randomdrake

Study: Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification

Citation: Mischel, Walter; Ebbesen, Ebbe B.; Raskoff Zeiss, Antonette. American Psychological Association Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol 21. Issue 2. 204-218. 1972.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1037/h0032198

DOI: 10.1037/h0032198

Abstract: Three experiments investigated attentional and cognitive mechanisms in delay of gratification In each study preschool children could obtain a less preferred reward immediately or continue waiting indefinitely for a more preferred but delayed reward Experiment I compared the effects of external and cognitive distraction from the reward objects on the length of time which preschool children waited for the preferred delayed reward before forfeiting it for the sake of the less preferred immediate one. In accord with predictions from an extension of frustrative nonreward theory, children waited much longer for a preferred reward when they were distracted from the rewards than when they attended to them directly Experiment II demonstrated that only certain cognitive events (thinking "fun things") served as effective ideational dis- tractors Thinking "sad thoughts" produced short delay times, as did thinking about the rewards themselves In Experiment III the delayed rewards were not physically available for direct attention during the delay period, and the children's attention to them cogmtively was manipulated by prior instructions While the children waited, cognitions about the rewards significantly reduced, rather than enhanced, the length of their delay of gratification Overall, atten- tional and cognitive mechanisms which enhanced the salience of the rewards shortened the length of voluntary delay, while distractions from the rewards, overtly or cogmtively, facilitated delay The results permit a reinterpretation of basic mechanisms in voluntary delay of gratification and self-control.

Study: Acoustic Virtual Vortices with Tunable Orbital Angular Momentum for Trapping of Mie Particles

Citation: Asier Marzo, Mihai Caleap, Bruce W. Drinkwater. Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 044301 – Published 22 January 2018.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.044301

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.044301

Abstract: Acoustic vortices can transfer angular momentum and trap particles. Here, we show that particles trapped in airborne acoustic vortices orbit at high speeds, leading to dynamic instability and ejection. We demonstrate stable trapping inside acoustic vortices by generating sequences of short-pulsed vortices of equal helicity but opposite chirality. This produces a “virtual vortex” with an orbital angular momentum that can be tuned independently of the trapping force. We use this method to adjust the rotational speed of particles inside a vortex beam and, for the first time, create three-dimensional acoustics traps for particles of wavelength order (i.e., Mie particles).

There's more to it than simply what you see at first glance. Snow Crash and Ready Player One described the experience at length. The freedom of expression, of identity of who or what you could be. The ways that people talk, interact, explore, and represent themselves in the virtual realities of those books is more than just "how it looks." Some concrete examples are pulling up virtual windows to access resources from "outside" the reality, or the multitude of sizes and shapes that people represent themselves with.

The descriptions of what earlier versions of the virtual realities in Snow Crash or Ready Player One were, line up with the basics that VRChat encompasses.

Those are some of the things I was addressing when I said it was reminiscent.

VRChat was released last year and has been picking up momentum all over the place. If you have not had the chance to see what it's like, it's worth at least checking out as an observer.

The worlds and experiences are reminiscent of Stephenson's Snow Crash or Cline's Ready Player One in so many ways. It's eery, fascinating, and altogether odd.

Add on top of this that spectators, sometimes in the thousands, watch these virtual experiences live on Twitch.tv, and you have a very "we're in the future" feeling.

You can check out plenty of live streams of people experiencing this on Twitch.tv now:

https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/VRChat

Study: DeepBreath: Deep Learning of Breathing Patterns for Automatic Stress Recognition using Low-Cost Thermal Imaging in Unconstrained Settings

Citation: Youngjun Cho, Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze, Simon J. Julier. arXiv:1708.06026 [cs.HC]

Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.06026

Abstract: We propose DeepBreath, a deep learning model which automatically recognises people's psychological stress level (mental overload) from their breathing patterns. Using a low cost thermal camera, we track a person's breathing patterns as temperature changes around his/her nostril. The paper's technical contribution is threefold. First of all, instead of creating hand-crafted features to capture aspects of the breathing patterns, we transform the uni-dimensional breathing signals into two dimensional respiration variability spectrogram (RVS) sequences. The spectrograms easily capture the complexity of the breathing dynamics. Second, a spatial pattern analysis based on a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is directly applied to the spectrogram sequences without the need of hand-crafting features. Finally, a data augmentation technique, inspired from solutions for over-fitting problems in deep learning, is applied to allow the CNN to learn with a small-scale dataset from short-term measurements (e.g., up to a few hours). The model is trained and tested with data collected from people exposed to two types of cognitive tasks (Stroop Colour Word Test, Mental Computation test) with sessions of different difficulty levels. Using normalised self-report as ground truth, the CNN reaches 84.59% accuracy in discriminating between two levels of stress and 56.52% in discriminating between three levels. In addition, the CNN outperformed powerful shallow learning methods based on a single layer neural network. Finally, the dataset of labelled thermal images will be open to the community.

Study: Spin Entanglement Witness for Quantum Gravity

Citation: Sougato Bose, Anupam Mazumdar, Gavin W. Morley, Hendrik Ulbricht, Marko Toroš, Mauro Paternostro, Andrew A. Geraci, Peter F. Barker, M. S. Kim, and Gerard Milburn Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 240401 – Published 13 December 2017.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240401

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240401

Abstract: Understanding gravity in the framework of quantum mechanics is one of the great challenges in modern physics. However, the lack of empirical evidence has lead to a debate on whether gravity is a quantum entity. Despite varied proposed probes for quantum gravity, it is fair to say that there are no feasible ideas yet to test its quantum coherent behavior directly in a laboratory experiment. Here, we introduce an idea for such a test based on the principle that two objects cannot be entangled without a quantum mediator. We show that despite the weakness of gravity, the phase evolution induced by the gravitational interaction of two micron size test masses in adjacent matter-wave interferometers can detectably entangle them even when they are placed far apart enough to keep Casimir-Polder forces at bay. We provide a prescription for witnessing this entanglement, which certifies gravity as a quantum coherent mediator, through simple spin correlation measurements.

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Study: Gravitationally Induced Entanglement between Two Massive Particles is Sufficient Evidence of Quantum Effects in Gravity

Citation: C. Marletto and V. Vedral Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 240402 – Published 13 December 2017.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240402

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.240402

Abstract: All existing quantum-gravity proposals are extremely hard to test in practice. Quantum effects in the gravitational field are exceptionally small, unlike those in the electromagnetic field. The fundamental reason is that the gravitational coupling constant is about 43 orders of magnitude smaller than the fine structure constant, which governs light-matter interactions. For example, detecting gravitons—the hypothetical quanta of the gravitational field predicted by certain quantum-gravity proposals—is deemed to be practically impossible. Here we adopt a radically different, quantum-information-theoretic approach to testing quantum gravity. We propose witnessing quantumlike features in the gravitational field, by probing it with two masses each in a superposition of two locations. First, we prove that any system (e.g., a field) mediating entanglement between two quantum systems must be quantum. This argument is general and does not rely on any specific dynamics. Then, we propose an experiment to detect the entanglement generated between two masses via gravitational interaction. By our argument, the degree of entanglement between the masses is a witness of the field quantization. This experiment does not require any quantum control over gravity. It is also closer to realization than detecting gravitons or detecting quantum gravitational vacuum fluctuations.

Study: The politics of space mining – An account of a simulation game

Citation: Paikowsky, Deganit. Tzezana, Roey. Acta Astronautica Volume 142, January 2018, 10-17.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2017.10.016

DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2017.10.016

Abstract: Celestial bodies like the Moon and asteroids contain materials and precious metals, which are valuable for human activity on Earth and beyond. Space mining has been mainly relegated to the realm of science fiction, and was not treated seriously by the international community. The private industry is starting to assemble towards space mining, and success on this front would have major impact on all nations. We present in this paper a review of current space mining ventures, and the international legislation, which could stand in their way - or aid them in their mission. Following that, we present the results of a role-playing simulation in which the role of several important nations was played by students of international relations. The results of the simulation are used as a basis for forecasting the potential initial responses of the nations of the world to a successful space mining operation in the future.

Highlights:

• The realization of space exploitation will disrupt world politics.

