Don't hear much talk about peace, and goodwill toward other humans here. I would expect more thoughtfulness, and less puffery and pro-gun talk from the IT crowd. Seems like there is a great reverence for weaponry, but not much love of thy fellow human.
Yes, this is all journal dependent. Recently we have stopped even suggesting possible reviewers when we get to that stage in the submission process. We stopped listing negative reviewers a long time ago. The process is broken, and needs to be revamped from the ground up. I think that each journal maybe should even consider having an open comment period on submitted manuscripts, and that back and forth discussions occur between the authors and the commenters and reviewers. Many papers would probably end up being much more accurate by the time they were published if they went through a more public process. Of course this would only work in an open access environment, because the pay-walled journals would never let anyone see the papers before they were published.
This is a big deal. I submit articles to these publishers, and this is outrageous. The idea that I would give email addresses to editors that came back to me in order to review my own papers not only never occurred to me, it seems like it would require a researcher with absolutely no ethics or morals whatsoever. The entire peer review process needs to be revamped from the ground up, and I think it would benefit science to have an open comment period on submitted articles or something similar. Authors should not be able to suggest reviewers, and both authors and reviewer should know who each other are, and interact as the paper goes through review. The absurd situation now where the reviewer knows who the authors are, but not visa versa, and where there is extremely limited interaction, mostly in the form of reviewer critiques that are often off-base but nonetheless accepted by editors, is not acceptable. A more interactive system is required, possibly with crowd-commenting for a limited time. The idea that the reviewers on high end papers were giving "reviewer contacts" to editors that went back to them is insane. I guess this is what money and desperation does to people.
I look forward to seeing progress on this endeavor,but so far I have seen none. I can't wait for someone to prove my claim that hardware will not imitate a living brain wrong. By the way, most neuroscientists outside the field of cognitive neuroscience agree with me, and several have written entire books on the subject of wetware vs. hardware. Yes, there are neuroscientists who think it can be done, but they have not made any progress in that direction. Not even a little. Since you and I and everyone else do not know what "living" even means at the mechanistic level, I don't see how you can claim you can do the same thing with hardware. But good luck. I recommend you start by discovering the secret of life, and how it works.
Simulating a neuron, and getting something to actually act exactly like a brain made up of billions of neurons are two completely different things. I am a biologist, not a hardware engineer, so I can only talk from the biology and neuroscience angles. I have had this discussion before here with people who are not biologists. Scientists still don't know how a single neuron works, not even close, so recreating it is still impossible. Plus, there are principles that we still do not understand, and therefore can not emulate them either.
Some people seem to think that if you could just imitate all of the electrical activity in the brain you would create a mind. That is silly. What do you think all those neurotransmitters and signaling agents are doing? The vast majority are not causing electrical activity in a postsynaptic neuron. They are causing biological (not electrical) changes in the surrounding membranes, and the intracellular structures associated with them. You mess with those chemicals, and you completely change the brain activity, both electrical and chemical.
So I am saying that in principle, what you are claiming is impossible. To make a brain, you are going to need to use wetware, not hardware. But of course you could prove me wrong by doing it, and I wish you good luck and success.
As a biologist I can assure you this would be a form of slow suicide, not a transfer of your mind into a digital form. What the neuron is doing electrically at any one given time is not the full scope of what it is doing, or can do. Considering that neuroscientists don't know how long term memory is stored, you would not be transferring memories, as well as not transferring all functions of each neuron. It might make for a fun sci fi movie, but it wouldn't work. But you were probably kidding anyway.
I actually believe strongly that people with sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies are driven to seek positions of power over others, and will do anything to get it. I am positive based on their behavior that many people running and working in various large corporations, as well as government agencies like the NSA, are clearly sociopathic. They not only have no regard for others, they have no regard for all of the negative consequences of their actions. I also firmly believe that the world does not have to be run by these people. But it would require that we start electing far fewer uber conservatives to government, and start to replace them with honest people. When Eisenhower was president, things were much less screwed up than now (with the exception of things like segregation, which was a holdover from the 1800s). He even warned of the sociopaths running the "military industrial complex". So it is possible to get honest people in office, like FDR, and get things done for average people, rather than for the wealthy. It requires that people vote differently than they have been.
Agree completely. America is leading the world down a very dark path where everything, including education, is monetized, turned into a commodity, and slowly but surely destroyed. Higher education is one great example, leaving graduates with relatively poor educations and crippling debt. The NIH has been turned into a "translational medicine" adjunct to the pharmaceutical industry. Money is a great motivator, but the things it motivates people to do are usually negative or harmful (think pollution, lack of worker safety, habitat destruction, species extinction, etc.). Scientific publishing is also now highly monetized, and that includes hundreds of so-called predatory journals (kept track of at Beall's list http://scholarlyoa.com/publish...). People need to understand that when only things that make money get done, that lots of good things worth doing don't ever get done.
