The old textbook example for regular speciation...
Anthropologists tend to make the theories when it comes to the story
of human evolution. They are not real familiar with standard evolutionary
theory and do not realize how bizarre the "Multiple Origins" theory is.
Humans like to assign magical things to happen in their evolution.
You don't want us to be like flatworms, do you?
So you saying that the USGS will not censure specific papers from
being published, they just want to help make them more popular?
That is just so... sweet.
Why don't they do this for all the other 1000's of scientific journals?
Journals have been publishing for 150 years without this government benifit
and do they really need Bush's help to do their jobs? What is Bush's background
gives him such scientific credentials?
The people in the agency who will do the peer reviews are not peers.
They are political bureaucrats. Can you see how that might be bad?
Why has the Bush administration started this benevolent program with specifically
this agency? Is there a motive, ya spose?
Why can't scientists evaluate the papers, like they always have? Are they
unqualified now? When will Bush qualify them?
Since papers coming out of USGS will be politically motivated, they will
have to be viewed more as propaganda than science. A special journal could be
used for their release, like "The Republican Review".
>> No, it's kinda like discussing economics or physics during calculus to make it more
>>practical and show people the real-world applications.
One problem with this is that a person with a CS undergrad degree isn't qualified to
go into automation programming, so it becomes a course which does not lead to
employment. It sure would be an exciting course to most, but not a very useful one.
When a course like this is put into the curriculum, some other course must
be taken out to make room for it. You can't just tack more requirements onto the
degree (or throw out the wonderful liberal arts stuff). Throwing this course in
the degree might have the effect of diluting the quality of the CS curriculum,
depending on if there is room or not for it. Something's gotta give...
>>There really isn't an "intro robotics" course here,
Yes there is, it is over in the college of EE. They have a
very nice robotics program at Ga Tech. Get a dual degree (CS and EE)
and you will be unstoppable.
Really, I don't think robotics belongs in the CS undergrad
curriculum. The graduates of that type of program are going into
desktop and server programming, not automation. Automation programming
requires a lot of hardware knowledge (microprocessors, bit banging,
actuators, sensors, signal conditioning, etc.) and that is too
much info to pack into one course to make the person capable of
getting a job in automation programming. Maybe at the graduate level
it would be a good specialty (with cross-cooperation with the EE school).
That said, the reason they might want to have a robotics course is
to excite the students into pursuing CS. When students first come into
their programming classes they are all cranked up about it and the
intense study of syntax, OO, and algorithms knocks the excitement
out of most of them. As salesmen say, it would provide a "Wow Effect"
for the student to continue studying the other "dull" aspects of programming.
Another opinion is that if the student considers the standard fare
of programming (syntax, OO, and algorithms) to be dull, maybe they are in the
wrong field anyway.
It is unlikely that a CS student with one course in "Robotics" will
get employment in the automation programming field. It just ain't enough.
Somehow the moderator forgot to allow the author to be represented in this debate.
Thank you Arlem Tashkinov for posting the above link to the full paper (I mistakenly called it
only the abstract in another post).
>> It makes sense that this environment doesn't allow the mental wiring to solidify.
.. and that is the grand experiment that is happening right now. We evolved to be fully
functional in our early teens, but now it is not possible to be fully functional, ever.
The environment is a rapidly changing landscape and we will have to run fast to stay in the
same place. How to use the phone changes. How to get to work changes. What to do at work changes.
We have to keep up.
What effect will this have on the psychology of the individual and the structure of our
society?
We have not evolved to be this way. Interesting experiment, no?
One side effect of this sustained immaturity will probably be that people learn to
keep learning and society will have the ability to adapt more rapidly to new situations.
In the past the elders would retain rigid rules that made society more stable, but also
make it inflexible to change over several generations.
"Psychological neotony" is a perpetual state of relearning and rethinking the environment.
It is what creative and innovative people do. It is also called "arrested psychological development".
Arrested development might become the norm and people who are not arrested will need treatment.=-}
The scoring system here is weird. You have one of the few posts of any real value and
you get the lowest score (0). I think the scores are either randomly generated or only
based on humor.
That is an extremely long and informative abstract. Is there anything left to be said in the paper? =-}
The author says the driving force for this sustained immaturity is our culture's
admiration of youth, but I think he is wrong on that. If this effect is really becoming more
prominent then I would guess that the driving force is the rapid change in technology. New methods
and gadgets come out every year and at an unprecedented pace. This requires people to relearn
everyday tasks such as how to make a phone call, etc.