• The simulation highlighted the political tensions and different interests.

• Inclusive international process is needed to reach fast adaptation.

• Creative mechanisms are needed to allow sharing of new global wealth.

I could not find official data yet for 2017, but they're missing a big one on this list and that's the United States Virgin Islands. 2015 brought 32.9 murders per 100,000 and they are consistently ranked as having one of the highest murder rates per capita of anywhere in the U.S.

That's a U.S. territory with a higher murder rate than Brazil.

This includes St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix.

I lived there for only a few years and experienced the loss of two friends due to homicide in that short time, on an island that is only 13 miles long, and 32 square miles.

Many of these crimes go unsolved despite such a small population, in such a small place, due to corruption, fear, and lack of resources.

Study: Reconstructing an African haploid genome from the 18th century

Citation: Jagadeesan, Anuradha. Gunnarsdóttir, Ellen D.. Ebenesersdóttir, S. Sunna. Guðmundsdóttir, Valdis B.. Thordardottir, Elisabet Linda. Einarsdóttir, Margrét S.. Jónsson, Hákon. Dugoujon, Jean-Michel. Fortes-Lima, Cesar. Migot-Nabias, Florence. Massougbodji, Achille. Bellis, Gil. Pereira, Luisa. Másson, Gísli. Kong, Augustine. Stefánsson, Kári. Helgason, Agnar. Nature Genetics 1,7 1061-4036 2018.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-017-0031-6

DOI: 10.1038/s41588-017-0031-6

Abstract: A genome is a mosaic of chromosome fragments from ancestors who existed some arbitrary number of generations earlier. Here, we reconstruct the genome of Hans Jonatan (HJ), born in the Caribbean in 1784 to an enslaved African mother and European father. HJ migrated to Iceland in 1802, married and had two children. We genotyped 182 of his 788 descendants using single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) chips and whole-genome sequenced (WGS) 20 of them. Using these data, we reconstructed 38% of HJ’s maternal genome and inferred that his mother was from the region spanned by Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon.

> "The answer, I discovered, is turbulence. It’s something we’ve all experienced, whether flying through choppy air at 30,000 feet or watching a whirlpool gather in the bathtub drain. Yet familiarity hasn’t bred knowledge: Turbulence is one of the least understood parts of the physical world."

This immediately made me think of "roughness" and Benoit Mandelbrot.

> “When you zoom in on a point, from a mathematical point of view you lose information about the solution,” said Vicol. “But turbulence is meant to describe exactly this — the transfer of kinetic energy from large to smaller and smaller scales, so it’s exactly asking you to zoom in.”

You can explore the Mandelbrot set in similar fashions. There are many tools online to do so. The more you zoom in, the more you get completely lost from what the original image looks like.

If this kind of stuff interests you, his TED talk is among my favorites and can be found here:

https://www.ted.com/talks/benoit_mandelbrot_fractals_the_art...

Study: No priming in video games

Citation: Dr. David Zendle, Dr. Paul Cairns, Dr. Daniel Kudenko, No Priming in Video Games, Computers in Human Behavior (2017).

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.09.021

DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2017.09.021

Abstract: Video games depict a variety of different concepts. Models of learning in games like the GLM (General Learning Model) and GAM (General Aggression Model) predict that exposing players to these in-game concepts can lead to important changes in player behaviour.

Priming effects are thought to be key to determining these changes in behaviour. However, recent research has suggested problems with the priming effects that have previously been observed in the video game literature. Indeed, widespread methodological issues with this body of research make it unclear whether priming effects occur at all in video games.

Two experiments (total N = 532) investigated whether priming effects still occurred in video games when known confounds in the literature were accounted for. Priming was observed in neither study. However, in both studies a novel negative priming effect was observed instead, in which exposure to a specific concept inhibited players’ reactions to things that were related to that concept.

These studies support previous research which indicates there may be serious confounding in the video game literature. They also suggest that the priming-related effects of video games may be overestimated. Finally, they highlight the potential existence of negative priming as an effect of video game play.

Highlights:

• Priming is not seen when differences in gameplay between conditions are controlled.

• Popular models of learning in games (GAM, GLM) are challenged.