Maybe you are right, and our "Justice Dept." is that corrupt. Sounds like time for a change. So how do you get people to vote for what is in their own best interest, and stop voting for the military industrial complex-controlled politicians? There do seem to be a few running this time around.
Of course AT&T had a choice, they could have gone to court. That would have stopped it right there. What could the NSA do, shut them down? And yes, this is news because the level of spying and complicity is even worse than previously reported. I am sure as more leaks come out, it will turn out to be far worse still.
The tech savvy crowd here at/. should be enraged that this is what our government is doing to the Internet. But maybe now that we have heard so much crap about what the government does that it just induces a yawn. I suppose that is a good thing for the NSA. I personally am outraged.
Re:Prime example of why intelligence is rare
on
Octopus Genome Sequenced
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The strangest thing is how the research shows that convergent evolution works even with distantly related organisms. The octopus eye is an exact copy of our camera type eye, but it evolved in mollusks (including clams) completely independently from birds and mammals. The only major difference is that mammal's and bird's eyes have the retina "inverted" with the rod and cone receptors at the back of the retina, furthest from the light source. In octopi, the retina is what you would expect, with the photo-receptors in the outer layer of the retina where the light hits first. Now we find out that many neural development genes are similar to mammals, even though they must have gotten to the same evolutionary conclusion via their own route. It makes you think that genes have limited ways to evolve that will actually work in practice, so only those organisms that come up with the correct genetic solutions to a problem do really well.
I think it is pretty obvious now that they are working together to make both money and increase their power. It is almost like a form of neofascism where corporations and the government are working together to keep control, and increase power and wealth. Most regulatory agencies have been "captured" by big business, think FDA, EPA, USDA, SEC, FEC etc. Corporations now write the legislation through ALEC, which then gets passed around from state to state, and the bribed politicians push for the legislation and then vote to pass it.
I could go on, but you get the point.
I don't think it could be rigged much worse without it becoming absurdly obvious even to people who weren't paying attention.
It's funny, because Trump figured out that what pleases primary voters is not the same thing that pleases party operatives and media personalities (notice I did not say journalists, which we don't have much of anymore). He knows that being a gigantic, egotistical snarky ahole is exactly what so many people want to hear. A lot of Americans would rather hear someone hurl insults as opposed to talking about policy issues. So he may have had to sign a truce with Fox News, but he is going to keep doing the same circus stunts to stay in the headlines. It will sell well in Merica.
Well, you've distilled one key problem with modern capitalism quite well. You can't "do business" without "greasing the skids". Somehow sounds a bit distinct from any kind of "government of, by and for the people". Unless you meant the rich people.
Now they don't need to route the money through anything other than their own superpacs. It is quite legal thanks to 5 out of 9 SC justices.
I hope this continues to be a point of discussion in this election, rather than what names Trump called certain women.
Actually, didn't Donald Trump announce at the last debate that he often bribes politicians in the US, and even mentioned some of his company on stage at the time? None of them disagreed, and one even said he would take more money from Trump. Don't see how this is any different. It is still bribing government officials (and candidates for office). But sometimes the "favor" doesn't get asked for right away. Maybe a year or two later. At least according to Trump the briber.
Milton Friedman's idea of freedom is capitalist freedom, not worker freedom. You have made it clear that you prefer your government to be run by rich elitists. Freedom in Friedman's view is the freedom to pollute, the freedom to exploit workers, bust unions and enrich the rich at everyone else's expense. Now I understand your position completely. You need say no more.
You are living in another century if you have to bring up Milton Friedman to support your position. His opinions are worthless to me and I wouldn't spend one second reading his nonsense.
So I'll chalk you up as supporting the Citizens United decision, which puts you at odds with most Americans.
I am not pretending. I am not a political scientist, I'm just a voter. I had no idea that reversing the order of the two words completely changed the definition. But this sounds like a distraction from what I was talking about.
Physicists are very smart people. They have to be able to figure out a way to simplify the authorship issue on projects that large. It requires a new type of attribution system for high density projects. Maybe working groups could be credited, with online attribution to each team. Teams would range from a handful, to dozens of members. This way the teams would get credit, and the authors are the members of those teams.
I had thought about that too. I am glad you mentioned it. I don't think Lessig will actually run because it takes a huge amount of organizing that he has never had to do. Sanders is a pro at running for office.
The good news is that the conversation is turning to our broken political system. It needs to be a top priority for all voters to end the control that Big Money has on politics, and the "news" agencies that report on politics.
You are talking about communism, not democratic socialism like in parts of Europe. In fact, you can't have free market capitalism without restrictions on money in politics, and still have any kind of democracy.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't hear much talk about peace, and goodwill toward other humans here. I would expect more thoughtfulness, and less puffery and pro-gun talk from the IT crowd. Seems like there is a great reverence for weaponry, but not much love of thy fellow human.