Another reason for extended immaturity stated in the abstract is the extension of formal education without
an endpoint ceremony that signals the end of all learning and the beginning of adulthood.
After "graduation" there are always more academic hills to climb into an endless horizon of
learning. I would point out that even if there was one, the continuous bombardment of changing technology in our
everyday lives would make it null and void.
This extended immaturity of creative people is a well know effect, but the author implies
it is becoming more common. I wonder what metric he used to prove this, or is it just a
hypothesis? He points to the increasing divorce rate as a symptom of immature thought,
but that sure is a stretch. The full paper online would be nice.
The author is not writing for pop-psychology, this is a scientific argument. The definition you have
from the popular dictionary is of physical maturity, not of psychological maturity from
a scientific, biological, evolutionary viewpoint. In
the field of biology, maturity is when the animal has acquired enough Stimulus --> Response reactions
to make quick decisions. These S-->Rs become hardcoded into the brain and become
knee-jerk reactions. They have evolved for purposes of survival. The adult must
often make quick decisions to survive. This age-related hardwiring of the brain has been proven
many times and in many ways in brain research. It's a bio-chemical thing that is difficult
to reverse.
I'm right close to fifty, also. You can't let pride get in the way of science, though.
The things I'm discussing are just part of who we are, like it or not. Adults are
rigid thinkers and immaturity implies creativity of S-->R patterning. Maybe knowing this
is true can help older people listen more to the ideas of young people.
I'm presently a teacher (college) and I repetitively spit out my knowledge to my students.
Every now and then a bold student asks why something is the way it is. My knee-jerk reaction
to say it is just that way and accept it. That's my old age talking. I find that as I get older
it becomes more painful to even consider new solutions to old problems. I have learned to
listen to the student's questions and go back to rethink why things are the way they are.
It has been very educational. I have to tell myself that it is successful to rethink these things
because I know maturity has made me mentally blind to new ideas. I can overcome that if I
try.
Most all of the posts on this thread are way off track and people don't realize this author is
writing a paper on the topics of psychology, evolution, and biology from a scientific standpoint.
The ridge thinking of the mature mind is not a new theory, it is old, well accepted, and proven. The
author is discussing what happens when the mature adult can't solidify a S-->R rule set
because the environment will not allow it. What is the outcome on development of the
individual's psychology? Will the necessity to create new S-->Rs through a lifespan require
the individual to remain in a psychologically immature state? Probably so. How will this change society?
Freud also mentioned, in his lectures, that people in creative fields seem to be in a
mentally juvenile state well into adulthood. This is not a new concept.
>> What is the formal definition of maturity ? I RTFA and didn't see one so its
>> impossible to agree or disagree with it.
The author is writing about maturity as defined by the field of developmental
psychology, specifically of mammals. When the animal is born it is bombarded
with information and starts to assemble order by looking for patterns. As the
animal matures, these patterns are remembered so that the animal can make
decisions more quickly when it sees them happen.
What this implies is that young animals will have delays
on reacting to certain situations because they are still developing a pattern
definition and reaction for that stimulus.
A mature adult who has seen the pattern before does
not think about the pattern, but reacts immediately without thought.
For you programmers out there, the child is still writing the
"if (pattern==true){ reaction }" code and the mature individual
stops programming and only runs the code, without thinking about it.
Mature individuals have the initial speed advantage, but if their
reaction is wrong then they will get stuck in a loop of illogical
behavior and will be unable to change the hardcoded logic of their mind.
One symptom of maturity is that the adult can't remember why they
do things a certain way, but they are very adamant about doing it that way.
Maturity is like having your software get ROMed, bugs and all.
>> So it looks like his definition of 'maturity' coresponds to my 'boring old fart',
>> which, at the age of 53, I hope I'm not.
When mammals are young they they have a mental flexibility to learn. When they get older their brains lock into the modes of thought that they learned in youth and find it difficult to see things in new ways. This is an old concept typified by the old addage "you can't teach an old dog new tricks". Maturity is the mental state of turning off observation and going into an auto-pilot mode of preconceived notions. The story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" is another example of this effect, in which the child sees the truth and the adults are blinded by their maturity.
In physics, most new discoveries are made by young people, below the age of 30. After the age of 30 a mature individual will often develop existing theories by compiling information, but seldom will they come up with unique observations that break new ground.
