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Video Game School

smijer — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:00:42 +0000

I will lay odds that this, or something substantially like, it will soon revolutionize education worldwide. Ummm, I’d like to add another 500 words to fill out this endorsement, but just read the NPR article (and/or listen to it). I’ve seen the power of video games – first hand, and a very close second hand – to bring out the problem solver in all of us. The problem with educational video games is that they are simply not very good, and they don’t sustain involvement over time. Structure one correctly over time, and contextualize the problem-solving elements properly, and use it for an hour or two a day, and you will have results never dreamed possible, from kids – including those who have little hope in traditional educational environments. Watch and see.

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Evolving in Monkey Town

smijer — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 11:00:22 +0000

I guess I’ll have to subscribe to the blog until I can get around to the book, but June Griffin makes her first appearance in Chapter 2, so it is going to have to be read.

So… anyway… I’m looking forward to it. I imagine other Eastern Tennesseans will enjoy it as well. Matter of fact, I expect it will do well with the national audience it seems to be targeted to.

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Posted in: Books, Religion, Sci/Tech
Post tags: Compatibilism, Religion, Science

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Not as good as Letterman

smijer — Wed, 19 May 2010 14:46:02 +0000

Another top ten list – (If that link doesn’t work, you can use this one, but then you get it split into three inconvenient pages).

6. Your mind is not your own.

Freud might have been wrong in the details, but one of his main ideas—that a lot of our behaviors and beliefs and emotions are driven by factors we are unaware of—turns out to be correct. If you’re in a happy, optimistic, ambitious mood, check the weather. Sunny days make people happier and more helpful. In a taste test, you’re likely to have a strong preference for the first sample you taste—even if all of the samples are identical. The more often you see a person or an object, the more you’ll like it. Mating decisions are based partly on smell. Our cognitive failings are legion: we take a few anecdotes and make incorrect generalizations, we misinterpret information to support our preconceptions, and we’re easily distracted or swayed by irrelevant details. And what we think of as memories are merely stories we tell ourselves anew each time we recall an event. That’s true even for flashbulb memories, the ones that feel as though they’ve been burned into the brain:

I’m not sure how disturbing this is… I get a touch of vertigo when I think about it. I don’t like the tag-line. It isn’t that your mind isn’t your own. In my book, your mind is *you*. Or a big part there-of. The vertigo is that your mind isn’t what it feels like it is… not a happy servant of the ego, so to speak. Instead it is an unfathomable set of interactions between the environment and the molecular systems in your brain, some of which we experience as immediate consciousness, some of which we don’t. And that’s an oversimplification, too. But not as bad as “your mind is not your own”.

10. The universe is made of stuff we can barely begin to imagine.

Everything you probably think of when you think of the universe—planets, stars, galaxies, black holes, dust—makes up just 4 percent of whatever is out there. The rest comes in two flavors of “dark,” or unknown stuff: dark matter, at 23 percent of the universe, and dark energy, at a whopping 73 percent:

What’s your favorite?

Oh yeah… be sure to use that second / 3 page link to get a hoot at some of the comments there.

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Dunning-Kruger revisited

smijer — Thu, 13 May 2010 11:00:49 +0000

The teaser at Boing-Boing for this ABC Science article on the Dunning-Kruger effect caught my eye because of the last sentence quoted there. I’ll include the last three for context – “It beautifully explains the utter confidence of those who, with no expertise, remain stubborn in their views regardless of overwhelming evidence. It makes you want to shake them by the collar and scream about how stupid they are. But evidence shows that’s not the best strategy.”

Oh yeah? Well, I had my ideas already about what a good strategy would look like in a perfect world, but there are problems with it. That perfect world approach is supported by the research:

The rather odd element of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that the incompetent don’t become aware of it until they become more competent. The key is education. Extending on their earlier experiments, Dunning and Kruger took half of their volunteers and trained them in how to solve the logic puzzles. It was as though a light went on for the under achievers. For the first time out of all the tests they began to realise that they were below average. Suddenly aware of their incompetence, they readjusted their estimates to something more realistic.

