I don't feel like it's a wholly black-and-white situation even then). But instead, a disturbing proportion of the posts seem to be saying it's the kid's own fault for making the video, or that he should just get over it and not let this bother him, and he shouldn't be such an insecure nerd... I mean... hello? Slashdot?
A lot of the posts really hit home for me, since they aren't really addressing the lawsuit, just the basic pre-lawsuit situation, and end up completely attacking the kid -- but I remember how I felt when I was that age, how terrified I was of, say, giving a presentation to the rest of the class, or doing anything that involved calling attention to myself. Something like this would have crushed me. (Even now, I can't imagine it would be terribly pleasant.) And when the posts are portraying him as a nerdy whiner who deserves to have the world laugh at him if he can't take a joke... bleh. Gym flashback.
Stop sympathizing with him and saying that people hate him because he is fat and awkward.
Re-read my post. I said no such thing. I'm sympathizing with him because he went through a terrible experience. I don't think 15 is an age where you can really say "Ah, you're a jerk? Then you deserve to be humiliated before the whole world!" If it were, most of us would have deserved that (or maybe still do).
I also don't care that some other more well-adjusted person might have taken what the other children intended to be a terrible experience and made it into a positive one. That level of maturity is something we should strive for ourselves, rather than using it as a stick with which to beat anyone who does not yet have it. One of the marks of real maturity is patience with those who do not yet have it. Give the kid a break.
These kind of responses remind me of the more popular kids in junior high who would harrass me constantly, and when I finally broke down and showed in some way that they were bothering me, would be like "Geez, what's your problem? Can't you take a joke?"
No, I wasn't always the nicest person at that age (I think most of us weren't, if we're honest), but I don't think that justifies that kind of treatment, and I don't think it's okay to humiliate someone, then blame them for minding.
The lawsuit is BS, okay, maybe. But grow up and stop hounding people who are weaker than you.
I have no respect or pity for people with no will power. And I despise those who are proud of these qualities.
Has it never occurred to you that maturity is a process that takes time? A lot of the torture I went through in junior high would be no big deal to me now, because I'm older and more self-confident and have (I hope) matured a lot. But it was still hell, and it doesn't mean it was my own fault that junior high sucked (at least, not entirely my fault).
Will power and confidence is something that a lot of people lack at that age, even if they later develop it. Why does that make it okay to find the people who don't yet have the advantage of maturity and single them out as terrible people?
I'm not advocating lack of responsibility, I'm just saying people could stand to show a little more compassion -- the kid's reaction may be wrong, but he's still gone through hell, and I don't accept "he made the video" as proof that it's his own fault that other people broadcast it to much of the world.
I realize now that I brought bullying upon myself as much as, if not more than, it was brought upon me. The sooner people learn that lesson, the better.
And you really think bullying people more is the way to teach them that lesson?
If I had my way you would not be able to sue someone else for your own emotional problems.
I don't understand why this keeps getting repeated -- I mean, I agree with your statement, but as I understand it he wasn't suing because he was sad, but because those people maliciously broadcast the video he made to the entire world, which certainly led to a lot of emotional problems for him, but the lawsuit is still a result of specific actions on the part of the other people, not just a vague emotion he happened to have.
Again, I don't really agree with the lawsuit, but I don't understand why everyone is so thoroughly unsympathetic about all this...
You can't blame someone else because of your personal problems.... because he chose to be a timid dweeb he got what he deserved.
What the hell? Why are so many of the comments saying things like this? He somehow deserves what happened to him because he wasn't smart enough, wasn't confident enough, didn't take advantage, whatever. Has everyone on this website forgotten what it's like to be a socially inept, outcast 15-year-old? Sure, by and large we've grown out of it, but a lot of us would not have appreciated having something we consider completely humiliating broadcast to the entire world.
You "can't blame someone else because of your personal problems," but what if the problems in question (humiliation in front of a worldwide audience, constant attention from the media and from strangers, drastically increased bullying in school when he was already not the most popular kid around) are in fact a direct result of someone else's actions? Can't you blame them for those actions, especially when they were done maliciously?
Everyone seems to be talking about fame as though it's this wonderful gift. Here's a clue: Not everyone wants it. And not everyone should be forced to want it, just because it's your opinion that he should have seized the opportunity and made a few bucks. Maybe he prefers the lack of fame over any potential profit he could have gotten from it. I know I would hate to be famous. That's not a sour grapes thing, I do have an ego and I would like to be well-respected within my own field, but real fame? Have you seen what the world does to celebrities? It's disgusting, and I'm glad that there's no realistic way that would happen to me.