• Negative priming inconsistently observed: Playing a game sometimes inhibits reactions to in-game concepts.

Study: Musical genre-dependent behavioural and EEG signatures of action planning. A comparison between classical and jazz pianists

Citation: Bianco, R., Novembre, G., Keller, P.E., Villringer, A., Sammler, D., Musical genre-dependent behavioural and EEG signatures of action planning. A comparison between classical and jazz pianists, NeuroImage (2018).

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.12.058

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.12.058

Abstract: It is well established that musical training induces sensorimotor plasticity. However, there are remarkable differences in how musicians train for proficient stage performance. The present EEG study outlines for the first time clear-cut neurobiological differences between classical and jazz musicians at high and low levels of action planning, revealing genre-specific cognitive strategies adopted in production. Pianists imitated chord progressions without sound that were manipulated in terms of harmony and context length to assess high-level planning of sequence-structure, and in terms of the manner of playing to assess low-level parameter specification of single acts. Jazz pianists revised incongruent harmonies faster as revealed by an earlier reprogramming negativity and beta power decrease, hence neutralising response costs, albeit at the expense of a higher number of manner errors. Classical pianists in turn experienced more conflict during incongruent harmony, as shown by theta power increase, but were more ready to implement the required manner of playing, as indicated by higher accuracy and beta power decrease. These findings demonstrate that specific demands and action focus of training lead to differential weighting of hierarchical action planning. This suggests different enduring markers impressed in the brain when a musician practices one or the other style.

Highlights:

• Real-time imitation of piano chord sequences with unexpected harmony or manner.

• Genre-specific strategies at high (harmony) and low (manner) levels of planning.

• Jazz pianists revised harmony faster (earlier negativity) at the cost of manner.

• Classical pianists had conflict in harmony (frontal theta) but excelled in manner.

• Focus of practice may cause enduring brain marks at different action control levels.

> slow down cars in urban areas

This is actually happening. Portland has recently fallen in line with other cities, like Seattle, and lowered thousands of miles of streets from 25 MPH to 20 MPH.

http://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/index.ssf/2018/01/portla...

Study: Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations? The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on US Crime

Citation: Gavrilova, E., Kamada, T. and Zoutman, F. (2017), Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations? The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on US Crime. Econ J.

Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12521

DOI: 10.1111/ecoj.12521

Abstract: We show that the introduction of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) leads to a decrease in violent crime in states that border Mexico. The reduction in crime is strongest for counties close to the border (less than 350 kilometres) and for crimes that relate to drug trafficking. In addition, we find that MMLs in inland states lead to a reduction in crime in the nearest border state. Our results are consistent with the theory that decriminalisation of the production and distribution of marijuana leads to a reduction in violent crime in markets that are traditionally controlled by Mexican drug trafficking organisations.

Study: Price Manipulation in the Bitcoin Ecosystem

Citation: Neil Gandal, JT Hamrick, Tyler Moore, Tali Oberman, Price Manipulation in the Bitcoin Ecosystem, Journal of Monetary Economics (2017)

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmoneco.2017.12.004

DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2017.12.004

Abstract: To its proponents, the cryptocurrency Bitcoin offers the potential to disrupt payment systems and traditional currencies. It has also been subject to security breaches and wild price fluctuations. This paper identifies and analyzes the impact of suspicious trading activity on the Mt. Gox Bitcoin currency exchange, in which approximately 600,000 bitcoins (BTC) valued at $188 million were fraudulently acquired. During both periods, the USD-BTC exchange rate rose by an average of four percent on days when suspicious trades took place, compared to a slight decline on days without suspicious activity. Based on rigorous analysis with extensive robustness checks, the paper demonstrates that the suspicious trading activity likely caused the unprecedented spike in the USD-BTC exchange rate in late 2013, when the rate jumped from around $150 to more than $1,000 in two months.

Highlights:

• Suspicious trades on a Bitcoin currency exchange are linked to rises in the exchange rate.

• A single actor likely drove the USD/BTC exchange rate from $150 to $1000 in 2 months.

• Trading volume on all exchanges increased greatly on days with suspicious activity.

• Unregulated cryptocurrency markets remain vulnerable to manipulation today.

