fburnaby

Perhaps MS word was worse 10 years ago. I think there is only one argument in the article that has stayed relevant, which is that word is a big complicated crash-prone program, whereas it's preferable to have a lightweight text editor. There are three possible required levels of expertise, depending on how important having a properly typeset document is: (1) using word (2) understanding TeX (3) understanding word.

If your document can be ugly, you can just open word and get cracking. The occasional weird formatting problems that show up in word aren't a huge deal. But if having a proper document is important, you need to either actually know latex or actually know word. Knowing latex is way easier than knowing how word works. MS made word easy to use by hiding all the gears. This is a problem when the gears don't work how you need them to (which sadly still happens too often).

The number of people for whom formatting matters this much is probably limited to publishers and academics, so I guess it probably doesn't matter much in general.

Some don't. Others are very willing to make extremely bold truth claims near constantly.

I'm told by an (admittedly pretty crappy-looking) online test (http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jTypes2.asp) that I'm an INTJ, with strong NT, but only weak I and J components. I don't know anything about the Meyers-Briggs scale beyond what's stated about it in the wikipedia entry, but the result isn't surprising to me at all, as I can definitely sympathize with your propensity for missing "obvious" features in your surroundings.

This must be a common trait among engineers, too: one day I went to my engineering classes with exactly half of my face shaved, the other half having grown out for 2 weeks. About three people in my class noticed eventually and started laughing at me. Even with them laughing, the rest of my classmates didn't notice, and couldn't figure out what the laughing was about.

When we're talking about how much money is involved with this research, and claiming it as an incentive for climate scientists to lie, we realize that this is money that's being spent on research right? Do we? There is no incentive for them to do anything other than get published, and this by no means requires any lying or forging of data.

Please tell me we understand this fact. Nobody (that is, no scientists) is pocketing money and running here, they're spending this money on research gear and on hiring analysts and grad students and the like. Given this, how is the amount invested relevant at all?

This is the obvious interpretation. You'd have to be trying to libel someone if you were to interpret it any other way...

For me, it's this glass trackpad. No more carrying around mice! I picked up my mac primarily for that, but I've ended up doing the same thing the author did. The OS/X side of this computer just works. I need to boot up a VM and run Ubuntu 2-3 times a week, but the mac OS works all he time, and it's a (guilty) pleasure.

What makes me feel tired is reading words in ALL CAPS LOCK; this isn't the year 1999, or 2004. Heck, it's not even 2008...

And furthermore, this is the reason why we have them licensed.

To the author: That's too funny that you were doing this at Dartmouth college. I commented after your last post to HN on this topic that I'm helping (by teaching tutorial sessions with the prof) do much the same thing in a linear algebra class this year. This prof was attending Dartmouth college during the time you mentioned! No wonder this all sounded so familiar!

So pretty much - don't work, and don't worry that you're not working. Then you'll feel motivated to work!

This is a fun paradox: someone who graduated from {MIT, Harvard, etc.} can't say they did, since it would be elitist. They can stop mentioning their Alma mater when they realize that it sounds elitist to mention it. But then it just seems like they're not mentioning it, as a way of signaling their lack of need to mention it (their status is obvious). Once you graduate from any of these schools, there's no way not to sound elitist when asked where you went to school. You're trapped.

PS - This, of course, doesn't mean someone graduating from these schools isn't elitist. It's just that the social exchange in which they tell you their Alma mater doesn't give you any information in regards to their elitism.

That's exactly what I'm getting, and living on (though not in NY admittedly). Hardly the -$45,000 claimed by in the article, and either way, it's better than the $0 involved with doing the research independantly.

What about drowsiness? If sleep is just a behavior for keeping us out of harm's way, shouldn't we be able to just "switch back on" upon being awaken? Granted, sometimes we do just start awake. But still, staying out of harm's way and resting sounds like a good reason to develop patience, but sleep.

Are there many species that sleep with their eyes and ears open?

A very cool experiment, and I hope it goes well. But don't you get funded to do a Ph.D? Isn't this more expensive (i.e. no stipend) than actually going to a school?

I suppose it may be hard to interest a university in some research on open education...

3+3=6, 30/5=6. Sorry for the snark, but what's your proposed interpretation? That it's all socioeconomic?

That was my snarky point.

