Seems like a good day based on the other threads around about wealth inequality, racism, what-have-you. You have one (you hear me? ONE) topic you're allowed to rant about. Energy crisis? Healthcare? Education? Peer review in science? The upcoming nanobot apocalypse? Improper coffee-brewing/storage methodology? People who drive like jerks?
Further, I'd request you frame whatever you talk about in a "solution"-based framework (i.e. what you think needs to be done) if you're choosing to discuss a problem, in order to stay somewhat positive.
Here's mine!
I think people vastly under-appreciate the importance and value of information in it's purest and generic sense. The degree to which it controls our lives is beyond astounding. Many problems in almost any area can be broken down / abstracted to one of information. Cancer? That's a break-down in cell signaling communication. Idiots being bad parents who spawn grows up to be bad parents ad infinitum? Another problem of information transfer/communication. The rising and falling of civilizations? That's why we need history! And the worst is politics / the news: everyone has an agenda in framing the information they try to feed you and shape your decision making (a bit Chomskyist, I know). This is also why net neutrality is an important issue: it shifts the power of how information is spread, from an even playing field to the entity that actually owns the field itself.
Let's take the time to not only appreciate information, but the need to obtain good and accurate information that allows us to peer beyond the noisy sea of useless crap and disinformation. Whatever your beliefs or background are, take the time to contemplate the information you're imbibing: where does it come from? Is it designed to benefit you or some other entity? Are there conflicts of interest? Beware of confirmation bias, as it can only hinder you.
Veritas vos liberabit!
Don't make me go all Claude Shannon on you! I was part ranting, but I do actually think a lot of the issues in the colloquial sense can be thought of in an information theoretic framework / I don't believe I'm conflating the two. I think one can abstract a lot of problems to a source, a sink, and a channel (or some network/combination of them), although in a lot of real-world cases, it would just be really tough to come up with the analytical model.
History goes beyond known facts. In history, many times the victors either lie about historical facts (e.g. extreme example being North Korea) or frame them in a way that is positive to the victors. Sometimes, when the real truth comes to light (there was an error), this can set a system back. One could say actual history/truth (sources) communicate over some channel (teachers, history books, etc.) to people (sinks). In this case, a "transmission" error can actually have dire consequences. One recent such example is what's happening in Ireland with politician Gerry Adams (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=309713893), where stuff about Gerry Adam's past coming to light (re~murder/kidnapping) are raising a bit of a controversy as he was a major player in the peace process between Ireland and Britain.
Another example: education. You could say that how things are classically taught are suboptimal, where a teacher is relaying information to students above their channel capacity (40 straight minutes, no breaks, etc.). Systems like Coursera/Kahn Academy help to reduce the transmission rate (e.g. presenting information in bite sized chunks, allow for speed playback control), which in some sense act as an adaptive optimization for what our brains can handle/unit time.
If you really want to get all meta with information transmission, you could say that a teacher relaying information to students is information transmission not only at the level of a student hearing or seeing the facts being taught, but also information transmission through neural signaling and chemical signaling. I'm on a roll.
I would recommend that any aspiring neuroscientist read Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. It should be required reading for grad students in neuroscience. But then, it contradicts a lot of the BS that you will come to convince your of in grad school, so maybe there's a reason it's not that popular.
If you want to really abstract the fuck out of everything, the universe is basically entirely composed of information.
Problem: Escalefters You know, the people that stand on the left of the escalator or the airport walkways. People generally have two responses to an escalator: #1. Oh, an escalator, that's great because I can just stand here and it does all the work for me, I'll take this opportunity to chill. #2. Oh, an escalator, that's great because now I can continue on my way at an even greater speed/pace. Both responses are absolutely fine and I'm liable to use either one depending on my mood or situation. BUT if you are opting for #1 you need to move your ass over to the right and let people pass you unobstructed. NO ESCALEFTING Solution? -Be aware people. It all starts here, now that you've read this you can be a part of the revolution against escalefting. edit: For what it's worth, I like this idea of #soapboxsundays
Oh yeah. Applies double to slidewalks. btw, which way generally depends on which side of the road you drive on - I'd expect people to keep left, not right :-)
Or when you're trying to go for a run and a group of people just take up the entire width of the damn thing. Even worse when they KNOW you're coming up behind them and don't move.
