05 FEB 2016 by ideonexus
Ways to Tackle a Problem
If a problem seems familiar, try reasoning by Analogy. If you solved a similar one in the past, and can adapt to thedifferences, you may be able to re-use that solution.
If the problem still seems too hard, divide it into several parts. Every difference you recognize may suggest a separate subproblem to solve.
If it seems unfamiliar, change how you’re describing it. Find a different description that highlights more relevant information.
If you get too many ideas, then focus on ...Folksonomies: problem solving
Folksonomies: problem solving
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notes28 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
The Virtue of Honesty
Honesty is the essence of secularism. It is a willingness to set aside any and every comfort in order to know the truth that allowed us to see our way out of religious belief. Somewhat more difficult is ensuring that we practice the same level of honesty in all other aspects of our lives. I say “somewhat more difficult” because in truth most of the humanists and atheists I know are relentlessly, exhaustively honest, sometimes to a comical extent. We are often paralyzed by our obsession wi... 1 notes
notesNot only honest to the truth, but honest with others about our non-belief.
22 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Production Costs for Antimatter
Fermilab produces antiprotons in medium-energy collisions of protons with a lithium target. Every now and then these collisions will produce an antiproton, which is then directed into the storage ring beneath the buffalo. When operating at average efficiency, Fermilab can produce about 50 billion antiprotons an hour in this way. Assuming that the Antiproton Source is operating about 75 percent of the time throughout the year, this is about 6000 hours of operation per year, so Fermilab produce... 1 notes
notesFermilab produces antiprotons in atomic collisions, here's how many and how much it costs to produce them.
04 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Enemies Make the Best Peer Reviewers
One way of dealing with errors is to have friends who are willing to spend the time necessary to carry out a critical examination of the experimental design beforehand and the results after the experiments have been completed. An even better way is to have an enemy. An enemy is willing to devote a vast amount of time and brain power to ferreting out errors both large and small, and this without any compensation. The trouble is that really capable enemies are scarce; most of them are only ordi...
1 Quoting Georg von Békésy, who says that enemies will work hard to disprove you for free, but sometimes they are ruined by becoming friends.
28 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Many Great Scientific Minds Were Religious
A great many leading lights of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment-Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle—were distinctly religious and viewed science as a better means of understanding God's creation and the laws governing it. 1 notes
notesAnd saw science as a better way to understand the creation.
17 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Baloney Detection Kit
In science we may start with experimental results, data, observations, measurements, 'facts'. We invent, if we can, a rich array of possible explanations and systematically confront each explanation with the facts. In the course of their training, scientists are equipped with a baloney detection kit. The kit is brought out as a matter of course whenever new ideas are offered for consideration. If the new idea survives examination by the tools in our kit, we grant it warm, although tentative, ...Bullet points for the baloney detection kit according to Carl Sagan.
23 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
How Brian Eno's Mind has Changed Through Use of the Intenet
I notice that I now digest my knowledge as a patchwork drawn from a wider range of sources than I used to. I notice too that I am less inclined to look for joined-up finished narratives and more inclined to make my own collage from what I can find. I notice that I read books more cursorily — scanning them in the same way that I scan the Net — ‘bookmarking’ them.
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I notice that more of my time is spent in words and language — because that is the currency of the Net — than it was...Some observations made by the author about how his thinking and behaviors have changed through online technologies.
