What? You did hear from various women that they would have liked to pick CS but were driven off by sexism? Wow.
Nope, I actually haven't heard anything about sexism, usually if women do say anything it is either due to the nature of the work itself ("all jobs are high stress and require lots of overtime") or based upon their perception of programmers from the media ("geeks and nerds") or negative impressions that they picked up from computer science courses in high school ("boring"). It's hard to scare people off due to sexism when they haven't actually been exposed to an office environment yet. Remember, most people going through computer science programs in college are fresh out of high school and generally don't have any "real" work experience.,
Blame? really? Last time I checked, people have a free choice as to what field they want to work/study in. If women choose not to do CS then its entirely their choice. No one is to blame.
Spoken like the ignorant white middle class male you most likely are. Last time you checked? That would be never, you're not paying any fucking attention.
I've heard the same thing at the office from various women, you aren't going to attract quality workers to a field by overselling it or forcing them into it. While people tend to agree that the IT fields in have an overall image problem, it's also not something that is going to change over night either as cultural changes require time. Furthermore, most women who are still college, that I have talked to also indicate they aren't exactly too interesting in working in a high stress field with the perception of mandatory overtime. Needless to say they are generally aren't interested in medical fields for the same reason.
Because those are for the most part low-status, low-paying servant style jobs.
I know a number of nurses and healthcare workers who would love to argue that point with you. But since we are looking at the bulk of the list as opposed to piecemeal, if you really look at that list, they are all jobs with fixed schedules and generally don't require overtime or place unexpected demands upon workers. In contrast, if you look at the lists of fields that are dominated by men (my apologizes for the horrible link, but it is the second hit on Google, most of the other links seem to be about men going into fields that are traditionally dominated by women, or about women breaking into men's fields as opposed to a strict listing) you will note they tend to be higher stress, more physically demanding, or have unpredictable schedules which most women seem to avoid.
How do you know our brains aren't simply super-massively parallel pattern matching machines? All human learning is achieved through the feedback loop of try something, observe the results (positive / negative), adjust, and try again. Everything from learning to walk to mastering a musical instrument works very similarly to this.
Since you posted AC I'm not sure if you are actually following this tread, but that is a bit of a gross exaggeration as there are a number of intuitive leaps recorded throughout human history. Off the top of my head Nikola Tesla likely made a number of these and reading his biographies you note that he visualized most devices before constructing them where on they worked as expected, in his earlier years at least. Brute force processes wouldn't necessarily lead to this.
I guess it depends upon the person you are talking about.
In all seriousness though, the human brain is still very much a black box, depending upon what area you are focusing on. Some of the processes are more or less scripted in some way (i.e. keep the heart beating) where as others have a large question mark next to them for how they might work (i.e. the creative process of artists).
The problem is that most states (and countries for that matter) aren't exactly in a rush to provide some sort of licensing process for software engineers either. IEEE has been working on a Principles and Practices Exam but until the state boards actually update their procedures to recognize software engineers and mandate some sort of license for critical systems development it is unlikely to gain much traction.
It's also a good location to do special ops training which you can tease out from the presentation that was listed. Furthermore, the presentation also indicates that RQ-11 Raven and Wasp III drones are what are operated. These are small "backpack" drones that are used for scouting which would make sense if they are being used for special ops training exercises.
Not sure why this was moderated as Funny, such a mapping would be quite interesting and depending upon how far off something is when it is spotted, a drone flying overhead could easily be spotted but someone might not know what it is.
Depending upon how large the application is, it is generally faster to just ask a developer what sort of algorithms are in it as opposed to sitting down and reading through the source yourself. Same applies to pretty much any large code base when you want basic factual knowledge of it as opposed to implementation details.
Those of us that are concerned about security prefer wired connections. Also, for high bandwidth consumption environments or environments where you want low latency the wired connections are going to serve you better.
Japan is lucky enough to have enough natural resources to go completely renewable.
