26 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
<em>g</em> Presumes Unidimensionality
In a multidimensional set of interrelations among tests, one axis can be found that accounts for as much of the interrelatedness as possible, even when it is known that more dimensions are required. The g-men have defined that largest dimension as g. They haven’t discovered it, as they are fond of saying, any more than the Greenwich Meridian was discovered by the International Meridian Conference in 1884. Any set of interrelated tests has to have a largest dimension, so under this definition...Folksonomies: iq measurement
Folksonomies: iq measurement
1 19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Impact of the Printing Press
It is to the press we owe the possibility of spreading those publications which the emergency of the moment, or the transient fluctuations of opinion, may require, and of interesting thereby in any question, treated in a single point of view, whole communities of men reading and understanding the same language.
All those means which render the progress of the human mind more easy, more rapid, more certain, are also the benefits of the press. Without the instrumentality of this art, such book...
2 It prevented authority from closing off access to truth.
18 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
Einstein's Cosmological Constant
Georges Lemaitre was a pudgy, pinkish Belgian Jesuit abbe—a Catholic priest—who also happened to be a skilled astronomer. Lemaitre had noticed that Einstein's general theory of relativity would have implied that the universe was expanding but for a troublesome little mathematical term called the cosmological constant that Einstein had inserted into his equations. Lemaitre saw no convincing reason why the cosmological constant should be there. In fact, Einstein himself had originally calculat...He put the constant into his theory to keep the Universe static, but observations demonstrated it was expanding, so he changed his theory to match the evidence.
24 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Experiments Were Sacred to Darwin
Although [Charles Darwin] would patiently go on repeating experiments where there was any good to be gained, he could not endure having to repeat an experiment which ought, if complete care had been taken, to have told its story at first—and this gave him a continual anxiety that the experiment should not be wasted ; he felt the experiment to be sacred, however slight a one it was. He wished to learn as much as possible from an experiment, so that he did not confine himself to observing the s... 1 
notes
notesHe hated to repeat them if he felt he had gained all the knowledge there was to gain from one, so he paid very close attention when performing one.
03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
All Technology is Social Engineering
Stanford University researcher Jeremy Bailenson has demonstrated that changing the height of one’s avatar in immersive virtual reality transforms self-esteem and social self-perception. Technologies are extensions of ourselves, and, like the avatars in Jeremy’s lab, our identities can be shifted by the quirks of gadgets. It is impossible to work with information technology without also engaging in social engineering.
[...]
When developers of digital technologies design a program that requir... 1 notes
notesWhen a developer designs an interface for a user to interact with a computer, they imply you are a program. When they put up a wiki, they suggest humans ultimately have a single point of view.
01 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Bad Men Hoard Knowledge
It would be desirable for the government to authorize people to go into the factories and shops, to see the craftsmen at their work, to question them, to draw the tools, the machines, and even the premises.
There are special circumstances when craftsmen are so secretive about their techniques that the shortest way of learning about them would be to apprentice oneself to a master or to have some trustworthy person do this. There would be few secrets that one would fail to bring to light by t...Instead of sharing it to the benefit of the rest of the world, and yet these same men complain of the wisdom of the ancients lost to the present.
