If you keep making Chicken Little the sky is falling predictions with computer models as your proof to bring about some desired political change. Then eventually you will lose all credibility and no one will listen to you anymore. You damage the reputation of the sciences and certainly of computer models when you do this. Knock it off.
I bet you're the sort of person who complains about people bringing politics into everything, by which they mean politics they don't agree with.
Look at the growth trend line of a six year old... then graph that out... in 10,000 years think how big he'll be!
As an aside, this appears to be the model used for valuing Apple shares. There seems to be an underlying assumption that we will soon discover FTL travel and find whole new alien galactic empires in need of iPhones, and watches with a day's battery life.
This is like a car manufacturer claiming that their car will have 1,000 horsepower, and after several months/years the people who have preordered it finally get theirs and find out it has 20 horsepower and the manufacturer says its a good thing because it makes the car safer.
Thanks for adding to the glorious slashdot pantheon of completely fucking stupid car analogies.
Because the Earth may explode and form a new asteroid belt at any moment.
You're thinking too small. The correct space fan argument is "because in just ten billion years the Sun will die and with it all life on Earth, so we need to have colonised other galaxies by then".
Software people are unable to understand the real world. But they're convinced we can build Mars colonizing spaceships based on decades-old fantasies...
I maintain our ancestors came from Mars after an environmental catastrophe and colonised Earth. Why are we trying to return to a dead planet from which we escaped?
It's always nice to see someone post a good, solid theory grounded in facts and confirmed observations on slashdot.
And all the climate change deniers are considered nuts for thinking that the scientists don't have the climate models right?
Proof positive that ANY computer model can be inaccurate. What is more dynamic and chaotic than the atmosphere?
Let's just give up on doing science altogether. After all, gravity and evolution and relativity are just theories not FACTS, so if I believe that the universe was created 6000 years ago it's equally as right as any so-called scientific theory.
If there are way too many variables, then it probably is a really poor candidate for simulation in the first place, and it is just garbage in, garbage out.
What nonsense. On that basis we wouldn't even bother trying to do weather forecasts at all. But, in fact, we are steadily improving their accuracy.
And what bank is going to step in and service such a loan? Inflation + 0.1% might be lucrative, but inflation + 0% means a lot of work for no pay to any of the staff involved.
The banks can do it as a public service, and if they won't then nationalise the fuckers.
Those who earn more will pay more for their degree through taxes while those whose earn less will pay less.
I absolutely agree with you, but this smacks of progressive taxation and therefore socialism, and is therefore now unacceptable to a government concerned with reducing taxes for the rich by slashing public spending on ideological grounds, sorry "reducing the deficit".
I would never consider that a history degree or a philosophy degree or an English degree would leave you in a position to be able to easily get a decent job, compared to STEM- and business-related degrees, and no one can ignore those economic realities.
Anyone who can get a reasonable history degree or philosophy degree or English degree can eaisly train up to be an accountant, computer programmer, banker, analyst or lawyer.
Granted, they probably won't be able to make a move easily to doing a PhD in theoretical particle physics, but then again nor could most people who did degrees in business studies, biology or network engineering.
That's all well and good. But, while you're getting an education, you need to learn the facts of life. Facts dictate that spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an art education is probably not going to pay off in the short or the long term. If you can't understand that, then you cannot claim to be educated at all.
Just because you do a degree in art history doesn't mean that you are then limited to jobs directly or even indirectly related to art history.
You are making a fundamental error and showing total ignorance of how the real world operates.
A lot of kids with rich parents do degrees in subjects like art history (because they enjoy them) and then get jobs in their daddies' firms. What I object to is that kids with poor parents aren't going to be given the same choice, especially with people like you mocking educational subjects they know nothing about.
I do agree that you shouldn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a degree in art history, but only because you shouldn't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on any degree.
There is nothing wrong with majoring in philosophy as a bachelor's degree. University is not supposed to be a job training exercise.
Or do you also think that no one should do a bachelor's degree in a science, on the basis that they could do business studies and earn more working in a fucking bank?
Just read the summary at the link, but it feels to me like it's the plot of a horror B movie.
The protagonists seem to be making the same dumb choices the teenagers do in the haunted house that gets them killed.
Maybe it's good, but the summary didn't entice me to look further into it.
Judging a book by its blurb is only one step up from judging it by its cover.
Personally, as a long-time reader of Archaeology magazine and enthusiastic amateur in the field, what I keep being surprised by is the field's routine assumptions that people before us were somehow stupid.
It derives from the "progressive" view that is taught so thoroughly in most schools (especially colleges and universities) that "new" means "better" and that history is irrevocably moving from worse to better.
