Mathematics is often pictured as a very isolated practice -- a person sitting alone at a desk. But it's surprisingly social, and while there is a fair amount of desk time, there's a lot of interpersonal relationships (as you put it) in the actual doing of math. Asking questions, explaining your results, mentoring students, even teaching classes -- a lot of math involves other people.
I think you kind of illustrate the point GP was making. All of the examples you talk about interacting with people seem really to be side effects of doing math. GP mentions a black and white world where everything is reduced to equations, and everything is right or wrong. Do "Asking questions, explaining your results, mentoring students, even teaching classes" really get outside of that? Is it not always geared towards the math, the truth and falsehood?
How often do you interact with people on most people would call a purely human level -- not doing math, not making judgements about truth claims, not reducing to equations or laws -- but sharing stories and talking about their emotions?
I'm not saying that talking about emotions is "better" than doing math, but the thrust of the 'sociality' amongst mathematicians as you describe it doesn't sound primarily social. It's like saying work is social -- it has social aspects to it, because it's a group of human beings, but the bottom line is that it's work.
Conspiracy theorists are NEVER disappointed... If they find NO evidence, that is proof that the conspiracy runs even deeper than suspected.
But there's another thing at work here, and probably the most important and successful conspiracy working today - and that is the conspiracy to discredit conspiracy theorists.
I see what you're saying -- you didn't explicitly say that it was. But the format of the argument you're making is one where the message is "people are refusing to take responsibility for their actions, and instead blame someone/thing else". If you're wondering why you got two responses "correcting" you, that's why.
That's the way most people see the world. It avoids having to take responsibility.
Okay, now you just blew it up.
In order to take responsibility for something, don't you generality have to have done something that would warrant taking of responsibility? They would rather blame genetics than "take responsibility." What exactly are they taking responsibility for? Does that just mean "accepting reality for what is?" to you? Because I think the normal definition is that one takes responsibility for their actions and the results of those actions.
MySQL's wins tend to be based on good marketing for a bad product.
What marketing have they done, really? I thought what made it popular was its easy integration with PHP, its easy accessibility ( it didn't have all those pesky data integrity features that keeps newbies out of real databases ), the explosion of the web and web applications, and its ease of administration ( no pre-2000 tech boom ISP would want to hire a real DBA to administrate their PostgreSQL for $10.99/mo. webhosting ) .
If there was no MySQL, it would be SQLite or something at that more primitive level, not PostgreSQL.
We're hearing the account of Cory Doctorow -- who in his novel "Little Brother" had an obvious axe to grind against Homeland Security and law enforcement, to the point of suggesting "9/11 was an inside job".
Yeah, because characters of a novel are simply carboard cut-outs that espouse the author's personal views, and they all agree with one another. They never complex creations that come into conflict with other characters, or even have conflicts of their own, leading to drama and a good story. </sarcasm>
Throwing your arms over your face or curling up in response to being kicked or punched are autonomic responses and cannot really be consciously controlled. That's really what too many of these 'assaulting an officer' charges amount to.
I'm certain that people believe it when a spacecraft launches, or their new TV is even thinner.
They didn't believe it when they were riding in canoes for the past 10,000 years, or walking around in multi-floor buildings for the past 5,000 years. Why would they believe it now?
For the most part, people can go about their lives with very little, or even fuzzy ambiguous understandings of the science. I can hook up a computer network, but I certainly don't believe any of the science -- I've seen the equations of electromagnetism and information theory, and I don't understand them one whit! I certainly can't believe something I don't understand, now can I?
1. "Trick" is frequently used in scientific context to mean "clever method" or "correction".
Are you aware that the first five pages of results from the google scholar search that you link shows authors whose last names are "Trick"? Every single one of them.
Finally, nothing at all precluded the adoption of VLANs or similar wire-sharing technology that could segregate telephony (for example) and allow re-use of address space.
Wouldn't that require the sale of new routers, or at least billing countless man-hours of Cisco consultants?
