Intellectual Pursuits May Create Brain Synapses 130
Bacteriophage writes "There's an interesting news scoop at Science Daily in which some neuroscientists have linked professions to 'brain power.' This may seem to some of you as obvious, the question is if people in 'intellectually stimulating' professions are smart the way they are because of 'nature or nurture,' whether or not they are predestined to take the careers they do, or possibly new synapses are being formed due to on-the-job stimulation."
Re:Nature or Nuture? (Score:1)
Leave it at that thank you.
a personal experience (Score:1)
thank you!! (Score:2)
- (http://biomedicine.about.com/business/biotech/
l ibrary/weekly/aa090299.htm)
In this case, they put in a few exra copies of a gene that codes for the protein channels necessary for LTP (Long-Term-Potentiation: the name neuropysch types have for the synapse strengthening that is thought ot be the basis of all learning). The mice got a lot 'smarter': they could go through mazes faster, and they learned new tasks much more rapidly than their genetically deficient peers due to their ability to rapidly integrate information into their brain.The issue is really not as obvious as the above posters seem to be claiming. 'nuff said.
Do you learn? (Score:2)
My advice: takea neurobiology course instead of a psych course. The biological underpinnings of behavior are being discoverd and soon (decades, maybe, but still soon) psychology will disappear, since it will have been reduced to biology. MAybe by then Evrythign will have been reduced to physcis under GUT anyway...read consilience.
sorry for the rambling...its real late. Just wanted to point out what I am sure is obvious to you in retrospect.
TTFN (ta-ta-for-now, as tigger would say)
This isn't about intelligence! (Score:4)
If things were that simple, then how would you rate my Dad's old friend, who's one of the best diesel mechanics you're likely to find - I could `think' rings around him, but I sincerely doubt I could ever be as good a mechanic as him. My ability to think effectively in the abstract doesn't translate particularly well into grasping what's going wrong with a complex piece of machinery that pretty much has a mind of it's own. His ability to understand how bits of the physical world interact with each other doesn't necessarily translate well into grasping how a program works.
Abstract thinking is wonderful stuff, but it isn't the be-all and end-all of the world. The basic assumption behind many of these posts, that the kind of abstract thinking that we all do, all the time, and often get payed lots of money to do, is somehow the only form of intelligence worthy of the name is fundamentally wrong.
To get back on topic . . .
This research doesn't say anything about a causal link between high numbers of synapses in the brain and in intellectually challenging job. Neither does it say anything about the converse.
What the research seems to show (according to the report - I haven't read the original paper) is that people in some types of jobs (engineers and teachers were the examples cited) have higher numbers of synapses in a particular part of the brain. Not the whole brain, merely a particular part. What this suggests to me (though I'm not a neuroscientist) is that that particular part of the brain is primarily where the kind of abstract thinking that engineers/teacher/thinkers in general tend to do takes place. Since I'm not a neuroscientist or pshycologist or anything of that ilk I can't comment on how these results relate to current models of brain function, but I wouldn't be surprised if these were quite important findings - researchers don't normally get excited about stuff that's not important.
Whatever the case, it'd be a really good idea if people got over this - yes you're intelligent and yes you probably have the same kind of synaptic complexity that these people are talking about, but Who Cares!!! It doesn't mean anything in the real world. The only real way to judge intelligence is by what it does, not by how many brain cells made it happen.
himi
Re:Do you learn? (Score:1)
Re:Article in Scientific American (Score:2)
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It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Re:a personal experience (Score:3)
There was a note about the latter in Scientific American within the last year or so.
There still seems to be some doubt about how prevalent new cell formation is, and how well they can migrate to other parts of the brain like they do in your formative years. So unless there has been more research published that I haven't heard of yet, I'd say the case is still out on how important the effect is.
As to the synaptic tree, conventional wisdom has long been that you are born with lots, but suffer serious pruning of "unused" synapses, and the pruning is pretty much done by the onset of puberty. This, for some, explains why it is easy to learn to speak a language "like a native" when you are small and very difficult when you are an adult. (For others, it's an explanation of why the male brain shuts down at the onset of puberty.)
However, it has also been conventional wisdom that learning requires some kind of change of "brainal" configuration. But I think CW has been that this is done by changing the strengths of synapses rather than the number of synapses.
If this new research proves to be evidence for the latter, then it is part of the ongoing revolution in our knowledge about the brain's life cycle. But based on nothing more than the linked article, a lot of unanswered questions remain, so this, like the genesis of new neurons, seems to need to be categorized as an exciting new development of as-yet unknown importance.
As for your damage... I know studies have shown that the brain has an amazing ability to route around certain kinds and scales of damage. But I don't recall hearing that anyone has previously shown this to be the result of new cells or new ramification of the synaptic tree. If they have, then the new news isn't really news at all. If not, then the new news may provide the low level explanation for the phenomenon.
Just my opinion... feel free to educate me.
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It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
weights (Score:1)
The 'weights' you speak of--actually the rate of firing/strength of impulse transmitted)--might change because new synapses are being created between neurons that are already connected. Personally, I think there is more eveidence that new protein channels are being inserted in the synaptic wall, but many others disagree. Althoguh this alteration of a syapses' stregnth (LTP or LDP) permits the creation'alteration of associations between neurons, I do not believe it is sufficient to explain learning(information storage). Behavioral patterns are modified: say, for example, that your pleasure centers are being stimulated at the same time as you hear a certain high-pitched tone. You will soon display a 'preference' for the tone in question, including the full-blown emotional response produced by hormone prduction that we have all come to know and cherish. However, information that you are able to access consciously is different. I am gonna stickj to my guns and state that one needs the creation fo new synapses to actually learn anything.
Of course, this assertion of function is irrelevant(sorry again...but I had to explain myself). The fact that new synapses are created was demonstrated empirically by a bunch of clever fellows who attached radioactive tracers to molecules associated with synaptic walls and then taking samples (these experiments were all on rats, of course) over a period of time and comparing the amount of radioactivity deiplayed. The average number of synapses/mm^2 from the same region changed quite a bit in response to various stimluli. I dont have a refernce on hand, but check your text. Im sure youll find plenty.
whats a neurobiology?
Re:smart people getting smarter (Score:2)
Oh come on, of course it is; you're saying that they are uneducated and/or stupid. Which some are, no doubt. And it's probably a stereotype shared by almost everyone with a more rewarding career.
But I've known postgraduate students (especially those from overseas) to take on part-time jobs as nightwatchmen, store assistants and short order cooks just to make ends meet, so it's not quite a foregone conclusion.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Mental Fitness? (Score:1)
PSY 301 (Score:1)
I remember my college psy prof. being quite sure that it was all nurture.
Several studies she talked about (which of course i don't remember specificaly) claimed that it's nurture almost exlusively.
Most, however, seem to indicate it's a balance of both... not unlike most things in life.
Re:FIRST POST NIGGERS (Score:1)
well i think we can definitely make a conclusion about the contrapositive of this theory.
Obviously both (Score:1)
The way you grow new synapses etc will mostly nature related, but the stimulation is nature.
Re:PSY 301 (Score:1)
Please correct me (and moderate me to kingdom come
Re:lettting a good thing go to waste! (Score:3)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:smart people getting smarter (Score:2)
Smarts come in all shapes and sizes. (Score:3)
For example, the art of sale. Now I could sit down and code an RCM module for the latest e-commerce site out there, but could I sell it? No way. I don't have the talent to make people want to buy from me. People who can do that, in my mind, have a gift that I don't. One that is normally not equated with "intelligence", yet in its own merrit is pretty challenging.
