I don't think this is at issue in the thread. What tlambert referred to as "teaching critical thinking" in the top of this thread is, specifically, the teaching of more formal approaches of critical thinking than the natural "raw, primal sate" you refer to. His argument is that imparting these methods gives kids ammunition to question knowledge that they're presented with in school before they have enough foundation, experience, and mental maturity to do it in an effective manner that doesn't end up filtering out more than it should, and thus interfere with their schooling. Whether this worry of the originator of the thread would bear out in practice is not going to be decided in this thread; it can only be determined by experiment.:)
I don't think we know exactly when the right time to teach this is--not without studies. I'm not really taking his side in the argument, either; as I wrote in my response to him, critical thinking teaching should be moved earlier from freshman college to perhaps the last year of high school, for a reason that doesn't require any studies to confirm: that most students would be covered, unlike in college, to which only some will continue.
I think he over-emphasized it, yes. But, given how unreasonable a literal drastic change seems, I just assumed that he was using hyperbole as a rhetorical device. I doubt he believes it's really as sudden as turning on a switch.
I'm not sure this is "stealing" them from their culture. It's equipping them with the ability to make a more rational choice, and I don't think you can really argue against this, regardless of any consideration for the overall effect integrated over population statistics.
"Transmission line" is a technical term narrowly defined in two fields: electrical power distribution, and communications. In the latter, it's a signal-carrying structure (coax, waveguide, etc.) designed to take into account radiative losses and reflections due to the increasingly dominant with higher frequency wave-nature of the signal. Neural impulses are at orders of magnitude lower frequency, so neither fits. I could see you making an analogy with conditioning the signal during its propagation, in the case of saltatory conduction, but it's quite a stretch as the analogy really breaks down when you try to think of what would the myelin sheath and nodes of Ranvier correspond to in an actual transmission line, in functional terms.
The source of disagreement between you and GP seems to be when, exactly, "as soon as kids are able to handle it" is. In reality, I'm not sure how narrow the spread is among students of when the appropriate age is. The standard deviation may be on the order of a couple of years. This is yet another issue where a more individualized approach to education would help--something, unfortunately, currently not available to the masses.
This is an insightful post. I'm persuaded that it's possible to try to teach this too early, before some foundational knowledge has been instilled. But I'm not sure that it's necessary to delay until the first term of a college, especially since everyone would benefit, not just those that end up going to college. I would support a mandatory course in senior high school year, with some of the principles being touched upon in science classes before that.
I think much the same could have (and usually has) been said before any of the major events in the history of progress that have punctuated the status quo of gradual advancement. Just think of first going to the moon, for example. Most such attempts fail, but without trying them, it would likely take much longer to reach such major milestones. Occasionally, dreams can be achieved, and the skeptics turn out wrong. On any individual enterprise, the numbers don't make sense as the expected outcome is too improbable to justify the expense--but only when you look at it from such a narrow point of voew; in the larger context of many attempts at a time, some will succeed, and those occasional successes can make it all worthwhile. Like Browning wrote, "a man's reach should exceed his grasp". Your approach is too utilitarian. I have no doubt that Bezos has considered the cost benefit analysis, and decided to pursue this not because his estimates were wrong, but because he is looking at the larger context despite the high likelihood of failure and low practicality.
Please mod parent post up. Pointing out the significantly deeper complicity and power of the telecom providers in this scandal is a much needed reminder.
I have an AOL address, though I've never been a subscriber of theirs. Are you suggesting one cannot retain their AOL address when cancelling a subscription, even though they let anyone get one for free, just like Gmail/Yahoo/you name it?
If strong AI (in the non-Searle sense) is possible, then machines will program themselves--whether you call it learning or whatever. Over many cycles, there is limited reason to expect that any initial guidelines or constraints put in by the human programmers will persist.