Should the kid have filed a lawsuit? Maybe not. Personally I would lean towards no. But there's a big gap between "a lawsuit is inappropriate here" and "What's the matter with this kid, he deserves what he got, why is this bullied, insecure 15-year-old acting so insecure and immature? He should just get over it." No doubt he will get over it, but give him a few years -- it took a lot of us that long even without a major roadblock like this.
Since there is emperical evidence for evolution, arguments against its very existence reek of a religious point of view that holds a book written thousands of years ago as being more correct than one's own eyes.
Just one nitpick -- I'd like to add "a religious point of view that holds a particular interpretation of a book," since ID / creationism / whatever is very much an American phenomenon, and most Christians worldwide who accept the Bible as true do not have issues with evolution. It's only interpreting the creation story in the Bible as literal science that leads to this conflict, and there was at least some doubt about that interpretation among church leaders thousands of years before Darwin.
The Catholic church is often trotted out as an example here, since the Vatican has basically said that evolution is probably true, but a lot of people don't realize that they seem to have learned their lesson over the Galileo issues -- though the acceptance of evolution is often portrayed as a reversal of stance, the Catholic church never said anything against Darwin or evolution. It was never even an issue, and active Catholics were involved in evolutionary research very early on. The primary conflict here is with the American fundamentalist subculture, and a lot of Christians are just as annoyed at their behavior as the rest of you...
if you broke the law and don't think you can get out of it in court, then this is called a consequence.
Others have already pointed out that even if you're innocent you won't necessarily be able to get out of the consequences of an attack by the RIAA. I'm more concerned because the consequences here are completely disproportionate to the offense.
There have been societies where the theft of something of relatively small value would be enough to lose the thief one of their hands, or even get them hanged. Being hanged would in that case be a consequence of someone's behavior -- but most of us believe that in a just society the severity of the punishment should be appropriate to the offense, and we no longer believe the death penalty is appropriate in those cases (or perhaps at all, but that's another flame war).
That's the problem with how these cases are being handled: Yes, if you're lucky enough to be one of the people who actually did commit the crime you're accused of, then the results are consequences of your actions. But the consequences demanded by the RIAA are drastically disproportionate to those actions. That's (one of the reasons) why, even though a lot of these people did break the law, they're still getting a lot of popular sympathy, even from people (like me) who disapprove of their actions...
Slashdot Mirror
Like the other response says -- it is only over the last several years that the competition has gotten so serious in some areas. There has been relatively little corresponding change in how US teams approach the competition.
Or why one of the US teams looked like they had just walked out of "a minor car wreck" if they really went there just for fun and not expecting to win.
I never said that every US team realizes they will not win -- just that ours did. I would speculate that this team just assumed they were the best, since they were always the best in their region, and didn't realize how seriously some countries are taking it right now. Even if you don't work on it for hours a day, it can be jarring to go from being the best all the time to being soundly beaten. To drive my chess metaphor entirely into the ground, think of a highschool chess team that can beat anyone else at the school and thinks it is therefore hot shit. If you send that team to a serious tournament against some of the eastern highschool players that spend most of their days practicing chess, they will probably resemble a minor car wreck too... but this says nothing about the countries' respective math education programs.
The rest of your response descends quickly into troll territory, so I don't really want to respond to that. In short, the article gives no substantial evidence for its claim that US CS is declining (relying mostly on the programming contest), and neither do you.
I do agree that the US education system is not what it should be. But the article doesn't deal with any real issues of innovation or research productivity or even the less academic issue of industry productivity, or in fact any other relevant measure of "decline," which is why I call it FUD.
I also went to the ACM world finals. We didn't do that great, but we did alright, and we had fun. My university was one of the best in the US in CS, but there was never even a chance of our winning ACM overall, and we never thought there was.
The reason is exactly what you describe: the groups that are winning the contest right now are putting in immense effort, going over literally thousands of ACM-style problems. They spend hours a day on it. They have entire libraries of pre-coded functions and solutions that they can plug into all kinds of problems whenever necessary.
Now, in contrast, at my Big Name CS School, most student energy goes into our classwork and other CS-related areas, and the ACM contest is a hobby. The team is generally chosen by sending out a mass email to the CS department saying "Anyone want to be on our ACM team?" The first year I did it, they had to send out the email repeatedly because they couldn't actually find 6 people (two teams) to send to the regional contest. Once you're on the team, every 2 or 3 weeks we would meet to go over some problems. The ACM problems are fun and interesting, and require problem-solving and basic knowledge of algorithms, but they are not "computer science," and all of us knew it. You put code in those problems that you would be ashamed to put into a production system, because you're on a time limit and it works.