Another example, football (pick a sport). I think a lot of geeks think of sporting as just a bunch of dumb jocks, but when you really look at it, all the stuff that's involved in a game like football is no different than you getting on the computer and playing Starcraft, or playing Chess. Its a lot of strategy (of course atleticism does count).
What I think these all have in common (and my point in all this) is that I think the proffesions that are truely "intellectual" proffesions are the ones that make you think on your feet. The ones that make you APPLY what you've learned. If I had to make the same HTML templates all day, every day, it would be no different than flipping burgers, even though I'm doing something with "computers", in the sense that a) I'm not doing anything new, and b) nothing changes so I'm not forced to use any other part of my brain.
I think the reasons there were more synapses in fields like engineering and teaching are because you constantly have to "relearn" what you're doing for any given situation, because every situation has its own set of rules and outcomes. Any job where you have to adapt like this in any way, I can see being one that uses a lot of "brain power".
Intelligence belays thermodynamics ;) (Score:2)
The analogy to open heart surgery relies on motor neuron responses and other physical aspects. Not a good test of you are Stephen Hawking, of the level of intelligence we possess.
Someone once said, IIRC, intelligence is the ability to think about contradictory things to some useful end. We have no adequate gauge for intelligence, as I am quite confident that some of the smartest people alive consistently, and even on purpose, "fail" tests that they could excel at if they wished so.
Now, I've known many doctors, lawyers, etc., in my lifetime, and they have all been able to, even in old age or complete ignorance of the field, pick up on new concepts and ideas almost instantly. Such as Linux -- I know doctors who have no (as in zero) working knowledge of Linux, but nonetheless have an avid curiosity in it, how it would benefit them, how the development model is significantly different, why it's cheaper, etc.
Maybe intelligence is directly related to our curiosity. Those with more curiosity tend to stay mentally fit, I would imagine. But that's really just speculation on my part ...
Re:This isn't about intelligence! (Score:1)
(generally abstract thinking - I mean hey, we're all programmers/thinkers/etc here at
Yea.. I was thinking along similar lines, in thinking in one area increases your ability to think in that one area, but not necessarily others. What brought this to mind is acting, which is vastly different from programming. Whilst an actor will become more and more skilled in understanding human emotions and motives and recreating them, they will in no way be furthering their ability to comprehend any code of any programming language. Infact they're probably lessening their chances of comprehending it, by developing their mind in the completely opposite direction. And of course the inverse is probably true, in that intense programming will lessen your mental ability to act well.
This is all very much off on a tangent of course, but hey.. do I look like I care whether I get moderated off-topic? huh? of course I do
el bobo
Re:More and more intelligent? (Score:2)
I cannot recall them, but I think there is logic, music, linguistics, emotions, reactions, and others I just cannot remember.
They are fundamentally measured, in theory, by the following:
* The capacity to acquire knowledge
* The capacity to apply knowledge
* The ability to combine knowledge to further understanding
* Facilitation of thought and reason. (pretty vague, tho.)
With regard to the number of synapses, you are completely correct. Einstein had a bigger brain by a little bit, but the left and right hemispheres of his cortex (IIRC) was connected, where in normal people it generally isn't. It isn't how many connections you have, it is how they are connected, and how they are used.
There have been recorded cases of people being of genius IQ, yet only having less than a third of their brain.
Re:smart people getting smarter (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Operating systems and interfaces (Score:4)
The laziness you mention is just one manifestation of our "gimme-gimme, now-now" culture. Nobody wants to bother to read the manual. Nobody wants to actually have to learn anything. Delayed gratification is as welcome in the general populace as it is in your average two-year-old.
Computer use has been reduced to an unskilled labor position. That sounds funny, doesn't it? But of course, many of you doubtless say, using a computer is unskilled labor position. Surely I'm not suggesting that it ever was, or that it should be?
Why, yes; that's exactly what I'm suggesting. Think about it. It wasn't all that long ago that you'd have been regarded as either a starry-eyed lunatic or a hopeless simpleton if you had suggested that computer programming, computer administration, or computer use should be counted as unskilled labor, requiring no prior skills or special training. Today, the reverse of this occurs. To suggest that there's anything to it is to foster "elitism", a verbal icon for the tired old idea that hard work and genuine skill can ever produce more competence than can sloth and slackery. Sorry, but it's true.
What's pushing this insanity is the market economy (and the media culture). The pressure to demonstrate stellar revenue growth on each and every corporate quarterly report drives those who pander software to do completely stupid things. They have to sell their goods to people who are completely and utterly unskilled. Why? Because there are more of them, and they've got money, that's why.
Vendors cannot require even average intelligence for the learning and use of their software, lest half their market be cut off from them. Consequently, they aim to create software that even an ADHD child could use, thereby restricting all of us to a childish level of interaction with our computers. It's embarrassing. Welcome to America.
It's like trying to read only comic strips and calling this literature. It's insulting. Yes, it takes time, work, and dedication to learn to read well enough to handle the Great Books rather than mere comic strips. But it's also worth it. Reduced to a level a discourse that even a quasi-illiterate child could fathom, our entire society suffers, leaving us all impoverished.
This zero-learning-curve principle for software is hardly the only force driving software manufacturers to previously unimaginable levels of idiocy, but it's a critically important, and the one which explains your own observation. Other factors include the notion that customer is always right, that more features are better, that software can in later releases have post-design features haphazardly accreted onto it like a child's fort at a junkyard, that flexible tools are only for professionals, that it's better to get a bad product out now than a good product out later, and that lack of backwards compatibility drives sales.
Our society is, as you indirectly observe, full of lazy people. They don't want to work for anything. They just want it handed to them on a silver platter, already raised and slaughtered and packaged and cooked and salted and cut up into bite-sized pieces to feed to their kiddies--and themselves.
Well, I've got sad news. Computers require skills. They do not produce jobs for unskilled laborers. But with books on the market with titles remarkably close to "Teach Yourself Brain Surgery in Five Days", or "How to Be a Concert Pianist in Ten Hours of Easy Listening", or "Wiring Your Backplane for Dummies", or "Become an Air-Traffic Controller Overnight", you see what's going on.
Computers aren't for the unskilled. It's not a television. It's not a garage door opener. Sure, you can get those things, but that's just the tip of the iceberg--the iceberg that's going to sink your boat. You can't be a systems adminstrator without prior skills. You certainly can't be a programmer without developing some serious skills. You can't even adminstrate a computer without developing serious skills.
Yet nary a day passes me by that someone whose idea of computers is limited to Word Perfect or Microsoft Word comes to me and effectively asks, "How can I use Perl to program my CGI script to handle a multistage shopping cart with distributed database connectivity, animated vector graphics, secure transactions, robustness in the face of complete systems failure, and online credit card verification -- and which scales to a thousand hits per second?" They have absolutely no programming background whatsoever. I gently (or sometimes, ungently) explain that you can't possibly teach them enough in a day, or three, for them to be able to do this, and no, there is no online tutorial either.
"But surely, computers are easy!" they retort. "The Web is therefore easy. Programming must be easy, too." This whole exchange really pisses them off. They've heard all this from millions of adverts, that anybody can do any of this, and that anybody can get rich quick without years of study. They've heard it so often that they're sure that those few of us who tell them otherwise must necessarily be lying to them. They saw it on TV, so it must be true, and we "professionals" (sorry, that's the old word; the new word is "elistist"; same thing) have to feeding them a line of bull to protect our own income streams.
