Europe's Got Talent For Geeks 97
fiannaFailMan writes "Teams of scientists from across the continent are vying for a funding bonanza that could see two of them receive up to $1.33 billion over 10 years to keep Europe at the cutting edge of technology. The contest began with 26 proposals that were whittled down to six last year. Just four have made it to the final round. They include a plan to develop digital guardian angels that would keep people safe from harm; a massive data-crunching machine to simulate social, economic and technological change on our planet; an effort to craft the most accurate computer model of the human brain to date; and a team working to find better ways to produce and employ graphene — an ultra-thin material that could revolutionize manufacturing of everything from airplanes to computer chips."
Re:yeah right (Score:5, Interesting)
In my experience, once you discover, that no matter where you go, roughly 90% of the people are complete and utter idiots, you're forgetting all the racial or nationalistic stereotypes you were brought up with.
At least in my case, misanthropy cured nationalism.
Re:At least one has merit... (Score:2, Interesting)
There are already competing efforts to model the human brain, why should this group in particular get the funding?
Once upon I time I was part of a group that tried to get EU funding for a project.
One of the reasons we didn't get it was that we were too pessimistic when mentioning other fields that would benefit from our research.
The research grants are not only there to benefit one specific research field. Projects like the LHC arguably made larger leaps in data management than it did in particle physics. That research will be beneficial for everyone with similar problems.
It doesn't answer your question but nothing will answer your question unless you specifically mention one group that you think should have the funding instead. Then we can discuss which project will benefit society the most.
Re:At least one has merit... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:At least one has merit... (Score:3, Interesting)
Spoken as somebody that has fully absorbed the propaganda of the Bayesian community. Statistical modeling cannot ever model complex things. It is really good at simple ones, but what does that get you? Not intelligence. Intelligence is not dealing with a lot of facts and finding simple things about them. Intelligence is dealing with a relatively small number of facts and having insights about them, i.e. things that extend the previous model you had on a fundamental level.
I am never ceased to be amazed how many people mistake mechanical data-mining for intelligence. My own explanation for that is that real intelligence is not that common in humans either.