I'm going to have to agree with the AC that posted because Japan hasn't exactly been blessed with much in the way of natural resources and most of the renewable options they have (e.g. tidal, geothermal, wind) are still a ways off from being able to support a city like Tokyo.
First, the book doesn't work for this discussion on the basic grounds that atheists, agnostics, and non-believers are being lumped into the same category when there are some nuances between those terms which lead to not really mean the same thing to most people. Also, just looking at how that survey question is written I wonder if the question is even asking the right question in some of those countries as there is a huge difference between belief in a "personal" god that holds and active interest in your affairs and belief in a god that doesn't care what you do and just exists and does their own thing as well.
Another issue that would require a deeper read of the books is that in Japan at least the belief in kami is not the same as belief in a god even though some of the kami may hold parallels to what could be considered gods.
They might have been on the list, but I'd have to pull out the research folder. Some of the studies have been outright discredited over the years, but others are a bit more of a question mark and are just "inconclusive." As a whole it makes for some interesting reading at times, but I doubt we are going to get a satisfactory answer any time soon.
... which I'm sure is what you're referring to.
Please don't assume you know what people are thinking as it tends to be quite off putting.
Depends upon the effect and depends upon how rigorous you want the testing to be. I'd have to hunt around to find the sources, but there have been a couple studies over the years that were more rigorous that showed that clairvoyance may be possible on a limited basis due to studies that resulted in predictions slightly better than pure chance. Most of these studies involved people in separate rooms either drawing cards or similar while someone else tried to predict what they were doing.
Personally, part of the problem that I have with the studies in general is that you don't see a long like of people that claim to have a given ability lining up for them and it typically your average person off the street. Granted there might not be anything to the effects at all, but on the same token, if it is a rare ability then you aren't going to find it looking at the wrong part of the population (i.e. those who are aware of their abilities self-select to not take part in studies).
Everything we know about consciousness (and at this point we know a rather lot)...
We may know a lot about how to describe consciousness and the parameters around it, but there is still a lot we don't know about it to include the core aspect of what it actually is and why it arises.
However, take anaesthesia as an example. Would you rather be put under by a medical doctor following scientific principles - incomplete as his knowledge may be - or take a homeopathic pill or have some old chinese man put needles into specific spots that he claims will remove the pain?
Depends on the situation, for actual surgery or invasive procedures I'd be hard pressed to believe that anyone is not going to take the anesthetic. When it comes to recovery though, I'd be willing to try other things for analgesic purposes. However, that is partly due a personal bias against stronger pain killers in general.
When it comes to science, philosophically I would be hard pressed to believe that it can explain everything but the framework will likely lead to explanations for most things. Additionally,. there are a lot of ethical concerns involved when it comes to medicine that I think is going to prevent it from learning about certain things just because there is no way to properly test them in general (some aspects of alternative medicines) or because a proper double blind study isn't really feasible.
That would be the best way to approach it, but the catch is finding people that are actually willing to do the degree of work required to do that. However, I doubt that you will see any aspect of acupuncture be accepted as proper "medicine" until such time that the mechanism of action is explained by something other than the flow of qi. Also, figuring out to properly test acupuncture is still a major concern and personally I'm not convinced that a proper placebo group can be formulated.
Who said it was preferable? Herbalism is good for some things, not so good for others. Anyone trying to treat all ailments with herbalism is going to find that there are a lot of gaps that they can't cover; however, on the same token, it can also cover a lot of the minor aches, pains, upset stomachs, etc that are part of life and limits the number of times people are rushing to a hospital for something trivial. Likewise, depending upon where you live, running down to the hospital isn't always an option and you want to attend to some things on your own.
Actually it does. There are specific standards they must adhere to, the MD does precisely mean they are qualified. You're talking nonsense here.
Again, the existence of initials after someone's name in and of itself does not mean that they are qualified. This is reason why in the United States getting an MD doesn't automatically grant you a license to practice medicine. Likewise, where you live in the world also plays a huge factor as the quality of education is quite variable.