When someone can't even manage to use Legos, they'll never be able to construct a skyscraper in a day or three of study. You just can't get there from here. Why do they think they should be able to? Because of the Big Lie that anyone can do anything they want with computers without learning squat. Without working. Instantly.
There's a reason people go to school for years to learn this kind of thing, and have professional internships to develop job skills. You can't just expect an illiterate street person to do this job. But people do. They really do. They think managing a computer (being a sysadmin) must be as easy as putting gas in their car, and that programming one must be as easy as adding oil to that car. Well, it isn't. This isn't unskilled labor. It never will be. Time to burst their bubble. This is the kinder thing to do than giving them false expectations of something for nothing.
It will, not, of course, happen. Corporate greed and sound-byte media coverage will see to it that the lies are left intact. But nobody will ever be happy, because lies remain lies.
Re:Operating systems and interfaces (Score:2)
Re:It seems almost obvious (Score:1)
Stop all reading
Start watching the 3 networks. Watching the history channel is not allowed.
Study hair dressing.
Theory: It's not what I did before, but how many synapses I loose (insert rhyme).
More Coffee Please -d
Violinists and General Smarts (Score:2)
Like Lifting Weights? (Score:1)
Except the former was tested on lab rats. Was the latter? Did they give some Lab Rats jobs in MIS and others jobs collecting Ratty garbage just to see which ones would have bigger brains and bigger muscles at the end of the month?
And this surprises people, why? Who can't remember High school, where the brainy kids got smarter and the jockey kids got bigger, because the former group sat at home coding all day, trying to hack local banks, and functionally learning how to avoid better mousetraps, while the jockey types were lifting weights.
What's going to be the next _massive_ revelation? Reading
Re:Insightful??? He didn't even read the article! (Score:1)
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Since we are all on the subject of computers. (Score:1)
New terms added to NDA (Score:1)
Re:Do you learn? (Score:2)
The "Communal Consciousness" opinion (Score:1)
The mice were of course picked at random.
However, the "smart" group of mice did much better than the stupid...
On can speculate if the expectations of the humans "rubbed off" onto the mice and they performed better or worse depending on the "karma" balance being tipped.
My point is, we still have no idea what causes intelligence. Actually, no one has even defined IQ in a satisfactory way.
One of my favourite quotes (paraphrased) is; "If the devil found himself in God's place, he would find himself to forced to take upon him all of heavens attributes". I believe that everyone has a great capacity for adaptation to our environment, regardless of our native abilities.
Re:smart people getting smarter (Score:1)
Nonsense, your average construction worker would hem and haw and probably refuse if he can. Your average programmer would hire a surgeon.
Later
Erik Z
Re:More and more intelligent? (Score:1)
It is connected in normal people. You should read the case studies of people who have had that connection severed. It's incredible how much information flows throws that connection. Certainly Einstein might've had a larger connection between hemispheres than most people.
Re:Obviously both (Score:1)
"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."
Re:Hrm... (Score:1)
"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."
Re:weights (Score:1)
Re:Operating systems and interfaces (Score:1)
Your comments on comic-book literacy remind me of a feature in the Toronto Star this fall (big Canadian newspaper). Apparently ~50% of the Canadian populace has day-to-day literacy problems -- they have difficulties leading their daily lives!
In one article, readability metrics were applied to various types of publications. Newspapers were targeted at a level from grade 5 to, if you're really lucky, grade 10. One of the things I remember most about my adolescence is the amazement I experienced every few months at the dramatic increase in my perspective; It's simply impossible to discuss meaningfully at a grade 5 level the things that *must* be discussed for the proper functioning of a nation.
One depressing thing they mentioned was that literacy advocates had largely abandoned the traditional argument that literacy is necessary for democracy, as it is ineffective today. Instead they are harping the economic aspect.
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Re:Operating systems and interfaces (Score:2)
I think that a UI that scales for various user proficiency levels would be great! Those of us who are hackers could dip right down into the nitty gritty, and my mom could have big buttons that pop up when you mouse over them. Is this impossible? No. What happens when the level you're at starts to chafe? You move on to the next one, until you're root. Is this a part of the Big Lie? No, it's unfulfilled potential, and until programmers get their heads out of their asses and start coding for *everyone*, it won't happen. But no, we're complacent and lazy, and we get pissed off when people can't understand how to use the tools we make. We blame the users for not knowing as much as we do. That's bullshit.
To force people to study computer science in order to check their email is like making people ponder the essence of the universe for 10 years before you teach them geometry.
I'll agree with you that computers are being billed as something they're not, but I disagree in your (apparent) solution. You say that no one offers a "Brain Surgery For Dummies" book, but I'd like to add that no one makes a "Learn How To Apply Band-Aids In 21 Days" book, either.
Is email complicated? No. Should people have to resort to traditional media to communicate? No. You don't have to spend years studying great correspondence throughout history to write a letter to Grandma thanking her for the sweater, so why should you have to know the basics of TCP/IP to send her email?
No, rank amateurs will *not* be able to write an Amazon.com clone. That's a fact of life. But most people just want their email, browser, word processor, and instant messager.
The sooner we get past the "damn users need to learn more" bullshit and start teaching the better. I'm doing my part. You do yours.
[ And yes, this is nit-picking, but I've read "literature" and cartoons, and I've found cartoons to have a much better handle on things. I'd take Tom Tomorrow and Berke Breathed over Bronte and Milton. ]
Re:Smarts come in all shapes and sizes. (Score:1)
Speaking of sports, I have to reccommend a book. It's called "Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans", by Tim McCarver. It's a great book. After reading it, I can't wait for next baseball season to begin.
Re:Operating systems and interfaces (Score:2)
Of course, setting up a proper SMTP gateway is something else, but that's why there's such a thing as a professional systems adminstrator.
Re:How old were the subjects? (Score:1)
I want a real time pet-scanner that scans a whole room full of people... Then I want to watch the colorful show on the monitor as I play Mozart in the room, as well as the view of brains in heated conversation...
Multiple Intelligences Theory (Score:1)
Dr. Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education is the leading proponent. Seven of them are musical intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, linguistic intelligence, spatial intelligence, interpersonal intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence. He recently added naturalist intelligence as the eighth. This site [cnidr.org] has a good overview.
My sister, a graduate student in education, had to learn about these ideas for a class. One idea coming out of the theory is that teachers should schedule different kinds of learning activities to suit different students. Some students may gain benefit from building models, others from writing papers and others from from working problems on paper.
I asked a graduate student in education psychology about this theory. He is very skeptical. While we certainly see people with particular talents who learn by different methods, Dr. Gardner's theory seems overwhelmingly based on anecdotes, his random observations and his imagination. It might turn out to be descriptive and useful. While the end product looks formal and authoritative, the underlying research and deduction is weak, if it is there.
Traditional theories of general intelligence, such as a general intelligence factor G, match my experience to some degree, as do the ideas of Gardner. I have some general ability to learn in a wide variety of fields, but I show and feel more aptitude toward some more than others.
For me, my attitude toward this argument on intelligence mirrors my ideas toward many areas of psychology. Many ideas help describe the world of psychology, but they usually have flaws. It leaves us with a few choices. One is to become dogmatic and fight the opposition. Another is to look at how so many psychological theories fail and disregard it all. I choose a third stance. This field often just does not allow for the rigorous, exact measurements of others. It does not mean that all the theories are worthless. We need to keep our wits about us when evaluating them, though. The old using 10% of the brain and left brain/right brain theories may have some small merits, but both have been shown too simple. If we are to continue with psychology being a social scientist, we must act as scientists. Challenge the results. Dispute the theories. Make measurements. Test the alternatives. Do science.
