Haha, yea. Depending on the university you can retake them and replace the grade though. Also you're supposed to buffer your hard classes with easy ones. It's not like you're supposed to take them all at once.
I think I reacted with my gut feeling with my first response. You raise a valid point, but the thing is much of the kind of growth you refer to(if I am not mistaken) involves individuals challenging themselves in new areas at their own pace. The fallacy here is that people who challenge themselves are still subjecting themselves to a fitness evaluation in that particular area. In school it is merely someone else's evaluation.
Psychological research does indicated that creativity is most abundant when there are things like indicators of openness to new thinking, fulfilled base needs, etc. The thing is that creativity is useful when it is built on well trained skills. To use an old saying, there is freedom in form. The problem is that form is built by straining out mistakes and aggressive (both positive and negative) feedback.
So you can gain, but if you have the skills imparted by the "pain" then you are probably more efficient at progressing.
My other point still stands that if you never face real trial, eventually you will meet it and it will not be in a safe structured environment. In school it's sink or swim, but at least you can always try again. In the real world, you only get that one chance, and it can be even more damaging if you fail.
I didn't say that people HAVE to do that. I do believe that overcoming adversity helps you *by it's definition*. If you've overcome something, you have learned a skill for beating the odds when they are against you. Yes you can grow in other contexts, and they are wonderful and nice, but the trick to becoming *adaptable* in *all* walks of life is to face a culling mechanism and survive it. It's natural selection on your coping mechanisms.
I don't really care if other people suffer, only that they learn to adapt. It just seems to me that most people learn to adapt when they are forced to.
Sorry about that I don't mean to call it intelligence. I only mean that it is a set of generalized skills. After all, the number 3 is the set of all things with three elements (I know it's circular - people smarter than me have better arguments).
I think you may mean transferable. I'm not being Trollish here, but merely emphasizing the fact that I'm not sure what you mean.
You're right I do mean transferable, I've just been doing too much math lately:-)
Again I have noticed an ideology forwarded as argument with absolutely no proof.
Hmm, well here the thing. I think math is great at that, but I also think doing any sort of hard problem solving will achieve the same effect. The benefit of math is that it is so abstract that you can easily make an analogy with variables. That's really all I mean. It also seems to me that many of the hardest non-social problems are best expressed in a mathematical context - so it can be hugely beneficial.
I've even heard some ideologues call math a language.
I agree with them. Math is a special language for expressing any well defined problem unambiguously. You can use other tools, but it definitely helps to know math.
It is disappointing that people so fanatically attribute Math with Intelligence or with the ability to be Logical.
I know lots of people who know math that I think are narrow minded and immature. The thing about math is that it attracts the ambitious intelligent types. Some of them go into other areas, but they are harder to identify since there's less of a crap filter. That's about all there is to it. If you see a math guy, you pretty much know they are smart at some level. With others you may have to observe them for a while before you figure it out - or you may never if they are really that smart. It's a perception problem, not a real problem.
You do have a point, but I believe that overcoming adversity is the best thing a person can do. By making classes too easy, you are missing a huge opportunity for personal growth.
The counter argument of course is to provide the people with what they want, and those exist as trade schools. What might be more useful is a really good 1000 level course with light requirements. I took a super easy psych class and went on to take a 4000 level one because I found it interesting without being overly difficult. The problem with those is that they have so little depth that you feel like you're in kindergarden.
On the other hand I'm a bit weird because I leaped into Intro to Quantum mechanics in my sophomore year (note I'm not a physics major) and it raped me hard. It was a a good experience because it made me feel bad, taught me some cool stuff, and made me a stronger person (I hope) as a result.
I guess what I'm advocating is that everyone should have ambition, and be curious. Eventually it will come together in some haphazard way and overcoming adversity will prepare anyone for a rich and fulfilling life. The trick is to almost break them but not quite....
Many times when you are making an estimation, it is faster to pick nice numbers and crunch them on paper fast rather than booting up matlab and interrupting your brainstorm for up to an hour while you figure out the commands and translate them. Those are the final tools, the ones you need for considering the problem initially should all be in your head.
Somewhat retarded story, I was at a paper pushing job and was assigned to sort these huge stacks of semi randomly sorted numbered papers. So I merge sorted them and it worked. Good times. God I need to go outside.
