Of course. The correct phrase would have been
"do animals other than humans have culture?"
Premack asked "can animals
other than humans have language",
and as a result of his research concluded
there's no
clear line between what we call language in
humans and the communication he could demonstrate in other
animals. He found quantitative differences
but didn't figure there was a qualitative
difference. Looks like we may conclude the
same is true of culture, tool use, and so on:
no clear line, quantitative differences but
not qualitative.
However most humans believe there is a clear line.
Researchers know better, but most humans
haven't listed to them. Yet another
example of how little humans have used those
communications skills we're so proud of.
Seriously, I have trouble lifting Wolfram's opus in book form. It outweighs my laptop by over 3 to 1. Kind of stands on its head the old saying
that ebooks won't be popular until you can curl
up on the couch with one. In this case, it would be easier with the ebook.
From what I've read so far, well, I'm reminded
of one critical analysis of those Tao of Physics
books that were so popular 20-30 years ago:
the physics readers knew the physics was
poor but were blown away by the Zen; the
Zen readers knew the Zen wasn't so good but
were impressed by the Physics; very few readers
knew enough of both fields to realize there was
actually little to Zukav and friends. With
Wolfram, seems like a similar interdisciplinary
shuffle of computers, math, and science.
How many of us know enough about all three
fields to say how valid Wolfram's ideas are?
Or for that matter, how much is new.
Scientific simulation
is not new, nor are mathematical models, or
even scientific visualization.
Perhaps this is where people feel he
takes credit for others' ideas?
Well, keep in mind that this is a popular book;
it's not peer-reviewed. In fact it's self-published; there are no standards here.
It's a beautiful book, it's a fun book,
I enjoy reading it, but it's neither more nor
less than one person's ideas.
...is the cars that did the most to create
needless dependence on oil producing countries.
Apparently that definition of "worst" is
off the table at Forbes.
...or the cars that did the most to foul the
air and water in the land they were driven.
You might think that defintion of "worst" was
fair game, but apparently Forbes doesn't.
It's generally observed but until now AFAIK
it hasn't been demonstrated in a controlled
study. There's a big difference between
the two.
For a few dozen centuries, it was "well established" that bleeding a patient was
the best approach for a wide variety of
diseases and complaints. No one felt it
necessary to do a controlled study.
The controls on this study are well done IMO.
The procedure is basically performance
after time delay. The independent variable
is what happens during that time delay.
The design controls for same time delay without
sleep, and sleep without the same exposure
to events before the delay. This helps rule out
the difference resulting from "background
processing" without sleep, or just being better
rested without the problem being introduced.
This kind of study lets you make stronger
statements about sleep specifically helping
problem solving. Statements like "sleep ought
to serve a function because we see so much of it"
aren't particularly strong. We also see a lot
of excretion; that doesn't necessarily imply
it helps problem solving.
My bank loves to pile on charges called
"service fee". When asked, they seldom can
even say what the service was. Why should I
pay a service fee when there's no known
service rendered for the fee? When they can say,
it usually turns out to be a service
essentially undistinguishable from the service
I contracted for when I opened my account,
for example processing checks for a checking
account. Why should I pay twice?
Now when challenged, the fee usually goes away.
I suspect that wouldn't happen if
my balance with them were lower.
No reason to believe my bank is an exception
here (it's a major bank).
So my experience leads me to believe that yes,
banks across the
country are getting away with routinely
imposing nonsense fees on their customers
who don't know they can object or don't
have the power to object. Yes, it wouldn't
be surprising at all if this ran into hundreds
of millions of dollars. And yes, this is
stealth theft.
And yes, as Consumers Union notes, this is also
done by credit card companies, insurance companies, car rental, video rental, phone,
cable, store credit cards,
the list goes on and on. It's a ripoff of
massive proportions stolen a few dollars at a time.
Yawn. Tell you what, instead of a dry academic
debate featuring dictionary defintions, why don't
you do something in the real world: create some
music, record it, and post the bits of your
recording of your own original music into the
public domain -- and
guess what, you've just done file sharing.
You've shared something that's yours to share.
I'll get interested in your opinions on
file sharing as soon as you do some.
Let me know where to find the bits.
I'm getting tired of "sharing" as the term.
It's not an accurate term. Some accurate terms:
theft, and accessory to theft, of intellectual
property: copyrighted recordings.
You can't "share" what isn't yours to share:
what someone else owns.
We may not all of us like it, but the individuals
had no right to distribute copies of copyrighted
recordings, or to facilitate illegal
distribution by others.
We may think jail is excessive for the crime,
but if that's how the law reads in the land
where they broke it, that's the penalty they
face.