But how much of each? (Score:1)
Cut scene A: Neurobiologist and psychologist reading paper. Headline "A mixture of Nature and Nurture determines behavior and potential." Both immediately smack foreheads, saying "Of Course!! Why didn't we realize this before!!??" in profoundly astounded tones. Having seen the blinding light of revelation, they go home.
End cut scene.
Of course everybody knows that a mixture of nature (the kind of natural environment that exists) and nurture (what kinds of interaction occur with this environment) determine evrything about the brain.
The question, though, is where these boundaries should be drawn. How much of what we consider in ourselves to be easily influenced by our conscious decisions is determined at birth? What limits have been imposed upon our learning capacity and how quickly we are able to learn? Are there natural/born geniuses? If so, are they the only kind, or can we create genius if we provide the proper set of interactions? Can we make everyone a potential genius through gene therapy, and how much social engineering would be necessary to complete sucha creation?
it is disappointing that the slashdot community has glanced so superficially at these issues. I thought the idea was to get behind the media hype to the truly new and meaty stuff.
Please do not take this critism too personally--I understand that the post was not meant to be particularly serious. 'Course, that's part of what I'm whining about :-)
Matt
HOW to change your brain (Score:2)
This review [amazon.com] on Amazon.com says it very well:
"the thing about many of the book's techniques: they are incredibly subtle in their effects.
Some other sites dealing with accelerated learning:
Anakin's Brain [anakin.com]
Project Renaissance [winwenger.com] - Win Wenger's home page.
Hot Rod Your Head! [botree.com]
Exploreit.net [exploreit.net]
Re:Operating systems and interfaces (Score:1)
Do you know exactly how every compenent of your car functions? Unless you are also a mechanic, I would think not. You may be a automotive enthusiast, change your own filters, and know how how to replace a failing alternator or water pump, but any serious work would still need to be perfomed by a professional. The average driver only needs know how to operate ther vehicle and know where and when to get it serviced. I also understand that there are divers who don't even know how to check and add oil. Are we just to to exclude those without experience and revoke their licences when they forget to rotae their tires? Each one of these groups needs to be addressed speratly when deciding on the apporpriate set of interfaces for them. If you notice, car commercials rarely combine "New V24 engine!" with "5,000,000 miles without a tune-up!"
What is the correct response to a helpless user when their engine starts to make noise?
A) Say, "You should know what the problem is. I will not waste my time helping idiots."
B) Point them in the right direction to information and possibly even teach them how to maintain a car.
C) (If you are an automotive engineer) Design a more robust engine that requires less attention and add dummy lights to the dashboard while possibly still leaving analog gauges for the enthusiasts.
Answer:
A) You are arrogant and an eletist. Just because you are an expert in one area does not make you superior to the ignorant.
B) Good, if someone politely comes to you for assistance, help them and hope that they'll learn. If they are rude, they probably suffer from a similar condition that sparks response A (see Script Kiddie and Power User).
C) Just because we can build our own cars from scratch and are willing to take the time to tweak and maintain every aspect, does not mean the rest of the world wants or has the time to. When designing for the general populace, a major goal is to reduce maintinace and learning curves. This also includes consideration for the common fool.
I understand that no matter how much we try to fool-proof something, a better fool will always come along and amaze yet another technical support person who thought they'd heard everything. Fools are one of the few constans in the universe and trying to tell them to read instructions will usually be a futile attempt. We can only do our best to kill^H^H^H^Haccomodate them.
My point? We cannot expect everyone to have the expertese that we have. (You probably realize by now that I am no whiz at speling.) We have to realize that not everyone needs to learn Perl to send e-mail. What we find intuitive can baffle others. Just because someone is slow and/or uneducated does not give us the right to think of ourselves as superior. Like it or not, there are ADHD children who need to be able to use a computer. I have a family member with attetion disorders and it is obvious to me that I cannot not expect everything to come easily and naturally to them.
Although I completely dissagree with your treatement of users, I do find that your description of the ever declining average inteligence of developers frighteningly real. There has been an ovewhelming rush into the computer industry fuled by the promise of money. Too many students flood into the high-demand marketplace without comlpeting a full study in the area that they are supposed to be qualified. They're are to many IT companies that'll pick up just about anyone that boasts "Hey, I'm NT certified!". What I do disagree with is your perception of the problem. The problem is not those taking advantage of time saving technology such as real time syntax checkers, but those who do not have a true and comple grasp of the technology. Just because we have gotten used to emacs doesn't mean eveyone else has to use it. Besides, if you were a _real_ programmer, you would be writing in assembly; everyone today is too dependant upon high level languages, right?
Wrong, the problem is when I see anxious students running off to a young company who is hiring every programmer they can get their hands on, only to come back after a couple of years to try to finish their education when they realize just how little they knew and were unable to progress. The probllem is that too many people are making money designing bad software while other companies make softwae to try to fix the bad software and the companies that are suckered into investing in shaky technology have to form enourmous IS departments, to often with unqualified individuals, to try to manage the bloated system.
I see to many people who are descent MFC programmers but know nothing else. Too much time is spent developing in bare-bones languages like C, when a language like tcl, Perl, or even Java would be much better suited for the project. A developer needs to know about all the tools that are avaliable to him or her and be able to take advantage of the best technology. BTW, Linux is not _always_ the answer. *gasp!*
Clean, robust, well planned, well excecuted, and well maintained projects written by organized and efficient teams are becoming few and far between.
Wrong! Stats 101 for you... (Score:1)
For what it is worth, sample of size 30 is generally accepted as "large," and will accurately reflect the whole of the sampled population at
Without more information about this study we can only guess, but I expect that there is a relatively low standard deviaiton in synapse counts (ie, a few more helps a lot) if the population is roughly normally distributed I expect that a 90% C.I. would be something like 10-24%. Now that's blind darts, but a 17% point estimate would be a significant statisical result (ie, contradicts null hypothesis); I'll leave it to the MDs to determine what the threshold for medical significance is... for all I know you might need 8 times as many synapses to be only half again as intelligent.
My point is just that we should not disregard the results just because there were only 16 subjects. 3 subjects, and we would be wasting our time arguing about this.
Remember Science Daily is basically press releases (Score:1)
Re:Nature or Nuture?(offtopic) (Score:1)
new neurons (Score:1)
Dont worry...soon well be able to stimulate neural growth and any brain damage that doesnt kill you will be mostly temporary.
You are all pretty wrong (Score:1)
Cautionary tale (Score:1)
However, it has also been conventional wisdom that learning requires some kind of change of "brainal" configuration. But I think CW has been that this is done by changing the strengths of synapses rather than the number of synapses.
see my other posts on this article regardiong this topic. As I said there, many researchers think that the strength (weight for you cosi people) is modified by adding additional synspases between neurons that are already connected. Regarding the Research considering the growth of new neurons, check out the press release [about.com] and the article istelf at nature [nature.com]
Re:weights (Score:1)
Absolutely correct. So we wouldnt expect new synapses to be grown unless there is a good reason that the synapses couldnt just be modified (occams razor + evolution selecting for the most efficient system). However, I think the argument that it one cannot actually store information that is consciously asccesible *only* using weights is compelling enough a reason. Not that ther is any actual [gasp] proof.