Let me put it this way, if you're bright and your skills are transitive, then as you learn to juggle certain kinds of relations ships (multi variable, one way, one to many, (non)commutative, (non)associative) it helps immensely with all kinds of problem solving. Learning to abstract a problem properly, ground it in ICs etc works in ALL areas of life. Math is the symbolic toolbox to describe it. The fact that you can take that learning and use it to build something or discover a new process is a bonus.
I agree, but on the other hand, if it's really something they want to do, they'll eventually find their way there. There are times when I struggle through a class and only later when I've learned enough and matured more am I able to advance. Education is like a dance, sometimes you stumble and try it again later and beautiful metaphor.
God damn, its a hypothesis that follows from what we know. This makes it the most useful hypothesis for exploring our genetic history. The only thing, the ONLY thing that science cares about is whether an idea can be useful for explaining something. Whether it is true or not is irrelevant, because there is no way to certify that your senses are telling you the truth. Can we just stop using the word "true" please? It's a misleading term.
I recall that when the scientists first transmuted elements, the paper they wrote explicitly avoided any mention of alchemy or the word "transmutation" to avoid being seen as flaky science.
You have a bad habit of generalizing everyone into some assholes who live in the suburbs. I would bet that a bum from NYC on a suburban church doorstep would earn quite a bit of resentment in many places, though all would be quite the overstatement. There are atheists everywhere. Get out of your shell.
I agree with you, but in fairness, the reason the atheist prison population is so low is probably because it is mostly accepted by philosophically minded, middle to upper class, well educated people (based on anecdotal evidence).
I like the concept, but who enforces the peace? For instance, how do you defend against a single charismatic person creating a roving army and looting the place? You'll need some sort of central authority to manage the military.
On the other hand, in cases like the WTC screwup, the main problem is because they have something like 7 stakeholders all arguing over every detail - true bureaucracy at work. I talked to the VP of one of the private project managers there and they were pissed off at the amount of money being wasted.
Lol. I've thought of this from time to time and managed to come up with a reducio ad absurdium. I thought, well we could have a world government that takes care of the general laws that have little cultural bearing, enforce the peace, etc. But then you would have to divide the world regionally to have a more local government. It would be a federal world.
But then you merely look at the US or the nascent EU nation and you see how the central authority grabs more and more power until the locals have nothing left. Thus, nations are the answer. Preferably many small nations with some sort of good peace enforcement. Ironically, this turns out to be exactly what we have what with the US being the world cop, many nations, and the UN being a place for the nations to discuss things in a neutral mediated setting.
This is arguably deficient in many ways. However, it is arguably close to an optimal setup. A world government would probably just collapse into civil war anyway.
Another thing I thought of is that so many sci-fi authors speak of how it is a disappointment that we wouldn't be able to meet extraterrestrials with a united face. I think this is a good thing. A species that is that homogeneous is probably not going to survive that long. The aliens could just deal with whomever they like - just like another nation interfacing with another. We just have to declare orbit neutral (which we have) to make it work.
"Almost all its projects." I think you may want to look up the Big Dig in Boston, many DMVs, the WTC reconstruction, and congress. The government is SOMETIMES efficient, but usually at a level where people don't report directly to elected officials AND have the right personality leading them. Making broad claims without a good basis is a bad idea.
Well common sense says that if you fuck some people over and recognize it and feel bad about it, you should do something about it. But common sense also says you should not let the kids inherit their parent's sins. Maybe a good solution is to limit the period where reparations are possible to 25 years - a generation. After that, fuck it.
While this is completely ludicrous, I think I have an analogy that might make sense in terms of why the case was allowed to proceed.
Let's say you buy a house from a builder, but he leaves behind a bomb inside a bombproof shelter in the basement hidden under the foundation. If the bomb goes off, it won't hurt anyone or damage property. You can only find the bomb if you dig to it and drill through the thick retainer walls. There are warning signs on the outside of the shelter telling not to open it because there is a bomb inside. If you open it and it blows up, who was responsible?
I dunno. I do think you have a point since W did live in Texas a while. However, the flubs in his English are too bad to not be intentional given what I heard on the recordings.
Paraphrasing from the NY Post, politicians like to hold mirrors up to their audience so that they feel like they are voting for themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Haha, yea. Depending on the university you can retake them and replace the grade though. Also you're supposed to buffer your hard classes with easy ones. It's not like you're supposed to take them all at once.