Bottom line, the US's "poor performance" in this contest is not indicative of poor education any more than the US's "poor performance" in the chess world during the cold war. Russia thought it was very valuable to have the best chess players be Russian (proving that Russians were smarter, etc.), so they threw money at it, and had their promising players study intensely, at the expense of a conventional education, focusing entirely on becoming the best chess players. American chess players, for the most part, still went through a normal highschool and frequently college education, and while some were very devoted to the game, hardly any studied it with the state-sponsored fervor of the typical Russian prodigy. And so what? If the goal of your life is to be good at chess, then the Russian model is better, and if the goal of your life is to be good at the ACM programming competition then you should spend hours a day studying old ACM problems, but if you want a good general education (or even a good CS education) that is probably not the best use of your time in college.
I've worked in industry, and now I'm in theoretical CS, and neither area requires thinking similar to the ACM competition. Those problems are great, and doing well in the contest requires knowledge and talent, but to be the best takes a very specific kind of knowledge that is not nearly as useful in any other area of CS.
This article is FUD.
An example of this principle that is often misunderstood in modern times is the Old Testament rule of "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." This phrase is associated with brutality and revenge, but actually it is a limit on the severity of punishments that for its time (and for most times and places since then, unfortunately) was quite merciful. It explicitly rules out the example you give of executing someone for stealing bread, or even for stealing something much more expensive. By this standard, the penalty for "stealing" copyrighted material should be comparable to the value of the material stolen. The law right now is so far beyond that it's scary.
And there are the other objectors who say "Yes, but if the penalty was that minor then it wouldn't be enough of a disincentive to copyright violators" -- but the primary purpose of just laws is not to serve as a disincentive to bad behavior (let alone that more severe punishments doesn't even correlate directly with less crime, as in your example). Even if, by instituting an instant death sentence for copyright violation, we were able to lower copyright violation to 1% of its current levels, this would not be acceptable, because death is not a proportionate punishment for that crime. Similarly, 10 years in prison, though a good deal more lenient than death, is grossly disproportionate to the offense that will yield it.
Does such a punishment deter crime? Not as much as you'd think. But who cares? The point is that it is an immoral punishment. The ends do not justify the means. People should be punished because of the wrongs that they committed, not as an example to scare other people out of misbehaving. People who break laws are still people, not some "criminal" class that becomes subhuman and is therefore unworthy of justice. And "justice" doesn't just mean "bad things happen to people who break laws." It should mean that those who break laws will receive a punishment appropriate to their specific actions, and it is poor sympathy for fellow human beings to ignore what happens to them because "they broke the law, so they had it coming."
Alright, rant over for now... suffice to say... I agree with you ;)
Is increasingly advanced nautical technology creating a rift between yachting haves and have-nots? A new study shows that many lowly millionaires are unable to afford the latest accessories. Film at 11.
No. This is the TOS for journal owners (see another comment above giving the explicit quote). This doesn't say viewers can't use ad-blocking software, all it says is that you, the journal owner, cannot deliberately provide them with this software. How could it even be possible to enforce TOS for people who aren't journal owners? Of course this has no affect on viewers.
It doesn't prove anything, but since at any given time probably at least half of drivers are not currently talking on the phone (that's a guess, I would imagine even more), it is at least fairly suspicious that I never once had a near miss with one of these people. Also, "almost hitting me" isn't the only criteria on which I can say someone's driving is poor -- like I and the original post both said, there is an easily observable correlation between talking on a cell phone and weaving back and forth / reacting more slowly.
Obviously I didn't make a scientific study -- it's theoretically possible that it is only on one particular stretch of road between my former apartment and former university that cell phones are correlated with worse driving. Or maybe I just got an extremely skewed sample for years at a time. But when scientific studies also say the same thing, why are people so insistent that they couldn't possibly be driving any worse? Why is everyone saying "this clearly can't apply to me, so the studies must be flawed?" or "why should I be punished because everyone else is irresponsible with cell phones?" Odds are, it does apply to you, and just because there is other behavior that is also dangerous in the car doesn't mean there shouldn't be any rules. Some responses are equating the attention taken by talking on the phone to that taken by listening to the radio -- is this for real? That's just silly. How can anyone seriously claim that those are comparable in terms of distraction or reaction time? Yes, some people will be bad drivers no matter how many rules there are, but that is no excuse to oppose rules a priori...
I used to ride a bike to school all the time. I was careful about it, and unlike most cyclists I actually obeyed traffic laws. Even so, there were several times that I had near misses. Every single one was a driver talking on a cell phone, and most of the times were at an intersection, and the driver wasn't paying enough attention to notice me -- maybe they would have noticed a car even though they're on the phone, but for a bike they wouldn't even stop.
I also noticed a lot of symptoms like the ones you describe -- you very quickly learn to spot and avoid the cell phone drivers, because they won't respond as quickly as a normal driver.
