Unfortunately, making a comment belligerant does not make it more correct. No but it does make it more amusing for me to write.
If you believe that anything as multi-faceted as "intelligence" (people can't even agree what the word _means_) is governed by single recessive genes, you need to do some thinking. No my point was that genetics has interesting properties in terms of traits that children inherit, these properties were known for a long time and even children learn of them in school.
It makes sense that there's a genetic component to intelligence. Is that the whole story? Seems unlikely to me. Of course it's not the whole story, studies put genetics at 50% influence at best. That's for pure intelligence and not for success in life which is oddly not that influenced by intelligence.
I don't know the studies to which you refer, but there's a lot of crock studies out there (James Watson recently claimed that Europeans are genetically smarter than Africans - a dubious and unfounded claim). A number of studies show an IQ gap between racial groups, the gap has shrunk in recent decades but asfaik still exists. This makes it decently plausible that there is a genetic difference in intelligence although it is difficult to be sure (especially of exactly how large it is). Granted this gap is quite pointless to consider for anything as it is small compared to the differences between individuals.
Also Asians kick everyone else's backside anyway if I remember so Europeans are also inferior.
Your post could be summarised by saying "what about recessive genes" - not exactly contributing a lot to the discussion, are you? Someone said that because intelligence isn't 100% genetic so it must be 0% genetic, I replied why he's an idiot.
No, I mean actual studies that are published in papers not whatever crap you enjoy reading because it has small words that you can comprehend. Here are some from my psychology 101 book (I'd write out the full name, journal and so on but you aren't worth that much of my time so you just get this): -Plomin & Petrill, 1997 -Grigorenko, 2000 -Neisser et al, 1996 -Broman et al, 1975
Also about your note on the difference between races the remaining gap to some indicates an unbridgeable genetic gap: -Hernnstein & Murray, 1994
Interestingly enough a number of people, unlike you, are sane enough to try to explain why such a gap doesn't really matter: -Loehlin, 2000 -Suzuki & Valencia, 1997 -Gould, 1981 -Zuckerman, 1990 -Nisbett, 1998
You've actually just proved the exact opposite to what you wanted to prove. You see, on the upward swing of production ( 1st half of the bell curve ), prices drop as output production heads towards the peak. On the downward swing ( ie the 2nd half of the bell curve ), prices increase as output continues. So the old argument that goes along the lines "Oh but we just have to wait for prices to increase" is partly correct... ie higher prices will lead to further uranium production, but we will most certainly be in the downward swing, and prices will be increasing, slowly at first, and then sharply rising shortly after. Okay so your point is? Prices will increase but how quickly they will do so is debatable and there are many alternative sources of uranium available (natural and man-made). We maxed out cheap sources of oil decades ago if I remember and that hasn't stopped things as the more expensive sources are also a lot more plentiful. Also the problem isn't production but rather that the current sources of uranium will run out quite quickly if we get all our energy from them.
Sure. But U235 is BY FAR the most plentiful source of nuclear power. It dwarfs everything else so massively that I'm surprised you mentioned it. No it's simply the most convenient one as it doesn't require that much processing (beyond extraction). Thorium-232 and Uranium-238 are both far more abundant but neither can be used directly as fuel. Actually if you allow for processing then Uranium-233 is by far the most abundant fuel.
1. World production at current prices has peaked I'm assuming you meant to say, there is plenty of it around but just not at current costs of extraction. The cost of the uranium is a small part of the total cost of nuclear power plants so even a substantial raise in the costs of extraction can be dealt with. 2. Uranium 235 is not the only fuel that can be used in nuclear power plants.
Oh for the love of god, genetics is not black and white. If you don't understand THAT then please shut up on any topic involving it because you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Even middle school kids know about recessive genes.
Studies, you know those things scientists use to learn about the world instead of guessing based on what they think it is like, indicate a strong genetic component to intelligence. So no, two intelligent people won't always have an intelligent kid but they're a whole lot more likely to have one than tow stupid people.