As far as 'knowing' which direction to grow in, and how the connections are built and controlled precisely...well, you hit the nail on the head. AFAIK, nobody has a fscking clue. Some people at my university (Brandeis) and Harvard are collaborating on an attempted exlplanation, but it is all only speculation at this point (if any of you working in such a project are listening, I apologize for the summary judgement! Feel free to correct me!!). The basic idea seems ot be that the neurons excrete some kind of growth factor when they want a new connection; this factor somehow stimulates all cells within a certain distance to send out new dendrites, and the dendrites lach on to whatever they hit first. Doesnt sound very efficient or precise to me..somehow I bet the brain isa lot better at choosing where to send the new dendrites.
If you find anything interesting concerning synaptogenesis (research links, commentary, etc), I would be interested in hearing about them.
Re:Nature or Nuture? (Score:1)
Predicting Emergent Properties (Score:1)
AFAIK, your claim amounts to the following:
1. Complex systems are more than the sum of their parts; due to complex interactions and stuff, they possess properties that none of their parts have. These properties are commonly called emergent properties.
2. These properties cannot be predicted from simply knowing the properties of the parts.
3. Therefore, any understanding of a complex system needs to start from the top and go down, and any knowledge gained from reductionist dissection is only complementary at best.
Is this approximatley correct? Assuming that it is, I have no choice but to say that The idea that complex systems are not describable from the bottom up is a silly trend which has only persisted because of our ignorance. An example:
In the late 70's/early 80s (I think...) John lovelock created a system called daisyworld in order or demonstrtae emergent properties in an easily uunderstood environment. He was advocating Gainaism at the time, and wanted to show how high-level properties couold emerge from low-level simplicity.
The system contained as simple earth model, with a normal temperature variation along the surface and an sun that got continually hotter w/ time. The planet contained 3 types of daisies-grey, white, and black. Eventually, the planet got hot enough for the black daisies to survive (since they absorbed the most heat). The more daisies there were, the higher (lower? yeah, lower) the albedo of the planet, the more energy it absorbed, and the hotter it got. As the temperature increased, it eventually go too hot near the poles for the black daisies, so grey and white daisies (which reflected more energy) began to thrive near the equator. The mix of grey, white, and black daisies contiued to change according to the 'needs' of the planet, ending up, eventualy, with only a bunch of white daisies for awhile, and then with all life dying as the sun got too hot.
The point: the temperature was regulated by the interactions of the daisies. The planet adjusted itself to work toward conditions favoring life. Lovlelock referred to it as the planets homeostasis. However, the emergent property of temeoprature regualtion could be predicted by reduction of the system into its componenet parts, as long as you knew all the rule and understood the physics behind. In this case--simplified beyond everything weve ever actually seen along similar lines by many orders of magnitude--we understand everything. The only reason this objection to reductionism has held up this long is becasue of our ignorance concerning otehr complex systems like social behavior, tornadoes, and the brain. Someday, well be able to predict everythig form a knowedge about the atoms involved; were just not there yet.
Sorry If ive been unclear...really, check out consilience if you are interested, or even the web of life by Fritjof Capra, for a more in depth discussion.
"Until all are one."-Optimus Prime (a Buddhist?)
but they ARE easy! (Score:2)
I think that another
Bullshit!
There is nothing inherently difficult about these things if enough time is invested in learning how they work. Computer programming is largely the learning of a language syntax. So many problems have been worked out over the life of the language, that most solutions to them are freely available.
System administration, while perhaps time-consuming, is not as bad as some would like you to think.
The main thing required for all of these things, is time, and a desire to learn them. There is nothing mysterious, or magical about the way that these things operate.
Computers are meant to work, some people just feel the need to complicate them with an aura of difficulty for the sake of their own egos.
And BTW, this is not to say that there aren't a lot of very talented computer people out there (Carmack), but they are as few and far between as the Hawkings of the physics world.
Want something difficult? Try physics. Oh, and troll me all you want, my karma can take it.
Re:Operating systems and interfaces (Score:1)
Re:Nature or Nuture?(offtopic) (Score:1)
Validity of the Study (Score:1)
1. The article mentioned that they examined 16 subjects. Sixteen people isn't really enough to draw any sort of conclusions, as the chance of seeing statistical anomalys is just too great. I'm sure it takes a great deal of time to count synapses, so they'll probably continue to study more people in the future. As of now, however, I don't think there's enough data to draw any meaningful conclusions.
2. The article mentioned that the researchers counted two types of synapses in the prefrontal cortex and the occipital cortex. It then says that 17% more synapses were counted in the more educated people. If the 17% increase was observed in both cortexes (plural sp.?), then it would seem to be meaningless. More educated people don't need to see more than others, so the occipital cortex, devoted to "simple visual perception", shouldn't be any different in the two groups. If the increase was seen only in the prefrontal cortex, then that might be significant. Otherwise, it's probably just a statistical thing (only 16 people...).
The researchers probably answered these questions in their study, and the article probably just missed these points. As is usually the case, it's probably more faulty journalism than faulty science.
Matt
Re:Do you learn? (Score:2)
Your bold statement is far from proven. You need to do a lot more philosophy of science reading yourself if you think that claim isn't controversial. For that matter, I think you're misinterpreting the arguments you're aluding to. Davidson for one is fond of advocating that there can't true laws for psychology, but even he does not say that the system's behavior is anything less than completely explainable by physical laws. He just says you can't reduce psychological laws to physical laws. (He's a non-reductive physicalist, which is, I'm certain and believe I've demonstrated in a paper in the past, an inconsistent position. There's an error in his argument, and depending on how you resolve it, you either end up with reductive physicalism, eliminative physicalism, or dualism -- take your pick.)
But, for that matter, Davidson is wrong to begin with (IMHO). The Putnam/Fodor (multiple realization) argument is flawed to begin with. There's no reason to believe psychology need be a special science that can't be reduced to neurobiology which can in turn be reduced to chemistry, then to physics, and we have no need to turn to "supervenience" for a solution either. There are plenty of people out there still committed to the unity of science program, and rightly so since no one has come up with a convincing argument why we should believe your bold statement to be true. In fact, it seems quite likely to be false.
--
Only easy if you like to learn (Score:2)
My point is that the general public is filled with people who do not wish to learn. They do not have the urge to learn that you point out is needed. They do not want to be forced to take the time for it, which you point out is necessary.
Problem solving that is a pleasurable pastime for programmers and administrators is pure hell for other people. Learning may be fun for us, but it is not fun for them. This is the whole problem. They want to do things that require learning, but they want to do them without satifying those inescapable pre-requisites. They're in over their heads, because they've been sold a big lie.
Our lazy, petulant, anti-intellectual, and completely pathetic public masses demand both tasteless and microwavable TV dinners as well as the software that corresponds to them.
Somehow who hates reading, hates learning, hates puzzles, hates problem solving, and hates logic should not expect to touch a computer without a professional holding their tremulous hand. A computer is not an appliance for dummies, and if you won't pay your dues to actually invest the real time it takes to honestly learn something, you will suffer. Better to hire yourself a secretary and let him deal with it for you.
Re:But how much of each? (Score:1)
I'm neither a biologist or a psychologist, but have a degree in English.
The question, though, is where these boundaries should be drawn. How much of what we consider in ourselves to be easily influenced by our conscious decisions is determined at birth? What limits have been imposed upon our learning capacity and how quickly we are able to learn? Are there natural/born geniuses? If so, are they the only kind, or can we create genius if we provide the proper set of interactions? Can we make everyone a potential genius through gene therapy, and how much social engineering would be necessary to complete sucha creation?
