But how are you going to measure the effectiveness of your drugs, if you have nothing to compare them with? We're talking basic scientific principles here. Or do you want to put unproven drugs on the market and just pray that they work?
Nothing. That's how you measure the strength of the placebo effect. The purpose of the placebo control group is to eliminate the placebo effect from the results, but if you want to measure the placebo effect, you want a control group that doesn't get a placebo.
Of course you can also use a different placebo. I believe blue ones are more effective than other colours, for example, and shape, size and number of pills matter too.
The placebo effect is really incredibly fascinating and bizarre. And I haven't even started about the nocebo effect, which is where you get negative side effects.
placebo is a method, not the substance. and it could be ethically applied by a doctor, without extracting money from the patient. grabbing money for inefficient substances and claiming that "it's ok because that's placebo" is unethical, pretty much stealing from those who have a health problem.
There are lots of ethical problems with using placebos as real treatment. One of them is that expensive placebos are actually more effective than cheap or free ones. And is it okay to lie to a patient when it's for their own good? And what if the placebo turns out not to have any effect?
Maybe doctors need acting classes: "Well, there is something that will help, but it's very expensive." "Ah, fortunately it's completely covered by your health insurance."
Oh, a wired article about a know clinical process that they don't understand.
Hint: Placebos are not increasing effectiveness.
Yes they are. Over the past 20 years, placebos have become stronger. It's a complete mystery why this is happening, but it is, and Wired is not remotely the first to report on this.
Looks like you're the one who doesn't understand this.
Why are you so eager for a straw man to attack? You are doing exactly what these people in Estonia want to do: starting early with programming, and yet you still manage to conjure up weird ideas about how surely they must be doing it wrong. Why? Is your argument that they should be starting in Kindergarten? Because that's what you seem to be doing.
More generally, children build self-esteem by doing stuff they can't do yet. If they never get to do stuff, they never build the esteem that maybe they can do this. This is much broader than simply learning a skill. There are people who seem to think it's bad to have 2 or 3 year olds clean up their own stuff (and then by the time they're 10, they complain that they never clean up their stuff). If parents are always there to take everything out of the hands of the child, then the child will learn to rely on the parent to do everything for him, instead of learning to rely on himself.
You object to teaching programming at 6 because it's too early, so you're starting at 3, 4 or 5? That makes no sense.
It looks like you're thinking about giving 6 year olds a university-level introduction to computer science. That'd be like teaching them to read by working through Ulysses with them.
It's much better to make programming fun, and move up slowly as they progress.
There's not just the failed social network, there's also the successful indie RPG Diaspora. And now there's also a BSG game.
It's a cool name, but somehow these things seem to happen in waves. A few years ago, everything seemed to be called "The Gathering Storm". Morphic resonance?
My son? He can recognize most letters and numbers.
But the thing with kids is that they develop faster than you think. If I only consider what he's learning right now, I'll be behind by the time he's ready for the next thing.
I'm a big proponent of teaching programming at school. I'm already happy if they start around 12 (around when I started, and actually got some programming lessons at school), but this is even better!
I'm also looking into ways to teach my son to program at an early age. I wasn't planning on starting at 6, but now I wonder why not.
But why do you need to submit your assignments to the publisher instead of to the professor? And in what world is it considered reasonable that you have to pay extra on top of your tuition in order to be able to submit your assignments for the class that you already paid tuition for?
Most of my profs wrote their own syllabi, which you could buy at low cost at the department's secretariat. Later they moved these to the universities bookstore, which I believe doubled the price. At least.
How can he possibly require that? What happens if you don't? How will he possibly know? Does he seriously want to waste his time micromanaging the note-taking? And how can he possibly fail someone for taking notes in a more suitable way?
There are two things I don't understand about this system:
1. The only truly vital thing you need the access code for is homework submission, right? Why is that the publisher's business? Shouldn't you be submitting your homework to the professor? Perhaps through the university's homework submission system? Charging $20 or $90 for the right to submit your homework is ridiculous. (All the other content can of course be copied from someone else or watched using someone else's account.)
2. Are there no student organizations in the US that buy books in bulk to sell them to students at enormous discounts? That's what we did. It keeps book costs somewhat manageable. And definitely far below the ridiculous prices I see here; I think the most expensive book we had cost f130 new, which would be about $50-$80 depending on exchange rate at the time (the '90s). And that book was an outlier. Most would cost half that.
I think we're talking about the space elevator here, aren't we? So tensile strength is really the only thing that matters. Or do you have some alternative ideas on its construction?
I'm not so sure our moon's origin is the same as those of other moons in the solar system. Our moon was apparently born out of a collision with another planet, which would explain why it's so big. But I hope you're right.
True, that would be awesome. But if I understand correctly, this one is Neptune sized. Does Neptune have large moons? And are even the large Jovian moons big enough to hold on to a breathable atmosphere?
I recently read that Apollo 13 was actually saved by a hippie, and NASA quickly buried that fact, because they only wanted it to appear as if spacecraft were only designed and controlled by clean cut men..
From what I understand, planets around binary stars weren't considered impossible, but for their orbit to be stable, they had to orbit so far away from the binary that they'd always be far outside the Goldilocks zone. But this, with a period of 303 days inside the Goldilocks zone, that's really amazing. Too bad they're gas giants.
Slashdot Mirror
But how are you going to measure the effectiveness of your drugs, if you have nothing to compare them with? We're talking basic scientific principles here. Or do you want to put unproven drugs on the market and just pray that they work?
Nothing. That's how you measure the strength of the placebo effect. The purpose of the placebo control group is to eliminate the placebo effect from the results, but if you want to measure the placebo effect, you want a control group that doesn't get a placebo.