I'd prefer a doctor operating one me to pay attention to the patient not pause to remember if this was the 16th sponge he took out or if the 16th was the one he took out 10 minutes ago.
Actually I believe some of this energy is from the potential energy locked in the Earth-Moon system. Specifically if you took all the energy out of tides for long enough you would slow down the earth's rotation till it was tidally locked to the moon.
Yes, and if you complain to them after election with the threat of not voting for them in the next election, then that's part of the extended four year campaign. ...so your point is?
And with US presidents, this fails to work for periods of four years at a time, since they couldn't care less who you vote for next time. Well they do for the first four years but there aren't enough choices and too many idiots so it doesn't much matter if you don't vote for them. Of course since the US is not an elected dictatorship the government has more elected officials than just the president.
After you've elected your representatives, what they do is out of your hands; the only way you can change their behavior is to elect someone different next time. Therefore, agonizing over who to elect next time is, in fact, the only thing that makes sense if you live in a representative democracy. Worrying about day-to-day policies is pointless once you've made up your mind that you already don't like the current guys. BS, politicians aren't telepaths or mind readers or able to see into the future or even particularly intelligent. They also don't set their votes is stone the day they get elected but most importantly they want to get reelected. So yes you CAN influence them even after they get elected by writing to them and complaining. If enough people do so then they may change their vote since they WANT to please their constituents. Bloody hard for someone to represent the people (aka: get their votes again in x years again) when the people don't ever directly say what they want.
A truly strong password should have at least three of the following, if not all four: Not really, you can just make you password longer and you are just as secure.
Well good point although rent can probably be cheaper (on the lower end, worst case is you get a roommate) than a mortgage especially in areas with good job opportunities. Nothing wrong with debt/loans as an investment, that is what college is after all, but if you can't pay (including in the expected future) your current debt then adding more is just a disaster waiting to happen. If worst come to worst you can move in to someone else's place for a while if you're renting but you can't do that with a house.
Well I'm making enough to do that but that's a different point and I never said I am talking about the average (simply what is possible for many people). Also a BS degree is almost worthless from some programs, I went for a MS myself for that reason.
Even at $50k you can pay it back in 4-5 years, possibly less since your salary will increase with time. If you do consulting or something else (networking is joy) then you can do so even faster.
If you're no good enough to get a great job or pay your loans of in reasonable time, and let's be honest not everyone is, then you may have done better by going to a less expensive school (or transfered if needed).
I got paid to go to school, rack up a nice salary, and am still single, thank you very much you arrogant douche. I'm just not so disconnected from reality that I think my case is (or possibly could be) typical.
It's not about it being "your fault", it's about your individual case being a terrible example to extrapolate from and assume that anyone who finds college loans burdensome is either lazy or foolish. I am extrapolating from many cases of people I know from various places, I know I'm far from normal. I only said that if you find college loans burdensome then you probably made some bad decisions somewhere. I have seen tons of people make various bad decisions that caused them problems later on including myself. Had they not made those bad decisions, which were often easily avoidable, then they wouldn't have had such problems.
Interestingly enough the main bad decision is assuming that because the average salary for degree X is Y they will make Y simply by having that piece of paper. They ignore the networking needed, the hard work needed, actually knowing the course material and so on.
"Unproductive spouse" lol. I'm going to follow up my previous guess with one that the "single" part is going to be true for quite some time. If you marry someone who you need to support (note I never said all spouses are unproductive or anything like that) then that's your choice and any problems are your fault.
Lemme guess -- single engineer? Close enough, not my fault if you spent tons of money on something with little future return (a worthless degree) or got married early to an unproductive spouse.
I also live well within my means, people have actually said it's impossible to live comfortably in my area with what I spend yet I do.
No, my family is middle class. Actually they were immigrants to the US with very little 15 years ago. Since then they have moved up to upper middle class from working class, own a house and all that other nice stuff. The only thing they gave me (could give me) was teaching me the value of money, hard work and intelligent planning.