If people are required to learn all their lives, it conflicts with the normal stabilization into rigid thinking that happens at maturity. Mature people need to lock into the misconceptions of their youth and take action without thought. It's part of normal development.
> Basically all life carries a lot of genetic information that is never expressed.
True.
> Things like genes for tails, extra eyes, exoskeletons, fins, etc... What happens
> is changes in the environment trigger these genes to express themselves.
Well, it doesn't really "trigger" them. Changes in the environment cause a
reshuffling of priorities in natural selection of the pre-existing, recessive genetic traits
and encourage a new direction for the species. This is how we create domestic
breeds from wild stock and we can create lines that look very different from the
wild stock. The genetic variations are pre-existing in the gene pool and inbreeding
causes them to become exposed.
> Unless you're a bacterium with a really short reproductive cycle enabling rapid
> expotential growth, it's really hard for a single mutation to have an instantaneous
> effect on survival rate.
That's true. Sexual reproduction causes a mixing and in an actively interbreeding species a
spontaneous mutation is likely to just wander around in the gene pool, not causing much overall
effect on the species population. The mutation becomes fodder for future variation.
Some species of animals seem to have gone through a genetic bottleneck, causing their
gene pool to have low variation. An example of this is the cheetah.
This effect of rapid evolution based on pre-existing (but unseen in the phenome) genetic
variation was brought up by several evolution theorists back in the 1940's to explain
the rapid evolution of whales and dolphins. The genome contains the mutations, but it
is hidden by the phenome. When change is needed, the varaition is there to help the
species survive.
Another interesting species is the King Conch of Florida. It lives in intercoastal lagoons
around Florida. It is considered one species, but each lagoon up and down the coast
has it's own phenotype variation of the species. Gene exchange is slow between these
pockets of populations. The other interesting thing is that the gene exchange is highest with
the geographical neighbor population, so gene flow is geographically linear in this species.
Back to the original article, it is not so much about selection as it is about the
bias in probability of certain mutations occuring over others. This has been known for
a long time. Some molecular structures in the DNA have weak points that are more
likely to change than others. Interesting study, but not earth-shaking.
> If we could read DNA like a program (e.g. truly understand it), we probably would
> find that it was worse than the equivalent of 100 drunk undergrads writing an
> operating system in perl... Amazingly it works, but it ain't pretty and would
> never pass a code review...
That is true, it is a very jumbled code. Much of it is redundant or useless. In genetics
these are called "junk genes". Trying to find the genes that code for necessary
protein functions is a real challenge because of all this junk in the code.
Why does the cell retain so much "junk"? Maybe it increases the probability of
future useful mutations. Maybe it just doesn't matter that it is in there,
so there is no positve selection for removal. Imagine if you had almost unlimited
storage space and no penalty for load or execution time. Would you bother to
remove any code? Why not leave every library you have ever written linked into
the final object? Some vestigal code will become corrupted with time and you
will ocassionally replicate whole libraries to only use one function.
That's the way the DNA and RNA look. It is very bizarre and tangled, like it
was cut, pasted and mangled together in a haphazard way. Intelligent design?
Only if the designer had a weird sense of humor.
>A philosophy professor should at least be familar with the ideas of quantum mechanics,
Philosophy is a liberal art. In liberal arts people are allowed to create their
own laws and universes. They are not restricted to the true laws of nature.
Ooooo! How I hate liberal arts...! (shaking fist in all directions)
The ideas of randomness and chaos will slowly leak into the liberal arts field. It
may take another hundred years, though.
> My philosophy professor in college once said that if you know enough
> about any environment, everything in that environment is predictable.
That's why liberal arts people are not allowed in the laboratory. Instead of
examining the existing laws of nature, they make up their own laws.
Biochemistry is not governed by predictability; it is governed by randomness,
stochastics, and chaos. These are areas that "philosophers" ignore, but
they govern many complex systems.
"... psychology is useless, philosophy is worse... " - Dire Straits
Sometimes I teach math and one of my favorite schtiks is to tell the students
I will accomplish something that no human has ever done or will ever be able to
repeat. Then I throw a deck of cards in the air. Exactly how they land will never
be repeated again. I stopped doing that when I found the cleaning crew would not
clean it up. Who would have predicted that?
> These knucklehead scientists are just rediscovering and codifying what
> has been ancient knowledge all along. The are repackaging selective
> breeding as a new concept.