Study: Dietary trehalose enhances virulence of epidemic Clostridium difficile

Citation: J. Collins, C. Robinson, H. Danhof, C. W. Knetsch, H. C. van Leeuwen, T. D. Lawley, J. M. Auchtung & R. A. Britton. Nature 2018-01-03 online.

Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25178

DOI: 10.1038/nature25178

Abstract: Clostridium difficile disease has recently increased to become a dominant nosocomial pathogen in North America and Europe, although little is known about what has driven this emergence. Here we show that two epidemic ribotypes (RT027 and RT078) have acquired unique mechanisms to metabolize low concentrations of the disaccharide trehalose. RT027 strains contain a single point mutation in the trehalose repressor that increases the sensitivity of this ribotype to trehalose by more than 500-fold. Furthermore, dietary trehalose increases the virulence of a RT027 strain in a mouse model of infection. RT078 strains acquired a cluster of four genes involved in trehalose metabolism, including a PTS permease that is both necessary and sufficient for growth on low concentrations of trehalose. We propose that the implementation of trehalose as a food additive into the human diet, shortly before the emergence of these two epidemic lineages, helped select for their emergence and contributed to hypervirulence.

Study: Precocious development of self-awareness in dolphins

Citation: Morrison R, Reiss D (2018) Precocious development of self-awareness in dolphins. PLoS ONE 13(1): e0189813.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189813

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0189813

Abstract: Mirror-self recognition (MSR) is a behavioral indicator of self-awareness in young children and only a few other species, including the great apes, dolphins, elephants and magpies. The emergence of self-awareness in children typically occurs during the second year and has been correlated with sensorimotor development and growing social and self-awareness. Comparative studies of MSR in chimpanzees report that the onset of this ability occurs between 2 years 4 months and 3 years 9 months of age. Studies of wild and captive bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) have reported precocious sensorimotor and social awareness during the first weeks of life, but no comparative MSR research has been conducted with this species. We exposed two young bottlenose dolphins to an underwater mirror and analyzed video recordings of their behavioral responses over a 3-year period. Here we report that both dolphins exhibited MSR, indicated by self-directed behavior at the mirror, at ages earlier than generally reported for children and at ages much earlier than reported for chimpanzees. The early onset of MSR in young dolphins occurs in parallel with their advanced sensorimotor development, complex and reciprocal social interactions, and growing social awareness. Both dolphins passed subsequent mark tests at ages comparable with children. Thus, our findings indicate that dolphins exhibit self-awareness at a mirror at a younger age than previously reported for children or other species tested.

The original article, from July of 2017, can be found on Task and Purpose. While it still has a lot of advertising, at least there isn't a big popup telling you to disable your ad-blocker.

https://taskandpurpose.com/sr-71-blackbird-rare-video/

Mods, maybe we could update the link and throw a (2017) on this?

Study: Chickens prefer beautiful humans.

Citation: Ghirlanda, S., Jansson, L. & Enquist, M. Hum Nat (2002) 13: 383.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-002-1021-6

DOI: 10.1007/s12110-002-1021-6

Abstract: We trained chickens to react to an average human female face but not to an average male face (or vice versa). In a subsequent test, the animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences (obtained from university students). This suggests that human preferences arise from general properties of nervous systems, rather than from face-specific adaptations. We discuss this result in the light of current debate on the meaning of sexual signals and suggest further tests of existing hypotheses about the origin of sexual preferences.

Study: An automated training paradigm reveals long-term memory in planaria and its persistence through head regeneration

Citation: Tal Shomrat, Michael Levin. Journal of Experimental Biology 2013. Published July 2, 2013

Link: http://jeb.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/jeb.087809

