6 ms·

We need to "gamify" this research. Farmville carrot-growers could be solving humanity's greatest problem! (I'm totally serious)

quizbiz 15y ago
So whats the first step? An open source engine on github?
itmag 15y ago
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/8684955-gamers-create-scientific-recipes http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/8684955-game...
possibilistic 15y ago
I'm a computational biochemistry student, and I don't think this is possible. We can gamify protein folding because this is a well-understood, well-characterized problem. What we don't have the slightest clue about is how to restore original cell state, eg. rid cells of aggregate intracellular waste, repair non-trivial DNA damage, restore the extracellular metabolome, etc. I think we should stop funding/granting scholarships to liberal arts majors. Let them become STEM majors.
- ebiester 15y ago
  There are really intelligent people out there who could never pass a calculus class, much less thermodynamics. Do you want them in your program taking up all the time of the teacher, stopping those proficient in math from getting the education they deserve?
  - timwiseman 15y ago
    It seems people get better at what they practice. I suspect anyone (barring genuine mental disability of some kind) could master calculus and thermodynamics if they were sufficiently motivated.
  - pm90 15y ago
    this is exactly what happens in most Indian engineering Universities, unfortunately...believe me, you never, ever want to be in that situation
  - hessenwolf 15y ago
    No there aren't; that's daft. What are you basing that on? Sure, it might be less easy for some than others, and less motivating, but if they can learn A, they can learn B and vice versa.
    - ebiester 15y ago
      I'm basing it on both my time as a math tutor for Pima Community College and on people I have known. People like my mother who, if she can quantify the data she can effectively do algebra, but as soon as X and Y appear she shuts down. She cannot make the jump to the abstract thinking of math, and it curtailed her ability to go back to college. It didn't help that her math teacher in 9th grade told her that she would never be good at math, much like many women from poor backgrounds. (I have no study, only the experience in tutoring on how many women said that a teacher told them not to bother, and could never make it over that hump.) Now you say that it's merely psychological for them and that they could. I'm telling you that for as much work as some of these people I tutored put in, they had a mental block that they simply could not overcome, fighting their way to a C in college algebra so they could get to where they're going. I can give as an example my boyfriend, who can speak and teach two languages better than most people here can in their native language, and is a promising Ph.D candidate in his program. He worked for a month straight (with my help) to raise his GRE math to a minimum score. His limit may be calculus, but certainly not higher math, and not upper level sciences. Yet I have seen this man wake up, read, write, sleep, and repeat for weeks straight. He's a gifted writer and academic, but even if he could muddle through (say...) managed information systems, he'd never be more than mediocre because his brain simply does not work that way. (He still asks for help with his Mac.) Square peg, round hole. It doesn't benefit those who have a passion for the sciences to put him and dozens of others in the same class, wearing down the professor because they struggle to grasp concepts that future scientists understood in fifth grade.
      - hessenwolf 15y ago
        1. I worked for a few years in the remedial math centre for mature students in my university, and one of my best friends did his doctorate in teaching mature students mathematics. Based on my experience, had I taken your attitude then I would have just not shown up for work. 2. I disagree that it doesn't benefit the stronger students. It was awfully hard for me to learn to teach mathematics, because I had never really had to learn it in a step by step way myself. However, when I did learn to teach an area, my understanding was orders of magnitude higher because I had the understanding of somebody gifted in the area but the method and the attention to detail of somebody who has learned it the hard way. If you mix classes with high and low skilled students, you just have to make sure you rely on the high skilled students as a teaching resource.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- rquantz 15y ago
  And what do you propose we do with our long lives without literature and the arts?
  - herdrick 15y ago
    Studying art and literature isn't the same as creating it.
    - anigbrowl 15y ago
      Studying engineering isn't the same as innovating, but you accept that people need to know the field first. the same is true for other fields, even if the domain knowledge isn't obvious to you.
      - rat87 15y ago
        What about editing, critiquing, or writing pop novels(perhaps somewhat equivalent to overseeing new devices or just engineering common devices). That also needs to get done.
      - herdrick 15y ago
        Can you point to some great artists and writers who studied art history or literature? I agree that formal study and practice of music (not the same as studying music history btw) has lead to a lot of great music.
- brettnak 15y ago
  Isn't the whole point of STEM to better the human experience? Without the liberal arts, I would argue there wouldn't be much of a human experience.
  - mattgreenrocks 15y ago
    Without the humanities, I'm not a big fan of the human experience. And I say that as someone who quite enjoys STEM. There's a lifetime of wonderful experience to be had outside of STEM.
    - possibilistic 15y ago
      My argument is that we have a surplus of humanities majors and the funding for them is disproportional to our basic need to advance scientific knowledge. Additionally, we must remain competitive with other countries that realize that STEM is the way to economic dominance. The humanities are subjects that can be explored at home by anyone who has the luxury of free time. While I admit that a hand-holding professor can help you traverse the field quicker and lead you to insight that would be difficult to divine on your own, there are books and audio lectures that can do the same job. And what's stopping anyone from joining a mailing list on the topic of interest? Even "big" art projects pale in comparison to the funding requirements of basic science research. We need to make sure every lab is fully-stocked with not only minds, but the latest equipment necessary to keep pace with the advancements being made at the top institutions.
  - tryitnow 15y ago
    The commenter did not say kill the liberal arts, he said to stop funding them. Many of the best thinkers and artists I know are self taught. Liberal arts costs a lot less to learn and teach than most STEN subjects. Liberal arts should be clearly defined as a leisure activity, one that everyone has a right to, but not something that we should subsidize at the expense of advances in human health. You can enjoy the liberal arts if you're dead. It's just a matter of priorities.
    - _delirium 15y ago
eurleif 15y ago
Unless we're just talking about adding an aspect of fun to research so existing scientists enjoy their work more (or tend to pursue it more eagerly, etc.), a necessary but insufficient condition for gamification is simplicity; and if we can find a way to break complex research down into tasks that are simple enough for almost anyone to complete, why not just underpay people on Mturk to do it and skip having to make it fun?
tripzilch 15y ago
Not living to (say) 150 is humanity's greatest problem?? And you're serious?? Ever stop to think of world hunger? Malnutrition still is the global leading cause of mortality in the world. And you're arguing to crowdsource a solution to aging which is supposedly "humanity's greatest problem" because us first-worlders can't live to 150, because having their genes fortified (or whatever) most certainly is not going to do much good for those that simply can't get enough nutrients. This is only a problem to that tiny privileged part of humanity that has no worries whatsoever about the two lowest levels of the Hierarchy of Needs. And you must be well aware which side of the fence you're on, how many there are suffering on the other side, and you have the gall to pose THIS as humanity's greatest problem? No. I don't easily use a "but the starving kids in Africa have it so much worse" argument, except in this case it's directly relevant. And don't get me wrong, I'm not against longevity research, cancer research or any kind of medical advances but at least they don't fucking claim they're solving a greater problem than fucking World Hunger.
- reasonattlm 15y ago
  Aging kills something of the order of 100,000 people every day, about twice as many people as all other causes put together: hunger, violence, accidents, etc. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outrage-1.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outra... The majority of those deaths are amongst the poor. Aging also causes great suffering for hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. The majority of those people are also poor - the poor suffer far more greatly than the wealthy because of degenerative aging due to their comparative lack of access to what palliative treatments do exist. If not for aging, the poor might have a far better chance of bettering their lot in life - they'd have no imposed time limit on working their way out of poverty, no need for large families to support them in their old age, and so forth. So your hair shirt view of the world is completely wrong. Aging is the greatest problem, and like all universal problems falls most heavily on the poor.
  - DennisP 15y ago
    That's an interesting point about large families...birth rates would probably fall pretty dramatically. Another potential benefit is that really long-lived people might take a longer-term view on other problems. It'd probably change the global warming debate pretty significantly, for example, if everybody right now had a life expectancy of a thousand.