They'd be better putting their learning efforts into mainstream medicine then. Of course things have to be adjusted by patient, but if you're using palnt material you have no idea what you're giving them, and as pointed out the plant source material can easily contain bad stuff as well. I gave willow as the example - there is indeed aspirin in there, there are also hepatoxic compounds. You are far better off giving a known dose of a pure substance than you are giving herbal supplements. This is an actual fact. There is no instance I know of where herbal remedies are both more effective and less harmful than refining the active ingredients and giving them at known doses.
Except not everyone is in a position to be able to study for a full medical degree, nor does everyone that studies herbalism necessarily want to do it to help other people, sometimes you just want to be able to treat your own minor concerns. Additionally, depending upon where you are in the world, you might not even have access to refined medications and knowledge of pants and herbs is arguably almost mandatory. Remember, not everyone lives in the city with fairly easy access to doctors and pharmacies.
The possible exception to this is cannabis/marinol, but the retarded legal and moral situation around cannabis use makes this whole area difficult, and AFAICT the cannabis derived medications so far only look at THC, which is far from the whole picture.
Cannabidiol is also known to have a strong potential as an anti-psychotic and possibly as a cancer treatment but currently it is too restricted legally to likely show up any time soon.
There is nothing magical about herbalism if you are actually doing it correctly. Everything that applies to dosing for regular pharmaceuticals applies to herbal treatments as well. Plus, modern chemistry has advanced to the point where the active compounds in plants and herbs can be identified and referenced accordingly which also improves the dosing significantly. In short, it's not based on magical thinking.
2) Practitioners are not qualified/accredited and could be prescribing anything
True, but the same could be said for just about anyone billing themselves as a medical practitioner anywhere you go in the world.Just because someone has an MD, NP, or PharmD after their name, it doesn't mean that they are qualified or accredited. If you look back historically, anyone that was participating herbalism for the general public usually underwent an apprenticeship of several years before they were considered ready to practice on their own. These days most reputable groups want two years of study followed by another two years of internships before they will recognize someone as a herbalist.
3) Many of the effective herbal remedies (e.g. willow bark) contain varying concentrations of the active ingredient, and also other active ingredients that may be harmful, so the pharmaceutical (e.g. aspirin) is both more effective and safer.
True, but that is part of the reason why anyone that actually wants to use plants and herbs needs education so that they know what they are doing. You can't just go into the woods, clip some leaves off a plant, and expect the same results every time, largely due to the varying concentrations that you mentioned. However, even if you have a consistent, known dose of a pharmaceutical, there are still PK/PD effects to take into account and dosing has to be adjusted to the patient.
Alright, so we know that herbalism works for certain disorders (e.g. aches and pains, upset stomach, etc) why is herbalism generally referred to "traditional medicine" or "alternative medicine"? By your logic, it should be "medicine" as there are known treatments for disorders that work when the proper dosage is given with a frequency greater than a placebo.
Honestly, I'm still not convinced that you can do a proper double blind study for acupuncture and it is also one of those that covers a lot of areas (e.g. pain management, nausea, etc) so you have to test each one of those before you can make a conclusive judgment on the whole practices.
However, the catch is that Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a large enough area that you can invalidate part of it without disproving everything. Chinese herbalism is part of TCM and there are a lot of "cures" under that and while some of them you might be able to dismiss outright as there know mechanism for why something might work, there can be other treatments that are highly effective that haven't been tested yet because some others under the same umbrella have been dismissed outright.
Part of the problem with evidence-based medicine is that there are a lot of things that are very hard to test for in the way of a double blind study and a number of the traditional techniques (i.e. herbalism) can fall under that just because you have to be careful about what you are doing.
Conversely, people also die when they trust the best that conventional medicine has to offer. Context is going to to mean a lot here as in some cases, there isn't much that can be done beyond providing comfort to the individual and hoping that they pull through on their own.
Slashdot Mirror
What? You did hear from various women that they would have liked to pick CS but were driven off by sexism? Wow.
