Good point. When is the last time you saw "white" people. Nobody's white, unless they fell in a tub full of white paint or whitewash. The same thing with black, I have never seen "black" people. Everyone is a certain shade of brown or beige. It is just human nature to see things in black and white, good or bad, absolute good or absolute evil. And there is also a desire for any group to have "us" (race 1) vs. "them" (race 2).
In all fairness this world view is characteristic of children. When children discover the world stereotypes are what helps greatly in learning. For example they'll think stuff like "if the candle burns, it means that anything that looks like a flame, is red and smokes will probably burn" and that is ok. Except that the children should grow up and understand that with some issues it is not black vs. good, there is a whole spectrum in between.
So another way to look at racists is as immature, they just never developped enough to have a full and more realistic view of the world.
Yeah, but who sets the percentage of minority (%10). Is it the company itself just trying to be nice? Is it the state or the federal government, I wonder...
That is really crazy. So if by talking with someone on the phone they happend to mention that the like a specific stereotypical food associated with a race, they are allowed to make the judgement based on that!?
Well, let's see he said he worked at a fried chicken restaurant -- hmm he must be black and he must have a criminal record. I'll mark the "African American" box and send the application for a background check.
It is. There is not a quick, easy answer, but I think people should try to be objective and be educated about it.
I have thought about this issue quite a bit. What started it was that when I was a freshman in college in the Computer Science program, my university had this Affirmative Action Scholarship program, that helped Black students from bad neighbourhoods of the city to get into college with a full ride, all-payed scholarship. I really liked the idea, and we had about 5 or such students in our CS freshman group of 30 or so people. But by the start of the 3rd year, none of those people were left in the program. They just couldn't make it because the level of their previous academic performance was well below what was necessary to pass even such classes as Freshman Enlish, Calculus or Intro To Comp Sci. They had all dropped out and none of them graduated. So the city and the college had bend over backward and spent tax money (it was a state school) but it was ultimately pointless because those students were not ready for it. Shouldn't that money have gone to anyone based on merit? For example write an essay, go for an interview and get a scholarship or something like that?
The point here is that having a race/gender quota system will not help heal the racial tension, will lead to even more discrimination (reverse discrimination is still discrimination), will teach certain groups of people to function as the "victims" and leech resourses of the state and others just because they are part of some ethnic/racial/gender/sexual orientation group. That will eventually lead to the lowering of the standards in education and business. Most often than not when the government is allowed to step in and regulate things it ends up creating a mess in the long run.
Now going back to the example with Affirmative Action Scholarships. I think by the time the students graduate high-school it is probably too late to give them 4 year scholarships. Help those people learn an applied skill so they can have jobs, don't expect them to finish a 4 year college when then can't even read well. Instead the money should be sent to the primary schools where the children are just starting to learn to count and read or write. If they get a good primary education they should have no problem competing with other students no matter what race or gender they are.
The same goes for businesses. Wanting to hire %30 Black employees, %50 women, will lead to hiring people who are not qualified. It is too bad, but hiring them won't fix the problem -- it will hurt in the long run. Sure if you take someone from McDonalds and make them the Product Manager, they'll get paid more but the company will run into the ground because they are not qualified.
So the best way to deal with the race issues is to not reinforce the divide but instead encourage and value education, learning and foster discussion of these issues. Setting a quota system or just throwing a bunch of money at the problem will not make it go away.
Thank you, that has already been pointed out though.
The problem is that it is not just the employment process that is messed up, but so is the Slashdot moderation system. I had used "nigger" chances are that the moderators would have just modded me down as soon as they saw the word, without even reading the message. But the problem is that I wanted others to hear what I had to say, and that meant not using "nigger" but using the "n-word" instead.
Someone told me why didn't I use the "c-word"? Well, I hope in the future it would become the "c-word" but that is not the case yet. If had used that nobody you have known what I am talking about. Hopefully, you and others who read the message would tell people who present you forms with "Caucasian" "Black" "White" "Asian" race categories could educate them as to why "Caucasian" is offensive and what it means. And why the whole separation of people into races is not very scientific.