Was running yesterday and there was a large fallen tree on the path. Sitting on the tree was a woman getting her picture taken. She saw me running towards her and didn't get up. I had to stop my run for ~30 seconds for her to finish posing. -I was less than thrilled.
Good point. I suppose where you are at they'd be escarighters.
Oh man, I have to pick just one. I'll pick a lesser-known one. TEAMRAMONYCAJAL PRESENTS: A DIATRIBE ON THE SAD STATE OF UNIVERSITY BIOLOGY EDUCATION 1) Statistics is not seen by still-too-many undergraduate programs as anything other than an elective. Hogwash, I say. My undergraduate program has required me to take one course in biostatistics, and I elected to take what was essentially Biostatistics Part 2 as part of a research semester. A lot of people like to say 'Why require calculus as part of a biology degree? We never use it!' Now I think calculus is damn necessary because it's increasingly the case that we're going to have to incorporate higher-level math into our work (MATLAB is a big thing in parts of neuroscience, for example, and it requires LINEAR ALGEBRA), but if you're going to drop calculus as a requirement you'd better fucking replace it with stats. And yes, that means two semesters. And yes, most biology majors are premeds or stuff like that. If you're a doctor, you had better fucking be able to interpret medical journal articles and keep up with your field, and that means knowing how the fuck statistics work, from the simplest goddamned t-test to a big ol' convoluted case-control thingy or some wackily complicated regression (and know how to talk to a biostatistician if it's maybe a little beyond your ken, which requires some biostatistical knowledge anyway). SOLUTION: REQUIRE SOME FUCKING STATISTICS 1a) If you're going to teach statistics, teach a fucking statistical program, and to the point TEACH IT WELL. I learned statistics using R, and my biostatistics professor was fucking abysmal at teaching us R and used R Commander as an interface. I didn't fucking understand how to use R when my professor of my entirely elective research design class taught us more advanced stuff in R, and forced us to do it at the console. I am a better statistics user for it. SOLUTION: FUCKING LEARN HOW TO TEACH A STATISTICAL PACKAGE AND INTEGRATE IT WELL INTO THE STAT CLASS 1b) I had the dubious privilege earlier in the semester of having to basically teach some poor sophomore huge amounts of statistics in an hour, using R. This was not something I was required to do, but I overheard her having difficulties and decided I'd step in. She had not taken the required statistics class, but yet her ecology and evolution class was requiring her to do even some stuff that wasn't required in the required statistics class. Out of the goodness of my own black little heart, I did for her what her professors neglected to do: teach her how to do a T-test, an ANOVA, a chi-square test, and a linear regression, send her a little 'cheat-sheet' with the tl;dr of the theory, what each test actually tells you, and how to do it in R, and she thanked me profusely and told me I'd explained everything in a crystal-clear manner. I was told by the resident biostatistician in my department that part of the problem with integrating statistics into the rest of the core curriculum is that a lot of scientists are still uncomfortable with statistics. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK. SOLUTION: HAVE SOME PROFESSORS WHO AREN'T UNCOMFORTABLE WITH STATISTICS TEACHING THE CLASSES, FOR FUCK'S FUCKING FUCK SAKE FUCK IT. 2) At least at my university the core curriculum and all the concentrations are continually in flux and it's fucking stupid. Yes, biology, by its nature as a science, changes with all the new information we get. No, that is not an excuse to change the degree requirements like Italy changes its prime ministers. SOLUTION: PUT SOME FUCKING THOUGHT INTO THE CURRICULUM. 3) Vishnu Roosevelt Muhammad Christ Selassie Guan Yin on a pogo stick, I had the displeasure of having to edit several classmates' papers for a required technical writing class for our major. WHY THE FUCKING FUCK CAN'T HALF OF YOU DUMB SHITS WRITE. SOLUTION: STEP IT THE FUCK UP ENGLISH DEPARTMENT I'll add more rant as I think of it. EDIT: I just edited the group project for the technical writing class I am required to take. SIDDHARTHA AMATERASU H. THOR CERNUNNOS, WHO THE FUCK LET YOU IDIOTS INTO COLLEGE.