The research is not trying to prove natural selection. That's been done
to death (pun, haha). Natural selection is when _existing_ genes are
selected or deselected from the gene pool based on circumstances of the
population. "Breeding" domestic animals has little to do with mutation
and selection, and is mostly just selection of desirable traits from the
_existing_ gene pool.
The research shows that a specific mutation has a high probability of
recurrance. This isn't exactly new either, it has been know for more than 15 years
that certain mutations has higher probability than others, based on
their molecular dynamics. Some genes are "weak", so to speak, and are more likely to
undergo mutation. Using this knowledge, it would be easier to predict the
immediate mutational response of an organism to an environmental change.
Long term response would become more "fuzzy" to prediction as more time would allow
more improbable mutations to occur.
This is unpublished research. They are probably putting a paper together right now
to submit for review. I bet it gets a 6 or 7 on a scale from 1 to 10. It's not earth
shaking, since it just re-affirms existing theory of the skewed probability of spontaneous, molecular
mutations.
There is too much complexity to explain if you start with an IDE. It is
too much at once. The only way around that problem is to let them think
it is magic and hope you can circle back around and teach it later.
A lot of teachers just ignore the explanation and the student finishes the
course with the mistaken impression that their program is part of the builder.
Student: "No, it not not Java, it's NetBeans".
> and presumed that the student had previously taken "C++", and before
> that had taken a variety of other programming and theory classes, working
> in Pascal, assembler and C, at the least.
Doh!
I'm a teacher also. I have had this problem. You should first check
the syllabii and try to determine the student's background. Even then,
don't believe that the previous teachers have taught the curriculum.
There's nothing more heart-wrenching than walking into class and expecting
to teach the course, only to find out you have students who are
not prepared to learn the required materials. It also makes me look
"unprepared" when this happens, because I have prepared to teach the syllabus and
the students are not at that point of development. When this happens I
stall the first class by asking them questions (it's an "oral quiz")
and then I quickly rewrite my class plans based on their existing knowledge.
I have never complained to other teachers about this. I normally
just drop back and punt. I want to stay on good terms with the other
faculty and not start a war. I believe teachers need to stick to the
content of the syllabus and if they deviate, it should only augment
the course and not ignore it. If a teacher has a disagreement with the
syllabii curriculum, they need to lobby to change it rather than just
ignoring what it is trying to do. Teachers need to row together to
keep on course (pun, haha).
I've been teaching C++ and Java for seven years. I've found
that the most effective method of introducing any language is
to start back at the command line compiler and a text editor.
The student should understand where the compiler components are
and how to manually set paths to their working directory.
Later on, when they start to use an IDE, I have them go look
through the builder generated code and try to find the code
that they put in.
As an interesting and educational lab I've assigned them to
create html builders. They really catch on to what a builder is
when they write their own builder.
Another controversial subject is whether to start out teaching objects
or leave them for latter. I usually leave them for latter so
the student can focus on logical statements and flow control using
simple primitives. Full understanding of objects comes latter
when the student has programming capabilities to see why objects
can help control program and data complexity.
> The reason fiber optic (particularly glass core) is so expensive
> is due to the difficult and sensitive process required to manufacture > that cable,
The cable is cheap, it is the manual labor involved in mounting the connector to the single mode fiber that makes it so expensive.
> Sorry, I wasn't really worried about icons; I thought
> that the original poster was discussing graphics in general.
I agree with you. The use of a vector format should not be limited to simple curves. The beauty of vectors is the ability to present complex graphics (and curves) with a few equations. Too bad we can't use HPGL or Postscript as part of the standard.
> Almost 50%? Perhaps in 2002 but browser news peg 800x600
> around 14%. Since his target market is english speaking
> people with an interest in games I am sure looking at his
> site statistics will be well within the 90%
People who like to run games normally have higher screen resolution than "normal" people. Ecommerce is targeted to the standard Joe with an XP default install of 800x600. That resolution is much more common than 14%.
> because they have a habit of employing designers who
> think their job is to make the page look "cool" & "attractive".
> I came to your website for the content, not admire your
> precisely-placed pixels.
But the person who is paying for the site development _wants_ a
nice looking site. Getting paid is important when attempting to make a living.
Having well presented content with easy & obvious navigation is also important, but the first thing the customer will notice is the site appearance on their browser. The appearance of the site represents the quality of their company.
When I was in the military a superior once told me "when people don't understand what you are saying they look at the quality of shine on your shoes". He was telling me that people use superficial things for evaluation.
