Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Idiocracy feels more like the current society (Score 1) 108

It's not that some some people should be prevented from voting, but rather what they vote on should be significantly simplified. Evaluating the capabilities of a candidate who is significantly smarter than you are is very hard. That's what we're asking voters to do, and as expected, they do very poorly.

A better approach is to only ask questions that people can reliably answer. For example, since almost everyone knows whether their own life is getting better or worse, that should the one and only question on the ballot. If enough people agree that their life is getting worse, then the entire government is thrown out and a new one is randomly chosen.

Comment Re:Slavery (Score 1) 127

Inflation is caused by the government's money printer. The government's money goes to the rich and well connected, shielding them from the effects of inflation. You on the other hand is not protected. In this way, the rich unfairly takes a larger slice of the pie than their contributions warrant.

Moreover, you must eat and therefore must acquiesce to the lower wages offered. In a real free market (as defined by economists), you would have the option to say "no" for as long as you'd like.

Comment Re: An endless supply of nuclear waste. (Score 1) 120

The best lies contain nuggets of truth. Do you remember them telling you that Teflon is safe? Well, it turns out Teflon is indeed safe, but the process of making it creates extremely toxic PFAS that they can simply release into the environment, where it will persist forever and can poison you even when it exists on the order of a few parts per trillion. They were able to do this because the government simply believed the industry's own "studies".

It's impossible to lie about GMO existing because they want to patent it and sue farmers who try to reuse the seeds. The next best thing is to lie about how safe it is or what they did to it. Maybe that particular change they patented is indeed safe, but they don't have to tell you about anything else they changed. Then 20 years from now we'll discover how many people they poisoned. The company will go bankrupt from all the lawsuits, but the company leadership will still retire to their tropical villas.

The fact is, life expectancy in the US is decreasing. The total cancer rate is stable or slightly increasing. Somehow it overcame the effects of almost everyone no longer smoking. We don't know what's causing this, and with scientific research being defunded, I suspect it'll be quite a while before we do.

Comment Re: An endless supply of nuclear waste. (Score 1) 120

The concern with GMO comes from a lack of trust in government. Some modifications causes the plant to produce its own pesticide, which clearly has a potential for harm if it ends up in the edible parts. So if the regulatory body has been bought out by the industry, how do we know they did the necessary investigation to ensure safety? Moreover, our understanding of genetics is pretty limited at this time so it's not possible to predict all of the side effects of any particular change.

Comment Re:Actually, all these horses are the same color. (Score 1) 224

If you remove half the workforce, society will undergo some sort of collapse. It doesn't really matter which half you remove.

That said, it's comparatively much easier to replace the blue collar half. You can retrain a doctor to be a nurse in a few weeks, whereas the opposite will take 6-10 years.

Some people dismiss the necessity of white collar work because they don't understand how that work affects their lives. But you really only have to look across the Caribbean at countries such as Haiti to see what it would be like without a well-educated workforce.

Comment Re: Summon MacMann (Score 1) 183

Some people thinks that Vehicle to grid is the solution, but the problem is that when you need the power in the evening for cooking is also when you want to charge the car so it isn't empty when you want to go to work the next morning.

Why don't you just charge at work? When you get home you have a full battery ready to power whatever you need at home.

Comment Re: This is good to see (Score 1) 124

Math hasn't changed. So why do we need new ways to teach it?

Well, math actually has changed. There are countless advancements. We proved Fermat's Last Theorem for example. But even ignoring the new content, we have improved ways of teaching kids as a result of decades of more experience.

But that's still small potatoes, the big change is what knowledge will be useful. We still have history classes that spend most of their time getting kids to memorize important names and dates in history. Is that really a good use of time? I looked up a middle school test question and it asked when schools were desegregated. It took me literally 3 seconds to type it into Google, which told me it was 1954. This is information that takes minutes or hours to memorize (and probably forget within a few days) and most people will never use it again. Meanwhile, why schools were desegregated and why many people resisted desegregation are actually very important facts that they should be teaching. Many of those lessons are still applicable today, and not just on the race issue.

Likewise, there's certainly some value in teaching arithmetic, but rather than wasting time on difficult arithmetic problems, maybe higher level math could be taught earlier. Have them do a bit more algebra or geometry. Maybe even teach discrete math and statistics towards the end of high school. Leave the calculating to the calculator.

Comment Re:Okay, it's not really "teacherless" (Score 1) 124

They have a "guide" to student ratio of 1:5.

If you look at their recruitment ad for "guides", they pay $100k annually and want prior experience in teaching.

So rather than improving the efficiency of education with AI, it almost seems like they've done the exact opposite. Even excluding facility costs, each student is paying $25-30k annually just for the "guide".

Comment Re:Schools (Score 1) 120

Wouldn't control structures be in the 100-level classes? 200-level would be databases, data structures and algorithms, OS internals, networking etc. Vector should also be in the introductory class, so by the time you get to 200-level it should be balanced trees, graphs and hash tables.

Comment Re:meh ... (Score 1) 109

I want the following, in order of importance; comfortable, range to do what I need, reasonably priced for that range, low maintenance, doesn't look like a rusty abandoned clunker.

Their normal production models have all that.

The reason they made the super fast car is so you can discover that they exist and can make a high quality car. Then they can sell you a more sensible model when you get to their dealership.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Love your country but never trust its government." -- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania

Working...