Anyway, good point, but I had already considered it and unfortunately I had to use what I used to make others see my point of view. Sorry if it seems too hypocritical...
I find it amusing that the average slashdotter parrots this inane viewpoint?
I find it amusing that you didn't provide any sources or or any figure to substantiate your "near-perfect reliability" claims and you are posting as an Anonymous Coward...
Or do you think black people just have really good tans?
--Yeah that is _exactly_ what I think! I posted a source that claims otherwise, but who cares to read those, right? Well, you have read my mind, I salute you. Might consider astrology for career path...
Speaking about the term Caucasian, here is an article from the Journal of Internal Medicine that talks about the history of the term, and how it is basically just as offensive to use as "negro".
The bottom line is that 'race is an unscientific construct'. And here is another small excerpt:
Blumenbach, the German anthropologist and anatomist, first used the word "race" in 1775 to classify humans into five divisions: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach also coined the term "Caucasian" because he believed that the Caucasus region of Asia Minor produced "the most beautiful race of men." Both Linnaeus and Blumenbach stated that humans are one species, and the latter remarked on the arbitrary nature of his proposed categories.
These men were products and producers of the prejudices of their era, but it is remarkable how similar the concept and categories of race remain today, even after it has been widely documented that phenotypic and biochemical variations do not correlate simply with genotypic differences.
Well that's the thing. I didn't want to use "nigger" because it might offend some people. I was not trying to offend or upset anyone. I just don't want any discrimination -- direct or reverse in the workplace. I can see how some people would be upset by it because it brings back the attitudes and attrocities commited during the time when the word was acceptable. But I can see your point too...
By the way, I could claim I am Asian too, I come from Russia and my father definetly has mongoloid face features -- Ghengis Khan is probably not that far in my family tree... "Yey, I am a minority now too!";-)
We are headed towards total socialism. Let government control this, let government control that -- bunch of bullshit if you ask me. I grew up and lived in the Soviet Union, and if there ever was a beaurocratic nightmare state , that was it. I came here to escape the corruption and avoid having to deal with miles of red tape, but it seems the situation gets worse and worse here too.
So they want the companies to hire people "in a diverse" kind of way. Are they going to have race, gender, sexual orientation quotas or what? I can see them saying : "We still need 5 more black-gay-women for this job." "Sorry straight-white-male, you might be qualified, well educated and the company would sure like to hire you but you are just not a black-gay-woman."
Will I have shave my legs, dress like a woman or act gay or claim that my grand grand grand father was black so therefore I am a minority, to get a job in the near future...?
What if claim that I am a African American, but I am actually white. Can they quantify and measure my race, will they sent to a local eugenics clinic to measure the size of my head or take my DNA to identify my race?
What would happen, if I just tell them that my grand-grand-grand father came from Africa so deep down I feel like I am part of a minority?
Actually I never check the "White" or "Caucasian" box on the race section on the forms, because putting myself in a race category just reinforces the fact that there are race categories and people are somehow treated differently because of it. Actually the word "Caucasian" comes directly from studies of eugenics at the turn of the century and I consider using it just as offensive as someone using the "n"-word, because it implies endorsing the values and attitudes of the time.
Interesting point about the hair products. I also would probably believe it has something to do with the bovine growth hormones and also with other environmental factors. Actually, it might turn out that it is more than one factor that would be responsible, so there might be more than one chemical that would trigger the onset of puberty, and they either have to work together (i.e. only children that use hair straightening products _and_ have been consuming large quantities of dairy and meat with the BGH will get an early onset) or it is that either one will do it.
Besides the environmental factors I think there are also some social factors. I do believe there is a mind-body connection and if children today are bombarded with sexual imagery and girls as young as 10 are forced by peers and media to wear sexy (read slutty) clothes and behave in a flirting ways with boys, I think they will eventually start to hit puberty much earlier. The body will "accomodate" to the mind.