That average income is in all areas and for all jobs including those that require no college degree. I decided to get a job that pays above average and to be good enough to get paid well for it. I am quite intelligent which makes it easy but even friends of mine who aren't so gifted make $80k+ out of college. Yeah they worked and still work their backsides off, one as an investment banker despite hating the job/hours.
Well not trivial but not all that difficult either. Get a degree that pays well and work your ass off on it, including in high school and after you graduate. Live frugally/well within your means.
Most people spend decades paying back student loans. Decades? Christ what the hell is wrong with some people, oh wait now I see...
Unless one lands a high paying job strait out of school and avoids things like a mortgage or paying rent, paying back 30-100k worth of debt can take a while. Mortgage? Why the hell would I want to take out yet More loans when I am still paying off my current ones. Oh wait, that's right you're not a true red blooded American unless you make sure the next 10 generations of your family will have to pay off your loans.
1) Did you go to college in the U.S.? and 2) Did you pay for your college education out of your own pocket? Yup and mostly, financial aid paid most of it and a scholarship covered many odd expenses. I think in the end if not for the scholarship I'd have paid $30k or so for the whole thing. I worked summers, of course, to pay for some it.
If the answer to either is "no," then I'd say you probably don't really know what you're saying. $30-50K is about average for a college education from a 4-year accredited private institution these days. Okay, I could easily pay off $30-$50k within 1 year of graduation if I needed to as that is (more or less) how much I put into saving within one year of graduation. Also I'm quite lazy, if I needed to I could have easily doubled that amount at the cost of my free time. See I went for a degree, statistics, that won't be outsource in 2 years and which not half my university is going for. I also got a masters because it's sort of silly to not make that extra investment in my field given the returns.
A bit less if you go to a public school Unless you're willing/able to live with mom and dad for the first few years following your graduation, paying back that loan is a real bitch, especially when the economy ends up in the crapper following 9/11 and there are no jobs available with sufficient pay to both live on and pay back your loan. 9/11? Are you confusing the recession caused by the bubble bursting with 9/11?
Also what sort of degree did you get, are you one of the idiots who didn't think or plan ahead and just went for whatever crap they "felt" would make them money? Have you tried moving to get a job? Have you worked your ass (ie: if you have free time you're not trying hard enough) off to make money?
Then, when you end up not paying, the loan goes into to default, and you can forget about getting a mortgage on a house, getting a car loan, or anything else that 'normal' people do to make themselves financially stable that involves having good credit. Why would you need to do any of those things, do you have absolutely no financial planning ability at all? Pay for the car in cash, a cheap used car of course. You don't need a house, rent till you've paid off your debts. You're young (assuming you went to college after high school) and such frivolous wastes of money are unnecessary.
The grass is always greener on the other side, eh?
It has always been like this and likely used to be much much worse (after all it used to be that no one knew of such things), except that you are likely a young twit who has never looked at history in his life. Hell do you not know of the red scare or even the the war on drugs that burned justice on a stake?
Welcome to reality, enjoy your stay and pleas learn some perspective.
Hmm, an uneducated answer. See, its hard to get citizenship elsewhere when you're massively in debt. Or when you have utterly no marketable skills and would be a drain on the economy of any country you moved to.
However, there are very few uneducated jobs available in the US thanks to Clinton's push to have them eliminated. There are plenty of uneducated jobs available, at low salaries of course unless you have connections. Oh wait do you mean well paying, non-physical, safe and comfortable uneducated jobs? Yeah, blame Clinton not your own laziness or anything like that.
This leaves people no choice but to go to college, which for most people means tens of thousands of dollars in debt. A trivial amount, if you're capable of working hard and living well within your means you can easily pay it back within a year or two of graduation.
Very, very few genes give you a 100% of dying at a given age. Most simply state you gave a higher risk and the risk is heavily dependent on the environment. So if you live healthy you have little to worry about but if you don't your heart may explode early.