For example, before being trained they had thought that they answered five out of the ten questions correctly, whereas in reality they had barely managed to score a single mark. After being trained their estimates plummeted to a more realistic score of just one out of ten.

Yeah – so far so good. But there is a catch-22 here. Sure, if you have a real simple problem and have a captive audience, a logic puzzle, and no merry band of anti-logicians doing their best to keep their recruit, it is a simple matter to help a person increase their competence.

In the real world, though, what motivation does a person have to increase their own competence when they are already unshakeably certain that they are fully competent? What if these confident beliefs are part of a cultural identity that no one wishes to surrender? What if their self-satisfaction is reinforced continuously by their peers?

What do you* do when a D-K-er refuses to be taught how to work the logic puzzle?

Unfortunately, I didn’t see any clues to help answer that. Feel free to brainstorm in the comments.

* Writing this, I tried to figure out a way to avoid coming off as arrogant. I couldn’t figure out a way to do it. People who know me know that I’m not immune to a bout of it, but the quick answer is “no, I don’t think I’m the all-knowing one whose job it is to educate the rest of the world.” On the other hand, I do perceive that anyone who does have a little bit of good information has an increasingly difficult job getting it out these days. And it’s not my problem and not my business… but if there is a secret to the game, I’d love to know what it is.

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Just a letter

smijer — Mon, 10 May 2010 12:00:45 +0000

Ripped entirely from Skeptical science:

A letter Climate Change and the Integrity of Science has been published in the journal Science. It’s written by 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences, including 11 Nobel laureates (here’s the complete list plus their university affiliations). I recommend reading the entire letter but here is an excerpt:

There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet…

… The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected. But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:

The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

Much more can be, and has been, said by the world’s scientific societies, national academies, and individuals, but these conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business-as-usual practices. We urge our policy-makers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the un restrained burning of fossil fuels.

The scientists are the members of the NAS most familiar with climate science, as explained by lead signer Peter Gleick:

It is hard to get 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to agree on pretty much anything, making the import of this letter even more substantial. Moreover, only a small fraction of National Academy members were asked to sign (the signatories are all members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences but were not speaking on its behalf). Because of a desire to produce a statement quickly, the coordinators of the letter focused on those sections of the NAS most familiar with climate science and the ongoing debate. But the NAS (and Academies of Sciences and other professional scientific societies from dozens of other nations) has previously published a long set of assessments and reviews of the science of climate change, which support the conclusions laid out in the Science essay.

Lastly, here is a link to the National Academy of Science’s Policy advice, based on science, to guide the nation’s response to climate change.

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Knocking Boots?

smijer — Thu, 06 May 2010 20:34:40 +0000

If Neanderthals are concerned, I think the better phrase is bumping uglies.

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There’s a name for that…

smijer — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:34:39 +0000

Something does not seem quite right. The most powerful man in the world, John F. Kennedy, was taken out by a lone nutjob of no previous consequence? A jet flies into the pentagon and yet the expected debris is not visible. And why can’t I see stars in the NASA Apollo moon landing photos?

Some hidden agent must be at work, conspiring to deceive and carry out some sinister plot.

At least that is how our brains are hardwired to think, and some of us more than others. This tendency has been termed the “hyperactive (or hypersensitive) agency detection device” – HADD – coined by Justin Barrett. Understanding that HADD is an intrinsic part of human nature is part of the core knowledge base of the skeptic.

More here.

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A few words from a real climate change skeptic

smijer — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:00:20 +0000

Truth be known, I don’t know if John Cook is a real skeptic or not – or rather, to what degree and in what situations he is a skeptic. I follow his blog on Google Reader, but my schedule has allowed me very little time for reading since I subscribed to him. So, I don’t know much about him. Yet, he advertises himself as “Skeptical Scientist”. Redundant as that may be, I suspect it is the case, and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. The post I link does not portray any particular failing in the skepticism department.

The reason I say he is a “real” climate change skeptic is because I think that the term “skeptic” should be reserved for people who apply a skeptical view methodically and with the purpose of increasing knowledge. I think that this its greatest value. Most people who are suspicious of climate change are not suspicious for reasons of rigorous skepticism.