Yes, the scientific way to silence an idiot is to ask him lots of hard questions, and let him keep the floor as long as he's able. When he can't answer those questions to the audience's satisfaction, then it's time to deliver your own answers
This is exactly why science is failing to grab the popular mind. If you do this, all you are doing is giving a smooth-talking fool all he needs to convince an audience who isn't smart enough or doesn't have enough background to know better. This is exactly what George Monbiot is talking about:
Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away
I was beating my head against the wall a couple years back trying to get a job, only to find out that one of my references who told me he would give me a reference, wasn't actually allowed to give them out. I asked every recruiter I had contacted until I found out which reference was screwing me out of work.
Or you can just have a buddy call your references and let you know what they said. That's what I do.
Basically, if scientist want their ideas to be respected in the public, they have to learn the art of PR. We're in the information age now; there's no way around it and no more hiding.
I agree with you -- although 'retarded' had a valid medical meaning once upon a time, in common usage it's an insult. BTW, I specifically avoided using the word 'retarded' in favor of 'impairment'. I don't think there's anything 'wrong' or 'bad' about people on the autism spectrum, but I think, on account of their asperger's/autism ( which puts them in a class of people) they share certain specific challenges in their life, which makes their lives more difficult than for people who are not on the spectrum. I don't think it's insulting to phrase that as an impairment -- just as my poor eyesight is a ( minor ) impairment -- but I'm open to changing my mind;)
Oh, and off topic: I don't think Pablo Picasso ever had the privilege of working with computers. I do, and computers (at least when coupled with average users) tend to give me far more problems and hard questions than they do answers. =P
Yes, but it was your human mind that percieved the problems/questions, not the computer!:P
One little data point for you: I have Asperger Syndrome, and an IQ of 148.
Hey, I've been diagnosed borderline Aspergers (another shrink disagreed), and my IQ was 130 when it was measured in the 3rd grade. I have feelings too; I'm sorry if I've hurt you, but are you saying that you've never felt impaired at school, work, or parties because of poor social skills? In other words, you've never felt impaired socially, even though you excelled in other realms? I sure as hell have, and I don't even really have Aspergers!
So yeah, you can go through the world as a wounded geek, or you can learn to better coping and emotional skills and not go around thinking that anybody who has an opinion different from yours is attacking you, or doesn't understand you at any level.
If the average functioning human mind can read emotional states of other people, can look at other people in the eye and carry on a "normal" conversation, isn't a person who can't somehow "impaired" compared to one who can? I'm not saying that they're bad or anything else like that, I'm just saying they have some specific cognitive impairments compared to an "average" person.
For instance, I knew some people with Down's syndrome in my public school system. They were the greatest people -- warm, caring, friendly, sincere -- but when it came to things like reading and math, well, you know the story.
Yes, I'm aware that Down's syndrome is a well-described, well-defined disease with specific genetic causes, and autism is poorly understood. All I'm saying is that autistic people, while having a good mind for facts and that sorts of things, have a poor mind for social interaction, which is kind of important. So I would argue that is it a kind of impairment.
Everything for an autism person MUST be concrete. I can see why this would lead to success in programming, but they would fail at many other professions.
... and I could see why this would fail...? Programming is some of the most abstract work out there. If it isn't abstract, then what is?
As a man, I will never have the choice to be a stay-at-home dad. Assuming I make enough money though, it wouldn't be socially acceptable for me to refuse my future wife the choice of quitting her job to be a full time mom...
I know a guy who is a stay-at-home dad. His wife runs a business.
Perhaps you're mixing up people of different ideologies into conglomo-homogenous person who thereby has contradictory beliefs?
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Slashdot Mirror
Mathematics is often pictured as a very isolated practice -- a person sitting alone at a desk. But it's surprisingly social, and while there is a fair amount of desk time, there's a lot of interpersonal relationships (as you put it) in the actual doing of math. Asking questions, explaining your results, mentoring students, even teaching classes -- a lot of math involves other people.
I think you kind of illustrate the point GP was making. All of the examples you talk about interacting with people seem really to be side effects of doing math. GP mentions a black and white world where everything is reduced to equations, and everything is right or wrong. Do "Asking questions, explaining your results, mentoring students, even teaching classes" really get outside of that? Is it not always geared towards the math, the truth and falsehood?
