While I agree with the sentiment, the reality is that students need to develop understanding of the fundamental principles of science before they can advance to the cutting edge.
More subtlely, though, is that by demonstrating directly to the student each major facet of scientific knowledge you free them from 'faith' knowledge. Science students don't need to take our word for it that water is polarised - they can see with their own eyes that an electric charge will deflect a water stream. The veil must be torn so that science does not merely become another religion.
Ask yourself, how many people who use a microwave everyday actually understand the principles on which it operates?
You make a valid point. In 100 years, will people remember the name of a particular human chess player from year X? Maybe. In 100 years, everyone involved in AI and computer history will remember deep blue and Kasparov. By 'losing' he has written himself into history.
Nice try, but I'm not a brit, and nor was I taking the piss out of the americans. Funny how trying to be concise for all parts of an international readership gets you modded "flamebait" these days. Perhaps mods will take the time to read more than the first line of a post before deciding it doesn't have a point.
I remember back at the end of college (I believe the yankees call it 'high school'), I was discussing with people they were going to do at university (which I believe the yankees call college, confusingly enough).
One bright young spark was emphatic that he was going to do IT and become rich - IT, he said, was only going to continue growing. Fair enough. But this was 1998, and by the time he graduated in 2002, the dot-com bubble was over and suddenly employment opportunities for CSIT people were much more scarce.
I, on the other hand, chose my degree not on the basis of its potential remuneration, but solely because I loved engineering (of the non-software kind) and I wanted to spend my life building cool shit. I wonder how many people signed up for IT expecting to be Bill Gates, only to find that they were condemned to spend their time developing webpages for the local kennel club.
Seriously, kids - a job that makes scads of money may never come your way, but it's not hard to get a job that brings you happiness and satisfaction. If you get a job that you truly enjoy, you'll never work again.
Hell, I spent my day putting together RC helicopters to make robots of out - I can't believe they PAY me to do that.
Been there, done that. Went on a field trip to visit malaria research lab in Thailand (and got to inject malaria mosquitoes with test chemical stuff, yay!). Do I advocate not stopping malaria? Of course not. But I do think we should think carefully about what we do before interfering with ecosystems, cus, you know, we have such a great track record of that. It'll all end in tears and frozen gorillas.
Most users, however, do not have the advantage of talking to the product designer face to face in order to understand the material in the first place. What I propose is more like getting the alpha-testers to write the manual; they can talk to the designers directly, record what they feel is important for people of their skill level to understand how to use the product, add to it form their own experience with the product and then this documentation can then be disseminated to all subsequent users of the product.
That's an interesting strawman argument - suggesting that a dislike of human intervention in ecosystems implies some sort of earth mother goddess-esque quasi-religious outlook - so interesting, in fact, that I don't feel I need to bother spending the effort to refute it. As pertains to diseases, oversight groups test and test and test and make sure there are no side-effects to what is being done. If you really believe you understand biology well enough to wipe our a disease or wipe out mosquitoes without unexpected complications, go for it. In human pharmacology, though, we have the advantage of being able to conduct clinical trials and repeat experiments over and over to find out what possible complications might arise. With the earth, there's one patient and no controls.
Installing lasers everywhere doesn't sound a lot like A) restoring natural predator populations, B) reducing human/prey presence, C) discovering the unknown cause. It doesn't sound like 'reversing damage' so much as treating problematic symptoms for your own convenience, while ignoring possibly legitimate causes that you've mentioned (eg, other things we're fucking up in the ecosystem). If you want to stop living in nature, I suggest you move to a city if you haven't already done so.
Actually, I used to live in Thailand. I would get an allergic reaction to mosquito bites that caused any bitten areas to swell up terribly. I'm no friend to mosquitoes, believe you me - if we could wipe them out without any consequences I'd say do it, just like small pox. But just be very very sure before you press the big red button.
Well, he was employee #1 in the company (both value-wise and chornologically). Since he didn't document at the start, it was much cheaper to hire a post-grad than spare a more expensive employee from actual development work.
