20 OCT 2018 by ideonexus
The Problem with American Politicians Being Lawyers
The job of the politician in America, whether at the local, state, or naA tional level, should be, in good part, to help educate and explain to people what world they are living in and what they need to do if they want to thrive within it. One problem we have today, though, is that so many American pobliticians don't seem to have a clue about the flat world. As venture capitalist John Doerr once remarked to me, "You talk to the leadership in China, andid they are all the engineers, and they g... 1 
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notes29 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
Mathematics is Hard Work, Not Genius
What I fight against most in some sense, [when talking to the public,] is the kind of message, for example as put out by the film Good Will Hunting, that there is something you're born with and either you have it or you don't. That's really not the experience of mathematicians. We all find it difficult, it's not that we're any different from someone who struggles with maths problems in third grade. It's really the same process. We're just prepared to handle that struggle on a much larger scal... 1 notes
notes15 APR 2015 by ideonexus
If a Harvard Degree is So Valuable, Why Not Franchise It?
But what if higher education is really just the final stage of a competitive tournament? From grades and test results through the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the colleges themselves, higher education sorts us all into a hierarchy. Kids at the top enjoy prestige because they’ve defeated everybody else in a competition to reach the schools that proudly exclude the most people. All the hard work at Harvard is done by the admissions officers who anoint an already-proven hypercompet...
1 24 JUN 2014 by ideonexus
Public School Mathematics are Like Drills
“Mathematics is not just a sequence of computations to be carried out by rote until your patience or stamina runs out—although it might seem that way from what you’ve been taught in courses called mathematics. Those integrals are to mathematics as weight training and calisthenics are to soccer. If you want to play soccer—I mean, really play, at a competitive level—you’ve got to do a lot of boring, repetitive, apparently pointless drills. Do professional players ever use those dril... 1 notes
notes21 JUN 2014 by ideonexus
Entertaining Work is a Moral Issue
I’m not the first person to notice that reality is broken compared with games,
especially when it comes to giving us good, hard work. In fact, the science
of happiness was first born thirty-five years ago, when an American psychologist
by the name of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi observed the very same
thing. In 1975, Csíkszentmihályi published a groundbreaking scientific study
called Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. The focus of the study was a specific kind
of happiness that Csíkszentmihályi ...Folksonomies: gamification
Folksonomies: gamification
1 notes
notesIsn't this also a matter of perspective? Don't we need to look at life like a game?
The problem is that real-life isn't like a game. A really tough programming problem doesn't match my skills, they can go far beyond them.
Education is ENGINEERED, so it can be like a game.
21 JUN 2014 by ideonexus
Why hard work others ask us to do doesn't inspire us
In our real lives,
hard work is too often something we do because we have to do it—to make a
living, to get ahead, to meet someone else’s expectations, or simply because
someone else gave us a job to do. We resent that kind of work. It stresses us
out. It takes time away from our friends and family. It comes with too much
criticism. We’re afraid of failing. We often don’t get to see the direct impact
of our efforts, so we rarely feel satisfied.
Or, worse, our real-world work isn’t ...Folksonomies: gamification
Folksonomies: gamification
1 notes
notes24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Evolution as Cyclical Repetition
If we lapse into thinking of the prebiotic, pre-reproductive world as a sort of featureless chaos of chemicals (like the scattered parts of the notorious jetliner assembled by a windstorm), the problem does look daunting and worse, but if we remind ourselves that the key process in evolution is cyclical repetition (of which genetic replication is just one highly refined and optimized instance), we can begin to see our way to turning the mystery into a puzzle: How did all those seasonal cycles... 1 notes
notesDaniel C. Dennett adds a cognitive tool to help understand how evolution works over time--by recognizing that evolution keeps trying, reproduction is a cycle.
16 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
Objective in the "Real Life" Game
The game heavily relies on the "carrot on a stick" principle. All objectives appear to be increasingly possible, yet every goal point disappears moments before you achieve it. There also appears to be no reward for honesty, hard work, altruism, or loyalty.
Highly pessimistic version.
08 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Rules of Magic Don't Make Any Sense
Some children would have waited until after their first trip to Diagon Alley.
"Bag of element 79," Harry said, and withdrew his hand, empty, from the mokeskin pouch.
Most children would have at least waited to get their wands first.
"Bag of okane," said Harry. The heavy bag of gold popped up into his hand.
Harry withdrew the bag, then plunged it again into the mokeskin pouch. He took out his hand, put it back in, and said, "Bag of tokens of economic exchange." That time his hand came ou... 1 notes
notesRational Potter experiments with a magical bag that will give him whatever he asks for and doesn't understand why it can understand some requests but not others.
06 AUG 2012 by ideonexus
Knowledge Increases
The progress of the sciences secures the progress of the art of instruction, which again accelerates in its turn that of the sciences; and this reciprocal influence, the action of which is incessantly increased, must be ranked in the number of the most prolific and powerful causes of the improvement of the human race. At present, a young man, upon finishing his studies and quitting our schools, may know more of the principles of mathematics than Newton acquired by profound study, or discovere...By standing on the shoulders of giants, the college-graduate can know more than Newton learned in a lifetime through all his hard work and discovery.