These are all reasonable questions I suppose, but if life is deterministic I'm really not sure that I want to know. I think I'd rather have the illusion of free will, then the knowledge that there is no such thing. The works of Skinner and such are fascinating as hell, but really terrify me.
Do I really want to know that the reason I salivate is because the bell rings (replace bell ringing with whatever stimuli you choose)?
But having said that, if you want to know my opinion, I believe that genius is born or arises out of one's own innate self. Society acts mostly as you might imagine an external agent would on any substance might... It either helps or hinders, but it does not control. It even might appear that it controls, but it really only helps make the self what it must truly be.
Ok, forget, now I'm starting to sound like Sarte... Goodnight.
Re:Only easy if you like to learn (Score:1)
could the same thing be said of yourself if you don't want to learn an interest of theirs?
The person that you mentioned in your original post is someone that doesn't grasp the "difficulty" of the task he has put before you. therefore, he needs someone to do it for him. But he doesn't need (hopefully) someone to actually market the products, or come up with a prodiuct to market in the first place.
I see your point, but something that I neglected to bring up was, that programming and sysadmin'ing for you and I is not that difficult. Just as being a salesman, or an art designer isn't diffucult for another person(s).
Our difficulty with those things doesn't necessarily make us lazy and oafish does it?
doing "post-mortem" on 16 "healthy individuals" (Score:1)
1st paragraph: "... said James E. Black, who is part of a team examining post-mortem brain tissue at
3rd paragraph: "... allowed for a systematic count of brain cells [...] in 16 healthy people."
yeah, take 16 healthy individuals, kill them and see what the neuron/synapse count is.
A very unhappy wording for a press release I must say...
Roland
Does more synapses = more intelligence? (Score:1)
I don't know too much about the brain, but it strikes me that the conclusion of the study doesn't really say anything about intelligence, or even anything about the correlation between profession and number of synapses, given how they measured the synapses. If they took brain tissue from an important part of the subjects' brain, wouldn't it affect the subjects drastically? If it isn't from an important part of the brain, then how can we be sure the finding has any meaning? Just because a certain neuron is being synapsed by a thousand axons doesn't mean that neuron is even being used. The fact that there are a lot of synapses might even demonstrate that that particular circuit isn't being used. We start out with more synapses prenatally then when we're adults. Then our connections are refined, so that a large number of these synapses are removed. This weeding out process is determined by the amount of electrical activity passing through a neuron. The multiplicity of synapses is part of the reason why we can't walk (or do much of anything) when we're born (that, and not having finished myelination.) Paring them down is what allows us to control our musculature. I realize brain synapses are drastically different from neuromuscular junctions, but I think the principle is the same. It's not the quantity, it's how they're connected that makes a big difference, not to mention the type of synapse they are.
Huh? and a Related Study on Squids (Score:1)
I remember reading an article (can't remember where exactly, probably Scientific American or some such) that described this study performed on squids in which the researchers were able to actually see new neural pathways being created based on the environment they put the squids in (e.g. an aquarium filled with chilly/hot water, excess salinity of the water, application of beatings, etc). The gist of the article was that this implied the proverbial "nurture" aspect of development.
This also brings to mind a study in which Alzheimer's (sp?) patients were put on this regimen of mental puzzles and brain teasers in order to test performance (I believe that was the original intent). They found that the patients actually started to get better after doing these puzzles and games for awhile. It turned out that the patients were developing new neural pathways from the mental stimulation.
So, while this latest study is neat and interesting, I guess I just don't see it as extremely earthshaking news, more of a confirmation of other studies.
Sarte hurts my brain (Score:1)
Just finished reading _A_Search_for_a_Method_. I understood the words individually, but together...they might as well have been minoan linear B spoken by a cranky gorilla on crack in an unknown sign language for all the meaning I managed to get out of them. How bout a deal: I offer to explain a deterministic philosophy which takes away free will but has a good shot at not depressing you, and you explain Sartre to me.
If you are worried about determinism, read Hume's _A_Dialogue_Concerning_Human_underfstanding. He talks about the problem with the scientific method (very very briefly: we see correspondences between facts often enough and we impose what might well be a fiction of causality. Saying that the scientific method is the best is only applying the method of induciton to the scientific method--that is, it has been right more than otehr methods of predicting the future in the past, therefore it is best. Without causaltiy there can be no determinism, and nobody has thought of anythign devastating to say to Hume's corpse yet)
Have a good evening yourself...And stay away from pigeoins and out of Skinner boxes, 'kay?
Obvious!!?? (Score:1)
But this is not the question in the nature/nurture debate. See my other post [slashdot.org].
As has been pointed out ad nauseam, this depends on what definition of intellignce you use. It certainly is not obvious that this is the case if one's definition contains the rate of learning or ability to remember information. These two abilities-along with many others-might well have nothing to do with occupation or indeed anything we can do to ourselves short of genetic engineering. Again, see my other post for a refernce to a story describing GA mice which are helping us explore this issue.
We all need to be more careful not to give in to the temptation to oversimplify things, no matter how lazy we feel. Better not to post and dumb everyone else down. This is a disturbing trend on Slashdot. If everyone here stops thinking, where will I go to read neat discussion...?
? (Score:1)
A joke, right? Otherwise: What the Fsck? (coercion to visit followed by a statement that we are free to think for ourselves without that kind of coercion?)
Don't reply to First Posters, for chrissakes! (Score:1)
Why don't you just stop replying to those morons? Okay, your post was funny, but most of the replies are at the same level as the original. PLEASE just stop that. Ignore them. At the moment, there are more replies to the first poster than to the actual story!
It seems almost obvious (Score:3)
Now as I have taken my interests into more scientific areas I can't hardly sleep anymore becuase I am always trying to invent some crazy new concept in my head. I can't count the number of things I have thought out completely from beginning to end and the said "well that was fun, lets move on"
The point of all this is that when you work in a high-thought area you really become used to figuring things out and suddenly you find yourself doing it automatically. Therefore it only stands to reason that you would self-teach yourself as you progress.
I guess we could think of the brain like just about any other part of the body, when a body part is put to work alot it (particularly muscle) grows. If our brain is using up all it synapses figuring out things like lines of code in the newest Playstation game or how to build a stunt kite powered by the Biesfield-Brown effect, it has to create some new synapses to do the rest of the thinking.
Incidently it would be a great experiment to test the IQ of a person as they start a job and test it again a about 10-20 years after they start the job. (Sorry if that was in the article I didn't read it)
Re:PSY 301 (Score:1)
absolutely... aroung age ~3 or so the brain stops making _physical_ connections...
that's why those are called the 'development years' when nurture is most important.
SE [sevenelements.com]
Nature or Nuture? (Score:3)
This has been "proven" by the fact that the only time I produce any good code is after about a pot of the stuff.
Speaking of that, I think I hear that my coffee's ready... Maybe when I'm finished drinking I'll think of something interesting to say.
(sigh) Probably not! Nature or Nuture?
The answer is Nature and Nuture.
lettting a good thing go to waste! (Score:1)
If we take a "naturally gifted" person and well just let them be, they will be smart, but that dont mean they will get anywhere!
A hardworking, avg. individual, on the other hand can get pretty far by just trying hard enough, given that he/she is not completely brain dead!
I have seen a lot of very very smart ppl. who would like nothing more than to play on some MUD all day and well really not give a crap about what they could be achieving! And then again the same ppl. had the ability to pick up things (algorithms and math. proofs in this case) faster than anyone else!!