How often do you interact with people on most people would call a purely human level -- not doing math, not making judgements about truth claims, not reducing to equations or laws -- but sharing stories and talking about their emotions?
I'm not saying that talking about emotions is "better" than doing math, but the thrust of the 'sociality' amongst mathematicians as you describe it doesn't sound primarily social. It's like saying work is social -- it has social aspects to it, because it's a group of human beings, but the bottom line is that it's work.
Here's an idea: buy a bunch and re-sell specific configurations.
Conspiracy theorists are NEVER disappointed... If they find NO evidence, that is proof that the conspiracy runs even deeper than suspected.
But there's another thing at work here, and probably the most important and successful conspiracy working today - and that is the conspiracy to discredit conspiracy theorists.
Man... it goes even deeper than I thought!
I never claimed it was.
I see what you're saying -- you didn't explicitly say that it was. But the format of the argument you're making is one where the message is "people are refusing to take responsibility for their actions, and instead blame someone/thing else". If you're wondering why you got two responses "correcting" you, that's why.
That's the way most people see the world. It avoids having to take responsibility.
Okay, now you just blew it up.
In order to take responsibility for something, don't you generality have to have done something that would warrant taking of responsibility? They would rather blame genetics than "take responsibility." What exactly are they taking responsibility for? Does that just mean "accepting reality for what is?" to you? Because I think the normal definition is that one takes responsibility for their actions and the results of those actions.
Child has autism = not my fault, it's the vaccines
Wait a minute. Autism is not the result of parenting.
Why do you frame this in the need to blame someone, anyway?
MySQL's wins tend to be based on good marketing for a bad product.
What marketing have they done, really? I thought what made it popular was its easy integration with PHP, its easy accessibility ( it didn't have all those pesky data integrity features that keeps newbies out of real databases ), the explosion of the web and web applications, and its ease of administration ( no pre-2000 tech boom ISP would want to hire a real DBA to administrate their PostgreSQL for $10.99/mo. webhosting ) .
If there was no MySQL, it would be SQLite or something at that more primitive level, not PostgreSQL.
We're hearing the account of Cory Doctorow -- who in his novel "Little Brother" had an obvious axe to grind against Homeland Security and law enforcement, to the point of suggesting "9/11 was an inside job".
Yeah, because characters of a novel are simply carboard cut-outs that espouse the author's personal views, and they all agree with one another. They never complex creations that come into conflict with other characters, or even have conflicts of their own, leading to drama and a good story. </sarcasm>
Defend yourself in court, not on the scene.
Throwing your arms over your face or curling up in response to being kicked or punched are autonomic responses and cannot really be consciously controlled. That's really what too many of these 'assaulting an officer' charges amount to.
WTC towers collapsed because of structural damage compounded by extreme temperatures?
Okay. Why did building 7 collapse?
Since I'm pretty sure you don't have an LHC in your backyard or your own temperature satellite in orbit,
Gee, if only we could get the raw data so that we could run our own-- oh wait a minute...
I'm certain that people believe it when a spacecraft launches, or their new TV is even thinner.
They didn't believe it when they were riding in canoes for the past 10,000 years, or walking around in multi-floor buildings for the past 5,000 years. Why would they believe it now?
For the most part, people can go about their lives with very little, or even fuzzy ambiguous understandings of the science. I can hook up a computer network, but I certainly don't believe any of the science -- I've seen the equations of electromagnetism and information theory, and I don't understand them one whit! I certainly can't believe something I don't understand, now can I?
You might enjoy this editorial: Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away
1. "Trick" is frequently used in scientific context to mean "clever method" or "correction".
Are you aware that the first five pages of results from the google scholar search that you link shows authors whose last names are "Trick"? Every single one of them.
Your link is not evidence of your supposition.
This whole "scandal" is blown out of proportion and based on smoke and mirrors.
It is based on smoke and mirrors, but it's certainly not blown out of proportions. George Monbiot addresses this point succinctly: Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away
Finally, nothing at all precluded the adoption of VLANs or similar wire-sharing technology that could segregate telephony (for example) and allow re-use of address space.
