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Comment Re:This should have never made the front page (Score 1) 729

I think the scientists would truly have to look at what they mean by religious. Does the gene make you tend toward religion, or could it also make you tend toward anything resembling religion under specific definitions of religion. In many ways the way people view science could be considered religious. Just pulling a sample wouldn't be enough. Research should be based on a very specific definition of what they mean by "religion" which is then used in surveying people to find a sample that shows what would be expression of that gene, and then another that shows what wouldn't be expression of the gene, and then a random sample of people. Then they could possibly start to pinpoint this religious gene, if it were to exist.

I think the way this work is being formed right now is mainly in a phase of "We're really trying to pinpoint the discrete tendencies this gene would create so we can further refine how to pinpoint it."

Comment Re:Hypocrites (Score 2) 696

I know this may be a slippery slope, but it seems like if it was decided to monitor those with power 24/7 to make sure they aren't abusing that power at any point, then that would mean that you're giving someone else power by having them monitor those with power. So then it would seem that eventually we would need to monitor those monitoring others to make sure the monitors aren't abusing their power, and this would just continue until everyone's being monitored because who knows when anyone will abuse any amount of power that they could possibly have. Admittedly the power of any normal person is much different than that of a government official, but it doesn't seem like a very big stretch could be made from monitoring one to make sure they don't abuse their power to monitoring the other for similar reasons.

I think the idea that "If you haven't done anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to hide" isn't particularly true. You have to understand that everyone has a different concept of when something's "wrong." And some people respect others' beliefs in what is wrong enough to want to hide some parts of their lives that don't necessarily need to be out in the open in order to avoid unnecessary conflict.

Comment Screw Movies, Go for TV (Score 1) 298

I wouldn't try to inspire people through movies that you watch maybe in the theater once, maybe rent it once, possibly see it a grand total of two or three times. People aren't always watching movies. However, a lot of people watch a generous amount of television, something where you get a persistent storyline that spans seasons. You don't just get into the characters for an hour or two, you get into them several times a week. Just think, how many people wanted to get into forensics, much less learned that forensics existed, after shows like CSI got really popular? I can't count the number of people in my anthropology department that joined because they started watching Bones and really wanted to be a forensic anthropologist.

Comment Conflicts with previous studies? (Score 1) 96

Previous studies have tried to link social network size to the size of the neocortex. Through this it was estimated that humans have social networks upwards near 150 people. This was further backed up through other research.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/pphfpu3c39ee9009/

This study, however, doesn't seem to address the neocortex since they only checked for links among different subcortical structures. The journal article itself doesn't even address the neocortex. In fact the article claims to be in accord with the "social brain hypothesis" which was formulated by Dunbar who developed the idea that the neocortex could be linked to social network size, which is in complete contrast to a belief that social network size can be calculated from the amygdala in the limbic system.

Comment First good argument against wikileaks. (Score 1) 810

This is the first time I've seen something that was published by Wikileaks that I don't think should have been. The summary refers to a cable documenting vital points to America's overall infrastructure. Most of the arguments for Wikileaks seem to say that the government should take responsibility for whatever bad things its representatives have communicated to others. However, this leak is something that I don't see as whistleblowing, or showing the government caught saying something they might regret. No, this is an outline of points of interest to keep the country running smoothly, important facilities spanning the entire globe. I can't see any actual good coming from the leak of this particular document.

When I see people saying the publishing of the cables is compromising US security, this is the first thing I have seen where I would agree.

Comment A downside to what? (Score 1) 287

This is a downside to the government doing something that they don't want others to know about in the first place. The downside comes from the fact that this information exists, not that it leaked. The quote on the bottom of the page is very appropriate right now. "Truth is hard to find and harder to obscure"

Comment Re:Language (Score 1) 1153

This is a truly archaic way of thinking about language as restricting what we can think about. We can certainly conceptualize things that we don't have words or language to express. That entire sentence seems paradoxical to me; how did we come up with a language to express anything to start with if we couldn't conceive of the ideas the language expresses without a language to express them?

To me, the key to education in mathematics is teaching problem solving, but the curriculum and teaching methods have moved to just a simplistic model of teaching rules to learn to regurgitate. These rules are so abstract that it's hard to conceive their use in real life application, and so they're learned for students' tests in class, if even that, and then shortly forgotten because they're so inapplicable.

I completely understand where Ramanathan is coming from, but I think it comes off in this summary as needing to completely abolish math at all. Truly, the best idea seems to be not to strictly teach these rules in a 'reference sheet' sort of manner, but to teach how to come to the conclusions that lead to these rules. This will lead to a better actual understanding of what math is, I believe.

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