That seems like quite a useless talent or rather it is given the current state of information retrieval. The best one can do now is get a very cursory or almost nonexistent understanding of a subject quickly. The time to read (and understand even at a shallow level) the information by itself makes everything else less than instant. Even then the understanding you have then is pretty much worthless for most purposes.
The general problem is that right now the result is not a shallow understanding but rather and incomplete and broken one. Worse many such people seem to think they in fact have a complete understanding. I for example don't and while I know a large number of subjects but would never claim to have a proper (ie: at all usable) knowledge of most of them.
Now my father has a useful way of doing things, he learns enough about a subject (a time consuming task) to be able to tie it to everything else he knows (and aims to never know more or less than this).
I think the problem is that I'm thinking in the short term while you're thinking in the long term. I find it foolish to depend too much on the later as it's impossible to predict new discoveries (which could have tremendous impact on the future). At the same time some discoveries may NOT happen, after all we still don't have those darn flying cars. Once you add in enough "well if this also existed"s in there anything is possible so the whole excersise is pointless.
I actually I find it amusing that you weren't able to get what position/view-point I was talking from.
Insults? You got me started at: "Well hopefully as seems absurdly pointless so far." I just hate it when people try to paint their lack of imagination and inability to make connections as some sort of stupidity on my part. (see below)
Actually I'm thinking the exact same thing about you, your original examples really were lacking compared to what you could have given. Also your skin is way too thin for the internet if you so mind my mild jab at you in that quote.
Uh, the book Rainbows End is precisely about the combination of a variety of such technologies. That was what you were supposed to get in the beginning. BZZZZT! Thanks for Playing! You're now taking the very thing that you missed in the beginning and are now claiming it as your own?
You're missing my bloody point.
Uh, I *am* talking about future versions, and again, the subject of the book being discussed is about technology a decade or more down the line, and its societal implications. You, on the other hand, are the one talking about Blackberries and touting that as some sort of foresight that can deem research in this direction useless.
No I'm claiming that research is premature except as the general research toy, for the near future this is useless technology. The changes needed to make it useful would dramatically change it's design and implementation.
50 terms ahead? You know, there's a difference between stretching yourself out of intellectual curiosity into related fields and going to random lectures with no preparation.
The lectures I went to were at a high enough and advanced enough level that missing a couple terms is less damaging than missing the time needed to look up those terms. Then again I may be simply intelligent enough to fill in the gaps more quickly than I can realistically expect to look up the terms.
I have also gone to almost random lectures and taken exams while lacking much of the needed knowledge. It was somewhat amusing to fill in the gaps as I went along, and when the material was of a moderate enough level I even did quite well in the end.
Laptops and Smart phones -- my what a prognosticator of future tech you are!
The far future is mysterious and unpredictable, I talk about the near future which you can consider in some reasonable sense. Anyone who thinks science fiction is in any reasonable sense predicting the future if a fool, it's prediction rate is of the shotgun variety (ie: if you shoot enough pellets then one will hit). My point is that the other technologies needed to make this work would also be almost as useful (maybe more) if used in existing devices. So claiming this technology on it's own does X is a lie as it simply makes X slightly easier.
Hmm, weren't you just talking about the combination of technologies? Please apply some of the actual thinking you were doing up above when you were writing this bit: "IF the interface was better then it could be useful but copying existing interfaces isn't a giant leap. I mean it having sub vocal commands, brain activity reading, proper eye tracking, working AI (in the light sense) help and so on." You're finally beginning to catch up. Did you finally read the Wikipedia article about Rainbows End, maybe?
Why would I need to read the wikipedia article, as I said I'm capable of thinking on my own so I don't simply need to regurgitate the idea
Except it's neither instant nor effortless, and most importantly it only contains a sliver of the knowledge in the world (and only a subset of the knowledge on the web). That's great if you want to learn just the basics or summary of a subject but if you want proper depth you often have to look elsewhere.