Some, and I think this includes my dear Buck… and maybe RW… are skeptical in the sense of “I don’t know what to think. Too many claims and counterclaims, and I just can’t keep track of them.” This is commendable, and a good example of folk skepticism. The truth is that the world is too big & complex for each person to establish for him or her self, with reasonable certainty, the truth of a lot of issues – including a lot of important ones. This type of skepticism is a hedge against wrong belief, and it makes sense for people who find it important to avoid poorly justified beliefs. In other words, it often seems more valuable to have a few true and well justified beliefs along with very few wrong beliefs than to have many true but poorly justified beliefs along with very many wrong ones.

I am a folk skeptic myself, but feel I have been able to navigate the claims and counterclaims of climate science and and have justified for myself a belief in the general conclusions of the vast majority of scientists who study climate.

I don’t think that folk skepticism should designate one a “skeptic” where it concerns climate change. This skepticism is a passive one, a choice for agnosticism on one issue in favor of spending the energy of unraveling questions for another group of tasks. It is not the active skepticism that does take the time to truly analyze the claims and require justification of them. I would rather style this type of folk skeptic who does not accept climate change science “agnostic.”

Some people who are suspicious of climate change (and I think this includes many political operatives) are suspicious because they are incapable of thinking of any issue except in terms of partisan advantage and gamesmanship – or at least in terms of partisan trust. This is not skepticism in any positive sense of the word. So, I don’t think the term should be applied to the bloggers, media personalities and political think-tanks that try to undermine popular understanding of climate science. I have a similar view toward those who are active in the climate science debate in order to preserve an economic interest in a polluting industry.

There are a few are old-guard climate researchers who are just tough to budge when it comes to a new result, especially one they didn’t see coming. Perhaps these individuals include real, rigorous, scientific skeptics. The modern-day classic example of a skeptic of this sort – from another field – is that of Alan Feduccia. While folks like Dr. Feduccia deserve respect for their contributions to science, and deserve to have their view heard in the academic debate, they are extremely few in number where it comes to birds and dinosaurs (for instance) or climate science. So, while I count them among climate change “skeptics”, I count them as a trifling minority thereof.

I think that most people who are suspicious of climate change are victims of the Dunning-Kruger effect, perhaps combined with a political or religious bias. This is based on observation. In my younger days, I trolled the halls of internet Creationism, and I there observed two things in great quantity – 1) large numbers of internet Creationists are victims of the Dunning-Kruger effect (almost always in tandem with religious bias), and 2) self-styled climate change skeptics on the internet today exist in large numbers and exhibit behavior very similar to that of internet Creationists (and not a few of them are Creationists). And, by the way – that link is the one that goes to the “real climate change skeptic”.

Skepticism is a key element in science. This is so much the case that I don’t believe science would be possible without it. So the real champions of scientific skepticism are the scientists themselves. It is climate scientists: both the large majority who accept AGW and the vanishingly small minority who reject it or hedge their acceptance dramatically, who have truly earned the term “climate change skeptic”.

I also think there is room for us folk skeptics in the mix. Folk skeptics, relying largely on the efforts of scientists, who go to an effort of critical justification for their views on climate science, might also deserve a junior badge of “climate change skeptic”.

I say all of this, and deny the term “skeptic” to the majority of disbelievers of climate change – to preserve the integrity of the word “skeptic”. The rest should be designated as worthy agnostics or as pestilent contrarians, depending on their respective beliefs and activities.

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Posted in: Philosophy, Sci/Tech
Post tags: Climate Change, Skepticism

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Blind Analysis

smijer — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:10:02 +0000

Very nice piece from miller explaining blind analysis – a method for avoiding tricks of human psychology under certain circumstances. It’s very interesting and I think you should read it. I think so because I read the first paragraph, applied some models of goodness to it, then I read the rest and checked my models. They worked, and it was good.

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Google Goggles

Buck — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:22:14 +0000

Pretty cool

Stuff like this makes me want to take better care of myself and live a long, long time. I still get excited when I think about the world my great grandchildren will live in.

It won’t be perfect. It never has been and it never will be. But it is still pretty damned impressive.

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