Comment Heck, I just use rock salt. (Score 1) 79
It's cheaper, effective, natural, and it's not going to cause a baby's arm to grow out of your forehead.
Comment Use plain salt instead of Roundup (Score 1) 192
I've always stayed away from Roundup. Fine salt gets to the problem quicker. The rock form is "time release" with the help of rain. Using salt makes more sense to me than fussing with some compound not found in nature.
Comment Re:The real question is.. (Score 1) 179
The real question is "What is sentience?" The Turing test is a test of mimicry, not sentience. We have no metric for it. Also, sentience doesn't imply intelligence. Assuming by some magic a true first AGI is stumbled upon, it may well be autistic and glossed over by some exhausted researcher.
Is Dyslexia an Evolutionary Advantage Rather Than a 'Disorder'? (msn.com) 133
LinkedIn recently added 'dyslexic thinking' as an official skill.
And now the U.K. national newspaper the Telegraph reports on scientists arguing that dyslexia is not a "disorder" — but an evolutionarily beneficial willingness to explore: The experts suggested that dyslexia, which causes difficulty reading, writing and spelling, is a useful specialisation and not a "neurocognitive condition"....
About one in five people have dyslexia, and their tendency to push the envelope would have been balanced out by other members of a prehistoric society, leading to a well-rounded group with equally useful skill sets. However, Dr Helen Taylor, from the University of Strathclyde, and Dr Martin Vestergaard, from the University of Cambridge, said that dyslexia was now seen as a problem because modern education systems focused on the things sufferers struggled with and neglected what they excelled at. They reassessed past studies on dyslexic individuals and disagreed with the prevailing theory that it was a cognitive deficit....
[S]ince the invention of written language, dyslexia has been seen as a problem, not a talent. "Schools, academic institutes and workplaces are not designed to make the most of explorative learning," said Dr Taylor. "We urgently need to start nurturing this way of thinking to allow humanity to continue to adapt and solve key challenges." They posit that dyslexic people are naturally more skilled "in realms like discovery, invention and creativity" and that this specialisation stems from millennia of human evolution.... Without the streak of curiosity and willingness to investigate that is commonplace in dyslexic brains, groups of people would likely struggle to survive, they said.
"The deficit-centred view of dyslexia isn't telling the whole story," said Dr Taylor. "We believe that the areas of difficulty experienced by people with dyslexia result from a cognitive trade-off between exploration of new information and exploitation of existing knowledge, with the upside being an explorative bias that could explain enhanced abilities observed in certain realms like discovery, invention and creativity.
The researchers argue this "explorative specialization in people with dyslexia could help explain why they have difficulties with tasks related to exploitation, such as reading and writing.
"It could also explain why people with dyslexia appear to gravitate towards certain professions that require exploration-related abilities, such as arts, architecture, engineering and entrepreneurship."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the story
And now the U.K. national newspaper the Telegraph reports on scientists arguing that dyslexia is not a "disorder" — but an evolutionarily beneficial willingness to explore: The experts suggested that dyslexia, which causes difficulty reading, writing and spelling, is a useful specialisation and not a "neurocognitive condition"....
About one in five people have dyslexia, and their tendency to push the envelope would have been balanced out by other members of a prehistoric society, leading to a well-rounded group with equally useful skill sets. However, Dr Helen Taylor, from the University of Strathclyde, and Dr Martin Vestergaard, from the University of Cambridge, said that dyslexia was now seen as a problem because modern education systems focused on the things sufferers struggled with and neglected what they excelled at. They reassessed past studies on dyslexic individuals and disagreed with the prevailing theory that it was a cognitive deficit....
[S]ince the invention of written language, dyslexia has been seen as a problem, not a talent. "Schools, academic institutes and workplaces are not designed to make the most of explorative learning," said Dr Taylor. "We urgently need to start nurturing this way of thinking to allow humanity to continue to adapt and solve key challenges." They posit that dyslexic people are naturally more skilled "in realms like discovery, invention and creativity" and that this specialisation stems from millennia of human evolution.... Without the streak of curiosity and willingness to investigate that is commonplace in dyslexic brains, groups of people would likely struggle to survive, they said.
"The deficit-centred view of dyslexia isn't telling the whole story," said Dr Taylor. "We believe that the areas of difficulty experienced by people with dyslexia result from a cognitive trade-off between exploration of new information and exploitation of existing knowledge, with the upside being an explorative bias that could explain enhanced abilities observed in certain realms like discovery, invention and creativity.
The researchers argue this "explorative specialization in people with dyslexia could help explain why they have difficulties with tasks related to exploitation, such as reading and writing.
"It could also explain why people with dyslexia appear to gravitate towards certain professions that require exploration-related abilities, such as arts, architecture, engineering and entrepreneurship."
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the story
Comment baffled by the "free-floating" distinction (Score 1) 55
Implies that some black holes are stationary... relative to what?
Comment Re:Sentience (Score 1) 387
Ditto. We have no metric for sentience, and never will.
Comment Ah, but did they... (Score 1) 17
account for the quasi-linear subduction vortices caused by adhesion creep in the hyperdimensional margins? Mom thinks their paracolimator needs recalibration, or at least a good degaussing.
Comment Things like these are why we must... (Score 1) 26
bioengineer ourselves first if we ever want to be spacefaring. You know, simple things like getting rid of respiration and metabolism. I'm not holding my breath.
Comment Re:I'm the other way (Score 1) 23
Me too: 4 or 5 meetings to recognize a face, probably 6 or 8 to picture their face in my head when they're not present.
Comment Are they denying smokers and obese people too? (Score 1) 337
Why not? Smoking and cramming one's face is a choice they make, just as much as not getting jabbed.
Comment we're mindless rabbits (Score 1) 191
Why is it that every futurist just assumes humanity will spread mindlessly ad-infinitum like rabbits or bacteria? What's the point of one trillion copies? I would like to think humanity has the intelligence to focus on quality rather than quantity.
Comment Please realize this is just a test. (Score 1) 34
There is no need to look into this any further. Things will be just fine.
Comment But since there is no source code... (Score 1) 121
investigators will not be able to tell why the AI flagged it. My point is, neurally-trained AI is basically a black box. With a 3 or 4GL at least you could "psychoanalyze" the source and determine the cause of rejection. Let's hope this kind of AI is never used in capital cases.
Comment This is why I hate C++ (Score 1) 160
and other "rich" languages. Rich languages allow for dozens of different ways a particular function can be written. Put another way, sure you know C++, but do you know that programmer's dialect? Put on a contest to write a simple bubble sort. I guarantee there will be submissions you will swear are in a different language altogether. Clever? Ooooh great, you get a cookie, but as a maintainer, I don't want to have to jump thru your cleverness hoops.
Comment So the assumption is that is was an actual sound? (Score 1) 118
I always assumed it was a "sound" like tinnitus --or the artifact of some sort of brain 'uckery.
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Interchangeable parts won't.