I think the brain is like any other muscle in the body!!! you use it and you can keep it in shape and actually get somethhing out of it! then again you could have the best brain and well never do anything with it! (i.e. become a marketer
But you still have to start off somewhere!!!! starting higher just means you can improve faster!!!
it does sound a bit cliche but the idea of nature or nurture being black and white just does not seem completely satisfying. (Hey we avg. ppl need a chance you know... and well the natural ones do have an edge
Re:picking surgeons (Score:1)
Re:Ranting about programs (Score:2)
Wrong. I've dealt with people. Thanks to our good friend, the Bell curve, we can see that 50% of people are less than 65% capable of handling a subject when they are educated and drilled on it. RTFM is not something they're willing or capable of doing. If you don't believe that statement, here's a real world example (annecdotal):
I wrote a client for Win32 (basically a port of a Unix client with a tray icon wrapper code for an easy to use UI) to handle updating ml.org, and a couple of other DynDNS websites. It was written because I used Windows on a computer I owned, and had an account with ml.org. The existing clients they pointed to didn't have the features I wanted, so I wrote mine. It was just a client, all the registrations and related would have been handled by ml.org or whatever DynDNS service they wanted. I included a little "feedback" menu option that would send email to me, in case they found a bug, or wanted to compliment me.
Of the few emails I received via feedback (ml.org collapsed in on itself two weeks after I released it), no less than half were "i luv this prog. u rock. my email is joestupid@cantspell.com, my id I chose was 31337rulers, and my pwd was passwrd. wen will my 31337d00ds.dyn.ml.org site be up w00t"
I even received the "Template" email a few times -- basically someone chose feedback, looked at the default things like "Enter email address here," and hit send instead of hitting cancel. Both buttons were right next to each other, too.
People seem to be stuck in this whole "get things done quickly so I can get to doing other things quickly" mindset, and so don't take time to think things through, look around and observe things, or even bother to try to be intelligent. Blaming the programmer for a program that a user can't be bothered to learn, is like blaming a manufacturer of a stick-shifted car model because people can't handle manual transmission.
No, rank amateurs will *not* be able to write an Amazon.com clone. That's a fact of life. But most people just want their email, browser, word processor, and instant messager.
But a computer is not an appliance. You can let a person get away with driving a car around with little understanding of it because it only does one thing: move when operated. It's an appliance with a flowchart that goes through about 8 choices, tops. Even with that level of simplicity, people can still learn a lot more about their car if they bother to observe and be aware of what it going on. With a computer, it's even more important to have some basic understanding available.
In a plane, you have to know if a wind is going to put your plane off its target, otherwise you could be lost without fuel. Operating a computer, if you have just run an attachment without good reason, you could have just given away private data, and destroyed all your precious settings and software. If you don't believe me, look at VCRs. They're very easy to use, but most have 12:00 blink-tagged on the front of them
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Special-purpose computing systems (Score:1)
Obviously, if somebody like this wants to do something beyond the basics, such as run or develop a real web site, they're out of their league. They either have to invest the time to learn how the thing really works, hire somebody else to do it, or forget about it. And honestly, if they don't have an aptitude for the technical, they're out of luck unless they put a lot of work into it.
However, in the coming years, we will see more and more special-purpose computing systems popping up. People are already using them without even knowing it. Yes, this is an absolutely terrible buzzword, but this is what I'm talking about: computing appliances. The refrigerator that has a computer in it that lets you manage your grocery shopping list, and eventually it'll even order your groceries for you over the Internet. You shouldn't need any special training to use a system like that, and yet it's a computer. I could go on about other such applications, but this thread is already off-topic.
My point is just that there are applications for computers that do not and should not require technical aptitude or training, and such devices are going to proliferate in the coming years.
But this doesn't really contradict your core assertion, which is essentially that people shouldn't expect to do complex things with computers without proper training. Eventually, we'll have much more intelligent computers, which can receive a task description in plain English, figure out what the user is really asking for (and because the user will never state the problem precisely, this will always involve a little Q and A), figure out how to do it, and then do it. This is a very sophisticated intelligence I'm talking about here; it's essentially the process followed by human software development efforts: gather requirements, develop a specification, design and implement the program, and then execute the program. Therefore, we need a computer that can think like a human in all the ways used for software development (that's a lot of ways) and has all the revelant knowledge (which is a lot of knowledge, including "common sense"). That's not going to be here anytime soon, so we all still have a little job security. ;-)
Re:Only easy if you like to learn (Score:2)
No! He said (and the subject still says): it's only easy to do something new if you like to learn. If you're someone who doesn't know how to drive, but wants to -- is it good if you are allowed to just sit down in a bumper car and ride around? Sure. How about a real car? Hmmm. Perhaps that person should take some time to learn about the dangers and benefits of a real car. But look, this person doesn't want to learn! "My day is hectic enough without all this learning phoey!"
could the same thing be said of yourself if you don't want to learn an interest of theirs?
You've missed the point again. It's like wanting to paint, but not wanting to prepare for it by learning something like "what is a brush" when you don't already know what one is. "I just want to paint, what is with all this technical jargon -- brushes, colours, etc!" There are people who want to do everything, but don't want to learn or prepare for it. These same people love "When buildings fall down" and their ilk on Fox.
If you want to use a computer, learn what a keyboard, mouse, monitor, is. Learn what a filesystem is. Learn about viruses, data, programs, and how to be aware of what your computer is doing. From that point, anyone should be able to use a computer effectively. However, people don't do that. They click "default" and let others do that horrible thinking. I mean, clicking "custom" would probably require reading and learning what the program they're installing will have as components. Horrors!
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Re:Hrm... (Score:1)
Re:but they ARE easy! (Score:1)
- ghandi
Re:It seems almost obvious (Score:1)
Re:Only easy if you like to learn (Score:2)
Someone who wants to use something, including and especially a computer, without learning how to use it, is lazy, stupid, or both. Either way, he's an unhappy victim of ludicrously false expectations.
Learning is fundamental. If you don't want to learn how to fly an airplane, or can't be bothered to take the time, then get out of the fricking cockpit. Now. You're a danger to yourself and others.
Re:Special-purpose computing systems (Score:2)
Re:Wrong! Stats 101 for you... (Score:1)
The SD for the difference of the means in an 8 vs. 8 test would be approximately half the SD of the standard population's SD, but large CI's ranges for the test will be increasingly greater than half of the same CI for the population because we are dealing with a T-distribution. It will take more than 2.5 SD's for a 99% CI. But you're right; we're just guessing here.
Another question one might ask is, how many similar tests have been run with no good results, and also, how many similar, plausible correlations were being looked for in the same test? So we may have gotten a 98% likelihood of significance. What if we were measuring 5 variables, any one of which might have independently shown significance but didn't? What if 10 similar tests have been tried by other teams around the world, none of which reported any good results? That's 50 measurements, and it's quite plausible for the null-hypothesis to randomly generate a 98% once in 50 attempts.
Whatever the statistics come up with, the results will need to be reproduced in order to establish validity. I'd guess that securing further grant money is a primary reason for the press release.
Re:? (Score:1)
"I'm not just some drone.. Come to my website.. Come to my website.."
I was trying to say, "I'm not just some low-life scum pushing his website all day long. I really have something to say."
I admit now after re-reading it that I could and should have been much clearer.
Re:PSY 301 (Score:1)
I remember my college psy prof. being quite sure that it was all nurture.