I wonder if perhaps there's an argument for pairing senior employees who do the critical design work with fresh hires to document the what and why of it. That way, the higher-up engineers don't have to write anything down and the junior engineers get to absorb some of their insight by osmosis.
I'm a little concerned by this. Suppose you disrupt the vision of mosquitoes. If it turns out to have permanent effects on the mosquitoes, they'll be easy prey for predators. Fewer mosquitoes... but then perhaps fewer predators, or more pressure on other potential prey. Suddenly other species go unchecked or apex predators have less food because that ecological niche filled by mosquitoes is empty. Am I the only one who thinks that humans need to stop fucking around the with the order of things and deal with it? Finding a cure for malaria (in our own bodies, which we're at liberty to fuck with) makes a lot more sense than disrupting ecosystems that were doing perfectly fine before we came along.
I've been in exactly this situation: we were an custom GPS electronics company where one very talented electrical engineer built the hardware from the ground up (and he and a whole team of software guys did the code). I signed on as his lackey to do additional electronics development on the side because his time was 'so valuable' and they needed more stuff done besides
.
The -very- first thing they had me do when I arrived was produce page after page of documentation on how the hardware actually worked so that the software guys could understand it. It wasn't ground-breaking design, it wasn't super complicated, but it was subtle and you couldn't get the whole idea of what was going on without being able to speak Engineer (specifically the EE dialect). A lot of people in the company were terrified that he'd walk out one day and get hit by a bus and the company would have to spend a fortune it didn't have for a team of engineers to come in and tell everyone else how their own system worked.
When I asked him why there was no documentation (or very poor documentation when there was) the answer was a combination of "You shouldn't need documentation" and "I'm not paid to document things."
Well, actually... you are.
A few early experiences counseled me very strongly to enforce good documentation practices in my code and hardware design. Any design more complicated than a blinking LED (the hardware equivalent of 'Hello World') requires it - if you aren't documenting, you're not doing what you're paid to do. As TFA says, End of Story.
Slashdot Mirror
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt that reads "I'm being baptised with stupid ->"
More subtlely, though, is that by demonstrating directly to the student each major facet of scientific knowledge you free them from 'faith' knowledge. Science students don't need to take our word for it that water is polarised - they can see with their own eyes that an electric charge will deflect a water stream. The veil must be torn so that science does not merely become another religion.
Ask yourself, how many people who use a microwave everyday actually understand the principles on which it operates?
Easy - just borrow a piece from one of the students.
Damn, you beat me to it - that was the very first thing I thought of when I RTFA.
Scientology is not a religion; it's a cynical pyramid scheme targeting the wealthy stupid. I just wish I had a thought of it first!
The 'natural religions'? As opposed to the unnatural religions? That makes about as much sense as people who refuse to buy food that's not 'organic'.
That's why I walk around Traal with a towel around my head.
You make a valid point. In 100 years, will people remember the name of a particular human chess player from year X? Maybe. In 100 years, everyone involved in AI and computer history will remember deep blue and Kasparov. By 'losing' he has written himself into history.
Nice try, but I'm not a brit, and nor was I taking the piss out of the americans. Funny how trying to be concise for all parts of an international readership gets you modded "flamebait" these days. Perhaps mods will take the time to read more than the first line of a post before deciding it doesn't have a point.
One bright young spark was emphatic that he was going to do IT and become rich - IT, he said, was only going to continue growing. Fair enough. But this was 1998, and by the time he graduated in 2002, the dot-com bubble was over and suddenly employment opportunities for CSIT people were much more scarce.
I, on the other hand, chose my degree not on the basis of its potential remuneration, but solely because I loved engineering (of the non-software kind) and I wanted to spend my life building cool shit. I wonder how many people signed up for IT expecting to be Bill Gates, only to find that they were condemned to spend their time developing webpages for the local kennel club.
Seriously, kids - a job that makes scads of money may never come your way, but it's not hard to get a job that brings you happiness and satisfaction. If you get a job that you truly enjoy, you'll never work again.
Hell, I spent my day putting together RC helicopters to make robots of out - I can't believe they PAY me to do that.
The 2nd amendment guarantees your right to a militia. What's needed is a new amendment to guarantee your right to a strategic arms program.