And yes, not all of us agree with all aspects of all law
establishing and regulating intellectual property.
But of course if you don't agree, you can lobby
to change the law, you can protest the law,
you can try to convince others the law is wrong
and should be changed.
But that's not what happened here.
These individuals simply broke the law.
I was going to offer a 25 cent bounty on
Microsoft security holes, but then I realized
I can't afford it.
Seriously, the PR design here is quite good:
shift the blame. By putting a bounty on the
bad guys, Microsoft frames the issue as the bad
guys are the problem, and gets the heat off
Microsoft's absymal security. I congratulate
Microsoft's PR talent here. Very slick.
As usual, agents that operate on the cell level
are the sexy news about fighting cancer.
But if I told you I had something that would
not just cure but outright prevent cancer
and specifically the most lethal cancer,
the type that causes 30% of all cancer deaths,
wouldn't you be interested?
It's not sexy, it's not high-tech, it's not
at the cell level, but I have a vaccine for the
most lethal cancer. It's called tobacco prevention. It's proven effective and cost
effective.
Tobacco product causes 30% of all cancer deaths
in America.
The most effective way of fighting those deaths
is not at the cellular level, when the cancer
has already started. The most effective way
is prevention, reducing tobacco consumption
as rapidly and effectively as possible.
This is not sexy, doesn't involve high tech --
and there's nothing high tech cancer cures
have ever delivered that even comes close.
Better yet, think about all the people you know,
and chances are you knew someone who died from
tobacco product. You should. This product
kills 1 out of 5 Americans.
You want to fight cancer? Stop it before it
starts. Learn about
tobacco
.
Learn about the scope and scale of the problem,
the
big picture
Learn about what tobacco product does
to the customer, to those nearest the customer,
to all of us:
Learn how tobacco product is engineered,
marketed, and spread across the globe:
"Herrnstein and Murray's research analyses --
never published in peer-reviewed scientific
journals" (cite)
The appearance
of science and statistical rigor are all over this, but just as last time,
the one thing Murray never does is
is meet the standards of science: publish in
a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
He publishes in the popular press, his own book,
looking oh-so-scientific and rigorous, and
conveniently never subjected to peer review.
Re:Well, since the conclusion of his last book
on
Human Accomplishment
·
· Score: 1
people will readily admit that certain breeds of dogs have undeniable traits...
Such as being born in the state of Maryland.
Well, you will probably find a higher proportion
of Chesapeak Bay Retrievers born there.
Must be in the genes, eh?
Not all traits are heritable. Some are correlated
with heritable traits for other reasons. E.g.
see above. Oldest mistake in the amateur
behavior analyst's repertoire is probably falling
into this confound.
Any such thesis is risky at best, but you might
make a case if you could get agreement on what
your dependent variables are and how you
quantify them, and your subsequent manipulations
respect the limits of your independent variables.
Unfortunately, this attempt is headed by a guy
known for using dependent variables that
are not well agreed on.
We might hope that risky theses are attempted,
to push the limits of what can be known,
to enlighten and inform the debate, if not to
provide definitive answers. No one's against
that. But it's a fact of life that if your
key staff include people known not to be equal
to the task, your conclusions won't be taken
seriously.
In short, Herrnstein and Murray gave up the
right to be taken seriously in this field
when they published their "work" last time.
Perhaps some day a credible proponent of
this thesis will come forward, who can
be taken seriously.
Might want to slow down a little, maybe
zippy development of user interfaces for
medical devices isn't such a great thing,
might even sometimes be
a bad thing
Well specified, straightforward, easy to
get right, user interfaces for medical
devices might be a better idea.
The most interesting thing from the PR: they're
trying to shift the burden of proof.
They frame the issue as if it's everyone else's
burden to show their change was bad. This
is a convenient framing for Verisign, of course.
It implies that when Verisign makes future
changes, it will be everyone else's burden to
prove each change is bad, or by default Verisign
gets to make the change.
It's also baloney. Fact is, it's Verisign's
burden to prove each of its proposed
changes would be good. ICANN
has made that perfectly clear.
So my guess on Verisign's thinking here:
better to lose this battle than the war.
This battle is just Verisign's current little
escapade with its advertiser service.
The war is Verisign's ability to make money
off its position. Hence Versign's framing.
Why this matters: you might figure Versign's
"temporarily" and "in the interests of working
with the community" etc. are just window dressing.
They're not. They're intended to frame the issue
as Verisign has the right to do things like this.
The way I read it, ICANN is saying that for
this and all future changes, Verisign has no
default go-ahead, and must instead first
convince ICANN for each change that it won't
break anything. In short, Verisign changes
are now viewed as guilty until proven innocent.