Well since you love name calling and insults I'll take my jab at you. You're a small minded nit wit who thinks that because google is the hot shit right now everything must in turn directly tie to it (or search). It seems almost like you're incapable of differentiating between potential technologies from science fiction and their near worthless current versions. A soyuz capsule is not an ftl city ship, and it won't be for a very long time if ever. You can't cite one example of what this can do now that is actually useful and can't be done just as easily (or close to it) using other methods.
You can't comprehend the difference between a technology being useful COMBINED with other advances and being useful on it's own. On it's own this is pretty useless as you can already do almost everything it does with other technologies. A future version of it may be useful on it's own but that would require either much better software or hardware.
IF search was much better than it is now this could be useful but search is not, search is quite bad right now (compared to what a user would WANT it to do). That's for sane subjects, anything such as actual research is much worse. IF the interface was better then it could be useful but copying existing interfaces isn't a giant leap. I mean it having sub vocal commands, brain activity reading, proper eye tracking, working AI (in the light sense) help and so on. IF the software was better it could be useful but again it's not. I mean an artificial memory and mini-brain, self-organizing (but allowing for user input) and easy to use.
Unlike you I am able to comprehend the technology not just regurgitate random somewhat related tid-bits that others have said. I KNOW how I'd find this useful if needed and google type search has NOTHING to do with it, search is too slow and inefficient. I'd instead use it as more or less memory augmentation, helping me store "links" to things I already know or have read but don't remember in detail. Global www search is too slow at a personal scale unless it is done personally and by the use (or with them in mind as an individual). Even then it'd be useless unless a lot of specialized software was written which could almost as easily be used on a laptop (but doesn't really exist).
Ah, another one who *thinks* he's clever but posts before thinking ahead one or two steps. It's different for one key reason: they can't see you using it, so you can use it in *any* conversation - This means that you can conspire in ways that a blackberry won't allow you.
Why even bother with fact to face conversations? You can conspire before the conversation, after the conversation and have a partner do it during the conversation.
Ah, another example of "cleverness" -- finding the one strawman example and not considering the real ones, then presenting that as *cleverness*. There are lots of simple queries that *are* useful. There are lots of technical terms in fields that you don't know that would be immediately useful in contexts like lectures, business meetings, meeting people for the first time, intellectual conversations... Have many of those?
And google is useless for most of them. I know because I search for such things a lot due to my indecently varied interests. By the time you know what the term means from finding the proper reference and reading it the lecture is 50 terms ahead. Likewise you can already do this with smart phones, laptops and so on.
For one thing, it's obvious I am talking about accessibility, of which speed is only a part. The phenomenon of a quantitative difference in speed/accessibility leading to a qualitative difference has been touted by persons like Linus Torvalds and Alan Kay. I think I'll take *them* over you! (On the basis of their good past performance intellectually, and your poor one in your post, so no crying argument by authority, baby!)
How is accessibility any better, all you've mentioned and talked about is speed. The speed with which you can
Just one example: give people the ability to invisibly send and read text messages, and you get something that looks just like Mental Telepathy. Which won't do anything a blackberry (or high end cell phone) does already except kill you when it goes off while you're driving (and no, you won't remember to turn the thing off every time you're in the car).
And this is just the surface! Well hopefully as seems absurdly pointless so far.
What if those invisible gestures and heads-up display contact lenses also let you Google something almost as fast and effortlessly as you can say the word? Have you ever googled anything? It doesn't matter if I can search as fast as I can say it, it still take me 200 times as long to parse the results as to say the query. If the query is complex it can take much longer, sometimes requiring multiple queries.
And for you nay-sayers, search existed before Google -- why did Google make things so much better? Research existed before the web & web search, why did the web make things so much better? Because if you cross certain thresholds in speed and accessibility, the quantitative difference becomes qualitative! Speed is worthless, google and the web didn't make accessing data simply faster but they made MORE information accessible.
Once searching for something becomes as easy as saying it, the very concept of *knowing* something changes. (Books already take us part way there. I "know" how to build a compiler. But if I couldn't reach for my copy of the "Dragon Book" I'd be awful lost!) BS, as I said searching is horridly time consuming to get information. For all intent sand purposes it doesn't matter if it takes you 1 second (saying it) or 10 seconds (use your cell phone) to open a search when it takes 10 minutes to parse the crap that you get.