Maybe there are some people who can do it safely, just like maybe there are some people who can drive well after a few drinks. But you don't get to drive a dangerous machine because "maybe" you're one of the small minority that can do it without impairing your driving.
higher level mathmatics has been difficult to aquire the ability to speak the language
Tell me about it! I'm a computer scientist by trade, but am trying to learn advanced algebraic geometry because of possible applications to theoretical computer science. Two years so far of ever-more-archaic vocabulary training, and no end in sight, and this is on top of a pretty good undergrad math education. (I share your frustration with vocabulary, and often have trouble remembering terms, but my poor memory is presumably of a much more minor and conventional variety than yours...)
But suffice to say that in my own small way I very much share your frustration with "breaking in" to mathematics (though theoretical computer science is "math" in a way, it isn't considered so by a lot of mathematicians, and it is still a much younger and shallower subject than most branches of mathematics, at least so far...)
To completely abandon the original topic, if you ever wanted to email me you'd be welcome to, I'm notlrahcd@gmail.com, but with the username spelled backwards. Maybe it's presumptuous to think I could give helpful advice, but I have been working on math and CS theory for several years now, and I flatter myself that I'm a pretty decent teacher, so if your professors are unhelpful I could probably at least point you in the right direction, or suggest books that are more useful... at least until you get deeper in. But in any case, best of luck with your degree, and more importantly, with your learning :)
The position that since someone is educated knows more than another and thus the other does not need have a voice in the matter is known as elitism.
Partly true -- but there's a difference between saying someone shouldn't have a voice, and saying you won't spend a substantial amount of your own time reading the dozens of unsolicited "proofs" of the millenium problems that most major mathematicians receive. Saying you have a solution to one of these problems is truly an extraordinary claim, and it is reasonable to expect extraordinary evidence, at least in the form of a willingness to spend a lot of effort and time in demonstrating that your approach is serious and rigorous. When your first action is to post your unverified proof on your personal webpage with a description of what you're going to do with the million dollars (and this is how many of the proofs are presented), it's unsurprising when you are not taken seriously.
And as I mentioned in the last comment, there's a big difference between dismissing an amateur's result because you think their opinion is worthless, and dismissing it because it has a serious flaw that is obvious to a real expert in the field.
So to me, all the statement that the wiki shouldn't be started because no one who uses it will be capable of doing anything that the "closed" academic community cannot do, is just biogotry hidden behind snobish superiority.
I'm not sure in what sense you mean the "closed" academic community since most of the research on these problems is publicly available, especially if you have an academic library nearby. If you mean that contributions from outside academic circles are not given much weight, that is perhaps true, but I'd argue that when it takes years of serious effort to even properly understand a field, it's unsurprising when most contributions to the field come from those who have chosen to work in it full-time. Few others (though I certainly wouldn't say none) would even have the time to really keep up with the field. I would be interested if you know of any examples of people who genuinely had a real academic contribution, but had difficulty getting it accepted because they didn't go through the standard academic channels. But at the very least, there are fewer of these cases than are reported in the popular press (it's easy to convince a reporter that the mathematical establishment is just being closed-minded, since the reporter typically can't understand the mathematicians' objections anyway).
Furthermore, the assumption that the community that has not been able to formulate the solution to these problems will, by following the same path, be able to answer these problems by using the same tools that have been used the the past strikes me as absurd.
That assumes the community is following only one path. Any of the millenium problems is much more complicated than a simple boolean "We have solved it" / "We haven't solved it yet" situation. In all of them, many people have made substantial progress in understanding the problems, even though we haven't solved them completely yet, and in some cases we have very good ideas about what obstacles any proofs would need to overcome -- so yes, we will need new tools, but we have some idea about what those tools look like, and there are researchers actively working to develop such tools. Just because we need new tools doesn't mean they must come from ignorance -- they can also come from knowledge.
By your own admission, "these are problems that have consistently resisted "plain old ingenuity,"" and therefore will more than likely require a leap of intuition to solve.
I imagine most of them will require several leaps of intuition, possibly over many years. Every major result requires some leaps of intuition. But every major result in a well-developed field (an example in an undeveloped field would be Galois, who developed an astounding theory at a very young age -- but his insights were not in
The fact is though, that an academic education is by no means a real education at least in the undergraduate levels.
Alright, I understand some of where you're coming from here. This is highly dependent on your particular school and particular professors, but on average, I agree with you. I was lucky enough to have a couple of professors as an undergraduate who were leaders in their field and great teachers, and it is because of them that I am pursuing academics (as you might have suspected, my personal stake in this discussion is that I'm a graduate student).