I have to guess that if Verisign had made a
less blatant, stupid, change, its changes
would still be viewed as innocent until proven
guilty.
Or, "fine, from here on in, mister, you gotta prove to me why you SHOULDN'T have detention"
I agree. If this isn't a clear-cut case of
abuse of their position, I don't know what is.
BTW, if Verisign is trying to defend itself
as "just trying to be helpful", I offer this
rebuttal. I compared Versign's search with ODP's on search
topics with which I'm familiar. Verisign
wasn't even in the same ballpark. The Versign
search results were heavy on their advertisers
and light on content. For helpful, you'd be
better off with someone else's help.
There is no proof that Microsoft had anything to do with this, and I think they didn't. I believe what he said in the article, he was fired
because of the ties @stake has with Msoft,
not because they specifically called @stake
and asked for him to be fired.
Then Msoft had something to do with this.
As did @stake.
Now, do you think this happens because tobacco
executives call the magazines and threaten
them? Not!
Instead, it's just understood, by everyone
who works at the magazine, that you don't
do hard-hitting articles on tobacco as long
as Altria (Philip Morris) is a major advertiser.
If you work at People magazine, for
instance, you soon learn that as long as Altria and
R. J. Reynolds and Brown and Williamson are buying
full page full color ads, your editors won't
be real interested in a lung cancer story.
It's seldom necessary for
your editor to tell you this. You
work for People, you learn that certain
stories aren't encouraged. And it's almost
never necessary for RJR or B&W to say anything
to People. Everyone understands the game.
The tobacco industry almost never has to pull
a few million dollars worth of ads to make its
point. That's because everyone understands
the game.
Now does that mean that Altria and RJR and B&W
have nothing to do with the lack of tobacco
coverage in People? Of course not! It just
means that they very seldom have to show their
hand. But they have everything
to do with it. As does People. Both are
complicit. The former uses its power, and
the latter responds to it.
Both are responsible
for the fact that, for instance, you'd never
know from a People story that more women
are killed every year from lung cancer
than breast cancer.
The tobacco industry is a particularly ugly
example, but there are others. Check out
an eye-opening videofor other examples.
So it's a mistake to say merely because
Msoft didn't make a call and ask for
Geer's firing, that Msoft had nothing with it.
Believe me, if Msoft was indifferent to it,
@stake wouldn't have done it. And that's not
how these things are done anyway. The story
usually gets chilled out from indirect, unspoken,
but very effective pressure. The unusual
thing here is that the story ran at all.
You can't argue that GUI standardization is what
has made so much money for M$ or things so
much easier for its customers. That hasn't happened. The history is otherwise.
For more examples,
I'm reminded of when everyone was going nuts
about 80386 and 68020: it's true 32 bit!
Wow! Fact was, I had been using
32 bit processors for years. They weren't
cheap, but they sure were "mainstream".
As a taxpayer and member of the community, I too
am concerned with underperformance: schools that
are not delivering quality education.
Where is the database I can monitor to provide
me with accurate, timely information to predict
which schools are failing?
My idea was to keep a virtual eye on every
school administrator and identify those at
risk of reducing the quality of education
at the school. I'd like to be able to look
up the measurements of that person's effectiveness from one source and at a glance: test scores,
attendence, discipline, and so on for all
students that he or she is responsible for.
My idea was not to punish low performing
administrators, but identify high-risk ones
so that early intervention can be used.
Slashdot Mirror
Premack asked "can animals other than humans have language", and as a result of his research concluded there's no clear line between what we call language in humans and the communication he could demonstrate in other animals. He found quantitative differences but didn't figure there was a qualitative difference. Looks like we may conclude the same is true of culture, tool use, and so on: no clear line, quantitative differences but not qualitative.
However most humans believe there is a clear line. Researchers know better, but most humans haven't listed to them. Yet another example of how little humans have used those communications skills we're so proud of.
From what I've read so far, well, I'm reminded of one critical analysis of those Tao of Physics books that were so popular 20-30 years ago: the physics readers knew the physics was poor but were blown away by the Zen; the Zen readers knew the Zen wasn't so good but were impressed by the Physics; very few readers knew enough of both fields to realize there was actually little to Zukav and friends. With Wolfram, seems like a similar interdisciplinary shuffle of computers, math, and science. How many of us know enough about all three fields to say how valid Wolfram's ideas are?
Or for that matter, how much is new. Scientific simulation is not new, nor are mathematical models, or even scientific visualization. Perhaps this is where people feel he takes credit for others' ideas?