Nope, I actually haven't heard anything about sexism, usually if women do say anything it is either due to the nature of the work itself ("all jobs are high stress and require lots of overtime") or based upon their perception of programmers from the media ("geeks and nerds") or negative impressions that they picked up from computer science courses in high school ("boring"). It's hard to scare people off due to sexism when they haven't actually been exposed to an office environment yet. Remember, most people going through computer science programs in college are fresh out of high school and generally don't have any "real" work experience.,
Blame? really? Last time I checked, people have a free choice as to what field they want to work/study in. If women choose not to do CS then its entirely their choice. No one is to blame.
Spoken like the ignorant white middle class male you most likely are. Last time you checked? That would be never, you're not paying any fucking attention.
I've heard the same thing at the office from various women, you aren't going to attract quality workers to a field by overselling it or forcing them into it. While people tend to agree that the IT fields in have an overall image problem, it's also not something that is going to change over night either as cultural changes require time. Furthermore, most women who are still college, that I have talked to also indicate they aren't exactly too interesting in working in a high stress field with the perception of mandatory overtime. Needless to say they are generally aren't interested in medical fields for the same reason.
Because those are for the most part low-status, low-paying servant style jobs.
I know a number of nurses and healthcare workers who would love to argue that point with you. But since we are looking at the bulk of the list as opposed to piecemeal, if you really look at that list, they are all jobs with fixed schedules and generally don't require overtime or place unexpected demands upon workers. In contrast, if you look at the lists of fields that are dominated by men (my apologizes for the horrible link, but it is the second hit on Google, most of the other links seem to be about men going into fields that are traditionally dominated by women, or about women breaking into men's fields as opposed to a strict listing) you will note they tend to be higher stress, more physically demanding, or have unpredictable schedules which most women seem to avoid.
How do you know our brains aren't simply super-massively parallel pattern matching machines? All human learning is achieved through the feedback loop of try something, observe the results (positive / negative), adjust, and try again. Everything from learning to walk to mastering a musical instrument works very similarly to this.
Since you posted AC I'm not sure if you are actually following this tread, but that is a bit of a gross exaggeration as there are a number of intuitive leaps recorded throughout human history. Off the top of my head Nikola Tesla likely made a number of these and reading his biographies you note that he visualized most devices before constructing them where on they worked as expected, in his earlier years at least. Brute force processes wouldn't necessarily lead to this.
You mean like a human brain?
I guess it depends upon the person you are talking about.
In all seriousness though, the human brain is still very much a black box, depending upon what area you are focusing on. Some of the processes are more or less scripted in some way (i.e. keep the heart beating) where as others have a large question mark next to them for how they might work (i.e. the creative process of artists).
Software Engineering: n/a
The problem is that most states (and countries for that matter) aren't exactly in a rush to provide some sort of licensing process for software engineers either. IEEE has been working on a Principles and Practices Exam but until the state boards actually update their procedures to recognize software engineers and mandate some sort of license for critical systems development it is unlikely to gain much traction.
It's also a good location to do special ops training which you can tease out from the presentation that was listed. Furthermore, the presentation also indicates that RQ-11 Raven and Wasp III drones are what are operated. These are small "backpack" drones that are used for scouting which would make sense if they are being used for special ops training exercises.
Not sure why this was moderated as Funny, such a mapping would be quite interesting and depending upon how far off something is when it is spotted, a drone flying overhead could easily be spotted but someone might not know what it is.
Depending upon how large the application is, it is generally faster to just ask a developer what sort of algorithms are in it as opposed to sitting down and reading through the source yourself. Same applies to pretty much any large code base when you want basic factual knowledge of it as opposed to implementation details.
Those of us that are concerned about security prefer wired connections. Also, for high bandwidth consumption environments or environments where you want low latency the wired connections are going to serve you better.
Japan is lucky enough to have enough natural resources to go completely renewable.
I'm going to have to agree with the AC that posted because Japan hasn't exactly been blessed with much in the way of natural resources and most of the renewable options they have (e.g. tidal, geothermal, wind) are still a ways off from being able to support a city like Tokyo.