So you'll have to excuse me if I don't agree that the academics deserve to be placed on a pedistal merely because of the fact that they have put in years to answer the questions in a particular manner.
I agree with this -- however, the fact that there are many mediocre people within any given field does not mean that there are no real experts. It is not enough for someone to have worked in a field for years, they must also have a proven track record of results in order to be considered a real authority. And as you say, authority should not be accepted blindly, but neither should it be ignored merely because you don't understand it yet.
I believe that the true test of your knowledge is in the ability to explain the subject matter in a comprehensible manner to your students and I so far see that as a skill sadly lacking in computer science and mathmatics at the undergrad level.
I disagree with your first statement -- I don't think that explaining to students is the test of knowledge. However, you have hit on one of my pet peeves: I think that the general standard of mathematical exposition right now is terrible. I think that this is reflective of laziness and elitism within the mathematical community. Much of the elaborate mathematical machinery that has developed over the last century is very useful, and has proven itself by yielding important results. But it is taught terribly -- students are given little if any long-term motivation, no larger perspective, and the whole thing is a sort of trial-by-fire or multi-year gauntlet for those who really do want to be mathematicians. I think that this costs the field many students who otherwise have the potential to be excellent mathematicians, but instead grow frustrated and go into other areas.
But, as a counterexample to your first statement: one professor (who shall remain nameless) at my current school is one of the most brilliant people in the field. He has proven this many times, producing some of the most important results in his field for decades running. For those who have the knowledge and mental agility to follow him, he has some extremely elegant and unique perspectives on a lot of problems. But, he is possibly the worst teacher I have ever met. He cannot explain a complicated idea to an undergraduate (or even most graduate students) to save his life. Does this reflect poorly on him? Of course. But does it mean he isn't really an expert? I don't think anyone in the field would argue that. I think his behavior is a symptom of arrogance, but it's just too simplistic to say that the people who are really the best at a particular mathematical discipline will also be the best at explaining it.
If theories are disproven and it is demonstrated why they are incorrect, anyone in the world with an internet connection will be able to learn from what is happening on the wiki and that, my friend, is what education is all about. Given the opportunity to learn, the person that is really interested in learning will be able to.
I think this is partially true. As the Internet keeps spreading, a lot of information and even entire textbooks are available online, and the truly devoted amateur has a much better chance of keeping up with comparatively modern mathematics than at any other time in histo
This is actually the opposite of the real conclusion from most of the negative posts... the claim is not that you can't discover anything new without an education. But we aren't just talking about "something new," we're talking about arguably the most difficult open problems in fields that have received intense scrutiny from very smart, well-educated researchers over the course of decades or centuries. While it might be possible for an amateur with only moderate education to discover "something new" in the fields, these are problems that have consistently resisted "plain old ingenuity," and in some cases (e.g. P vs. NP) there are solid theoretical reasons why. It's just like Fermat's Last Theorem -- somebody finally did solve it, but he was an expert in the field, who was familiar with prior lines of research and the subtleties of the problem that had developed over the centuries. I would argue that no one who does not have a good grounding in advanced number-theoretic developments of the late 20th century will ever find (or understand) a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. With work and training, perhaps they will, but your statement is saying "If I can't produce something at the cutting edge of the field without an education, then I won't be able to with one."
Since I am just now starting college after only 24 years of professional computer experience what right do I have to find any flaws with my instructors. After all some of them have had 4 years of academic computer experience.
You have every right to find flaws with your instructors. But there's a big difference between pointing out errors of your instructor (who is one person and can easily make mistakes, especially when speaking off the top of his head to a classroom) and completely surpassing the efforts of the best mathematicians of the last century, who devoted decades to these same problems, and made major discoveries about them.
To re-work a metaphor I've heard in another context: A group of completely untrained math enthusiasts solving (say) P vs. NP because they have some tremendous natural gift in mathematics is akin to a group of tall, athletic men who have never seen a basketball taking down the top team in the NBA. It just doesn't happen. Yes, maybe they'll score a basket or two, and maybe the untrained math enthusiasts will solve an open problem or two, but the biggest problems in the field? No. There is more to these problems than that.
Wait a sec, I came up with the question therefore I am an expert and since no one else is an expert I must be correct because only experts can solve problems.
I assume this part is tongue in cheek, but to give a real answer anyway: if this had been a real problem, and if you devoted decades of your life exclusively to the problem, consulting with all the top experts worldwide on areas relating to the problem and making major advances in understanding the problem beyond what anyone had done before, then you would be an expert, and your opinion would carry some weight. Experts aren't the only ones who can solve problems, but if anyone was seriously interested in solving that problem, the first thing they ought to do is see what work you've done on it, and what advances you've contributed to the field. It would be ridiculously presumptuous for someone to ignore all you've done and claim to have a solution, when you've already written a number of papers on why their naive approach doesn't work -- yet this is exactly what many of the amateur approaches to the millenium problems do.