In other words, some will say that girls dress and behave in a sexual manner at an early age becuase they have hit puberty but it could also go the other way.
I have noticed this difference in average age of puberty firsthand. I grew up in a another country (Russia) and came here to the States when I was 15. At home most girls and guys my age had hit puberty at a much later date than my peers in the States. Quite interesting. Girls, back in my old country would not be allowed to wear make-up or dress slutty at school, were more modest and all an all didn't have sex as much as the girls and guys of the same age from US. If the social factors are responsible, then the average age of puberty during the extremely inhibited Victorian times should be much higher, and that is the case: the average age of puberty for girls back then was 16, and now it is more like 11 -- all within 160 years.
I can think of an experiment that would allow girls from another country to use the hair products and food from US but still live where they live. I wonder what would happen? It would be an extremely un-ethical experiment so it would never be done.
What he did, is he set up a CA on a hex grid, with a certain set of rules, to be the medium (i.e. each mollecule is approximated by a cell). Then he simulated the movement of a plate through that medium and it turns out some interesting eddies form behind the plate that look very much like turbulence. The problem of course is that the CA "eddies" look like turbulence, but that doesn't mean that they somehow model the real world turbulent flow. But it is still an interesting picture to look at. Perhaps someone is aware of a more detailed simulation or a more in depth study of this...
Well, that was the point of my post. We are using QM to build things. The math seems to predict the phenomena. Quantum encryption works with entanglement and there has been experimental proof. But it seems that we cannot really understand it. Other phenomena are likewise. So I was wondering whether there is actually a limit as to how much our brains can understand. In other words some phenomena we will comprehend as the science progresses, but some we will never be able to wrap our head around.
This is more of a philosophical debate I guess. Some scientists have claimed that knowing the math and having the equation is all we need, there is no need for conceptual models in our head. Others claim that is not enough and they would want to understand what is really going on.
Actually the problem with the Weather might not be just the number of variables, but the different local sensitivities to those variables -- it is a chaotic system. So even if you buy a billion dollar computer and account for as many variables as possible you might still not similate the weather in some part of the world, because it is very sensitive on the initial conditions. For example it is inherently harder to simulate and predict weather in England. There have always been jokes about un-predictability and errors in their forecasts, but that is not because their computing power is limited but because in their region the weather is more chaotic. As someone already mentioned it is like saying that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in South America could change the course of a hurricane in Atlantic.
Speaking of turbulence, I am not an expert, but I remember reading about the problem of turbulence in Wolfram's "A New Kind Of Science" book about it. He approached the problem from a CA point of view and got some interesting results. here is the chapter on it.
At the same time, I have to say it is Wolfram, the self proclaimed pioneer and genius, who wrote a book full of proofs that start with "I am quite convinced..." or "It seems to me...". But nevertheless some of the stuff he did is quite interesting. I think fluid flow is one those things.
I was actually wondering, could it be the case that we might not even be able to understand and explain some phonemena simply because our brain power is not adequate. For example the math works out for QM, but I don't think anyone can understand or conceptualize what is happening during entanglement (Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance" and never quite got to accept it).
Or when someone is talking about multi-dimensional spaces, it is easy to express it in a mathemtical form (R^6 or C^6), but what does that mean in reality, how would you think about such a space?
(Speaking of the 6 dimensions, there was an article on Slashdot about how the dark matter doesn't exist but instead we see what we do because "space has 6 dimensions".here.)
The point is that, just like dogs will never be able to solve integrals with the brain power they have now, so humans likewise might not be capable of understanding certain phenomena from the physical universe we live in.
Good point. What you mentioned is exactly the difference between the learning people get in an applied college vs a 4 year university. Someone learning from an online university or from a 2 year applied school will learn to do things by memorizing the menu paths. For example they might say to themselves "To add a new layer I must click the 3 menu from the left, scroll down two item, then click the third on the right" or something like that. That works fine for a while but put that person in front of a different operation system or a different program that has pretty much the same functionality as the one he learned, just different menus -- and they are completely lost!