Had the same problem in stats for engineering, which was required for my Bio degree. R. Everything in R. All we spoke was R. Professor could barely make an coherent sentence without writing a proof. His wife was an Ayn-Rand acolyte macroeconomics professor who wore those weird round-bottomed medical shoes. They made sense, but I can't express why in words. Regardless, I have all but completely forgotten how to use R. I definitely became less enamored/'scared'/mesmerized about stats and feel much better about criticizing their usage, including arguing with my current boss about why student's t is NOT going to be as sufficient as ANOVA.
What made me learn R in my second semester of statistics was that my professor actually gave us references with the exact command and all the variables and what they meant. He EXPLAINED it. He didn't make us scour the internets for what the hell we were supposed to do for a two-sample t-test. He gave us the commands. He expected us to know how to use them. Did you explain to your boss that Student's T is an ANOVA for only 2 samples and that for ANOVA you have to do Tukey's HSD (which is really not that hard in R)? This is the thingamabobber I typed up for the sophomore, published here just in case anyone else on Hubski wants a mini-statistics and mini-R lesson:
IMPORTING YOUR DATA INTO R Say you have a set of data. Before you do anything with this data at all, make sure each variable is in the columns, not the rows (i.e. the headers are at the top of each column and the data goes down the column). This makes working with the data a lot easier. Let's assume you use Microsoft Excel 2007 or later, because that's common, and that you have this little sheet of data, called dogbones.csv (save it as a .csv, because R hates Excel. Also, save it in your My Documents folder, because this is where R will pull datasheets from). Even though the data's going to be typed out here in rows because this is an email, imagine that it is in columns. To import this data into R, there are a few ways to do it. If you have a small dataset with one IV and one DV, you can type: If you have a huge dataset, you type: dogbones <- read.csv("dogbones.csv", header=TRUE) To get the same sets as 'dogs' and 'fmrlengths', you type: TESTS One-sample T-test: Let's say we're comparing a population and we want to see whether it's significantly different than a mean of 3. Two-sample T-test: Let's say we're comparing heights of men and women, and that these variables are coded as 'hmales' and 'hfemales', and that we're assuming equal variance. All you type is: Pearson's chi-square: For a 2-way table called 'townsmog' where the rows are towns A and B and the columns are 'bothered by pollution' and 'not bothered by pollution': Correlation test: Is 'money' correlated with 'intelligence'? Linear regression test: Assuming 'money' is correlated with intelligence, how much does 'intelligence' determine 'money', and is this significant?
So dog 1 has femur length 14, dog 5 has femur length 18, and so on. Dogs: 1 2 3 4 5
FemurLengths: 14 15 16 17 18
and ignore the more complicated dataset commands. dogs <- scan(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
fmrlengths <- scan(14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
(as an aside here, before you import a data set in R, it's a lot easier if the variable names are kinda condensed). dogs <- dogbones$Dogs
fmrlengths <- dogbones$FemurLengths t.test(population, mu=3) t.test(hmales, hfemales, var.equal=TRUE) chisq(townsmog) cor.test(money, intelligence) moneyIQreg <- lm(money ~ intelligence)
summary(moneyIQreg)
There were underlying issues that went further than just the type of test to be using, I meant it more as an example. Also, while I oh-so cherish my time spent in R, I'm not doing anything that necessitates that level of control, nor is that particular skill (working in R, not stats knowledge) set something that needs to be maintained. I also spent a bunch of time messing around in LaTeX, thinking that would come in handy later, or at least be interesting enough to merit working in, but in the end I have a fancy-looking CV that is really annoying to update.Did you explain to your boss that Student's T is an ANOVA for only 2 samples and that for ANOVA you have to do Tukey's HSD (which is really not that hard in R)?
I use Word. I'm so glad biology doesn't have a bizarre practice of using LaTeX for everything. What the fuck, physics.
yeah, university really isn't all that, is it? I'm doing computer science, it's kind of scary how many people complain that: they don't need to learn any maths they don't need to learn any computer science theory they don't need to learn how to program (or don't bother), because they'll learn on the job they don't need to learn how to write they don't need to learn how to present shit uhhh
Oh, university is most certainly all that, and if you disagree you haven't put enough into your education, but many of the students aren't. Do half of the students expect to be the stereotypical unwashed code monkey whose only job is typing code and who never gets brought out as a representative of whichever organization, industrial or academic or governmental, that they only got a job at because they can code?