What I really wanted to address is your comment to "learn a blue collar skill, learn the concepts of coding so you can apply as needed to specific tasks, learn a science branch, learn literature". There is too much to learn, put plainly. Knowledge has grown tremendously, while our mental capacity has not. During Newton's time, one could reasonably know all scientific knowledge in the world at the time; these days, specialization within ever more narrow subfields is becoming extreme, to the point where I know a microbiologist specializing in cancer research (my stepfather, actually) who could not make a sense of a microbiology paper in another sub-subfield. Having both breadth and depth is impossible. If we leave the technical aspect of things to machines, we can concentrate on the creative/cultural ones, where we will be ahead for a longer time, and it's not really a competition (i.e., we don't have to worry about the machines obsoleting us in that respect, since they can have their own culture).
I hope you meant ferric oxide pellets. Hydrogen oxide can refer either to water, or to the hydroxide ion, none of which are useful, as breaking the O-H bonds is an endergonic reaction.
Cat hearing is extremely sensitive compared to ours, so I think the bells would be more than uncomfortable for the cat, even if they don't necessarily damage its hearing.
I take issue with the premise that coding should be made fun in the first place. In a world where, within a couple of decades, machines will program themselves, I don't think coding or any other technical (let alone blue collar) field is an appropriate thing to invest in learning--and I say this as a gainfully employed computer "scientist". When I have kids, I would probably discourage them from specializing in such subjects (though general knowledge is another matter). As someone posted on slashdot once, when a civilization gets above the level of mere subsistence, culture is pretty much the entire point of human existence.
The difference between two unique individual humans
You don't even define how difference is measured. Your following sentence only holds water when you're measuring a single point of difference--but that's irrelevant to the topic. Multiple points of difference are highly correlated, and clusters DO show very clear separation in multidimensional space of differences that dwarfs intra-gender variations. You should have actually read the post I linked to. Edwards' paper completely destroys your statistical argument. "Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy". BioEssays 25 (8): 798–801. Full PDF at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.174.698&rep=rep1&type=pdf
This idea is disproved by the same argument that was applied to discredit the idea that genetic variation between individuals of a population group with close genealogy (i.e. a human race) is greater than variation between groups. Edwards showed that, while allele variations on any given genetic locus are greater within a racial group than among groups, these variations are correlated and it only takes several loci taken together to form clear clustering. See Edwards, A. W. F. (2003). "Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy". BioEssays 25 (8): 798â"801. If you do this cluster analysis on the differences between the human sexes, you'll get analogous results. What you say is technically true only when you pick one or very few dimensions on which to compare, which is incredibly misleading, as taking more than a few together makes sexual dimorphism as clear as night and day--even when restricted to only the scope of neurology and ignoring any other physiological differences.
The study does NOT support Lysenkoism (which itself is a rip-off of the older Lamarckism, though the slashdotting Russophiles don't like to admit precedence to a Frenchman even in regards to the fraudulent pseudoscience derivative they promulgate) See http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4510525&cid=45578265 for why the study does not support what you claim it does.
Wrong! The study does NOT support Lysenkoism (which itself is a rip-off of the older Lamarckism, though the damned Russophiles don't like to admit precedence to a Frenchman even in regards to the fraudulent pseudoscience derivative they promulgate) See http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4510525&cid=45578265 for why the study does not support what you claim it does.
> What you *can* do is show multiple studies that were looking for harm and could not meaningfully find any.
Actually, no, you can't. As Popper showed 50 years ago, it is wrong to consider corroboration as a reason, a justification for believing in a theory or as an argument in favor of a theory to convince someone who objects to it.
See, for example,
Karl Popper (1963). Conjectures and Refutations. p.53. ISBN0-06-131376-9.
"Induction, i.e. inference based on many observations, is a myth. It is neither a psychological fact, nor a fact of ordinary life, nor one of scientific procedure."
Though Popper's critical rationalism may seem extreme in its rejection of induction and the embrace of only falsifiability and nothing else, all critical attacks against it have failed over the decades, including posthumously to Popper, and despite near-heroic attempts by Elby etc.