Unless you believe that there was some Atlantean super civilization or earthly paradise now lost, on the evidence we have new does mean better and there has been progress.
I would rather be an unemployed single parent mother in the Twenty First Century in the US or Europe than an emperor two thousand years ago.
we now wonder how we managed before the cell / smartphone era
Do we?
I think it's only the people brought up on cellphones since birth that think that. For most of us, there is nothing particularly world-shattering about a portable phone.
They're useful in the same way that a dishwasher is. Yes, I'd rather not do washing up by hand, but when I need to on holiday or whatever, it doesn't exactly kill me, it just takes a bit more time.
I think the idea that our time is so precious that we need to have instantaneous access to information at our fingertips is a sign that people should work a bit less, rather than anything else.
The only way that self-driving cars would be revolutionary to most people would be if they provided a usable, more or less free public transportation system, but it seems likely that companeis like Uber will scuttle that idea one way or the other.
And they don't necessarily need to drive you into town, just to the closest subway, train or LRT station.
That is an extremely good point. If you live two or three miles from a station (and don't enjoy a 45 minute walk at each end of the day), by the time you get into your car to drive there it's probably easier to stay in your car and drive all the way rather than worry about parking etc.. With a decent public transport system, it would be easier to hop out of your car and straight onto a train.
In most EU countries there are more people than land. And cars are already a problem in cities. However, this problem will not be healed by self-driving cars
If the idea of self-driven cars for hire really caught on, you'd probably find more car-sharing, since people would already have abandoned the pure ownership/"my car is my kingdom" mentality. Plus the cars wouldn't have to park in city centres.
Slashdot Mirror
If you keep making Chicken Little the sky is falling predictions with computer models as your proof to bring about some desired political change. Then eventually you will lose all credibility and no one will listen to you anymore. You damage the reputation of the sciences and certainly of computer models when you do this. Knock it off.
I bet you're the sort of person who complains about people bringing politics into everything, by which they mean politics they don't agree with.
In that case, you have no need to object to them.
But I suppose you would still allow that they have a negative effect.
Look at the growth trend line of a six year old... then graph that out... in 10,000 years think how big he'll be!
As an aside, this appears to be the model used for valuing Apple shares. There seems to be an underlying assumption that we will soon discover FTL travel and find whole new alien galactic empires in need of iPhones, and watches with a day's battery life.
It just shows that you can not predict the future, from psychics to computer modeling it all fails because the future is inherently unpredictable.
Indeed, there's no better than a 50/50 chance the Sun will rise tomorrow.
Clown.
"Its not a bug...... Its a feature!"
This is like a car manufacturer claiming that their car will have 1,000 horsepower, and after several months/years the people who have preordered it finally get theirs and find out it has 20 horsepower and the manufacturer says its a good thing because it makes the car safer.
Thanks for adding to the glorious slashdot pantheon of completely fucking stupid car analogies.
Because the Earth may explode and form a new asteroid belt at any moment.
You're thinking too small. The correct space fan argument is "because in just ten billion years the Sun will die and with it all life on Earth, so we need to have colonised other galaxies by then".
Software people are unable to understand the real world. But they're convinced we can build Mars colonizing spaceships based on decades-old fantasies...
I maintain our ancestors came from Mars after an environmental catastrophe and colonised Earth. Why are we trying to return to a dead planet from which we escaped?
It's always nice to see someone post a good, solid theory grounded in facts and confirmed observations on slashdot.
Maybe there'll be one tomorrow.
And all the climate change deniers are considered nuts for thinking that the scientists don't have the climate models right?
Proof positive that ANY computer model can be inaccurate. What is more dynamic and chaotic than the atmosphere?
Let's just give up on doing science altogether. After all, gravity and evolution and relativity are just theories not FACTS, so if I believe that the universe was created 6000 years ago it's equally as right as any so-called scientific theory.
If there are way too many variables, then it probably is a really poor candidate for simulation in the first place, and it is just garbage in, garbage out.
What nonsense. On that basis we wouldn't even bother trying to do weather forecasts at all. But, in fact, we are steadily improving their accuracy.
.... and being downmodded to 'troll' proves my assertion.
There isn't a "-1 delusional fucking idiot" mod option on slashdot.
Cap interest at inflation
And what bank is going to step in and service such a loan? Inflation + 0.1% might be lucrative, but inflation + 0% means a lot of work for no pay to any of the staff involved.
The banks can do it as a public service, and if they won't then nationalise the fuckers.
Those who earn more will pay more for their degree through taxes while those whose earn less will pay less.