The community on the wiki so far seems unwilling to devote time to the real experts, focusing almost exclusively on cranks who claim to already have proofs, and ignoring actual published, peer-reviewed papers that describe all the advances made so far.
Now I've looked at the site more thoroughly, and I don't believe it anymore.
Context: I'm a graduate student in Theoretical Computer Science, so I do know something about P vs. NP and the current obstacles to solving it.
The first information (beyond the basic definitions) that anyone should know if they hope to approach the P vs. NP question is 1. The Baker-Gill-Solovay result that P vs. NP does not relativize and 2. The Razborov-Rudich result that "natural proofs" can't show P != NP. Both of these are fairly technical results, but still explainable to a relatively broad audience. Between the two of them, they rule out every currently known lower bound proof technique as a method of proving P != NP, which means that if we hope to prove P != NP we need some radically new ideas. If someone claims to have a viable approach to proving P != NP, the first (well, maybe second or third) thing any trained theoretician will ask is how the approach works around these two papers, particularly the second. (I went to a talk at Harvard by someone presenting a new approach, and that was in fact one of the major questions he was asked.)
These two results are summed up as two bullet points on the wiki.
Now, on the other side of things, more focused on cranks who give bogus proofs of P vs. NP one way or the other -- the wiki has links to dozens of them, and discussion pages about several of them. One page says, regarding a particular "proof" that P = NP, that it "seems like a very reasonable approach that will require a high level of scrutiny." Here's a hint: No it won't. Studying these claims is a waste of time. I looked at the pdf of the paper in question, and there are about a dozen warning flags that the author is a crank (in addition to the major one that the author publicly claims to have resolved P vs. NP but hasn't gotten any major computer scientists to believe him). These people are a terrible source of "ideas" for resolving P vs. NP, especially when I can't even find links on the wiki to some of the possibly legitimate, peer-reviewed approaches for resolving the question (e.g. the Mulmuley-Sohoni approach via algebraic geometry, or Joel Friedman's ideas about cohomology and topos theory).
Please don't respond saying "Well it's a wiki, you should add that information yourself!" I'll look more at the site and might add some things, but my point is that the site's community as a whole is devoting a lot of time and effort to dead-ends, and none to actual published academic papers. My fixing a few pages or adding information about one or two things is not going to change the direction of the entire site...
As for the wiki, I'm cautiously optimistic. I very much doubt that any new results will come out of it, but if it can eventually give clear expositions of the various problems and their contexts in their various fields, with good references to supplementary reading, it could be a great resource. Being in CS theory, I'm only really familiar with P vs. NP, and I'd love to see where the major efforts in other branches of mathematics are going...
Yes, the argument was about how he should be dealt with, not what was his crime, but there are no circumstances under which the first step of that answer should not be "a fair public trial." Nor should those who receive a fair public trial be the "lucky ones," regardless of the severity of their alleged offense, and regardless of how obvious it may be that they're guilty. If it's obvious that they're guilty, there should be no problem convicting them, and the only reason not to would be 1. The evidence isn't really there (not an issue in the current situation, it seems), 2. The government wants to hold him indefinitely or treat him in some way that they could not do legally via a conviction, or 3. The government doesn't want a public trial for some other reason, which is never okay. There are situations where it is alright for some people (e.g. in the government) to decide the fate of another, but it can never be without accountability.
Probably the lawyer is just pulling a publicity stunt to help his client, sure. But the appalling thing is that his arguments are not easily dismissed. At other (not all, but some) times in our history, this wouldn't even be an issue, but right now the government is pretty open about ignoring civil rights and fair trials and all that, and won't even clearly condemn torture of people who are not even convicted, and some of whom are almost certainly innocent.
I won't go so far as to say the OP didn't care whether the guy was guilty or not, but he came dangerously close to saying he should face the consequences of his alleged actions before his trial. After the trial, go ahead, that's what the law is for, but until then he should not have to worry about whether he will mysteriously vanish and never stand trial...
"Lucky?" Funny... I thought that fundamental human rights were supposed to be accorded to all humans, not just the ones who aren't suspected of being a national security threat... I know it doesn't work that way anymore, but does that mean we should talk about it like somebody shouldn't be tried before being punished? Cause I still think that a fair trial is an ideal worth shooting for...
If he were to get off easy the message will be sent to our enemy...
So, screw whether he's actually guilty, we will punish him severely to make an example of him to our enemies. Or wait, maybe we should just punish people who were actually proven guilty in court, and punish them by law, according to the severity of their crime, rather than to make them an example? You know, treat them like actual human beings instead of messages to the rest of the world about our superiority.