Of course you can also use a different placebo. I believe blue ones are more effective than other colours, for example, and shape, size and number of pills matter too.
The placebo effect is really incredibly fascinating and bizarre. And I haven't even started about the nocebo effect, which is where you get negative side effects.
I've heard a physician claim that paracetamol is practically a placebo. But I don't care. It works for me.
placebo is a method, not the substance. and it could be ethically applied by a doctor, without extracting money from the patient.
grabbing money for inefficient substances and claiming that "it's ok because that's placebo" is unethical, pretty much stealing from those who have a health problem.
There are lots of ethical problems with using placebos as real treatment. One of them is that expensive placebos are actually more effective than cheap or free ones. And is it okay to lie to a patient when it's for their own good? And what if the placebo turns out not to have any effect?
Maybe doctors need acting classes: "Well, there is something that will help, but it's very expensive." "Ah, fortunately it's completely covered by your health insurance."
Oh, a wired article about a know clinical process that they don't understand.
Hint: Placebos are not increasing effectiveness.
Yes they are. Over the past 20 years, placebos have become stronger. It's a complete mystery why this is happening, but it is, and Wired is not remotely the first to report on this.
Looks like you're the one who doesn't understand this.
Even so, he's in the employ of the university, isn't he? How can he justify not accepting assignments that he assigned?
Why are you so eager for a straw man to attack? You are doing exactly what these people in Estonia want to do: starting early with programming, and yet you still manage to conjure up weird ideas about how surely they must be doing it wrong. Why? Is your argument that they should be starting in Kindergarten? Because that's what you seem to be doing.
More generally, children build self-esteem by doing stuff they can't do yet. If they never get to do stuff, they never build the esteem that maybe they can do this. This is much broader than simply learning a skill. There are people who seem to think it's bad to have 2 or 3 year olds clean up their own stuff (and then by the time they're 10, they complain that they never clean up their stuff). If parents are always there to take everything out of the hands of the child, then the child will learn to rely on the parent to do everything for him, instead of learning to rely on himself.
You object to teaching programming at 6 because it's too early, so you're starting at 3, 4 or 5? That makes no sense.
It looks like you're thinking about giving 6 year olds a university-level introduction to computer science. That'd be like teaching them to read by working through Ulysses with them.
It's much better to make programming fun, and move up slowly as they progress.
There's not just the failed social network, there's also the successful indie RPG Diaspora. And now there's also a BSG game.
It's a cool name, but somehow these things seem to happen in waves. A few years ago, everything seemed to be called "The Gathering Storm". Morphic resonance?
My son? He can recognize most letters and numbers.
But the thing with kids is that they develop faster than you think. If I only consider what he's learning right now, I'll be behind by the time he's ready for the next thing.
Well, is that not programming too? Start with simple instructions, and then slowly move up.
I'm a big proponent of teaching programming at school. I'm already happy if they start around 12 (around when I started, and actually got some programming lessons at school), but this is even better!
I'm also looking into ways to teach my son to program at an early age. I wasn't planning on starting at 6, but now I wonder why not.
But why do you need to submit your assignments to the publisher instead of to the professor? And in what world is it considered reasonable that you have to pay extra on top of your tuition in order to be able to submit your assignments for the class that you already paid tuition for?
Most of my profs wrote their own syllabi, which you could buy at low cost at the department's secretariat. Later they moved these to the universities bookstore, which I believe doubled the price. At least.
How can he possibly require that? What happens if you don't? How will he possibly know? Does he seriously want to waste his time micromanaging the note-taking? And how can he possibly fail someone for taking notes in a more suitable way?
There are two things I don't understand about this system:
1. The only truly vital thing you need the access code for is homework submission, right? Why is that the publisher's business? Shouldn't you be submitting your homework to the professor? Perhaps through the university's homework submission system? Charging $20 or $90 for the right to submit your homework is ridiculous. (All the other content can of course be copied from someone else or watched using someone else's account.)
2. Are there no student organizations in the US that buy books in bulk to sell them to students at enormous discounts? That's what we did. It keeps book costs somewhat manageable. And definitely far below the ridiculous prices I see here; I think the most expensive book we had cost f130 new, which would be about $50-$80 depending on exchange rate at the time (the '90s). And that book was an outlier. Most would cost half that.
I think we're talking about the space elevator here, aren't we? So tensile strength is really the only thing that matters. Or do you have some alternative ideas on its construction?
You don't need to cut down trees from this. You can make it out of twigs or old furniture or any other kind of wood left-overs.
You need way more tensile strength for that.
I'm not so sure our moon's origin is the same as those of other moons in the solar system. Our moon was apparently born out of a collision with another planet, which would explain why it's so big. But I hope you're right.
True, that would be awesome. But if I understand correctly, this one is Neptune sized. Does Neptune have large moons? And are even the large Jovian moons big enough to hold on to a breathable atmosphere?
I recently read that Apollo 13 was actually saved by a hippie, and NASA quickly buried that fact, because they only wanted it to appear as if spacecraft were only designed and controlled by clean cut men..
From what I understand, planets around binary stars weren't considered impossible, but for their orbit to be stable, they had to orbit so far away from the binary that they'd always be far outside the Goldilocks zone. But this, with a period of 303 days inside the Goldilocks zone, that's really amazing. Too bad they're gas giants.
It's always good to explain stuff to each other. No reason to keep your spouse in the dark about your hobbies.
I have no idea just what my wife understands about roleplaying (probably more than I suspect), but she knows it's one of my major hobbies.