First, the book doesn't work for this discussion on the basic grounds that atheists, agnostics, and non-believers are being lumped into the same category when there are some nuances between those terms which lead to not really mean the same thing to most people. Also, just looking at how that survey question is written I wonder if the question is even asking the right question in some of those countries as there is a huge difference between belief in a "personal" god that holds and active interest in your affairs and belief in a god that doesn't care what you do and just exists and does their own thing as well.
Another issue that would require a deeper read of the books is that in Japan at least the belief in kami is not the same as belief in a god even though some of the kami may hold parallels to what could be considered gods.
The PEAR studies were discredited...
They might have been on the list, but I'd have to pull out the research folder. Some of the studies have been outright discredited over the years, but others are a bit more of a question mark and are just "inconclusive." As a whole it makes for some interesting reading at times, but I doubt we are going to get a satisfactory answer any time soon.
... which I'm sure is what you're referring to.
Please don't assume you know what people are thinking as it tends to be quite off putting.
Depends upon the effect and depends upon how rigorous you want the testing to be. I'd have to hunt around to find the sources, but there have been a couple studies over the years that were more rigorous that showed that clairvoyance may be possible on a limited basis due to studies that resulted in predictions slightly better than pure chance. Most of these studies involved people in separate rooms either drawing cards or similar while someone else tried to predict what they were doing.
Personally, part of the problem that I have with the studies in general is that you don't see a long like of people that claim to have a given ability lining up for them and it typically your average person off the street. Granted there might not be anything to the effects at all, but on the same token, if it is a rare ability then you aren't going to find it looking at the wrong part of the population (i.e. those who are aware of their abilities self-select to not take part in studies).
Everything we know about consciousness (and at this point we know a rather lot)...
We may know a lot about how to describe consciousness and the parameters around it, but there is still a lot we don't know about it to include the core aspect of what it actually is and why it arises.
Well, there's the argument that all acupuncture is placebo :)
Potentially true, but on the same token, we also don't use placebo groups for new surgical procedures either because of their invasive nature.
However, take anaesthesia as an example. Would you rather be put under by a medical doctor following scientific principles - incomplete as his knowledge may be - or take a homeopathic pill or have some old chinese man put needles into specific spots that he claims will remove the pain?
Depends on the situation, for actual surgery or invasive procedures I'd be hard pressed to believe that anyone is not going to take the anesthetic. When it comes to recovery though, I'd be willing to try other things for analgesic purposes. However, that is partly due a personal bias against stronger pain killers in general.
When it comes to science, philosophically I would be hard pressed to believe that it can explain everything but the framework will likely lead to explanations for most things. Additionally,. there are a lot of ethical concerns involved when it comes to medicine that I think is going to prevent it from learning about certain things just because there is no way to properly test them in general (some aspects of alternative medicines) or because a proper double blind study isn't really feasible.
That would be the best way to approach it, but the catch is finding people that are actually willing to do the degree of work required to do that. However, I doubt that you will see any aspect of acupuncture be accepted as proper "medicine" until such time that the mechanism of action is explained by something other than the flow of qi. Also, figuring out to properly test acupuncture is still a major concern and personally I'm not convinced that a proper placebo group can be formulated.
Then why prefer herbalism to other medicine?
Who said it was preferable? Herbalism is good for some things, not so good for others. Anyone trying to treat all ailments with herbalism is going to find that there are a lot of gaps that they can't cover; however, on the same token, it can also cover a lot of the minor aches, pains, upset stomachs, etc that are part of life and limits the number of times people are rushing to a hospital for something trivial. Likewise, depending upon where you live, running down to the hospital isn't always an option and you want to attend to some things on your own.
Actually it does. There are specific standards they must adhere to, the MD does precisely mean they are qualified. You're talking nonsense here.
Again, the existence of initials after someone's name in and of itself does not mean that they are qualified. This is reason why in the United States getting an MD doesn't automatically grant you a license to practice medicine. Likewise, where you live in the world also plays a huge factor as the quality of education is quite variable.