Or, in other terms, "The researchers want to generate hype, so instead of letting a great result stand on its own they have decided to legitimize their ascientific opponents (who will not change their minds anyway) by claiming that their discovery, of all the thousands of fundamental discoveries made in biology, is the one that will shut down this illogical and uninformed ID talking point."
Stop feeding the trolls. If (and this is a big if) ID adherents are convinced that a particular aspect of evolution actually does make sense, they'll just shift to the next gap in our far-from-complete understanding and say that that one is the problem. Talking about real, important discoveries as though their significance is to confirm evolution, rather than explain it, is to play into the hands of IDers and creationists by accepting implicitly that evolution still has holes that need confirmation, and by falsely suggesting that serious biologists are relieved to have this new discovery, since before that they had no answer for the current batch of ID talking points.
There are many holes in our understanding, and many points at which we don't know exactly how certain aspects of evolution work. This does not mean we are uncertain that it works, any more than extremely small oddities in general relativity experiments make us uncertain that gravity works. The precise how we're still nailing down, but no scientist doubts that masses attract each other. Stop letting the other side make this seem like a legitimate scientific conflict, and emphasize what's really important here -- that we have made another step towards explaining the how.
If I read correctly, the settlement easily could have been in that range -- the higher amount was just what they were seeking in court, right? A settlement would invariably be lower, if only because it saves the trouble and expense of following through on the court case. Or maybe it actually mentioned the settlement amount and I just didn't read it carefully enough.
Though I don't know how one puts a realistic price tag on something like this, either way...
Good lord, what is with people that they keep believing this nonsense? Why do extroverted people insist on believing that introverted people are deeply unhappy about their state, and would be able to have a normal happy life if only they could learn to socialize the way all the extroverts do? Why is there this persistent myth that if only we could learn to socialize and act normally, we would be popular and happy, too? Many of us are happy with our lives and our friends, and don't want to live our lives like you. People like different things. Go figure.
To answer your accusation: No, I did not secretly wish anything like that. I wished, and not at all secretly, that the popular kids would leave me the hell alone.
I'm not ordinarily bitter about my experiences back then -- they were terrible at the time, but I'm over them. If I sound bitter, it's a product of these threads, which are reminding me again that people really don't (care to) understand what a lot of kids go through.
In any case, I can function socially these days, and have on the whole recovered from my "awkward stage" -- I'm even comfortable giving talks in front of crowds, something I understand even "normal" people often dislike -- but I am not an extrovert and have no wish to be, and I will never be one of the cool kids. This is fine with me. I wish people would stop thinking that people like me would be happy if only they could fix us.
Perhaps -- it wouldn't bother me as much if people were just complaining about the stupidity of the lawsuit and/or legal system (though I don't feel like it's a wholly black-and-white situation even then). But instead, a disturbing proportion of the posts seem to be saying it's the kid's own fault for making the video, or that he should just get over it and not let this bother him, and he shouldn't be such an insecure nerd... I mean... hello? Slashdot?
A lot of the posts really hit home for me, since they aren't really addressing the lawsuit, just the basic pre-lawsuit situation, and end up completely attacking the kid -- but I remember how I felt when I was that age, how terrified I was of, say, giving a presentation to the rest of the class, or doing anything that involved calling attention to myself. Something like this would have crushed me. (Even now, I can't imagine it would be terribly pleasant.) And when the posts are portraying him as a nerdy whiner who deserves to have the world laugh at him if he can't take a joke... bleh. Gym flashback.
Re-read my post. I said no such thing. I'm sympathizing with him because he went through a terrible experience. I don't think 15 is an age where you can really say "Ah, you're a jerk? Then you deserve to be humiliated before the whole world!" If it were, most of us would have deserved that (or maybe still do).
I also don't care that some other more well-adjusted person might have taken what the other children intended to be a terrible experience and made it into a positive one. That level of maturity is something we should strive for ourselves, rather than using it as a stick with which to beat anyone who does not yet have it. One of the marks of real maturity is patience with those who do not yet have it. Give the kid a break.
These kind of responses remind me of the more popular kids in junior high who would harrass me constantly, and when I finally broke down and showed in some way that they were bothering me, would be like "Geez, what's your problem? Can't you take a joke?"
No, I wasn't always the nicest person at that age (I think most of us weren't, if we're honest), but I don't think that justifies that kind of treatment, and I don't think it's okay to humiliate someone, then blame them for minding.
The lawsuit is BS, okay, maybe. But grow up and stop hounding people who are weaker than you.