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Also Asians kick everyone else's backside anyway if I remember so Europeans are also inferior. Your post could be summarised by saying "what about recessive genes" - not exactly contributing a lot to the discussion, are you? Someone said that because intelligence isn't 100% genetic so it must be 0% genetic, I replied why he's an idiot.
No, I mean actual studies that are published in papers not whatever crap you enjoy reading because it has small words that you can comprehend. Here are some from my psychology 101 book (I'd write out the full name, journal and so on but you aren't worth that much of my time so you just get this):
-Plomin & Petrill, 1997
-Grigorenko, 2000
-Neisser et al, 1996
-Broman et al, 1975
Also about your note on the difference between races the remaining gap to some indicates an unbridgeable genetic gap:
-Hernnstein & Murray, 1994
Interestingly enough a number of people, unlike you, are sane enough to try to explain why such a gap doesn't really matter:
-Loehlin, 2000
-Suzuki & Valencia, 1997
-Gould, 1981
-Zuckerman, 1990
-Nisbett, 1998
1. World production at current prices has peaked I'm assuming you meant to say, there is plenty of it around but just not at current costs of extraction. The cost of the uranium is a small part of the total cost of nuclear power plants so even a substantial raise in the costs of extraction can be dealt with.
2. Uranium 235 is not the only fuel that can be used in nuclear power plants.
Oh for the love of god, genetics is not black and white. If you don't understand THAT then please shut up on any topic involving it because you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Even middle school kids know about recessive genes.
Studies, you know those things scientists use to learn about the world instead of guessing based on what they think it is like, indicate a strong genetic component to intelligence. So no, two intelligent people won't always have an intelligent kid but they're a whole lot more likely to have one than tow stupid people.
I'd prefer a doctor operating one me to pay attention to the patient not pause to remember if this was the 16th sponge he took out or if the 16th was the one he took out 10 minutes ago.
Actually I believe some of this energy is from the potential energy locked in the Earth-Moon system. Specifically if you took all the energy out of tides for long enough you would slow down the earth's rotation till it was tidally locked to the moon.
Well good point although rent can probably be cheaper (on the lower end, worst case is you get a roommate) than a mortgage especially in areas with good job opportunities. Nothing wrong with debt/loans as an investment, that is what college is after all, but if you can't pay (including in the expected future) your current debt then adding more is just a disaster waiting to happen. If worst come to worst you can move in to someone else's place for a while if you're renting but you can't do that with a house.
Well I'm making enough to do that but that's a different point and I never said I am talking about the average (simply what is possible for many people). Also a BS degree is almost worthless from some programs, I went for a MS myself for that reason.
Even at $50k you can pay it back in 4-5 years, possibly less since your salary will increase with time. If you do consulting or something else (networking is joy) then you can do so even faster.
If you're no good enough to get a great job or pay your loans of in reasonable time, and let's be honest not everyone is, then you may have done better by going to a less expensive school (or transfered if needed).
It's not about it being "your fault", it's about your individual case being a terrible example to extrapolate from and assume that anyone who finds college loans burdensome is either lazy or foolish. I am extrapolating from many cases of people I know from various places, I know I'm far from normal. I only said that if you find college loans burdensome then you probably made some bad decisions somewhere. I have seen tons of people make various bad decisions that caused them problems later on including myself. Had they not made those bad decisions, which were often easily avoidable, then they wouldn't have had such problems.
Interestingly enough the main bad decision is assuming that because the average salary for degree X is Y they will make Y simply by having that piece of paper. They ignore the networking needed, the hard work needed, actually knowing the course material and so on. "Unproductive spouse" lol. I'm going to follow up my previous guess with one that the "single" part is going to be true for quite some time. If you marry someone who you need to support (note I never said all spouses are unproductive or anything like that) then that's your choice and any problems are your fault.