Well, keep in mind that this is a popular book; it's not peer-reviewed. In fact it's self-published; there are no standards here. It's a beautiful book, it's a fun book, I enjoy reading it, but it's neither more nor less than one person's ideas.
NHTSA data also say that drunk driving accidents kill 17,000 people per year, cause 513,000 injuries per year, and cost $114 billion per year. NHTSA
A $500 gadget that prevents a drunk driver from starting the car would have far better bang for the buck.
For a few dozen centuries, it was "well established" that bleeding a patient was the best approach for a wide variety of diseases and complaints. No one felt it necessary to do a controlled study.
The controls on this study are well done IMO. The procedure is basically performance after time delay. The independent variable is what happens during that time delay. The design controls for same time delay without sleep, and sleep without the same exposure to events before the delay. This helps rule out the difference resulting from "background processing" without sleep, or just being better rested without the problem being introduced.
This kind of study lets you make stronger statements about sleep specifically helping problem solving. Statements like "sleep ought to serve a function because we see so much of it" aren't particularly strong. We also see a lot of excretion; that doesn't necessarily imply it helps problem solving.
Or largest publicly admitted-to databases.
Now when challenged, the fee usually goes away. I suspect that wouldn't happen if my balance with them were lower.
No reason to believe my bank is an exception here (it's a major bank).
So my experience leads me to believe that yes, banks across the country are getting away with routinely imposing nonsense fees on their customers who don't know they can object or don't have the power to object. Yes, it wouldn't be surprising at all if this ran into hundreds of millions of dollars. And yes, this is stealth theft.
And yes, as Consumers Union notes, this is also done by credit card companies, insurance companies, car rental, video rental, phone, cable, store credit cards, the list goes on and on. It's a ripoff of massive proportions stolen a few dollars at a time.
It would be sad and silly if you had to replace all your recordings of music yet again.
It would be a disaster if the music itself were threatened.
I'll get interested in your opinions on file sharing as soon as you do some. Let me know where to find the bits.
You can't "share" what isn't yours to share: what someone else owns.
We may not all of us like it, but the individuals had no right to distribute copies of copyrighted recordings, or to facilitate illegal distribution by others.
We may think jail is excessive for the crime, but if that's how the law reads in the land where they broke it, that's the penalty they face.
And yes, not all of us agree with all aspects of all law establishing and regulating intellectual property.
But of course if you don't agree, you can lobby to change the law, you can protest the law, you can try to convince others the law is wrong and should be changed.
But that's not what happened here. These individuals simply broke the law.
Seriously, the PR design here is quite good: shift the blame. By putting a bounty on the bad guys, Microsoft frames the issue as the bad guys are the problem, and gets the heat off Microsoft's absymal security. I congratulate Microsoft's PR talent here. Very slick.
But if I told you I had something that would not just cure but outright prevent cancer and specifically the most lethal cancer, the type that causes 30% of all cancer deaths, wouldn't you be interested?
It's not sexy, it's not high-tech, it's not at the cell level, but I have a vaccine for the most lethal cancer. It's called tobacco prevention. It's proven effective and cost effective.
Tobacco product causes 30% of all cancer deaths in America.
The most effective way of fighting those deaths is not at the cellular level, when the cancer has already started. The most effective way is prevention, reducing tobacco consumption as rapidly and effectively as possible.
This is not sexy, doesn't involve high tech -- and there's nothing high tech cancer cures have ever delivered that even comes close.
Put yourself in an oncologist's shoes and think about it.
Better yet, think about all the people you know, and chances are you knew someone who died from tobacco product. You should. This product kills 1 out of 5 Americans.
You want to fight cancer? Stop it before it starts. Learn about tobacco .
Learn about the scope and scale of the problem, the big picture
Learn about what tobacco product does to the customer, to those nearest the customer, to all of us:
Learn how tobacco product is engineered, marketed, and spread across the globe:
And, if you decide you do want to do something about this, learn what and who you will be fighting, and how to fight effectively.
It's not sexy, it's not high tech, but it's nothing less than a vaccine for cancer, and it works.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
The appearance of science and statistical rigor are all over this, but just as last time, the one thing Murray never does is is meet the standards of science: publish in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. He publishes in the popular press, his own book, looking oh-so-scientific and rigorous, and conveniently never subjected to peer review.
Such as being born in the state of Maryland.
Well, you will probably find a higher proportion of Chesapeak Bay Retrievers born there. Must be in the genes, eh?
Not all traits are heritable. Some are correlated with heritable traits for other reasons. E.g. see above. Oldest mistake in the amateur behavior analyst's repertoire is probably falling into this confound.