Has it never occurred to you that maturity is a process that takes time? A lot of the torture I went through in junior high would be no big deal to me now, because I'm older and more self-confident and have (I hope) matured a lot. But it was still hell, and it doesn't mean it was my own fault that junior high sucked (at least, not entirely my fault).
Will power and confidence is something that a lot of people lack at that age, even if they later develop it. Why does that make it okay to find the people who don't yet have the advantage of maturity and single them out as terrible people?
I'm not advocating lack of responsibility, I'm just saying people could stand to show a little more compassion -- the kid's reaction may be wrong, but he's still gone through hell, and I don't accept "he made the video" as proof that it's his own fault that other people broadcast it to much of the world.
I realize now that I brought bullying upon myself as much as, if not more than, it was brought upon me. The sooner people learn that lesson, the better.
And you really think bullying people more is the way to teach them that lesson?
If I had my way you would not be able to sue someone else for your own emotional problems.
I don't understand why this keeps getting repeated -- I mean, I agree with your statement, but as I understand it he wasn't suing because he was sad, but because those people maliciously broadcast the video he made to the entire world, which certainly led to a lot of emotional problems for him, but the lawsuit is still a result of specific actions on the part of the other people, not just a vague emotion he happened to have.
Again, I don't really agree with the lawsuit, but I don't understand why everyone is so thoroughly unsympathetic about all this...
You know... if you're into that sort of thing...
(Of course, using it just proves that you have something to hide... so maybe you'll get in trouble anyway.)
What the hell? Why are so many of the comments saying things like this? He somehow deserves what happened to him because he wasn't smart enough, wasn't confident enough, didn't take advantage, whatever. Has everyone on this website forgotten what it's like to be a socially inept, outcast 15-year-old? Sure, by and large we've grown out of it, but a lot of us would not have appreciated having something we consider completely humiliating broadcast to the entire world.
You "can't blame someone else because of your personal problems," but what if the problems in question (humiliation in front of a worldwide audience, constant attention from the media and from strangers, drastically increased bullying in school when he was already not the most popular kid around) are in fact a direct result of someone else's actions? Can't you blame them for those actions, especially when they were done maliciously?
Everyone seems to be talking about fame as though it's this wonderful gift. Here's a clue: Not everyone wants it. And not everyone should be forced to want it, just because it's your opinion that he should have seized the opportunity and made a few bucks. Maybe he prefers the lack of fame over any potential profit he could have gotten from it. I know I would hate to be famous. That's not a sour grapes thing, I do have an ego and I would like to be well-respected within my own field, but real fame? Have you seen what the world does to celebrities? It's disgusting, and I'm glad that there's no realistic way that would happen to me.
Should the kid have filed a lawsuit? Maybe not. Personally I would lean towards no. But there's a big gap between "a lawsuit is inappropriate here" and "What's the matter with this kid, he deserves what he got, why is this bullied, insecure 15-year-old acting so insecure and immature? He should just get over it." No doubt he will get over it, but give him a few years -- it took a lot of us that long even without a major roadblock like this.
[END RANT]
Just one nitpick -- I'd like to add "a religious point of view that holds a particular interpretation of a book," since ID / creationism / whatever is very much an American phenomenon, and most Christians worldwide who accept the Bible as true do not have issues with evolution. It's only interpreting the creation story in the Bible as literal science that leads to this conflict, and there was at least some doubt about that interpretation among church leaders thousands of years before Darwin.
The Catholic church is often trotted out as an example here, since the Vatican has basically said that evolution is probably true, but a lot of people don't realize that they seem to have learned their lesson over the Galileo issues -- though the acceptance of evolution is often portrayed as a reversal of stance, the Catholic church never said anything against Darwin or evolution. It was never even an issue, and active Catholics were involved in evolutionary research very early on. The primary conflict here is with the American fundamentalist subculture, and a lot of Christians are just as annoyed at their behavior as the rest of you...
Others have already pointed out that even if you're innocent you won't necessarily be able to get out of the consequences of an attack by the RIAA. I'm more concerned because the consequences here are completely disproportionate to the offense.
There have been societies where the theft of something of relatively small value would be enough to lose the thief one of their hands, or even get them hanged. Being hanged would in that case be a consequence of someone's behavior -- but most of us believe that in a just society the severity of the punishment should be appropriate to the offense, and we no longer believe the death penalty is appropriate in those cases (or perhaps at all, but that's another flame war).
That's the problem with how these cases are being handled: Yes, if you're lucky enough to be one of the people who actually did commit the crime you're accused of, then the results are consequences of your actions. But the consequences demanded by the RIAA are drastically disproportionate to those actions. That's (one of the reasons) why, even though a lot of these people did break the law, they're still getting a lot of popular sympathy, even from people (like me) who disapprove of their actions...