That is why I think it is important to teach the basics _and_ the applied stuff together. So while someone learns Photoshop or GIMP they would also learn why there need to be layers, what is DPI, what is a color space, what is kerning, hyphenation and other general stuff like that, not just memorize the sequence of menus. This doesn't apply just to Photoshop, it applies to everything. For example when dealing with programmers, I can tell right away if they graduated from a 2 year school or a 4 year one just by talking to them for 1 minute. The ones from an applied college will ask me what languages I know and boast as to how many they know. Someone from a 4 year college would instead ask me what kind of programming paradigms do I like to use to solve a problem (procedural, functional, object oriented etc.), or they'll ask me about wether I prefer to use Prim's or Kruskal's algorithms for a minimum spanning tree problem. And stuff like that.
That is about the time when competition would come in and people would say, "screw it, I'll go across the road to your competition and get their business"... except that with Google there isn't anyone else "across the road" that is just as good.
I guess we'll just have to hope that Google will be always nice and always make the right choice, which they do make, don't they... ?
I think this scientist doesn't quite know what is going on. The reason that spacetime is spelled together and not "space time" is preciselly because it is to be regarded as one entity : spacetime. Talking about time separately as being or not being curved is speculation, because there is no "time" separate from "space".
Slashdot Mirror
In all fairness this world view is characteristic of children. When children discover the world stereotypes are what helps greatly in learning. For example they'll think stuff like "if the candle burns, it means that anything that looks like a flame, is red and smokes will probably burn" and that is ok. Except that the children should grow up and understand that with some issues it is not black vs. good, there is a whole spectrum in between.
So another way to look at racists is as immature, they just never developped enough to have a full and more realistic view of the world.
Yeah, but who sets the percentage of minority (%10). Is it the company itself just trying to be nice? Is it the state or the federal government, I wonder...
Well, let's see he said he worked at a fried chicken restaurant -- hmm he must be black and he must have a criminal record. I'll mark the "African American" box and send the application for a background check.
This country is going downhill...I have thought about this issue quite a bit. What started it was that when I was a freshman in college in the Computer Science program, my university had this Affirmative Action Scholarship program, that helped Black students from bad neighbourhoods of the city to get into college with a full ride, all-payed scholarship. I really liked the idea, and we had about 5 or such students in our CS freshman group of 30 or so people. But by the start of the 3rd year, none of those people were left in the program. They just couldn't make it because the level of their previous academic performance was well below what was necessary to pass even such classes as Freshman Enlish, Calculus or Intro To Comp Sci. They had all dropped out and none of them graduated. So the city and the college had bend over backward and spent tax money (it was a state school) but it was ultimately pointless because those students were not ready for it. Shouldn't that money have gone to anyone based on merit? For example write an essay, go for an interview and get a scholarship or something like that?
The point here is that having a race/gender quota system will not help heal the racial tension, will lead to even more discrimination (reverse discrimination is still discrimination), will teach certain groups of people to function as the "victims" and leech resourses of the state and others just because they are part of some ethnic/racial/gender/sexual orientation group. That will eventually lead to the lowering of the standards in education and business. Most often than not when the government is allowed to step in and regulate things it ends up creating a mess in the long run.
Now going back to the example with Affirmative Action Scholarships. I think by the time the students graduate high-school it is probably too late to give them 4 year scholarships. Help those people learn an applied skill so they can have jobs, don't expect them to finish a 4 year college when then can't even read well. Instead the money should be sent to the primary schools where the children are just starting to learn to count and read or write. If they get a good primary education they should have no problem competing with other students no matter what race or gender they are.