What is really annoying is when a customer wants something that is tacky or just a poor design idea. If you do it then it is embarasing to put in your portfolio and if you don't do it the customer will either not pay or slam you to other potential customers.
> This site (shameless plug) looks just fine
>regardless of the font size,
At 800x600 I have to use the horizontal scroll bar to read that page. It is very annoying. Almost 50% of the world uses 800x600. It might be that your clients would have higher resolution, but for commercial design it best to try to satisfy at least 90% of all visitors.
Slashdot Mirror
The old textbook example for regular speciation...
Anthropologists tend to make the theories when it comes to the story of human evolution. They are not real familiar with standard evolutionary theory and do not realize how bizarre the "Multiple Origins" theory is.
Humans like to assign magical things to happen in their evolution. You don't want us to be like flatworms, do you?
Alas, Anon...
being published, they just want to help make them more popular?
That is just so... sweet.
Why don't they do this for all the other 1000's of scientific journals?
Journals have been publishing for 150 years without this government benifit
and do they really need Bush's help to do their jobs? What is Bush's background
gives him such scientific credentials?
The people in the agency who will do the peer reviews are not peers.
They are political bureaucrats. Can you see how that might be bad?
Why has the Bush administration started this benevolent program with specifically
this agency? Is there a motive, ya spose?
Why can't scientists evaluate the papers, like they always have? Are they
unqualified now? When will Bush qualify them?
Since papers coming out of USGS will be politically motivated, they will
have to be viewed more as propaganda than science. A special journal could be
used for their release, like "The Republican Review".
They aren't making laws, they are having bozos do a peer review of scientific papers.
Normally peer review is done by a team of people who are your equal or
better in your field of publication. Now it will be done by the peanut gallery.
>> No, it's kinda like discussing economics or physics during calculus to make it more
>>practical and show people the real-world applications.
One problem with this is that a person with a CS undergrad degree isn't qualified to go into automation programming, so it becomes a course which does not lead to employment. It sure would be an exciting course to most, but not a very useful one.
When a course like this is put into the curriculum, some other course must be taken out to make room for it. You can't just tack more requirements onto the degree (or throw out the wonderful liberal arts stuff). Throwing this course in the degree might have the effect of diluting the quality of the CS curriculum, depending on if there is room or not for it. Something's gotta give...
>>There really isn't an "intro robotics" course here,
Yes there is, it is over in the college of EE. They have a very nice robotics program at Ga Tech. Get a dual degree (CS and EE) and you will be unstoppable.
Really, I don't think robotics belongs in the CS undergrad curriculum. The graduates of that type of program are going into desktop and server programming, not automation. Automation programming requires a lot of hardware knowledge (microprocessors, bit banging, actuators, sensors, signal conditioning, etc.) and that is too much info to pack into one course to make the person capable of getting a job in automation programming. Maybe at the graduate level it would be a good specialty (with cross-cooperation with the EE school).
That said, the reason they might want to have a robotics course is to excite the students into pursuing CS. When students first come into their programming classes they are all cranked up about it and the intense study of syntax, OO, and algorithms knocks the excitement out of most of them. As salesmen say, it would provide a "Wow Effect" for the student to continue studying the other "dull" aspects of programming.
Another opinion is that if the student considers the standard fare of programming (syntax, OO, and algorithms) to be dull, maybe they are in the wrong field anyway.
It is unlikely that a CS student with one course in "Robotics" will get employment in the automation programming field. It just ain't enough.
>> Here's what the auther says himself: http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/ed-boygenius.html
Somehow the moderator forgot to allow the author to be represented in this debate. Thank you Arlem Tashkinov for posting the above link to the full paper (I mistakenly called it only the abstract in another post).
>> It makes sense that this environment doesn't allow the mental wiring to solidify.
We have not evolved to be this way. Interesting experiment, no?
One side effect of this sustained immaturity will probably be that people learn to keep learning and society will have the ability to adapt more rapidly to new situations. In the past the elders would retain rigid rules that made society more stable, but also make it inflexible to change over several generations.
"Psychological neotony" is a perpetual state of relearning and rethinking the environment. It is what creative and innovative people do. It is also called "arrested psychological development". Arrested development might become the norm and people who are not arrested will need treatment.=-}
The scoring system here is weird. You have one of the few posts of any real value and you get the lowest score (0). I think the scores are either randomly generated or only based on humor.