I think I reacted with my gut feeling with my first response. You raise a valid point, but the thing is much of the kind of growth you refer to(if I am not mistaken) involves individuals challenging themselves in new areas at their own pace. The fallacy here is that people who challenge themselves are still subjecting themselves to a fitness evaluation in that particular area. In school it is merely someone else's evaluation.
Psychological research does indicated that creativity is most abundant when there are things like indicators of openness to new thinking, fulfilled base needs, etc. The thing is that creativity is useful when it is built on well trained skills. To use an old saying, there is freedom in form. The problem is that form is built by straining out mistakes and aggressive (both positive and negative) feedback.
So you can gain, but if you have the skills imparted by the "pain" then you are probably more efficient at progressing.
My other point still stands that if you never face real trial, eventually you will meet it and it will not be in a safe structured environment. In school it's sink or swim, but at least you can always try again. In the real world, you only get that one chance, and it can be even more damaging if you fail.
My 2 cents.
I didn't say that people HAVE to do that. I do believe that overcoming adversity helps you *by it's definition*. If you've overcome something, you have learned a skill for beating the odds when they are against you. Yes you can grow in other contexts, and they are wonderful and nice, but the trick to becoming *adaptable* in *all* walks of life is to face a culling mechanism and survive it. It's natural selection on your coping mechanisms.
I don't really care if other people suffer, only that they learn to adapt. It just seems to me that most people learn to adapt when they are forced to.
Sorry about that I don't mean to call it intelligence. I only mean that it is a set of generalized skills. After all, the number 3 is the set of all things with three elements (I know it's circular - people smarter than me have better arguments).
I think you may mean transferable. I'm not being Trollish here, but merely emphasizing the fact that I'm not sure what you mean.
You're right I do mean transferable, I've just been doing too much math lately :-)
Again I have noticed an ideology forwarded as argument with absolutely no proof.
Hmm, well here the thing. I think math is great at that, but I also think doing any sort of hard problem solving will achieve the same effect. The benefit of math is that it is so abstract that you can easily make an analogy with variables. That's really all I mean. It also seems to me that many of the hardest non-social problems are best expressed in a mathematical context - so it can be hugely beneficial.
I've even heard some ideologues call math a language.
I agree with them. Math is a special language for expressing any well defined problem unambiguously. You can use other tools, but it definitely helps to know math.
It is disappointing that people so fanatically attribute Math with Intelligence or with the ability to be Logical.
I know lots of people who know math that I think are narrow minded and immature. The thing about math is that it attracts the ambitious intelligent types. Some of them go into other areas, but they are harder to identify since there's less of a crap filter. That's about all there is to it. If you see a math guy, you pretty much know they are smart at some level. With others you may have to observe them for a while before you figure it out - or you may never if they are really that smart. It's a perception problem, not a real problem.
You do have a point, but I believe that overcoming adversity is the best thing a person can do. By making classes too easy, you are missing a huge opportunity for personal growth.
The counter argument of course is to provide the people with what they want, and those exist as trade schools. What might be more useful is a really good 1000 level course with light requirements. I took a super easy psych class and went on to take a 4000 level one because I found it interesting without being overly difficult. The problem with those is that they have so little depth that you feel like you're in kindergarden.
On the other hand I'm a bit weird because I leaped into Intro to Quantum mechanics in my sophomore year (note I'm not a physics major) and it raped me hard. It was a a good experience because it made me feel bad, taught me some cool stuff, and made me a stronger person (I hope) as a result.
I guess what I'm advocating is that everyone should have ambition, and be curious. Eventually it will come together in some haphazard way and overcoming adversity will prepare anyone for a rich and fulfilling life. The trick is to almost break them but not quite....
Many times when you are making an estimation, it is faster to pick nice numbers and crunch them on paper fast rather than booting up matlab and interrupting your brainstorm for up to an hour while you figure out the commands and translate them. Those are the final tools, the ones you need for considering the problem initially should all be in your head.
Somewhat retarded story, I was at a paper pushing job and was assigned to sort these huge stacks of semi randomly sorted numbered papers. So I merge sorted them and it worked. Good times. God I need to go outside.
Let me put it this way, if you're bright and your skills are transitive, then as you learn to juggle certain kinds of relations ships (multi variable, one way, one to many, (non)commutative, (non)associative) it helps immensely with all kinds of problem solving. Learning to abstract a problem properly, ground it in ICs etc works in ALL areas of life. Math is the symbolic toolbox to describe it. The fact that you can take that learning and use it to build something or discover a new process is a bonus.