DOI: 10.1242/jeb.087809

Summary: Planarian flatworms are a popular system for research into the molecular mechanisms that enable these complex organisms to regenerate their entire body, including the brain. Classical data suggest that they may also be capable of long-term memory. Thus, the planarian system may offer the unique opportunity to study brain regeneration and memory in the same animal. To establish a system for the investigation of the dynamics of memory in a regenerating brain, we developed a computerized training and testing paradigm that avoided the many issues that confounded previous, manual attempts to train planarians. We then used this new system to train flatworms in an environmental familiarization protocol. We show that worms exhibit environmental familiarization, and that this memory persists for at least 14 days – long enough for the brain to regenerate. We further show that trained, decapitated planarians exhibit evidence of memory retrieval in a savings paradigm after regenerating a new head. Our work establishes a foundation for objective, high-throughput assays in this molecularly tractable model system that will shed light on the fundamental interface between body patterning and stored memories. We propose planarians as key emerging model species for mechanistic investigations of the encoding of specific memories in biological tissues. Moreover, this system is lik ely to have important implications for the biomedicine of stem-cell-derived treatments of degenerative brain disorders in human adults.

Study: Exposure to rodenticides in Northern Spotted and Barred Owls on remote forest lands in northwestern California: evidence of food web contamination

Citation: Gabriel, M. W., L. V. Diller, J. P. Dumbacher, G. M. Wengert, J. M. Higley, R. H. Poppenga, and S. Mendia. 2018. Avian Conservation and Ecology 13(1):2.

Link: https://doi.org/10.5751/ACE-01134-130102

DOI: 10.5751/ACE-01134-130102

Abstract: The documentation of anticoagulant rodenticides (AR) in nontarget species has centered around wildlife that inhabit urban or agricultural settings. However, recent studies in California have shown that AR use in remote forest settings has escalated and has exposed and killed forest carnivores. Anticoagulant rodenticides have been documented as physiological stressors for avian species. Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) critical and occupied habitat overlaps the areas where these studies occurred, yet no data were previously available to demonstrate whether this species was similarly affected. We investigated whether avian predators are also exposed to these specific pesticides and whether Barred Owls (Strix varia) may be a surrogate to indicate exposure rates in Northern Spotted Owls. We documented that 70% of Northern Spotted Owls and 40% of Barred Owls were exposed to one or more anticoagulant rodenticides. None of the rodent prey species sampled within the study area were positive for ARs. There were no spatial clusters for either low or high rates of exposure, though we detected low temporal trend early on throughout the study area. We hypothesize a recent change in land-use toward marijuana cultivation may have led to the increased use of AR in this area. This study demonstrates environmental contamination within occupied Northern Spotted Owl habitat and that Barred Owls can be used as adequate surrogates for detecting these pollutants in a rare species such as the Northern Spotted Owl. Furthermore, additional studies should focus on whether these pesticides are also affecting prey availability for these forest avian species.

I was able to develop the habit of taking supplements by attaching them to a craving and replacing an existing behavior. When I feel hungry or eager for a snack in the early afternoon or late morning, I know that means it’s time for a small glass of V8 and supplements. It’s worked well attaching it to a craving like that as I am not actively trying to remember to take the supplement, I am just triggering it off of something that happens every day anyway.

Maybes mods could add (2015). Seems little more than a regurgitation of the TED talk it links to multiple times entitled “Why are these 32 symbols found in ancient caves all over Europe?” which can be found here:

https://www.ted.com/talks/genevieve_von_petzinger_why_are_th...

> "any "AI" is better than none no matter how poor it is"

You don't have to disagree. The OP said:

> "it doesn't really matter all that much how good the AI is"

I think you're both correct and you bring up an interesting point. As long as your AI is "good enough" to replace what would've taken more resources to do otherwise, it's a win. I'm not sure if that's "half" as you stated, but I bet it depends on the task. If the task is saving a few seconds to query something, then I'd agree, half of the time wrong isn't a savings. But, if you have less than half a chance at saving thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours if it works correctly, then that may be chalked up as a win.

"What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL"

Could be retitled:

"I should have learned SQL before dealing with ORMs."

Every single point the author brings up comes seems to come down to simple database design, lazy development, or not understanding their tools. They really don't seem to have anything to with ORMs or query languages.

Any screwdriver can make for a bad hammer and some screws may go in with a large enough mallet.

> Perhaps the most subversive issue I've had with ORMs is "attribute creep" or "wide tables"

Normalization of data is required whether you're using a query language or an ORM to access it. The fact that ORMs make it easy to "hide" the fact that you've added 500 columns to a table isn't the ORM's fault.

