16 APR 2018 by ideonexus
Teachers Must Put Themselves in the Student's Place
According to Devlin, teachers have a responsibility to learn about kids' interests. "It's not the students' responsibility to put themselves in our place. As teachers, it's our responsibility to put ourselves in the students' place. And if they are in a digital world, where they will invest many hours solving difficult, challenging problems in a video game, it would be criminal if we didn't start where they are and take advantage of the things they want to do. That's the world they live in, t... 1 
notes
notes20 JUL 2017 by ideonexus
Old CRPGs are Unplayable for Modern Gamers
They had five days to play (Ultima IV), and I asked them to make as much progress as they could in that time. When we gathered to debrief in class, a few students explained how they’d overcome some of their difficulties, but the vast majority was utterly flummoxed by the game. As one of them put it, “I’d say for gamers of our generation, an RPG like Ultima IV is boring and pretty much unplayable.” After removing the arrow from my chest, I asked them to explain why.
It mostly came dow... 1 notes
notes06 NOV 2016 by ideonexus
The Media Mediates
There is definitely the sense that the media can mediate (!) the experience of viewers after the thing has happened. I might be sitting at home in North Carolina, watching the program and think one thing, and then the guy with a tie and “expertise” might come on right after it’s over and say with great gusto that one person or another has done something radical and race-changing that I never even considered. I often think of a great art museum in Boston when I think of these debates re:... 1 notes
notes08 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
PhDs Lack Skills for Surviving Outside Academia
Inefficiency arises from the fact that substantial resources have been invested in training these scientists and engineers. The trained have foregone other careers – and the salary that they would have earned – along the way. The public has invested resources in tuition and stipends. If these ‘investments’ are then forced to enter careers that require less training, resources have not been efficiently deployed. Surely there are less expensive ways to train high school science teachers...
1 04 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
How to Sell to Millennials
1. People buy things because of what they can do with them... Create crystal-clear communication that helps people connect how your product or service makes their lives better. An obsession with simplicity is essential.
2. People buy things because of what they can tell others about it... Help connect people to other people through your business. Sales isn't really about "selling" anymore, it's about building a community.
3. People buy things because of what having it says about them... Con...Folksonomies: marketing
Folksonomies: marketing
1 notes
notes24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Diversification in the Cosmos
The last of the five philosophical problems is the problem of final aims. The problem here is to try to formulate some {298} statement of the ultimate purpose of the universe. In other words, the problem is to read God's mind. Previous attempts to read God's mind have not been notably successful. One of the more penetrating of such attempts is recorded in the Book of Job. God's answer to Job out of the whirlwind was not encouraging. Nevertheless I stand in good company when I ask again the ... 1 notes
notes20 JAN 2015 by TGAW
Chuck Stover on Making Use of Your Brain During Repetitiv...
It was a job. It was good exercise, great people there. It gave me a lot of time to think about design during the day because of the repetitive nature of the work.
Kind of put half of my brain thinking about design questions and the other half to work. Then I would come home after work and get onto Sketch-Up and work on designs until I passed out.Folksonomies: 3dprinting 3ddesign
Folksonomies: 3dprinting 3ddesign
Chuck Stover worked a factory job making Cadillac suspensions. That repetitive job gave him the ability to think about 3D design.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Science Generators
Conway’s Game of Life is perhaps best viewed not as a single shorthand abstraction but rather as a generator of such abstractions. We get a whole bunch of useful abstractions—or at least a recipe for how to generate them—all for the price of one. And this points us to one especially useful shorthand abstraction: the strategy of Looking for Generators. We confront many problems. We can try to solve them one by one. But alternatively, we can try to create a generator that produces solutio...Folksonomies: science hypotheses
Folksonomies: science hypotheses
1 notes
notesNick Bostrom on the possibility of looking for scientific concept generators, similar to the way Conway's Game of Life is a pattern generator, rather than looking for random scientific problems to solve.
17 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
The Strategy of Releasing All Data
The response many organizations adopted then
(and continue to pursue AF) is to provide overwhelming
amounts of data to the public. This
provided a two-fold defense. First, it allowed immediate
deniability to any charge of withholding data.
Second, the sheer volume of data available meant
that almost any argument could be made or refuted
with selective referencing and correlation to other
publicly available information. This is a rapid, cheap
response that puts the onus back on the accuser to
... 1 notes
notesInteresting idea: be completely transparent, releasing so much data that any hypothesis can be cherry-picked from it, then hire spin-doctors to do just that.
12 APR 2013 by ideonexus
A Biased Explanation of Foxes and Hedgehogs
How Foxes Think
Multidisciplinary: Incorporate ideas from different disciplines and regardless of their origin on the political spectrum.
Adaptable: Find a new approach—or pursue multiple approaches at the same time—if they aren’t sure the original one is working.
Self-critical: Sometimes willing (if rarely happy) to acknowledge mistakes in their predictions and accept the blame for them.
Tolerant of complexity: See the universe as complicated, perhaps to the point of many fundament... 1 notes
notesNate Silver provides a very negative portrayal of those who think like hedgehogs, settling down in one field of expertise, compared to those who think like foxes, darting from field to field.