I agree, but on the other hand, if it's really something they want to do, they'll eventually find their way there. There are times when I struggle through a class and only later when I've learned enough and matured more am I able to advance. Education is like a dance, sometimes you stumble and try it again later and beautiful metaphor.
God damn, its a hypothesis that follows from what we know. This makes it the most useful hypothesis for exploring our genetic history. The only thing, the ONLY thing that science cares about is whether an idea can be useful for explaining something. Whether it is true or not is irrelevant, because there is no way to certify that your senses are telling you the truth. Can we just stop using the word "true" please? It's a misleading term.
I recall that when the scientists first transmuted elements, the paper they wrote explicitly avoided any mention of alchemy or the word "transmutation" to avoid being seen as flaky science.
You have a bad habit of generalizing everyone into some assholes who live in the suburbs. I would bet that a bum from NYC on a suburban church doorstep would earn quite a bit of resentment in many places, though all would be quite the overstatement. There are atheists everywhere. Get out of your shell.
I agree with you, but in fairness, the reason the atheist prison population is so low is probably because it is mostly accepted by philosophically minded, middle to upper class, well educated people (based on anecdotal evidence).
I like the concept, but who enforces the peace? For instance, how do you defend against a single charismatic person creating a roving army and looting the place? You'll need some sort of central authority to manage the military.
Point taken.
On the other hand, in cases like the WTC screwup, the main problem is because they have something like 7 stakeholders all arguing over every detail - true bureaucracy at work. I talked to the VP of one of the private project managers there and they were pissed off at the amount of money being wasted.
You can still terrorize as large an area as you want if you can get the arms and people to do it :P
Lol. I've thought of this from time to time and managed to come up with a reducio ad absurdium. I thought, well we could have a world government that takes care of the general laws that have little cultural bearing, enforce the peace, etc. But then you would have to divide the world regionally to have a more local government. It would be a federal world.
But then you merely look at the US or the nascent EU nation and you see how the central authority grabs more and more power until the locals have nothing left. Thus, nations are the answer. Preferably many small nations with some sort of good peace enforcement. Ironically, this turns out to be exactly what we have what with the US being the world cop, many nations, and the UN being a place for the nations to discuss things in a neutral mediated setting.
This is arguably deficient in many ways. However, it is arguably close to an optimal setup. A world government would probably just collapse into civil war anyway.
Another thing I thought of is that so many sci-fi authors speak of how it is a disappointment that we wouldn't be able to meet extraterrestrials with a united face. I think this is a good thing. A species that is that homogeneous is probably not going to survive that long. The aliens could just deal with whomever they like - just like another nation interfacing with another. We just have to declare orbit neutral (which we have) to make it work.
Wow I'm rambling. I hope this makes sense.
"Almost all its projects." I think you may want to look up the Big Dig in Boston, many DMVs, the WTC reconstruction, and congress. The government is SOMETIMES efficient, but usually at a level where people don't report directly to elected officials AND have the right personality leading them. Making broad claims without a good basis is a bad idea.
Well common sense says that if you fuck some people over and recognize it and feel bad about it, you should do something about it. But common sense also says you should not let the kids inherit their parent's sins. Maybe a good solution is to limit the period where reparations are possible to 25 years - a generation. After that, fuck it.
While this is completely ludicrous, I think I have an analogy that might make sense in terms of why the case was allowed to proceed.
Let's say you buy a house from a builder, but he leaves behind a bomb inside a bombproof shelter in the basement hidden under the foundation. If the bomb goes off, it won't hurt anyone or damage property. You can only find the bomb if you dig to it and drill through the thick retainer walls. There are warning signs on the outside of the shelter telling not to open it because there is a bomb inside. If you open it and it blows up, who was responsible?
Hey! I spilled your LOX & Coffee on my pants, and my penis broke off! I'll sue!
I dunno. I do think you have a point since W did live in Texas a while. However, the flubs in his English are too bad to not be intentional given what I heard on the recordings.
Paraphrasing from the NY Post, politicians like to hold mirrors up to their audience so that they feel like they are voting for themselves.
Not everyone is very bright. Ever heard of a bar fight?
ahhh. Thank you! That makes a lot of sense.
Thirded.