Interesting - how? Isn't the means of production also much higher for mechanized farming? I'm hardly an expert so I'd love an explanation if I'm wrong, but I figured that the extra services involved in the larger-scale operations would also require extra transport of goods before and during harvest.

Also, regarding the lack of efficiency in transportation - where can I learn more? Of course high-volume shipping is more efficient per unit, but does this include incidental transit overhead for those people managing this process? I guess what I'm trying to say is that what matters is the total environmental costs incurred by the entire production/distribution "ecosystem", not the per unit shipment cost reported an invoice somewhere in the process.

If the practices can be sustained, then we've increased the carrying capacity. To revert to traditional practices could decrease it again. The bigger the difference between our population size and carrying capacity, the worse that ride down will be. Of course, how these practices can be made/kept sustainable is an issue.

I can second that. I took up buying my vegetables from a few hippies around town last year. They deliver to my door for the same price the (non-organic) vegetables would have cost at the grocery store. Though, I think a lot of this improved taste could be freshness as well; most of the goods are local and were picked much more recently. Another detractor is the fact that the food at the store has (typically) travelled much longer distances.

I agree with the thesis of the article, though. With the coming (actually, possibly already-existing) overpopulation crisis, high-tech food is going to be important. Unfortunately, the hardcore food-hippies will have to get over that fact.

They're the best at capitalism.

It's a joke, but I'm afraid it's author doesn't seem to think so.

He's pointing out that it souds like "pedobus". Exactly what the parents are trying to avoid.

I wonder how many get hit by cars careening onto the sidewalk, while walking to school alone, while evading would-be kidnappers?

I'm just about to start lecturing the tutorials for a linear algebra class next week. The prof that is running the course taught it to me 4 years ago and is the reason I'm now in grad school. She did more or less the same thing that you mention, and it definitely works. I remember all of this material from back when I took the class; it's still familiar and I use it all the time.

But despite being very useful for a half to two-thirds of her students, there is always about 1/3 of the class who does terrible in this course. How did you get these people to keep up?

Anyway, I'm glad you posted this. It's a good pick-me-up motivator as I'm about to be trying to do the same thing!

It would be just as much of an academic service for you to help find a out that AI can't work is it would be if you found out it can. The problem is inherently interesting and worthwhile pursuing, regardless. Phlogiston theory brought on Oxygen and the rest of chemistry after a while.

Searle is an atheistic (I think - at least he's nonreligious) philosopher who agrees with you. He argued against "functionalism" - which is pretty much the stance that most here are taking - that consciousness is a complex adaptive process, nothing "magical".

However, he's just playing with your intuition, the same way you are, and his logic (though not his certainty, either, from the bit I've read) is flawed. You should read up on his "Chinese room" thought experiment yo learn why.

"Down with the pointy-headed academics! Their magical theories have failed us again!"

It is ridiculous to blame academics for forming and publishing theories. The theories did not cause anything to happen. Someone who didn't understand them decided to use them anyways. Anyone who takes an academic theory, and blindly applies it, without understanding it is bound to screw themselves. From the article:

"most traders know it does not work and only pretend to use it because finance theory is fashionable and criticizing the model is a heresy"

So, they knew the theory didn't work for their purposes, tried it anyways, and now blame the people who made the theory. Brilliant.

Very true. That's a problem that in principle can be fixed, though. Your "fake" sciences can in principle all be approached using the scientific method. They are actually real sciences. It's just a portion of the practitioners that hurt their credibility. My guess is that it's the inherently complex subject matter that allows politically-charged crackpots and other non-scientists to squeeze their way in and call themselves scientists.

For me, it just started to work naturally once my parents (finally) got a computer 9 years ago. I thought you just spend some time in front of a computer and it starts to happen...

I completely share Russell's distaste for the practices of pushy salesmen, but I absolutely can't side with him in condemning them and blaming the cultural problem that he identifies on them. The salespeople are a wasteful symptom of our (the consumers) weakness for consumer crap and for their antics - they're not the cause of it.

Also, while (again) I completely agree that because they are driving over-consumption that this is a problem, it's very difficult to tell how much of problem it is. Maybe some people really enjoy owning useless shit and are taking advantage of an opportunity while it's made convenient by the sales person. Has anyone attempted to do some science to understand this? What proportion of purchases "induced" by pushy salespeople are customers unhappy with X weeks later, as compared with "other" purchases - ones made with previous intent?