That is an extremely long and informative abstract. Is there anything left to be said in the paper? =-}
The author says the driving force for this sustained immaturity is our culture's admiration of youth, but I think he is wrong on that. If this effect is really becoming more prominent then I would guess that the driving force is the rapid change in technology. New methods and gadgets come out every year and at an unprecedented pace. This requires people to relearn everyday tasks such as how to make a phone call, etc.
Another reason for extended immaturity stated in the abstract is the extension of formal education without an endpoint ceremony that signals the end of all learning and the beginning of adulthood. After "graduation" there are always more academic hills to climb into an endless horizon of learning. I would point out that even if there was one, the continuous bombardment of changing technology in our everyday lives would make it null and void.
This extended immaturity of creative people is a well know effect, but the author implies it is becoming more common. I wonder what metric he used to prove this, or is it just a hypothesis? He points to the increasing divorce rate as a symptom of immature thought, but that sure is a stretch. The full paper online would be nice.
>> Sorry but I really can't let that pass. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/maturity
>> has the definition The state or quality of being fully grown or developed.
The author is not writing for pop-psychology, this is a scientific argument. The definition you have from the popular dictionary is of physical maturity, not of psychological maturity from a scientific, biological, evolutionary viewpoint. In the field of biology, maturity is when the animal has acquired enough Stimulus --> Response reactions to make quick decisions. These S-->Rs become hardcoded into the brain and become knee-jerk reactions. They have evolved for purposes of survival. The adult must often make quick decisions to survive. This age-related hardwiring of the brain has been proven many times and in many ways in brain research. It's a bio-chemical thing that is difficult to reverse.
I'm right close to fifty, also. You can't let pride get in the way of science, though. The things I'm discussing are just part of who we are, like it or not. Adults are rigid thinkers and immaturity implies creativity of S-->R patterning. Maybe knowing this is true can help older people listen more to the ideas of young people.
I'm presently a teacher (college) and I repetitively spit out my knowledge to my students. Every now and then a bold student asks why something is the way it is. My knee-jerk reaction to say it is just that way and accept it. That's my old age talking. I find that as I get older it becomes more painful to even consider new solutions to old problems. I have learned to listen to the student's questions and go back to rethink why things are the way they are. It has been very educational. I have to tell myself that it is successful to rethink these things because I know maturity has made me mentally blind to new ideas. I can overcome that if I try.
Most all of the posts on this thread are way off track and people don't realize this author is writing a paper on the topics of psychology, evolution, and biology from a scientific standpoint. The ridge thinking of the mature mind is not a new theory, it is old, well accepted, and proven. The author is discussing what happens when the mature adult can't solidify a S-->R rule set because the environment will not allow it. What is the outcome on development of the individual's psychology? Will the necessity to create new S-->Rs through a lifespan require the individual to remain in a psychologically immature state? Probably so. How will this change society?
Freud also mentioned, in his lectures, that people in creative fields seem to be in a mentally juvenile state well into adulthood. This is not a new concept.
>> impossible to agree or disagree with it.
The author is writing about maturity as defined by the field of developmental psychology, specifically of mammals. When the animal is born it is bombarded with information and starts to assemble order by looking for patterns. As the animal matures, these patterns are remembered so that the animal can make decisions more quickly when it sees them happen.
What this implies is that young animals will have delays on reacting to certain situations because they are still developing a pattern definition and reaction for that stimulus. A mature adult who has seen the pattern before does not think about the pattern, but reacts immediately without thought.
For you programmers out there, the child is still writing the "if (pattern==true){ reaction }" code and the mature individual stops programming and only runs the code, without thinking about it. Mature individuals have the initial speed advantage, but if their reaction is wrong then they will get stuck in a loop of illogical behavior and will be unable to change the hardcoded logic of their mind. One symptom of maturity is that the adult can't remember why they do things a certain way, but they are very adamant about doing it that way.
Maturity is like having your software get ROMed, bugs and all.
>> which, at the age of 53, I hope I'm not.
When mammals are young they they have a mental flexibility to learn. When they get older their brains lock into the modes of thought that they learned in youth and find it difficult to see things in new ways. This is an old concept typified by the old addage "you can't teach an old dog new tricks". Maturity is the mental state of turning off observation and going into an auto-pilot mode of preconceived notions. The story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" is another example of this effect, in which the child sees the truth and the adults are blinded by their maturity.