He's been putting his name in everything he produced after Mathematica. Actually, it looks like now even that's become "Wolfram Mathematica", according to the website.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think this is at issue in the thread. What tlambert referred to as "teaching critical thinking" in the top of this thread is, specifically, the teaching of more formal approaches of critical thinking than the natural "raw, primal sate" you refer to. His argument is that imparting these methods gives kids ammunition to question knowledge that they're presented with in school before they have enough foundation, experience, and mental maturity to do it in an effective manner that doesn't end up filtering out more than it should, and thus interfere with their schooling. Whether this worry of the originator of the thread would bear out in practice is not going to be decided in this thread; it can only be determined by experiment. :)
I don't think we know exactly when the right time to teach this is--not without studies. I'm not really taking his side in the argument, either; as I wrote in my response to him, critical thinking teaching should be moved earlier from freshman college to perhaps the last year of high school, for a reason that doesn't require any studies to confirm: that most students would be covered, unlike in college, to which only some will continue.
I think he over-emphasized it, yes. But, given how unreasonable a literal drastic change seems, I just assumed that he was using hyperbole as a rhetorical device. I doubt he believes it's really as sudden as turning on a switch.
I'm not sure this is "stealing" them from their culture. It's equipping them with the ability to make a more rational choice, and I don't think you can really argue against this, regardless of any consideration for the overall effect integrated over population statistics.
"Transmission line" is a technical term narrowly defined in two fields: electrical power distribution, and communications. In the latter, it's a signal-carrying structure (coax, waveguide, etc.) designed to take into account radiative losses and reflections due to the increasingly dominant with higher frequency wave-nature of the signal. Neural impulses are at orders of magnitude lower frequency, so neither fits. I could see you making an analogy with conditioning the signal during its propagation, in the case of saltatory conduction, but it's quite a stretch as the analogy really breaks down when you try to think of what would the myelin sheath and nodes of Ranvier correspond to in an actual transmission line, in functional terms.
Funny--while you reject the first term of the phrase "computer science", I object to the second.
The source of disagreement between you and GP seems to be when, exactly, "as soon as kids are able to handle it" is. In reality, I'm not sure how narrow the spread is among students of when the appropriate age is. The standard deviation may be on the order of a couple of years. This is yet another issue where a more individualized approach to education would help--something, unfortunately, currently not available to the masses.
This is an insightful post. I'm persuaded that it's possible to try to teach this too early, before some foundational knowledge has been instilled. But I'm not sure that it's necessary to delay until the first term of a college, especially since everyone would benefit, not just those that end up going to college. I would support a mandatory course in senior high school year, with some of the principles being touched upon in science classes before that.
I think much the same could have (and usually has) been said before any of the major events in the history of progress that have punctuated the status quo of gradual advancement. Just think of first going to the moon, for example. Most such attempts fail, but without trying them, it would likely take much longer to reach such major milestones. Occasionally, dreams can be achieved, and the skeptics turn out wrong. On any individual enterprise, the numbers don't make sense as the expected outcome is too improbable to justify the expense--but only when you look at it from such a narrow point of voew; in the larger context of many attempts at a time, some will succeed, and those occasional successes can make it all worthwhile. Like Browning wrote, "a man's reach should exceed his grasp". Your approach is too utilitarian. I have no doubt that Bezos has considered the cost benefit analysis, and decided to pursue this not because his estimates were wrong, but because he is looking at the larger context despite the high likelihood of failure and low practicality.
Please mod parent post up. Pointing out the significantly deeper complicity and power of the telecom providers in this scandal is a much needed reminder.
I have an AOL address, though I've never been a subscriber of theirs. Are you suggesting one cannot retain their AOL address when cancelling a subscription, even though they let anyone get one for free, just like Gmail/Yahoo/you name it?
If strong AI (in the non-Searle sense) is possible, then machines will program themselves--whether you call it learning or whatever. Over many cycles, there is limited reason to expect that any initial guidelines or constraints put in by the human programmers will persist.
What I really wanted to address is your comment to "learn a blue collar skill, learn the concepts of coding so you can apply as needed to specific tasks, learn a science branch, learn literature". There is too much to learn, put plainly. Knowledge has grown tremendously, while our mental capacity has not. During Newton's time, one could reasonably know all scientific knowledge in the world at the time; these days, specialization within ever more narrow subfields is becoming extreme, to the point where I know a microbiologist specializing in cancer research (my stepfather, actually) who could not make a sense of a microbiology paper in another sub-subfield. Having both breadth and depth is impossible. If we leave the technical aspect of things to machines, we can concentrate on the creative/cultural ones, where we will be ahead for a longer time, and it's not really a competition (i.e., we don't have to worry about the machines obsoleting us in that respect, since they can have their own culture).