Wouldn't that require the sale of new routers, or at least billing countless man-hours of Cisco consultants?
Scientists are like sharks and lame hypotheses are blood in the water.
It seems like the claim she's making is that scientists are like sheep to a strong, but wrong, theory.
Yes, the scientific way to silence an idiot is to ask him lots of hard questions, and let him keep the floor as long as he's able. When he can't answer those questions to the audience's satisfaction, then it's time to deliver your own answers
This is exactly why science is failing to grab the popular mind. If you do this, all you are doing is giving a smooth-talking fool all he needs to convince an audience who isn't smart enough or doesn't have enough background to know better. This is exactly what George Monbiot is talking about: Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away
I was beating my head against the wall a couple years back trying to get a job, only to find out that one of my references who told me he would give me a reference, wasn't actually allowed to give them out. I asked every recruiter I had contacted until I found out which reference was screwing me out of work.
Or you can just have a buddy call your references and let you know what they said. That's what I do.
George Monbiot has an incredible editorial on this:
Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away
Basically, if scientist want their ideas to be respected in the public, they have to learn the art of PR. We're in the information age now; there's no way around it and no more hiding.
I agree with you -- although 'retarded' had a valid medical meaning once upon a time, in common usage it's an insult. BTW, I specifically avoided using the word 'retarded' in favor of 'impairment'. I don't think there's anything 'wrong' or 'bad' about people on the autism spectrum, but I think, on account of their asperger's/autism ( which puts them in a class of people) they share certain specific challenges in their life, which makes their lives more difficult than for people who are not on the spectrum. I don't think it's insulting to phrase that as an impairment -- just as my poor eyesight is a ( minor ) impairment -- but I'm open to changing my mind ;)
Oh, and off topic: I don't think Pablo Picasso ever had the privilege of working with computers. I do, and computers (at least when coupled with average users) tend to give me far more problems and hard questions than they do answers. =P
Yes, but it was your human mind that percieved the problems/questions, not the computer! :P
One little data point for you: I have Asperger Syndrome, and an IQ of 148.
Hey, I've been diagnosed borderline Aspergers (another shrink disagreed), and my IQ was 130 when it was measured in the 3rd grade. I have feelings too; I'm sorry if I've hurt you, but are you saying that you've never felt impaired at school, work, or parties because of poor social skills? In other words, you've never felt impaired socially, even though you excelled in other realms? I sure as hell have, and I don't even really have Aspergers!
So yeah, you can go through the world as a wounded geek, or you can learn to better coping and emotional skills and not go around thinking that anybody who has an opinion different from yours is attacking you, or doesn't understand you at any level.
Well, how do you define retardation?
If the average functioning human mind can read emotional states of other people, can look at other people in the eye and carry on a "normal" conversation, isn't a person who can't somehow "impaired" compared to one who can? I'm not saying that they're bad or anything else like that, I'm just saying they have some specific cognitive impairments compared to an "average" person.
For instance, I knew some people with Down's syndrome in my public school system. They were the greatest people -- warm, caring, friendly, sincere -- but when it came to things like reading and math, well, you know the story.
Yes, I'm aware that Down's syndrome is a well-described, well-defined disease with specific genetic causes, and autism is poorly understood. All I'm saying is that autistic people, while having a good mind for facts and that sorts of things, have a poor mind for social interaction, which is kind of important. So I would argue that is it a kind of impairment.
Everything for an autism person MUST be concrete. I can see why this would lead to success in programming, but they would fail at many other professions.
... and I could see why this would fail...? Programming is some of the most abstract work out there. If it isn't abstract, then what is?
As a man, I will never have the choice to be a stay-at-home dad. Assuming I make enough money though, it wouldn't be socially acceptable for me to refuse my future wife the choice of quitting her job to be a full time mom...
I know a guy who is a stay-at-home dad. His wife runs a business.
Perhaps you're mixing up people of different ideologies into conglomo-homogenous person who thereby has contradictory beliefs?
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)