I also live well within my means, people have actually said it's impossible to live comfortably in my area with what I spend yet I do.
No, my family is middle class. Actually they were immigrants to the US with very little 15 years ago. Since then they have moved up to upper middle class from working class, own a house and all that other nice stuff. The only thing they gave me (could give me) was teaching me the value of money, hard work and intelligent planning.
That average income is in all areas and for all jobs including those that require no college degree. I decided to get a job that pays above average and to be good enough to get paid well for it. I am quite intelligent which makes it easy but even friends of mine who aren't so gifted make $80k+ out of college. Yeah they worked and still work their backsides off, one as an investment banker despite hating the job/hours.
Also what sort of degree did you get, are you one of the idiots who didn't think or plan ahead and just went for whatever crap they "felt" would make them money? Have you tried moving to get a job? Have you worked your ass (ie: if you have free time you're not trying hard enough) off to make money? Then, when you end up not paying, the loan goes into to default, and you can forget about getting a mortgage on a house, getting a car loan, or anything else that 'normal' people do to make themselves financially stable that involves having good credit. Why would you need to do any of those things, do you have absolutely no financial planning ability at all? Pay for the car in cash, a cheap used car of course. You don't need a house, rent till you've paid off your debts. You're young (assuming you went to college after high school) and such frivolous wastes of money are unnecessary.
The grass is always greener on the other side, eh?
It has always been like this and likely used to be much much worse (after all it used to be that no one knew of such things), except that you are likely a young twit who has never looked at history in his life. Hell do you not know of the red scare or even the the war on drugs that burned justice on a stake?
Welcome to reality, enjoy your stay and pleas learn some perspective.
Very, very few genes give you a 100% of dying at a given age. Most simply state you gave a higher risk and the risk is heavily dependent on the environment. So if you live healthy you have little to worry about but if you don't your heart may explode early.
That seems like quite a useless talent or rather it is given the current state of information retrieval. The best one can do now is get a very cursory or almost nonexistent understanding of a subject quickly. The time to read (and understand even at a shallow level) the information by itself makes everything else less than instant. Even then the understanding you have then is pretty much worthless for most purposes.
The general problem is that right now the result is not a shallow understanding but rather and incomplete and broken one. Worse many such people seem to think they in fact have a complete understanding. I for example don't and while I know a large number of subjects but would never claim to have a proper (ie: at all usable) knowledge of most of them.
Now my father has a useful way of doing things, he learns enough about a subject (a time consuming task) to be able to tie it to everything else he knows (and aims to never know more or less than this).
I actually I find it amusing that you weren't able to get what position/view-point I was talking from.
Insults? You got me started at: "Well hopefully as seems absurdly pointless so far." I just hate it when people try to paint their lack of imagination and inability to make connections as some sort of stupidity on my part. (see below)
Actually I'm thinking the exact same thing about you, your original examples really were lacking compared to what you could have given. Also your skin is way too thin for the internet if you so mind my mild jab at you in that quote.
Uh, the book Rainbows End is precisely about the combination of a variety of such technologies. That was what you were supposed to get in the beginning. BZZZZT! Thanks for Playing! You're now taking the very thing that you missed in the beginning and are now claiming it as your own?
You're missing my bloody point.
Uh, I *am* talking about future versions, and again, the subject of the book being discussed is about technology a decade or more down the line, and its societal implications. You, on the other hand, are the one talking about Blackberries and touting that as some sort of foresight that can deem research in this direction useless.
No I'm claiming that research is premature except as the general research toy, for the near future this is useless technology. The changes needed to make it useful would dramatically change it's design and implementation.
50 terms ahead? You know, there's a difference between stretching yourself out of intellectual curiosity into related fields and going to random lectures with no preparation.
The lectures I went to were at a high enough and advanced enough level that missing a couple terms is less damaging than missing the time needed to look up those terms. Then again I may be simply intelligent enough to fill in the gaps more quickly than I can realistically expect to look up the terms.