Yes, this is all journal dependent. Recently we have stopped even suggesting possible reviewers when we get to that stage in the submission process. We stopped listing negative reviewers a long time ago. The process is broken, and needs to be revamped from the ground up. I think that each journal maybe should even consider having an open comment period on submitted manuscripts, and that back and forth discussions occur between the authors and the commenters and reviewers. Many papers would probably end up being much more accurate by the time they were published if they went through a more public process. Of course this would only work in an open access environment, because the pay-walled journals would never let anyone see the papers before they were published.
This is a big deal. I submit articles to these publishers, and this is outrageous. The idea that I would give email addresses to editors that came back to me in order to review my own papers not only never occurred to me, it seems like it would require a researcher with absolutely no ethics or morals whatsoever. The entire peer review process needs to be revamped from the ground up, and I think it would benefit science to have an open comment period on submitted articles or something similar. Authors should not be able to suggest reviewers, and both authors and reviewer should know who each other are, and interact as the paper goes through review. The absurd situation now where the reviewer knows who the authors are, but not visa versa, and where there is extremely limited interaction, mostly in the form of reviewer critiques that are often off-base but nonetheless accepted by editors, is not acceptable. A more interactive system is required, possibly with crowd-commenting for a limited time. The idea that the reviewers on high end papers were giving "reviewer contacts" to editors that went back to them is insane. I guess this is what money and desperation does to people.
I look forward to seeing progress on this endeavor,but so far I have seen none. I can't wait for someone to prove my claim that hardware will not imitate a living brain wrong. By the way, most neuroscientists outside the field of cognitive neuroscience agree with me, and several have written entire books on the subject of wetware vs. hardware. Yes, there are neuroscientists who think it can be done, but they have not made any progress in that direction. Not even a little. Since you and I and everyone else do not know what "living" even means at the mechanistic level, I don't see how you can claim you can do the same thing with hardware. But good luck. I recommend you start by discovering the secret of life, and how it works.
Simulating a neuron, and getting something to actually act exactly like a brain made up of billions of neurons are two completely different things. I am a biologist, not a hardware engineer, so I can only talk from the biology and neuroscience angles. I have had this discussion before here with people who are not biologists. Scientists still don't know how a single neuron works, not even close, so recreating it is still impossible. Plus, there are principles that we still do not understand, and therefore can not emulate them either.
Some people seem to think that if you could just imitate all of the electrical activity in the brain you would create a mind. That is silly. What do you think all those neurotransmitters and signaling agents are doing? The vast majority are not causing electrical activity in a postsynaptic neuron. They are causing biological (not electrical) changes in the surrounding membranes, and the intracellular structures associated with them. You mess with those chemicals, and you completely change the brain activity, both electrical and chemical.
So I am saying that in principle, what you are claiming is impossible. To make a brain, you are going to need to use wetware, not hardware. But of course you could prove me wrong by doing it, and I wish you good luck and success.
As a biologist I can assure you this would be a form of slow suicide, not a transfer of your mind into a digital form. What the neuron is doing electrically at any one given time is not the full scope of what it is doing, or can do. Considering that neuroscientists don't know how long term memory is stored, you would not be transferring memories, as well as not transferring all functions of each neuron. It might make for a fun sci fi movie, but it wouldn't work. But you were probably kidding anyway.
I actually believe strongly that people with sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies are driven to seek positions of power over others, and will do anything to get it. I am positive based on their behavior that many people running and working in various large corporations, as well as government agencies like the NSA, are clearly sociopathic. They not only have no regard for others, they have no regard for all of the negative consequences of their actions. I also firmly believe that the world does not have to be run by these people. But it would require that we start electing far fewer uber conservatives to government, and start to replace them with honest people. When Eisenhower was president, things were much less screwed up than now (with the exception of things like segregation, which was a holdover from the 1800s). He even warned of the sociopaths running the "military industrial complex". So it is possible to get honest people in office, like FDR, and get things done for average people, rather than for the wealthy. It requires that people vote differently than they have been.
Agree completely. America is leading the world down a very dark path where everything, including education, is monetized, turned into a commodity, and slowly but surely destroyed. Higher education is one great example, leaving graduates with relatively poor educations and crippling debt. The NIH has been turned into a "translational medicine" adjunct to the pharmaceutical industry. Money is a great motivator, but the things it motivates people to do are usually negative or harmful (think pollution, lack of worker safety, habitat destruction, species extinction, etc.). Scientific publishing is also now highly monetized, and that includes hundreds of so-called predatory journals (kept track of at Beall's list http://scholarlyoa.com/publish...). People need to understand that when only things that make money get done, that lots of good things worth doing don't ever get done.