> Knowing how to write SQL becomes even more important when you attempt to actually write queries using an ORM. This is especially important when efficiency is a concern.

What do they think the ORMs are doing? Magical incantations over the disks? The ORMs are just using queries too. You can write really horrifically bad queries in a query language and also abuse ORMs, but that doesn't make either one bad. Most ORMs can let you see precisely the SQL they are creating. If not, the database will surely log the queries for you and let you know what's going on.

> The problem is that you end up having a data definition in two places: the database and your application.

Welcome to the fact that we have multi-layered technology? There's always going to be discrepancies between the layers that have to be ironed out because no data designs are perfect or future-proof. The author then attempts to bring migrations into the picture as if database migrations are somehow just not a problem if you aren't using ORMs (hint: database migrations have always been tough even in very well-design systems).

> Dealing with entity identities is one of those things that you have to keep in mind at all times when working with ORMs, forcing you to write for two systems while only have the expressivity of one. What this results in is having to manipulate the ORM to get a database identifier by manually flushing the cache or doing a partial commit to get the actual database identifier.

Sounds like a pretty frustrating example, but I've worked with at least 10 different ORMs I can think of off of the top of my head and not a single of them required "manually flushing a cache" or a "partial commit" to "get the actual database identifier." I wouldn't write this up as being an issue with ORMs or that this problem would be magically fixed by only writing SQL either.

> Transactions. Something that Neward alludes to is the need for developers to handle transactions. Transactions are dynamically scoped, which is a powerful but mostly neglected concept in programming languages due to the confusion they cause if overused.

Transactions are pretty straightforward and I cannot agree with: "The concept of a transaction translates poorly to applications due to their reliance on context based on time."

Transactions don't care about time at all. They care about order and making sure that things are completed in a certain series of steps. This actually translates very well to applications, especially when you have processes that take a long time, where you don't want something to happen unless another thing happens first.

While a decently-written article, this comes across as someone who learned about ORMs more deeply than databases, discovered the flaws that ORMs have, and decided that query languages must be the only way forward.

This ignores the fact that we created and adopted ORMs after struggling through years of rigid queries smattered throughout code.

Writing bare queries has a time and a place, but ORMs have saved countless hours of development time, and allowed for vastly improved longevity of code.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Fun article and a good reminder that the desires of human beings may not have changed as much as we think.

The dishwasher, as we know it, was not invented by someone who was tired of doing dishes.

It was invented 130 years ago by a wealthy woman who didn't like the way her servants handled her good China. She tried washing the dishes herself but found it too much to bear. She wasn't even the one who was washing the dishes, she just knew that her servants weren't good enough at the task described: "Assess where things are, you have to identify everything, you have to remember where it goes, you have to move it in an appropriate way and you have to do all this in some manner of real time."

I don't buy it. The makers of the software that this appears to be a carefully written advertisement for, came to the same conclusion as the rest of the IT world (that some of us saw a mile away): NoSQL was, and still is, only good for very specific things in very specific cases; it's generally dreadful for anything that SQL engines could already do well.

The subtitle for this contains: "After years of being left for dead" and the author throws phrases around like: "And boy did the software developer community eat up NoSQL, embracing it arguably much more broadly than the original Google/Amazon authors intended."

Who? Where's the data? This blog post has a lot of links, references, and studies, but where's the data to back up the premise?

A quick search on Google Trends comparing SQL databases to NoSQL as an entire term, or any of the popular flavors of NoSQL, reveals that it is not even a blip in comparison.

But don't take my word for it, the author and their company had the "DUH" moment too (emphasis mine):

> ...we soon realized that we’d have to do a lot more work: e.g., deciding syntax, building various connectors, educating users, etc. We also found ourselves constantly looking up the proper syntax to queries that we could already express in SQL, for a query language we had written ourselves! One day we realized that building our own query language made no sense. That the key was to embrace SQL.

You might have had hubris stemming from discarding or not knowing all of the history that you decided to share with us in this blog post. A great deal of the NoSQL community was completely unpalatable for this reason. The folks who had been doing data for decades, and built stable and powerful systems on top of many prior decades of mistakes, built them for a reason.

