OT: What the heck do they teach in college??

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instructions for

yes. failure to notice the keys you've put your fingers on. of course, if you want to speed things up, take a typing course. :)

Besides how can you deny the existence of a God that knew about cars long before we did?

"God *drove* Adama and Eve from the Garden of Eden in a *Fury*."

"For I did not speak of my own *Accord*."

"The apostiles were in one *Accord*" (Odyssey minivan?)

"Joshua's *Triumph* was heard throughout the land."

"Michael Pardee" wrote

One just cannot safely generalize like this.

It's easy to figure out what sources on the net are reliable and which are bunk.

I for one also access the same journals I might access at a university library, using the net.

I have yet to find anything terribly amiss on Wikipedia.

You're sure I haven't been reading your posts, huh?

Michael, again, I think you have much to offer this newsgroup by way of Honda advice. And good luck with whatever your religious beliefs are. Starting this year when I can, I oppose ID blah blah taught in science classes.

snip a lot of stuff that, logically speaking, just has no place here, for reasons I gave before.

Like I said, one cannot have a rational discussion with someone who insists on throwing deductive reasoning skills out the window on his whim.

Yet you accept Wikipedia???????

I chose T1 theory, something I have done classes on, to do my confidence check. What a mess! It is like a student went to a class and tried to explain it from his notes without ever grasping the subject. For example, they cover the subject of line codes fairly well but barely mention timing recovery, which is the entire reason for BnZS line codes. It also misidentifies the limit of consecutive zeros for AMI as 7 (the author was apparently confused by the B8ZS coding issue) whereas the spec is actually "no more than 15" as illustrated by the suite of test patterns that include

14 or 15 consecutive zeros. They describe "robbed bit signaling" so badly the description is mostly misleading. The list goes on and on; I considered offering corrections but large areas need deep re-writes to correct the conceptual structure, and on reflection I decided there was no point in straightening up one subject in a source I would be a fool to trust anyway.

I'm sure you are not competent to discern my level of education in particular fields, nor the intelligence or education of my associates, from any of the posts. Only in the post that followed your assumption did I identify the nature of the people around me, and I see you ignore that. Very well - I can't compete with your bigotry. If you are as educated as you claim, you have turned your back on it to fumble in the darkness.

Never once have you addressed my central point, the one I have made so many times in this thread and that others have at least taken intelligent whacks at - the sudden appearance of deep abstract thought in spite of having no obvious mechanism under natural selection.

I also oppose it being taught in science classes, even though I am aware more flighty stuff is being taught. However, the question of how abstract thought has suddenly appeared *is* a science question - maybe not one for children, but certainly for research. Just because we don't have an answer doesn't mean it is not a valid question. Again, it has nothing whatsoever to do with my religious beliefs... why can't you grasp that? You must set aside your preconceptions sometime.

No, I have never "thrown out deductive reasoning skills" any more than you have thrown out inductive reasoning skills. I simply say you misunderstand the role of deduction. I point out and have illustrated that deduction is so limited that it can't extend our knowledge; that is its design. Deductive reasoning works within what we know and goes no farther because the rules of deduction prevent it. If you misunderstand that it is certainly not for my lack of trying.

Mike

Looks real good, Remco! I think I was too hung up on the test choices being numeric, while in my heart I always suspected we couldn't factor out the soil resistance. So it *was* indeterminate with the info supplied!

There is one little thing still picking at my brain (maybe it's a parasite!) As you point out, the "inelastic collision" is important in that it allows us to conclude the combined masses had identical velocity after impact. I had become hung up on the thought that it might allow us to look for the intersection of conservation of momentum with conservation of energy, so I was looking at the energy loss in the "impedance mismatch" of the differing masses, but I got lost in the wilderness trying to make that work for me. Unless you see anything in there that could conceivably resolve R for us, I'm going to go with your "cipherin'" and declare you "Da Man!"

(At least I didn't do badly on the test otherwise. I scored something in the mid-90s while second place was in the 70s. Dang. An unanswerable question... that jes' ain't right!)

Mike

What a great mental image!

Now, that's ***really*** sick! I love it! (Except for the part about the Fury - why would God drive a Plymouth? [shudder])

Mike

I fear I'd simply end up making mistakes faster. I'm thinking of creating a new language: "teh" and "hte" translate to the English "the." In an ideal world keyboards would have spell checkers built into them.

Mike Donuts make me smarter. After I've had a couple, I know I shouldn't have. That is obviously *way* more than I knew before.

Yup, it would appear so. One needs to know R - it can't be zero/ignored.

Wow -- Thank you. Do they have an award of sorts for this to hang on the fridge? :)

As A side note, I like hanging things like this on the fridge: My wife actually /admitted/ to being wrong we had and, during a weak moment, agreed to sign a post-it note declaration to that effect. I had this hanging on the fridge for /years/. Other people might show off their tool collection, sound system or car, but that post it note was my pride and joy when we had visitors. :) That is, until we moved and it magically disappeared, never to be seen again...