I have also gone to almost random lectures and taken exams while lacking much of the needed knowledge. It was somewhat amusing to fill in the gaps as I went along, and when the material was of a moderate enough level I even did quite well in the end.
Laptops and Smart phones -- my what a prognosticator of future tech you are!
The far future is mysterious and unpredictable, I talk about the near future which you can consider in some reasonable sense. Anyone who thinks science fiction is in any reasonable sense predicting the future if a fool, it's prediction rate is of the shotgun variety (ie: if you shoot enough pellets then one will hit). My point is that the other technologies needed to make this work would also be almost as useful (maybe more) if used in existing devices. So claiming this technology on it's own does X is a lie as it simply makes X slightly easier.
Hmm, weren't you just talking about the combination of technologies? Please apply some of the actual thinking you were doing up above when you were writing this bit: "IF the interface was better then it could be useful but copying existing interfaces isn't a giant leap. I mean it having sub vocal commands, brain activity reading, proper eye tracking, working AI (in the light sense) help and so on." You're finally beginning to catch up. Did you finally read the Wikipedia article about Rainbows End, maybe?
Why would I need to read the wikipedia article, as I said I'm capable of thinking on my own so I don't simply need to regurgitate the idea
Except it's neither instant nor effortless, and most importantly it only contains a sliver of the knowledge in the world (and only a subset of the knowledge on the web). That's great if you want to learn just the basics or summary of a subject but if you want proper depth you often have to look elsewhere.
You can't comprehend the difference between a technology being useful COMBINED with other advances and being useful on it's own. On it's own this is pretty useless as you can already do almost everything it does with other technologies. A future version of it may be useful on it's own but that would require either much better software or hardware.
IF search was much better than it is now this could be useful but search is not, search is quite bad right now (compared to what a user would WANT it to do). That's for sane subjects, anything such as actual research is much worse. IF the interface was better then it could be useful but copying existing interfaces isn't a giant leap. I mean it having sub vocal commands, brain activity reading, proper eye tracking, working AI (in the light sense) help and so on. IF the software was better it could be useful but again it's not. I mean an artificial memory and mini-brain, self-organizing (but allowing for user input) and easy to use.
Unlike you I am able to comprehend the technology not just regurgitate random somewhat related tid-bits that others have said. I KNOW how I'd find this useful if needed and google type search has NOTHING to do with it, search is too slow and inefficient. I'd instead use it as more or less memory augmentation, helping me store "links" to things I already know or have read but don't remember in detail. Global www search is too slow at a personal scale unless it is done personally and by the use (or with them in mind as an individual). Even then it'd be useless unless a lot of specialized software was written which could almost as easily be used on a laptop (but doesn't really exist).
Ah, another one who *thinks* he's clever but posts before thinking ahead one or two steps. It's different for one key reason: they can't see you using it, so you can use it in *any* conversation - This means that you can conspire in ways that a blackberry won't allow you.
Why even bother with fact to face conversations? You can conspire before the conversation, after the conversation and have a partner do it during the conversation.
Ah, another example of "cleverness" -- finding the one strawman example and not considering the real ones, then presenting that as *cleverness*. There are lots of simple queries that *are* useful. There are lots of technical terms in fields that you don't know that would be immediately useful in contexts like lectures, business meetings, meeting people for the first time, intellectual conversations... Have many of those?
And google is useless for most of them. I know because I search for such things a lot due to my indecently varied interests. By the time you know what the term means from finding the proper reference and reading it the lecture is 50 terms ahead. Likewise you can already do this with smart phones, laptops and so on.
For one thing, it's obvious I am talking about accessibility, of which speed is only a part. The phenomenon of a quantitative difference in speed/accessibility leading to a qualitative difference has been touted by persons like Linus Torvalds and Alan Kay. I think I'll take *them* over you! (On the basis of their good past performance intellectually, and your poor one in your post, so no crying argument by authority, baby!)
How is accessibility any better, all you've mentioned and talked about is speed. The speed with which you can