The same goes for businesses. Wanting to hire %30 Black employees, %50 women, will lead to hiring people who are not qualified. It is too bad, but hiring them won't fix the problem -- it will hurt in the long run. Sure if you take someone from McDonalds and make them the Product Manager, they'll get paid more but the company will run into the ground because they are not qualified. So the best way to deal with the race issues is to not reinforce the divide but instead encourage and value education, learning and foster discussion of these issues. Setting a quota system or just throwing a bunch of money at the problem will not make it go away.
The problem is that it is not just the employment process that is messed up, but so is the Slashdot moderation system. I had used "nigger" chances are that the moderators would have just modded me down as soon as they saw the word, without even reading the message. But the problem is that I wanted others to hear what I had to say, and that meant not using "nigger" but using the "n-word" instead.
Someone told me why didn't I use the "c-word"? Well, I hope in the future it would become the "c-word" but that is not the case yet. If had used that nobody you have known what I am talking about. Hopefully, you and others who read the message would tell people who present you forms with "Caucasian" "Black" "White" "Asian" race categories could educate them as to why "Caucasian" is offensive and what it means. And why the whole separation of people into races is not very scientific.
Anyway, good point, but I had already considered it and unfortunately I had to use what I used to make others see my point of view. Sorry if it seems too hypocritical...
Ehe!
I find it amusing that the average slashdotter parrots this inane viewpoint? I find it amusing that you didn't provide any sources or or any figure to substantiate your "near-perfect reliability" claims and you are posting as an Anonymous Coward... Or do you think black people just have really good tans?
--Yeah that is _exactly_ what I think! I posted a source that claims otherwise, but who cares to read those, right? Well, you have read my mind, I salute you. Might consider astrology for career path...
I've been wondering, who sets these quotas?
Good point. I've already been called on that one though ;)
The bottom line is that 'race is an unscientific construct'. And here is another small excerpt:
Blumenbach, the German anthropologist and anatomist, first used the word "race" in 1775 to classify humans into five divisions: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach also coined the term "Caucasian" because he believed that the Caucasus region of Asia Minor produced "the most beautiful race of men." Both Linnaeus and Blumenbach stated that humans are one species, and the latter remarked on the arbitrary nature of his proposed categories.
These men were products and producers of the prejudices of their era, but it is remarkable how similar the concept and categories of race remain today, even after it has been widely documented that phenotypic and biochemical variations do not correlate simply with genotypic differences.
By the way, I could claim I am Asian too, I come from Russia and my father definetly has mongoloid face features -- Ghengis Khan is probably not that far in my family tree ... "Yey, I am a minority now too!" ;-)
So they want the companies to hire people "in a diverse" kind of way. Are they going to have race, gender, sexual orientation quotas or what? I can see them saying : "We still need 5 more black-gay-women for this job." "Sorry straight-white-male, you might be qualified, well educated and the company would sure like to hire you but you are just not a black-gay-woman."
Will I have shave my legs, dress like a woman or act gay or claim that my grand grand grand father was black so therefore I am a minority, to get a job in the near future...?
What would happen, if I just tell them that my grand-grand-grand father came from Africa so deep down I feel like I am part of a minority?
Actually I never check the "White" or "Caucasian" box on the race section on the forms, because putting myself in a race category just reinforces the fact that there are race categories and people are somehow treated differently because of it. Actually the word "Caucasian" comes directly from studies of eugenics at the turn of the century and I consider using it just as offensive as someone using the "n"-word, because it implies endorsing the values and attitudes of the time.
Besides the environmental factors I think there are also some social factors. I do believe there is a mind-body connection and if children today are bombarded with sexual imagery and girls as young as 10 are forced by peers and media to wear sexy (read slutty) clothes and behave in a flirting ways with boys, I think they will eventually start to hit puberty much earlier. The body will "accomodate" to the mind.
In other words, some will say that girls dress and behave in a sexual manner at an early age becuase they have hit puberty but it could also go the other way.