Several studies she talked about (which of course i don't remember specificaly) claimed that it's nurture almost exlusively.
Most, however, seem to indicate it's a balance of both... not unlike most things in life.
Well, the only way we'll know for sure is with an experiment using cloned humans. I volunteer.
Apparatus:
Cloning Equipment
Method:
1. Clone me.
2. Send my clone to school, then later, work.
3. I'll stay home drinking beer, watching TeleToon.
4. After a lifetime of leisure for me, and work for my clone, cut open our brains and start counting synapses!
Conclusion:
Beer goes good with TeleToon.
(Nature or Nurture) OR (Nature and Nurture) (Score:1)
Surely, like all beings thought to have evolved over time, it's a case of stick them in the pan and see what survives, other than that - anything goes...
You would have thought that any being that was more able to adapt through it's surroundings (or nurture) would have an evolutionary advantage over one who doesn't (gifted through nature).
Evolution therefore states that, eventually, advances through nurture should evolve? and eventually at all levels.
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Vote for "Anonymous Coward cannot First Post."
Re:It seems almost obvious (Score:1)
However, I guess it's like only ever doing pushups in the gym - your pecs will be superb, but it doesn't mean you'll be a champion athlete. Just because we develop synapses to help us do one kind of mental task better, doesn't mean they'll be of any help at other ta
The Meaning of Abstract (Score:1)
The word "abstract" is significant here. It implies a sort of reasoning or thinking that is not specific to a particular field. Yes, it takes a lot of time and experience to become a car mechanic, and it takes a lot of time and completely different experience to become a computer programmer, but if the findings of this study indicate a cause-effect relationship in the suspected direction, we learn an interesting fact about potential. Keeping one's mind active in any intellectual field (one that promotes abstract thinking) could improve one's ability to learn to function in any other intellectual field. Of course it will take time to pick up the experience and details of a separate field, but it will flow more easily. You don't have to re-gain the intellect, just the knowledge.
Use a smaller-scale example: A computer programmer who started out learning BASIC, then went on to learn C, and in so doing, begins to understand the commonality between programming languages and how computers actually function. It is now much easier for this programmer to pick up any programming language. Of *course* he needs the reference material and needs to take some time to learn even the basics of the new language, but it's much easier than it was to learn even a language as simple as BASIC for the first time.
This said, abstract thinking is the over-arching "language" of intellectual professions and fields. In any intellectual field, there will be a need to think abstractly to some degree. The ability to think abstractly makes it easier to devise one's own solution when it is not already part of one's knowledge.
So the significance of the new information, then, is related to the fact that keeping one's mind active in an intellectual field *may* actually have a quantifiable effect on one's ability for abstract thinking which can be applied (to some extent) in any field. Of course the cause/effect relationship is still inconclusive.
But does it make you want to? (Score:1)
It's fine and well for intellectual activities to stimulate brain development, but that doesn't mean anything in terms of educating people (especially school kids) if you can't get them *interested* in doing that. If you want to improve education then the question is whether or not you can actually make kids want to use their brains more. Most people I know unfortunately do as much as possible to try do as little thinking as they can possibly get away with, a tendency I find rather disturbing, and the situation isn't helped by the fact that the majority of the media (especially advertising) likes to encourage this mental laziness so that they can rip you off by saying that "scientists prove our washing powder washes whiter" etc etc
Operating systems and interfaces (Score:3)
The pursuit for easy-to-use and intuitive interfaces is creating a generation of lazy computer users, and worse, a generation of lazy computer programmers that won't survive outside an IDE with context-sensitive help and syntax highlighting. And bad programmers create bad programs.
Re:Operating systems and interfaces (Score:2)
Of course Windows did teach me one thing UNIX hasn't. Patience. Nothing like having to debug a program on an OS that crashes frequently anyway. As one Windows-programmer friend of mine said "It's hard to tell when a crash is your fault or Windows' fault"
Re:PSY 301 (Score:1)
I wouldn't think so...
it's just too complicated to ever get a grip on, imho...
what has one effect on one kid at X stage has a different effect on a different kid at X stage.
SE [sevenelements.com]
How old were the subjects? (Score:3)
Probably the only way you could come up with a causal link between synaptic complexity and the `intellectualism' of your profession would be with a long term study, starting with children and following them through to middle age . . . Which is bit of a problem, really - by the time they'd collected enough data over a long enough time to get reasonable results, we'd probably know enough about our brains to make the results moot . . .
In any case, these findings are interesting, but they're hardly earth shattering. I mean, one of the researchers was quoted as saying that they back up observations made on animals - human brains may be vastly more complex than any other animal's, but they're still made of the same stuff, so it's not that surprising they seem to develop similarly . . .
himi
My intellectualism is exponential - it decays exponentially with time after my last caffeine hit . . .
Re:It seems almost obvious (Score:1)
Yeah, isn't it absolutely great to learn new stuff, and think of many implications yourself (even if you read about that stuff having been discovered by somebody else years ago). There is no question that you train your brain by using it, and you definitely do that more in more mentally challenging fields.
But that doesn't mean that new synapses are actually grown (which is the point of this article, after all). It just tells us that the brain develops, but not how.
And that article wasn't about IQ tests, either
Re:smart people getting smarter (Score:1)
One becomes 'smarter' because of experience. As you work with something all the time, it becomes second nature, and enabling you to learn more complex things based on that. But if you're to learn something completely new and unrelated to what you've been working at for so long, it'd be just as hard as if you'd been digging ditches all your life.
Re:smart people getting smarter (Score:3)
While I'll admit your chances of living through open heart surgery performed under any kind of crash course aren't very good, so this might not make the best analogy, but I for one would take more comfort in the fact that the programmer would have a better retention for knowledge then the night watchman.
*Disclaimer*, this is not an insult to any employees of the all night chicken shack.
Re:Operating systems and interfaces (Score:2)
All of the characteristics of ADHD go hand in hand with the same traits that many geeks have. I don't have the slightest interest in many, many subjects, but I can focus intently on a programming task for hours. I did this when I was a child, too, and I could use many, many programs, well designed or not, better than the adults who surrounded me.
So, next time, pick a different, more appropriate group to single out, insult, and pick on, and hope they aren't listening at the time.
And computers are tools. They're for everyone. If you don't know how to use it, don't be surprised when it doesn't work. However, never let your opportunity to learn be taken away from you by people who think you shouldn't know. Like all those poor ADHD kids who can't find what they're looking for because Uncle Tom took away their computer...
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pb Reply or e-mail rather than vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:PSY 301 - Wrong, brain DOES change (Score:3)
I once found a videotape showing, side by side, time lapse footage through a microscope of an 8-year-old brain and a 40-year-old brain, and man, that 8 year old's dendrites were running circles around the 40 year old's. I showed it to a kid I was tutoring, to try to convince him he had to make the best use of his peak brain-growing years.
But over the last two years, neuroscience has been turned upside down with discoveries that animals, including mammals, DO continue to create new neurons throughout adulthood. The old view was largely an old wive's tale, handed down for several generations. Much like the unquantifiable and meaningless malarkey that we only use 10% of our brain.
from http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/99/q4/1014-brain
"...Princeton scientists have shown that new neurons are continually added to the cerebral cortex of adult monkeys. The discovery reverses a dogma nearly a century old
'This is an absolutely novel result,' says William T. Greenough, director of the neuroscience program at the University of Illinois' Beckman Institute. 'These data scream for a reanalysis of human brain development.' "
Article in Scientific American (Score:2)