And here we see the author trying to proclaim that suddenly SQL is back?

SQL never went anywhere. NoSQL is a neat tool that was developed and continues to be developed and probably isn't going anywhere. But the idea that NoSQL suddenly overtook SQL, and now SQL is seeing some huge resurgence, feels like it comes from the perspective of someone who only saw a window into the last 6-8 years of development.

The king is dead. Long live the king.

There is plenty of precedence for this in the United States and elsewhere. There are even laws against it in a number of states and countries but it is very difficult to write legislation for and enforce.

This category of abuse of our legal system is called "Strategic lawsuit against public participation" or SLAPP.

More information can be found on the Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...

I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned in the article. I am not a lawyer, but it would seem that these types of suits would fall squarely in the SLAPP definition.

I enjoy expressively writing to cool off sometimes, so I was interested in checking out the study itself.

The link to the actual study from 2017/09/08 can be found here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28884815

"The effect of expressive writing on the error-related negativity among individuals with chronic worry."

> The error-related negativity (ERN), an ERP elicited immediately after errors, is enlarged among individuals with anxiety. The relationship between anxiety and enlarged ERN has spurred interest in understanding potential therapeutic benefits of decreasing its amplitude within anxious individuals. The current study used a tailored intervention-expressive writing-in an attempt to reduce the ERN among a sample of individuals with chronic worry. Consistent with hypotheses, the ERN was reduced in the expressive writing group compared to an unrelated writing control group. Findings provide experimental support that the ERN can be reduced among anxious individuals with tailored interventions. Expressive writing may serve to "offload" worries from working memory, therefore relieving the distracting effects of worry on cognition as reflected in a decreased ERN.

The study is not shy about what conclusions should and shouldn't be drawn from it. There is large "Limitations and future directions" section. Here are some excerpts:

> Although the current study sheds light on the utility of expressive writing in reducing the ERN among worriers, there are limitations that should be addressed in future studies.

> First, the samples size (N540) was rather small for a between-subjects investigation, and, unfortunately, this is the rule rather than the exception in comparable cognitive neuroscience studies (Holmes & Pizzagalli, 2010; Klawohn et al., 2016; Olvet & Hajcak, 2012)

> Second, we examined the ERN only after participants engaged in the writing and were therefore unable to assess how these processes changed from before to after writing.

> Third, we did not include a low-worry control condition. The purpose of the present study, however, was to provide a very specific test of the effects of expressive writing on the ERN in individuals with chronic levels of worry. Indeed, we meant to build upon the prior study that tested the effect of attention bias modification on the ERN (Nelson et al., 2015) by examining high-anxious individuals instead of college students sampled without regard for anxiety symptoms.

> Fourth, because we utilized a student sample, it would be useful to examine the effects of expressive writing on the ERN in clinical samples in future studies. However, as we detailed in Method, the individuals in our sample reported worry symptoms that were comparable to previous studies of patients with GAD, and by using a well-validated measure in the PSWQ, it is likely that many of our participants had GAD. Moreover, college students are not immune to psychopathology.

> I'd agree with his argument if that's what it is, just not his example.

I guess I wasn't very clear, then. The parent is correct, my argument did include: "ability to think about an abstract problem and come up with a solution to it."

I was trying to use a bit of brevity in my example but these responses make me believe I oversimplified an actual recent problem I had in mind (which is what I believe make the best interview questions). I do try to attach more business needs to the questions I've asked during interviews. Instead of:

"how would you store 1 million strings, search through them while caching results, and make sure only certain individuals can access certain strings"

What I really had in my head was: "We have tens of thousands of PDFs that we need to extract text from to make available. That text needs to be normalized. Only certain members of certain teams should have access to different types of text. Additionally, this is going to produce millions of strings. How would you get the PDFs to a place you could use them, extract the necessary text, normalize it, store it, utilize caching to make retrieving it snappy, and ensure correct access?"

Technical interviews should be more full of questions that spark conversations where additional inquiries come naturally. What kind of software? What version? What framework? Could you do that faster? And so on. Rattling off whiteboard questions is definitely what I was trying to make an example of avoiding.