I have noticed this difference in average age of puberty firsthand. I grew up in a another country (Russia) and came here to the States when I was 15. At home most girls and guys my age had hit puberty at a much later date than my peers in the States. Quite interesting. Girls, back in my old country would not be allowed to wear make-up or dress slutty at school, were more modest and all an all didn't have sex as much as the girls and guys of the same age from US. If the social factors are responsible, then the average age of puberty during the extremely inhibited Victorian times should be much higher, and that is the case: the average age of puberty for girls back then was 16, and now it is more like 11 -- all within 160 years.
I can think of an experiment that would allow girls from another country to use the hair products and food from US but still live where they live. I wonder what would happen? It would be an extremely un-ethical experiment so it would never be done.
What he did, is he set up a CA on a hex grid, with a certain set of rules, to be the medium (i.e. each mollecule is approximated by a cell). Then he simulated the movement of a plate through that medium and it turns out some interesting eddies form behind the plate that look very much like turbulence. The problem of course is that the CA "eddies" look like turbulence, but that doesn't mean that they somehow model the real world turbulent flow. But it is still an interesting picture to look at. Perhaps someone is aware of a more detailed simulation or a more in depth study of this...
This is more of a philosophical debate I guess. Some scientists have claimed that knowing the math and having the equation is all we need, there is no need for conceptual models in our head. Others claim that is not enough and they would want to understand what is really going on.
Actually the problem with the Weather might not be just the number of variables, but the different local sensitivities to those variables -- it is a chaotic system. So even if you buy a billion dollar computer and account for as many variables as possible you might still not similate the weather in some part of the world, because it is very sensitive on the initial conditions. For example it is inherently harder to simulate and predict weather in England. There have always been jokes about un-predictability and errors in their forecasts, but that is not because their computing power is limited but because in their region the weather is more chaotic. As someone already mentioned it is like saying that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in South America could change the course of a hurricane in Atlantic.
At the same time, I have to say it is Wolfram, the self proclaimed pioneer and genius, who wrote a book full of proofs that start with "I am quite convinced..." or "It seems to me...". But nevertheless some of the stuff he did is quite interesting. I think fluid flow is one those things.
Very interesting point. I never heard anyone put it that way. I'd give you +5 mod points if I had any.
Or when someone is talking about multi-dimensional spaces, it is easy to express it in a mathemtical form (R^6 or C^6), but what does that mean in reality, how would you think about such a space?
(Speaking of the 6 dimensions, there was an article on Slashdot about how the dark matter doesn't exist but instead we see what we do because "space has 6 dimensions".here.)
The point is that, just like dogs will never be able to solve integrals with the brain power they have now, so humans likewise might not be capable of understanding certain phenomena from the physical universe we live in.
They did, but it is very dark and hard to see.
That is why I think it is important to teach the basics _and_ the applied stuff together. So while someone learns Photoshop or GIMP they would also learn why there need to be layers, what is DPI, what is a color space, what is kerning, hyphenation and other general stuff like that, not just memorize the sequence of menus. This doesn't apply just to Photoshop, it applies to everything. For example when dealing with programmers, I can tell right away if they graduated from a 2 year school or a 4 year one just by talking to them for 1 minute. The ones from an applied college will ask me what languages I know and boast as to how many they know. Someone from a 4 year college would instead ask me what kind of programming paradigms do I like to use to solve a problem (procedural, functional, object oriented etc.), or they'll ask me about wether I prefer to use Prim's or Kruskal's algorithms for a minimum spanning tree problem. And stuff like that.
I guess we'll just have to hope that Google will be always nice and always make the right choice, which they do make, don't they ... ?
I think this scientist doesn't quite know what is going on. The reason that spacetime is spelled together and not "space time" is preciselly because it is to be regarded as one entity : spacetime. Talking about time separately as being or not being curved is speculation, because there is no "time" separate from "space".
Unfortunately it will only be available for Atari, BeOS and NeXT systems. Also it is especially optimized to work well with the GNU/Hurd kernel...