Bang, zoom, straight to the moon of Omicron Persei eight!
He said he wants to get cable now.
Been there, done that. Went on a field trip to visit malaria research lab in Thailand (and got to inject malaria mosquitoes with test chemical stuff, yay!). Do I advocate not stopping malaria? Of course not. But I do think we should think carefully about what we do before interfering with ecosystems, cus, you know, we have such a great track record of that. It'll all end in tears and frozen gorillas.
Let me ask my boyfriend and I'll get back to you.
Is it me or does 'SyFy' sound like a gay boy lisping the word 'sissy'? "Ohy, the syfy channel? Iht's fahbulus - I wadch it all the tyme!"
Oops - I fail. Reply is below your comment.
Most users, however, do not have the advantage of talking to the product designer face to face in order to understand the material in the first place. What I propose is more like getting the alpha-testers to write the manual; they can talk to the designers directly, record what they feel is important for people of their skill level to understand how to use the product, add to it form their own experience with the product and then this documentation can then be disseminated to all subsequent users of the product.
That's an interesting strawman argument - suggesting that a dislike of human intervention in ecosystems implies some sort of earth mother goddess-esque quasi-religious outlook - so interesting, in fact, that I don't feel I need to bother spending the effort to refute it. As pertains to diseases, oversight groups test and test and test and make sure there are no side-effects to what is being done. If you really believe you understand biology well enough to wipe our a disease or wipe out mosquitoes without unexpected complications, go for it. In human pharmacology, though, we have the advantage of being able to conduct clinical trials and repeat experiments over and over to find out what possible complications might arise. With the earth, there's one patient and no controls.
Installing lasers everywhere doesn't sound a lot like A) restoring natural predator populations, B) reducing human/prey presence, C) discovering the unknown cause. It doesn't sound like 'reversing damage' so much as treating problematic symptoms for your own convenience, while ignoring possibly legitimate causes that you've mentioned (eg, other things we're fucking up in the ecosystem). If you want to stop living in nature, I suggest you move to a city if you haven't already done so.
'Deal' as in 'put up with'. Apologies if you don't understand Australian lingo. Crikey.
Actually, I used to live in Thailand. I would get an allergic reaction to mosquito bites that caused any bitten areas to swell up terribly. I'm no friend to mosquitoes, believe you me - if we could wipe them out without any consequences I'd say do it, just like small pox. But just be very very sure before you press the big red button.
I wonder if perhaps there's an argument for pairing senior employees who do the critical design work with fresh hires to document the what and why of it. That way, the higher-up engineers don't have to write anything down and the junior engineers get to absorb some of their insight by osmosis.
I'm a little concerned by this. Suppose you disrupt the vision of mosquitoes. If it turns out to have permanent effects on the mosquitoes, they'll be easy prey for predators. Fewer mosquitoes... but then perhaps fewer predators, or more pressure on other potential prey. Suddenly other species go unchecked or apex predators have less food because that ecological niche filled by mosquitoes is empty. Am I the only one who thinks that humans need to stop fucking around the with the order of things and deal with it? Finding a cure for malaria (in our own bodies, which we're at liberty to fuck with) makes a lot more sense than disrupting ecosystems that were doing perfectly fine before we came along.
.
The -very- first thing they had me do when I arrived was produce page after page of documentation on how the hardware actually worked so that the software guys could understand it. It wasn't ground-breaking design, it wasn't super complicated, but it was subtle and you couldn't get the whole idea of what was going on without being able to speak Engineer (specifically the EE dialect). A lot of people in the company were terrified that he'd walk out one day and get hit by a bus and the company would have to spend a fortune it didn't have for a team of engineers to come in and tell everyone else how their own system worked.
When I asked him why there was no documentation (or very poor documentation when there was) the answer was a combination of "You shouldn't need documentation" and "I'm not paid to document things."
Well, actually... you are.
A few early experiences counseled me very strongly to enforce good documentation practices in my code and hardware design. Any design more complicated than a blinking LED (the hardware equivalent of 'Hello World') requires it - if you aren't documenting, you're not doing what you're paid to do. As TFA says, End of Story.