In physics, most new discoveries are made by young people, below the age of 30. After the age of 30 a mature individual will often develop existing theories by compiling information, but seldom will they come up with unique observations that break new ground.
If people are required to learn all their lives, it conflicts with the normal stabilization into rigid thinking that happens at maturity. Mature people need to lock into the misconceptions of their youth and take action without thought. It's part of normal development.
See his web site : http://www.highparkgroup.com/
If you pay his company enough, he will represent whatever view you need. What to chip together and make him pro-global warming?
True.
> Things like genes for tails, extra eyes, exoskeletons, fins, etc... What happens
> is changes in the environment trigger these genes to express themselves.
Well, it doesn't really "trigger" them. Changes in the environment cause a reshuffling of priorities in natural selection of the pre-existing, recessive genetic traits and encourage a new direction for the species. This is how we create domestic breeds from wild stock and we can create lines that look very different from the wild stock. The genetic variations are pre-existing in the gene pool and inbreeding causes them to become exposed.
> Unless you're a bacterium with a really short reproductive cycle enabling rapid
> expotential growth, it's really hard for a single mutation to have an instantaneous
> effect on survival rate.
That's true. Sexual reproduction causes a mixing and in an actively interbreeding species a spontaneous mutation is likely to just wander around in the gene pool, not causing much overall effect on the species population. The mutation becomes fodder for future variation.
Some species of animals seem to have gone through a genetic bottleneck, causing their gene pool to have low variation. An example of this is the cheetah.
This effect of rapid evolution based on pre-existing (but unseen in the phenome) genetic variation was brought up by several evolution theorists back in the 1940's to explain the rapid evolution of whales and dolphins. The genome contains the mutations, but it is hidden by the phenome. When change is needed, the varaition is there to help the species survive.
Another interesting species is the King Conch of Florida. It lives in intercoastal lagoons around Florida. It is considered one species, but each lagoon up and down the coast has it's own phenotype variation of the species. Gene exchange is slow between these pockets of populations. The other interesting thing is that the gene exchange is highest with the geographical neighbor population, so gene flow is geographically linear in this species.
Back to the original article, it is not so much about selection as it is about the bias in probability of certain mutations occuring over others. This has been known for a long time. Some molecular structures in the DNA have weak points that are more likely to change than others. Interesting study, but not earth-shaking.
> find that it was worse than the equivalent of 100 drunk undergrads writing an
> operating system in perl... Amazingly it works, but it ain't pretty and would
> never pass a code review...
That is true, it is a very jumbled code. Much of it is redundant or useless. In genetics these are called "junk genes". Trying to find the genes that code for necessary protein functions is a real challenge because of all this junk in the code.
Why does the cell retain so much "junk"? Maybe it increases the probability of future useful mutations. Maybe it just doesn't matter that it is in there, so there is no positve selection for removal. Imagine if you had almost unlimited storage space and no penalty for load or execution time. Would you bother to remove any code? Why not leave every library you have ever written linked into the final object? Some vestigal code will become corrupted with time and you will ocassionally replicate whole libraries to only use one function.
That's the way the DNA and RNA look. It is very bizarre and tangled, like it was cut, pasted and mangled together in a haphazard way. Intelligent design? Only if the designer had a weird sense of humor.
Philosophy is a liberal art. In liberal arts people are allowed to create their own laws and universes. They are not restricted to the true laws of nature.
Ooooo! How I hate liberal arts...! (shaking fist in all directions)
The ideas of randomness and chaos will slowly leak into the liberal arts field. It may take another hundred years, though.
> about any environment, everything in that environment is predictable.
That's why liberal arts people are not allowed in the laboratory. Instead of examining the existing laws of nature, they make up their own laws.
Biochemistry is not governed by predictability; it is governed by randomness, stochastics, and chaos. These are areas that "philosophers" ignore, but they govern many complex systems.
" ... psychology is useless, philosophy is worse ... " - Dire Straits
Sometimes I teach math and one of my favorite schtiks is to tell the students I will accomplish something that no human has ever done or will ever be able to repeat. Then I throw a deck of cards in the air. Exactly how they land will never be repeated again. I stopped doing that when I found the cleaning crew would not clean it up. Who would have predicted that?
The research is not trying to prove natural selection. That's been done to death (pun, haha). Natural selection is when _existing_ genes are selected or deselected from the gene pool based on circumstances of the population. "Breeding" domestic animals has little to do with mutation and selection, and is mostly just selection of desirable traits from the _existing_ gene pool.