Maybe you are right, and our "Justice Dept." is that corrupt. Sounds like time for a change. So how do you get people to vote for what is in their own best interest, and stop voting for the military industrial complex-controlled politicians? There do seem to be a few running this time around.
Of course AT&T had a choice, they could have gone to court. That would have stopped it right there. What could the NSA do, shut them down? And yes, this is news because the level of spying and complicity is even worse than previously reported. I am sure as more leaks come out, it will turn out to be far worse still.
The tech savvy crowd here at /. should be enraged that this is what our government is doing to the Internet. But maybe now that we have heard so much crap about what the government does that it just induces a yawn. I suppose that is a good thing for the NSA. I personally am outraged.
The strangest thing is how the research shows that convergent evolution works even with distantly related organisms. The octopus eye is an exact copy of our camera type eye, but it evolved in mollusks (including clams) completely independently from birds and mammals. The only major difference is that mammal's and bird's eyes have the retina "inverted" with the rod and cone receptors at the back of the retina, furthest from the light source. In octopi, the retina is what you would expect, with the photo-receptors in the outer layer of the retina where the light hits first. Now we find out that many neural development genes are similar to mammals, even though they must have gotten to the same evolutionary conclusion via their own route. It makes you think that genes have limited ways to evolve that will actually work in practice, so only those organisms that come up with the correct genetic solutions to a problem do really well.
I think it is pretty obvious now that they are working together to make both money and increase their power. It is almost like a form of neofascism where corporations and the government are working together to keep control, and increase power and wealth. Most regulatory agencies have been "captured" by big business, think FDA, EPA, USDA, SEC, FEC etc. Corporations now write the legislation through ALEC, which then gets passed around from state to state, and the bribed politicians push for the legislation and then vote to pass it.
I could go on, but you get the point.
I don't think it could be rigged much worse without it becoming absurdly obvious even to people who weren't paying attention.
It's funny, because Trump figured out that what pleases primary voters is not the same thing that pleases party operatives and media personalities (notice I did not say journalists, which we don't have much of anymore). He knows that being a gigantic, egotistical snarky ahole is exactly what so many people want to hear. A lot of Americans would rather hear someone hurl insults as opposed to talking about policy issues. So he may have had to sign a truce with Fox News, but he is going to keep doing the same circus stunts to stay in the headlines. It will sell well in Merica.
Well, you've distilled one key problem with modern capitalism quite well. You can't "do business" without "greasing the skids". Somehow sounds a bit distinct from any kind of "government of, by and for the people". Unless you meant the rich people.
Now they don't need to route the money through anything other than their own superpacs. It is quite legal thanks to 5 out of 9 SC justices.
I hope this continues to be a point of discussion in this election, rather than what names Trump called certain women.
Actually, didn't Donald Trump announce at the last debate that he often bribes politicians in the US, and even mentioned some of his company on stage at the time? None of them disagreed, and one even said he would take more money from Trump. Don't see how this is any different. It is still bribing government officials (and candidates for office). But sometimes the "favor" doesn't get asked for right away. Maybe a year or two later. At least according to Trump the briber.
Milton Friedman's idea of freedom is capitalist freedom, not worker freedom. You have made it clear that you prefer your government to be run by rich elitists. Freedom in Friedman's view is the freedom to pollute, the freedom to exploit workers, bust unions and enrich the rich at everyone else's expense. Now I understand your position completely. You need say no more.
You are living in another century if you have to bring up Milton Friedman to support your position. His opinions are worthless to me and I wouldn't spend one second reading his nonsense.
So I'll chalk you up as supporting the Citizens United decision, which puts you at odds with most Americans.
Yup, that sums up the problems with modern capitalism very well. Everyone is doing something wrong because it pleases the boss and makes them money.
Every time I send an angry email to myself, I get pissed off.
I am not pretending. I am not a political scientist, I'm just a voter. I had no idea that reversing the order of the two words completely changed the definition. But this sounds like a distraction from what I was talking about.
I love this story.
Physicists are very smart people. They have to be able to figure out a way to simplify the authorship issue on projects that large. It requires a new type of attribution system for high density projects. Maybe working groups could be credited, with online attribution to each team. Teams would range from a handful, to dozens of members. This way the teams would get credit, and the authors are the members of those teams.
We would prefer to avoid any Imperial entanglements.
I had thought about that too. I am glad you mentioned it. I don't think Lessig will actually run because it takes a huge amount of organizing that he has never had to do. Sanders is a pro at running for office.
The good news is that the conversation is turning to our broken political system. It needs to be a top priority for all voters to end the control that Big Money has on politics, and the "news" agencies that report on politics.
It is obvious what I meant when I mentioned Europe. Social democracy.
You are talking about communism, not democratic socialism like in parts of Europe. In fact, you can't have free market capitalism without restrictions on money in politics, and still have any kind of democracy.