One recent solution, posted not much above you: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4531753&cid=45634657
Another one, that's actually been around for quite a while, vitrification (i.e. glassification): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022311513010313
And yet another one, that Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed some years ago: http://web.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-2/text/radside1.html
There's no dearth of solutions. The issue is one of political will and public relations.
I hope you meant ferric oxide pellets. Hydrogen oxide can refer either to water, or to the hydroxide ion, none of which are useful, as breaking the O-H bonds is an endergonic reaction.
Cat hearing is extremely sensitive compared to ours, so I think the bells would be more than uncomfortable for the cat, even if they don't necessarily damage its hearing.
I take issue with the premise that coding should be made fun in the first place. In a world where, within a couple of decades, machines will program themselves, I don't think coding or any other technical (let alone blue collar) field is an appropriate thing to invest in learning--and I say this as a gainfully employed computer "scientist". When I have kids, I would probably discourage them from specializing in such subjects (though general knowledge is another matter). As someone posted on slashdot once, when a civilization gets above the level of mere subsistence, culture is pretty much the entire point of human existence.
No, it's not. *Your* argument is the incoherent one--and is refuted in http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.174.698&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Your statement is incorrect.
The difference between two unique individual humans
You don't even define how difference is measured. Your following sentence only holds water when you're measuring a single point of difference--but that's irrelevant to the topic. Multiple points of difference are highly correlated, and clusters DO show very clear separation in multidimensional space of differences that dwarfs intra-gender variations. You should have actually read the post I linked to. Edwards' paper completely destroys your statistical argument. "Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy". BioEssays 25 (8): 798–801. Full PDF at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.174.698&rep=rep1&type=pdf
As another poster already pointed out, this is incorrect. Also see my response to a post similar to yours here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4514745&cid=45589679
This idea is disproved by the same argument that was applied to discredit the idea that genetic variation between individuals of a population group with close genealogy (i.e. a human race) is greater than variation between groups. Edwards showed that, while allele variations on any given genetic locus are greater within a racial group than among groups, these variations are correlated and it only takes several loci taken together to form clear clustering. See Edwards, A. W. F. (2003). "Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy". BioEssays 25 (8): 798â"801. If you do this cluster analysis on the differences between the human sexes, you'll get analogous results. What you say is technically true only when you pick one or very few dimensions on which to compare, which is incredibly misleading, as taking more than a few together makes sexual dimorphism as clear as night and day--even when restricted to only the scope of neurology and ignoring any other physiological differences.
The study does NOT support Lysenkoism (which itself is a rip-off of the older Lamarckism, though the slashdotting Russophiles don't like to admit precedence to a Frenchman even in regards to the fraudulent pseudoscience derivative they promulgate) See http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4510525&cid=45578265 for why the study does not support what you claim it does.
Wrong! The study does NOT support Lysenkoism (which itself is a rip-off of the older Lamarckism, though the damned Russophiles don't like to admit precedence to a Frenchman even in regards to the fraudulent pseudoscience derivative they promulgate) See http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4510525&cid=45578265 for why the study does not support what you claim it does.
> What you *can* do is show multiple studies that were looking for harm and could not meaningfully find any.
Actually, no, you can't. As Popper showed 50 years ago, it is wrong to consider corroboration as a reason, a justification for believing in a theory or as an argument in favor of a theory to convince someone who objects to it.
See, for example,
Karl Popper (1963). Conjectures and Refutations. p.53. ISBN0-06-131376-9.
"Induction, i.e. inference based on many observations, is a myth. It is neither a psychological fact, nor a fact of ordinary life, nor one of scientific procedure."
Though Popper's critical rationalism may seem extreme in its rejection of induction and the embrace of only falsifiability and nothing else, all critical attacks against it have failed over the decades, including posthumously to Popper, and despite near-heroic attempts by Elby etc.
He's been putting his name in everything he produced after Mathematica. Actually, it looks like now even that's become "Wolfram Mathematica", according to the website.
Titus Groan? I see someone else on /. has been reading Gormenghast. :D
(Prune: short for Prunesquallor)