Unfortunately, this attempt is headed by a guy known for using dependent variables that are not well agreed on.
Unfortunately, this guy is also known for then using manipulations that do not respect the limits of his independent variables
That's why Herrnstein and Murray's previous "work" is termed ideology, not science.
We might hope that risky theses are attempted, to push the limits of what can be known, to enlighten and inform the debate, if not to provide definitive answers. No one's against that. But it's a fact of life that if your key staff include people known not to be equal to the task, your conclusions won't be taken seriously.
In short, Herrnstein and Murray gave up the right to be taken seriously in this field when they published their "work" last time. Perhaps some day a credible proponent of this thesis will come forward, who can be taken seriously.
Well specified, straightforward, easy to get right, user interfaces for medical devices might be a better idea.
They frame the issue as if it's everyone else's burden to show their change was bad. This is a convenient framing for Verisign, of course. It implies that when Verisign makes future changes, it will be everyone else's burden to prove each change is bad, or by default Verisign gets to make the change.
It's also baloney. Fact is, it's Verisign's burden to prove each of its proposed changes would be good. ICANN has made that perfectly clear.
So my guess on Verisign's thinking here: better to lose this battle than the war. This battle is just Verisign's current little escapade with its advertiser service. The war is Verisign's ability to make money off its position. Hence Versign's framing.
Why this matters: you might figure Versign's "temporarily" and "in the interests of working with the community" etc. are just window dressing. They're not. They're intended to frame the issue as Verisign has the right to do things like this.
I have to guess that if Verisign had made a less blatant, stupid, change, its changes would still be viewed as innocent until proven guilty.
Or, "fine, from here on in, mister, you gotta prove to me why you SHOULDN'T have detention"
BTW, if Verisign is trying to defend itself as "just trying to be helpful", I offer this rebuttal. I compared Versign's search with ODP's on search topics with which I'm familiar. Verisign wasn't even in the same ballpark. The Versign search results were heavy on their advertisers and light on content. For helpful, you'd be better off with someone else's help.
By way of comparison,
magazines that run cigarette ads tend to do poor coverage of the health effects of cigarettes even though those same magazines do all sorts of coverage on other health questions.
Now, do you think this happens because tobacco executives call the magazines and threaten them? Not!
Instead, it's just understood, by everyone who works at the magazine, that you don't do hard-hitting articles on tobacco as long as Altria (Philip Morris) is a major advertiser.
If you work at People magazine, for instance, you soon learn that as long as Altria and R. J. Reynolds and Brown and Williamson are buying full page full color ads, your editors won't be real interested in a lung cancer story. It's seldom necessary for your editor to tell you this. You work for People, you learn that certain stories aren't encouraged. And it's almost never necessary for RJR or B&W to say anything to People. Everyone understands the game. The tobacco industry almost never has to pull a few million dollars worth of ads to make its point. That's because everyone understands the game.
Now does that mean that Altria and RJR and B&W have nothing to do with the lack of tobacco coverage in People? Of course not! It just means that they very seldom have to show their hand. But they have everything to do with it. As does People. Both are complicit. The former uses its power, and the latter responds to it.
Both are responsible for the fact that, for instance, you'd never know from a People story that more women are killed every year from lung cancer than breast cancer.
The tobacco industry is a particularly ugly example, but there are others. Check out an eye-opening videofor other examples.
So it's a mistake to say merely because Msoft didn't make a call and ask for Geer's firing, that Msoft had nothing with it. Believe me, if Msoft was indifferent to it, @stake wouldn't have done it. And that's not how these things are done anyway. The story usually gets chilled out from indirect, unspoken, but very effective pressure. The unusual thing here is that the story ran at all.
It's all about stealing clicks and eyeballs.
Verisign is just trying to steal them first.
Is it Windows 3? Windows 95? 98? 2000? ME? XP?
You can't argue that GUI standardization is what has made so much money for M$ or things so much easier for its customers. That hasn't happened. The history is otherwise.
For more examples, I'm reminded of when everyone was going nuts about 80386 and 68020: it's true 32 bit! Wow! Fact was, I had been using 32 bit processors for years. They weren't cheap, but they sure were "mainstream".
Ain't nothin' new.
Where is the database I can monitor to provide me with accurate, timely information to predict which schools are failing?
My idea was to keep a virtual eye on every school administrator and identify those at risk of reducing the quality of education at the school. I'd like to be able to look up the measurements of that person's effectiveness from one source and at a glance: test scores, attendence, discipline, and so on for all students that he or she is responsible for.
My idea was not to punish low performing administrators, but identify high-risk ones so that early intervention can be used.