Remco

"Michael Pardee" wrote

So far I have not seen an entry in Wikipedia that is any worse than a standard encyclopedia's entry.

Encyclopedia's are not supposed to contain every word possible about a subject, ya know. They're summaries.

Never heard of it, so I can't say whether your analysis is right or wrong.

Does the World Book Encyclopedia cover T1 theory any better? Or at all?

If not, I'd wager it's one of those arcane topics that few care about and so if one wants an authoritative discussion on it, one had better dig a lot more. And, yup, just by virtue of the fact I'd never heard of it, I know I should go beyond Wikipedia to read up on it.

You're eager to show you know something "special," aren't you?

You said I hadn't any data for my conclusion. So are you saying I have or have not read your posts.

Reponses like the last one of yours above is, again, why I don't give you much credit in the reasoning department.

nor the intelligence or education of my associates, from

Trying to reason with someone who is not strong in the reasoning department becomes too discouraging.

I did not have much incentive to try to separate your wheat from your chaff.

I mean, come on, throwing some high school physics problem into the fray? What's the point?

I'm a goddamn multi-degreed, multi-licensed, vastly experienced engineer, in both academia and what I'll call the real world. Textbook problems through the third year of college (never mind high school) are contrived and underwhelm. They're child's play and bear little relation to actual real life problems, except as alphabet building blocks or, ohmygod, to build deductive reasoning skills.

When do you claim "deep abstract thought" "suddenly appeared?

The simple fact that you dismiss deductive reasoning as a significant part of the scientific process (or, for that matter, almost any process involving rational communications) tells me all I need to know about your reasoning skills.

Again, both deductive and inductive reasoning are vital to science's progress.

The first evidence of abstract thought appears as cave art, about 30K years old, in France. I will allow that other cave art may have been obliterated or may not have been discovered so that the initial appearance of abstract thinking ability may be as much as 100K years ago, 10K generations.

On the rest of this, I'm calling it quits. I saw your post on a different subject (Hondas - I remember those!) and felt uneasy. I don't want that. You are a valuable contributor and I don't want to see hard feelings develop between us. We are becoming increasingly unimpressed with each other's reasoning/analytical abilities, and that serves no useful purpose. This thread (particularly our part of it) has generated far more smoke than light. I don't see a brighter future anywhere in it, and I invite you to have the last word.

All the best to you.

Mike

"Michael Pardee" wrote E wrote

Why is cave art the only way abstract thinking can occur?

Couldn't, say, people have danced out stories with abstract meanings?

Be accurate now: It's not the appearance of abstract thinking that was discovered. It was the _physical evidence_ of one form of abstract thinking that was discovered.

By the way, I hope you realize you're using deductive reasoning above to conclude that "deep abstract thought" suddenly appeared at a certain time. So the logic is sound, but the premise is flawed.

Likewise.

And may I say, FWIW, because I try to be honest, that your paragraph above does in fact show high intelligence on one level: The point of communications is to get along to promote a greater good. One should throw out one's ideas and critique others but be willing to move forward.

You have a lot of imagination and interests and maybe you just want to chatter and free associate about these. Lots of folks of course like such conversation. Me, I like to see a point. I go looking for Socratic exchanges or similar.

I appreciate that you agree ID theory (or was it creationism? or both?) shouldn't be taught in science classrooms.

I happen to feel that many of ID theories assertions are worthy fodder for discussion in philosophy, theology, etc. classes. Also, ID theory has some criticisms of evolution that of course have merit and should be addressed with scientific responses (or, really, the slow chiseling towards truths that scientific research constitutes). But bona fide scientists put forth these criticisms, first. No need to clothe them in ID theory, 'cause they don't belong to just ID theory.

The fact is not merely that science doesn't have all the answers, but as a deductive matter it can't have all the answers without a whole new paradigm for looking at existence--a paradigm that at the moment is imaginable only in a very abstract sense. Meaning its details cannot be described.

With enough queries of "Why?," eventually we find ourselves unable to respond. We just don't know.

So conjecture away. Even believe in god. That scientific studies in fact demonstrate that religious faith increases life expectancy is, by itself, one pithy an argument for believing in some sort of intelligent designer.

Good idea. I'm going with Calvin Klein. Or maybe Ralph Lauren, depending on which one gives me a longer life expectancy.

Or if not longer life, at least a well-dressed life...

Actually, I was expecting to evolve into a better-dressed person, but it hasn't happened yet. Guess that's a point in favor of ID? Or maybe it's just gonna take my family another few thousand generations before we have matching socks?

I am going to steal this notion and throw it in every ID theory proponent's face every change I get lol.

"Like hell we're going to teach Christian Dior in biology class! Those kids spend enough on clothes! There is nothing--nothing!--I tell you wrong with Wal-Mart blue jeans!"

They're all there, sure. Often they don't come out in the rihgt sqeuneec thuogh. ;-)

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then it's slow way down or take a typing class. although, many people seem to get some speed out of hunt and peck.