They'd be better putting their learning efforts into mainstream medicine then. Of course things have to be adjusted by patient, but if you're using palnt material you have no idea what you're giving them, and as pointed out the plant source material can easily contain bad stuff as well. I gave willow as the example - there is indeed aspirin in there, there are also hepatoxic compounds. You are far better off giving a known dose of a pure substance than you are giving herbal supplements. This is an actual fact. There is no instance I know of where herbal remedies are both more effective and less harmful than refining the active ingredients and giving them at known doses.
Except not everyone is in a position to be able to study for a full medical degree, nor does everyone that studies herbalism necessarily want to do it to help other people, sometimes you just want to be able to treat your own minor concerns. Additionally, depending upon where you are in the world, you might not even have access to refined medications and knowledge of pants and herbs is arguably almost mandatory. Remember, not everyone lives in the city with fairly easy access to doctors and pharmacies.
The possible exception to this is cannabis/marinol, but the retarded legal and moral situation around cannabis use makes this whole area difficult, and AFAICT the cannabis derived medications so far only look at THC, which is far from the whole picture.
Cannabidiol is also known to have a strong potential as an anti-psychotic and possibly as a cancer treatment but currently it is too restricted legally to likely show up any time soon.
1) It's based on magical thinking
There is nothing magical about herbalism if you are actually doing it correctly. Everything that applies to dosing for regular pharmaceuticals applies to herbal treatments as well. Plus, modern chemistry has advanced to the point where the active compounds in plants and herbs can be identified and referenced accordingly which also improves the dosing significantly. In short, it's not based on magical thinking.
2) Practitioners are not qualified/accredited and could be prescribing anything
True, but the same could be said for just about anyone billing themselves as a medical practitioner anywhere you go in the world.Just because someone has an MD, NP, or PharmD after their name, it doesn't mean that they are qualified or accredited. If you look back historically, anyone that was participating herbalism for the general public usually underwent an apprenticeship of several years before they were considered ready to practice on their own. These days most reputable groups want two years of study followed by another two years of internships before they will recognize someone as a herbalist.
3) Many of the effective herbal remedies (e.g. willow bark) contain varying concentrations of the active ingredient, and also other active ingredients that may be harmful, so the pharmaceutical (e.g. aspirin) is both more effective and safer.
True, but that is part of the reason why anyone that actually wants to use plants and herbs needs education so that they know what they are doing. You can't just go into the woods, clip some leaves off a plant, and expect the same results every time, largely due to the varying concentrations that you mentioned. However, even if you have a consistent, known dose of a pharmaceutical, there are still PK/PD effects to take into account and dosing has to be adjusted to the patient.
Alright, so we know that herbalism works for certain disorders (e.g. aches and pains, upset stomach, etc) why is herbalism generally referred to "traditional medicine" or "alternative medicine"? By your logic, it should be "medicine" as there are known treatments for disorders that work when the proper dosage is given with a frequency greater than a placebo.
There are things about the human body and mind that science does not understand yet.
Name five.
You might have to to give a bit more in the way of parameters for this but off the top of my head:
Honestly, I'm still not convinced that you can do a proper double blind study for acupuncture and it is also one of those that covers a lot of areas (e.g. pain management, nausea, etc) so you have to test each one of those before you can make a conclusive judgment on the whole practices.
However, the catch is that Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a large enough area that you can invalidate part of it without disproving everything. Chinese herbalism is part of TCM and there are a lot of "cures" under that and while some of them you might be able to dismiss outright as there know mechanism for why something might work, there can be other treatments that are highly effective that haven't been tested yet because some others under the same umbrella have been dismissed outright.
Part of the problem with evidence-based medicine is that there are a lot of things that are very hard to test for in the way of a double blind study and a number of the traditional techniques (i.e. herbalism) can fall under that just because you have to be careful about what you are doing.
Conversely, people also die when they trust the best that conventional medicine has to offer. Context is going to to mean a lot here as in some cases, there isn't much that can be done beyond providing comfort to the individual and hoping that they pull through on their own.