OK fine, "not all that" perhaps wasn't the right expression but yes, I more or less agree with you. I think I had this idea that university would do the job of making people interested in computer science, when in reality, by the time you get to university level that's really up to the student. But then, there aren't any good pre-university computer science courses in the UK. So where are people going to pick up the computing bug? Nerdy parents (in my case it was my father)? There were a few extra-curricular things at my school but then not all places are lucky enough to provide stuff like that. It's a big problem, one that has been in the news in the UK quite a bit as well (the only sensible thing that Michael Gove has talked about, actually). So quite a few people are only here because of the prospect of a decent job, which is fine I suppose but that seems like a pretty grim attitude to have. But then I've met a lot of people who are way more driven than I am. Which is for the best, really. And yeah, I think I did OK because I'm interested in compsci and alright at the subject. So that's nice.
I'm game, let's give it a shot. The fallacy of the belief in government: any government. Before I start I want you to think about the fact that there is no such thing as legitimate government, or even that there is such a thing as Government. Right now, we're as a species in big problems, mainly because we obey rules made up by others in their self-interest instead of serving the public good. The crisis of '08 which still hasn't ended and has crippled a generation turned out to be a text-book example of cronyism and self-serving legalized theft. Many people wail and complain and try to adress the problems they face with unjust laws, stifling rules and the lack of justice, without realizing one essential fact. There is no government. Government has no body, no reality except for a few lines written down on a piece of paper saying there's a government.
There never was. It's an idea whose time has come to be mocked. The idea that ANYONE has the right to order someone else to do something by threatening them with force ( 'Obey the law or we'll throw you in jail and steal all your money') is an abhorrence to anything which even slightly resembles something humane. In other words, the belief there's something as someone who has the right to rule you and order you to do things which go against your own free will is lunacy. And we're collectively hallucinating. Think about this. From the day you're born you're given a serial number (your social security number) which grants you certain civil rights. These civil rights are codified (i.e. written down) natural rights (i.e. rights you have, which are inherent and which can NEVER be taken away from you).
However, civil rights CAN be changed as well as taken away. If they have been given to you by a 'higher power', then they can be taken away by the same entity which gave them to you. These civil rights and this social contract make you subject to certain obligations, when you're no more than a few days old. These rules control you, tell you what you can and cannot do (even if you're not hurting anyone but yourself; or not even hurt yourself!). You are not allowed to decide for yourself, but should obey to Government, the people who claim they're Government and the rules written on a piece of paper by the same people who now tell you you should obey because it's the Law. Even if this goes against every moral fibre in your body. You are now property of the State. Congratulations.
If the idea of Governance is based on the idea of the Social Contract, this contract has been made iwith someone who didn't comprehend it due to the fact s/he was a baby at the time and was not aware of all the rules, obligations, regulations and ever-dwindling rights and it is therefore null and void. If Governance is 'by consent' then being no longer prepared to participate in said State dissolves the idea of Government as well. In short: the idea there is really something as 'Government' is a fallacy, being either a coercion which is never legitimate; or it is a fiction which works only if you consent to it. Either way, Government as an reality does not exist and the sooner we realize this as a species, the sooner we can throw off the shackles which keep us going straight off the cliff.
Got any better ideas that take stock of the fact that humanity has never been entirely composed of adequately rational human beings (c.f. wars, massacres, organized crime, mental illness )? And if you SERIOUSLY think children should have EXACTLY the same rights as adults (no, I'm not talking about basic human rights; I'm talking about things you earn at the age of majority), I don't know what to tell you.