The research shows that a specific mutation has a high probability of recurrance. This isn't exactly new either, it has been know for more than 15 years that certain mutations has higher probability than others, based on their molecular dynamics. Some genes are "weak", so to speak, and are more likely to undergo mutation. Using this knowledge, it would be easier to predict the immediate mutational response of an organism to an environmental change. Long term response would become more "fuzzy" to prediction as more time would allow more improbable mutations to occur.
This is unpublished research. They are probably putting a paper together right now to submit for review. I bet it gets a 6 or 7 on a scale from 1 to 10. It's not earth shaking, since it just re-affirms existing theory of the skewed probability of spontaneous, molecular mutations.
There is too much complexity to explain if you start with an IDE. It is too much at once. The only way around that problem is to let them think it is magic and hope you can circle back around and teach it later.
A lot of teachers just ignore the explanation and the student finishes the course with the mistaken impression that their program is part of the builder. Student: "No, it not not Java, it's NetBeans".
> that had taken a variety of other programming and theory classes, working
> in Pascal, assembler and C, at the least.
Doh!
I'm a teacher also. I have had this problem. You should first check the syllabii and try to determine the student's background. Even then, don't believe that the previous teachers have taught the curriculum.
There's nothing more heart-wrenching than walking into class and expecting to teach the course, only to find out you have students who are not prepared to learn the required materials. It also makes me look "unprepared" when this happens, because I have prepared to teach the syllabus and the students are not at that point of development. When this happens I stall the first class by asking them questions (it's an "oral quiz") and then I quickly rewrite my class plans based on their existing knowledge.
I have never complained to other teachers about this. I normally just drop back and punt. I want to stay on good terms with the other faculty and not start a war. I believe teachers need to stick to the content of the syllabus and if they deviate, it should only augment the course and not ignore it. If a teacher has a disagreement with the syllabii curriculum, they need to lobby to change it rather than just ignoring what it is trying to do. Teachers need to row together to keep on course (pun, haha).
I've been teaching C++ and Java for seven years. I've found that the most effective method of introducing any language is to start back at the command line compiler and a text editor. The student should understand where the compiler components are and how to manually set paths to their working directory.
Later on, when they start to use an IDE, I have them go look through the builder generated code and try to find the code that they put in.
As an interesting and educational lab I've assigned them to create html builders. They really catch on to what a builder is when they write their own builder.
Another controversial subject is whether to start out teaching objects or leave them for latter. I usually leave them for latter so the student can focus on logical statements and flow control using simple primitives. Full understanding of objects comes latter when the student has programming capabilities to see why objects can help control program and data complexity.
> The reason fiber optic (particularly glass core) is so expensive
> is due to the difficult and sensitive process required to manufacture
> that cable, The cable is cheap, it is the manual labor involved in mounting the connector to the single mode fiber that makes it so expensive.
> that the original poster was discussing graphics in general.
I agree with you. The use of a vector format should not be limited to simple curves. The beauty of vectors is the ability to present complex graphics (and curves) with a few equations. Too bad we can't use HPGL or Postscript as part of the standard.
> around 14%. Since his target market is english speaking
> people with an interest in games I am sure looking at his
> site statistics will be well within the 90%
People who like to run games normally have higher screen resolution than "normal" people. Ecommerce is targeted to the standard Joe with an XP default install of 800x600. That resolution is much more common than 14%.
> think their job is to make the page look "cool" & "attractive".
> I came to your website for the content, not admire your
> precisely-placed pixels.
But the person who is paying for the site development _wants_ a nice looking site. Getting paid is important when attempting to make a living. Having well presented content with easy & obvious navigation is also important, but the first thing the customer will notice is the site appearance on their browser. The appearance of the site represents the quality of their company.
When I was in the military a superior once told me "when people don't understand what you are saying they look at the quality of shine on your shoes". He was telling me that people use superficial things for evaluation.
What is really annoying is when a customer wants something that is tacky or just a poor design idea. If you do it then it is embarasing to put in your portfolio and if you don't do it the customer will either not pay or slam you to other potential customers.
>regardless of the font size,
At 800x600 I have to use the horizontal scroll bar to read that page. It is very annoying. Almost 50% of the world uses 800x600. It might be that your clients would have higher resolution, but for commercial design it best to try to satisfy at least 90% of all visitors.