I absolutely agree with you, but this smacks of progressive taxation and therefore socialism, and is therefore now unacceptable to a government concerned with reducing taxes for the rich by slashing public spending on ideological grounds, sorry "reducing the deficit".
I would never consider that a history degree or a philosophy degree or an English degree would leave you in a position to be able to easily get a decent job, compared to STEM- and business-related degrees, and no one can ignore those economic realities.
Anyone who can get a reasonable history degree or philosophy degree or English degree can eaisly train up to be an accountant, computer programmer, banker, analyst or lawyer.
Granted, they probably won't be able to make a move easily to doing a PhD in theoretical particle physics, but then again nor could most people who did degrees in business studies, biology or network engineering.
That's all well and good. But, while you're getting an education, you need to learn the facts of life. Facts dictate that spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an art education is probably not going to pay off in the short or the long term. If you can't understand that, then you cannot claim to be educated at all.
Just because you do a degree in art history doesn't mean that you are then limited to jobs directly or even indirectly related to art history.
You are making a fundamental error and showing total ignorance of how the real world operates.
A lot of kids with rich parents do degrees in subjects like art history (because they enjoy them) and then get jobs in their daddies' firms. What I object to is that kids with poor parents aren't going to be given the same choice, especially with people like you mocking educational subjects they know nothing about.
I do agree that you shouldn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a degree in art history, but only because you shouldn't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on any degree.
Or do you also think that no one should do a bachelor's degree in a science, on the basis that they could do business studies and earn more working in a fucking bank?
2015 Best Novel: Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
2015 Longest Novel: Seveneves, Neal Stephenson.
Hopefully I'll have it finished by 2016 when they announce the result.
Just read the summary at the link, but it feels to me like it's the plot of a horror B movie. The protagonists seem to be making the same dumb choices the teenagers do in the haunted house that gets them killed. Maybe it's good, but the summary didn't entice me to look further into it.
Judging a book by its blurb is only one step up from judging it by its cover.
"Republicans want a huge military but they don't want to send it anywhere. The Democrats wants a small military and they want to send it everywhere."
Were you in a coma between 2001 and 2009?
Personally, as a long-time reader of Archaeology magazine and enthusiastic amateur in the field, what I keep being surprised by is the field's routine assumptions that people before us were somehow stupid.
It derives from the "progressive" view that is taught so thoroughly in most schools (especially colleges and universities) that "new" means "better" and that history is irrevocably moving from worse to better.
Unless you believe that there was some Atlantean super civilization or earthly paradise now lost, on the evidence we have new does mean better and there has been progress.
I would rather be an unemployed single parent mother in the Twenty First Century in the US or Europe than an emperor two thousand years ago.
home after a night out with the boys
That will surely be the killer app for a lot of people depending on how much it costs.
Otherwise, I'd generally prefer to have my own car and take a taxi when I want to get drunk.
Who needs that 500hp turbocharged V-8 when the computer is gonna drive at the speed limit anyways?
Who "needs" it now?
Depending on your point of view it's either a way of showing off or a socially acceptable geeky hobby. It has no real utility except on a race track.
we now wonder how we managed before the cell / smartphone era
Do we?
I think it's only the people brought up on cellphones since birth that think that. For most of us, there is nothing particularly world-shattering about a portable phone.
They're useful in the same way that a dishwasher is. Yes, I'd rather not do washing up by hand, but when I need to on holiday or whatever, it doesn't exactly kill me, it just takes a bit more time.
I think the idea that our time is so precious that we need to have instantaneous access to information at our fingertips is a sign that people should work a bit less, rather than anything else.
The only way that self-driving cars would be revolutionary to most people would be if they provided a usable, more or less free public transportation system, but it seems likely that companeis like Uber will scuttle that idea one way or the other.
Autonomous car tech on the other hand is here, works
It "works" in the sense of "works in carefully controlled tests" not "works in the real world".
And they don't necessarily need to drive you into town, just to the closest subway, train or LRT station.
That is an extremely good point. If you live two or three miles from a station (and don't enjoy a 45 minute walk at each end of the day), by the time you get into your car to drive there it's probably easier to stay in your car and drive all the way rather than worry about parking etc.. With a decent public transport system, it would be easier to hop out of your car and straight onto a train.
In most EU countries there are more people than land. And cars are already a problem in cities. However, this problem will not be healed by self-driving cars
If the idea of self-driven cars for hire really caught on, you'd probably find more car-sharing, since people would already have abandoned the pure ownership/"my car is my kingdom" mentality. Plus the cars wouldn't have to park in city centres.