There are many disfunctional, mentally-ill people. However, the majority of deaths, massacres, wars and heinous crimes have been perpetrated by people while following orders given to them by someone who called themselves 'Government'. It might be the soldiers who die but it's the cowards in positions of power who give the order. If everyone realized that just because there's something or someone calling themselves 'Government' which orders you to go out and kill people it doens't mean you actually have to do that, how many wars, atrocities, massacres etc do you think we will see? Not a lot, I think. That being said, you ALWAYS bear a personal responsability for your actions which harm another human being (and perhaps even as far as every other living thing). Responsability means you cannot hide behind the false excuse of 'just following orders'. It's the one who pulls the trigger, dumps the toxic waste in the river or pulls the wings off of flies. NOT the one who ordered you to do that. You have a moral responsability to think for yourself. And as soon as you realize you cannot hide behind leaders, you realize the idea of Government of and in itself is idiotic. Second part: huh? Where did I say that children should have exactly the same rights as adults? I was talking about the legal obligations imposed upon a baby, at the same time it 'receives' civil rights. Civil rights are a legal fiction; which come from the idea of a Social Contract between an individual and the State. And since a new-born cannot make a balanced judgement, any contract imposing obligations upon an individual is null and void. I'm interested what rights you had in mind when you reacted, because I don't know what you're hinting at. edit: spelling
Who punishes the dysfunctional and how in a non-governmental system? What is a government other than an organization with origins in an old agreement among a people, handed down through the years to new electees, though the current parties were not party to the original agreement (but how do you pass it on and change it with each generation? Oh, that's right, elections)? Also, remember, government is not a mean-looking The Man or The Woman in a suit. It's made up of people. Some of whom are idiots. I have been part of The Government as an intern at the Smithsonian (which is considered part of the government). So has my father, in a different job in a different part of the government. My mother still is, in yet another different job in yet another different part of the government. Which part of the government do you blame? Congress? The Supreme Court ? The executive branch? Which part of the executive branch? Talking about 'Government' as a monolith will get any discussion nowhere.
First of all, you haven't answered my previous question about what rights you had in mind when you reacted the first time. Second: a government is indeed an organisation with origins in an old agreement, handed down through the years. And that is exactly the problem. You are born into a system of rules and obligations, along with rights, but you had absolutely no say in them. You are bound by rules imposed upon you without your consent.
Indeed, government is a collection of people, some of which are idiots. And believing it's morally right to have idiots writing lines on a piece of paper and saying 'now you have to obey what we've just written down on this piece of paper, or else we'll throw you in a cage' is exactly the problem I have with Government.
I'm not sorry, because government IS a monolith. Ever tried to fix things through the judicial or legislative system? Yeah, in the past it might have worked a bit but only because people realized at a certain dim level that an imposed rule was not helping them and they demanded to have it changed. Which is still very much like the slave asking his master to whip him a little less often. No one has the right to imprison another human being; no one has the right to rob, steal or kill. So why is it that these things change when it's government who's doing these exact same things all of a sudden?
That's the point I'm trying to make: just because someone says 'this rule HAS to be obeyed' and the fact that everyone believes this outright lie doesn't make it so. If I wrote down on a piece of paper 'you have to wear a yellow paper hat every other day, otherwise you'll be locked up for a year' you'd think I'd be insane, and rightly so.
So why do we magically believe in the sanity of rules when government makes them? Because we've 'agreed' to be ruled? I haven't. Show me where it says any of us have agreed to be ruled (if, of course, you WANT to be ruled, I have nothing to say. Your life, your choice.) But that doesn't change the fact that the whole idea of government, in which a small group of people can boss other people around and call it a good thing is a logical fallacy. Thirdly: the punishing of the dysfunctional. This is, indeed, a tricky one. First off: ask the question why are people dysfunctional? Is it something they've picked up from birth? An accident? Drugs? And if so, what were the cause which led them to a certain act of dysfunctionality? As a family/neighborhood/town you CAN get together and decide how you can deal with dysfunctional individuals. There's mediators galore but there's no one from stopping you to ask an impartial third person to review a certain case. You can be governed, no problem. But it should be consentual which means you enter such a system of rules by your own free will and you must be able to leave again if the rules are changed on an almost daily basis (as is the case nowadays). I think the idea of banishment (temporarily or permanent) has much more merits than imprisonment. Btw, if elections would solve anything, it would either be outlawed or things would have changed for the better already. Since they haven't, I can confidently state that looking for the solution coming from other people isn't going to work. Which takes us right back at the main problem: believing someone else has the right to rule you. You are not a slave who needs the master's permission to do something YOU know to be right. If what you do harms no one or demolishes the natural resources around you, who has the right to tell you you can't do them?
There's examples of working non-governmental societies all throughout the world as well as throughout history. You break the one rule (which is when you've harmed someone) and you will have to take responsability for your actions. Your neighbours have the obligation to call you out if you're messing things up. because they have a responsability too: not to let someone mess up things in such a way that it harm others. As far as your last remark: I don't really blame a specific part of government, I'm looking people who think there should BE such a thing as government in the first place.