quizbiz 15y ago

So whats the first step? An open source engine on github?

itmag 15y ago

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/8684955-gamers-create-scientific-recipes http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/8684955-game...

possibilistic 15y ago

I'm a computational biochemistry student, and I don't think this is possible. We can gamify protein folding because this is a well-understood, well-characterized problem. What we don't have the slightest clue about is how to restore original cell state, eg. rid cells of aggregate intracellular waste, repair non-trivial DNA damage, restore the extracellular metabolome, etc. I think we should stop funding/granting scholarships to liberal arts majors. Let them become STEM majors.

ebiester 15y ago
There are really intelligent people out there who could never pass a calculus class, much less thermodynamics. Do you want them in your program taking up all the time of the teacher, stopping those proficient in math from getting the education they deserve?
- timwiseman 15y ago
  It seems people get better at what they practice. I suspect anyone (barring genuine mental disability of some kind) could master calculus and thermodynamics if they were sufficiently motivated.
- pm90 15y ago
  this is exactly what happens in most Indian engineering Universities, unfortunately...believe me, you never, ever want to be in that situation
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  No there aren't; that's daft. What are you basing that on? Sure, it might be less easy for some than others, and less motivating, but if they can learn A, they can learn B and vice versa.
  - ebiester 15y ago
    I'm basing it on both my time as a math tutor for Pima Community College and on people I have known. People like my mother who, if she can quantify the data she can effectively do algebra, but as soon as X and Y appear she shuts down. She cannot make the jump to the abstract thinking of math, and it curtailed her ability to go back to college. It didn't help that her math teacher in 9th grade told her that she would never be good at math, much like many women from poor backgrounds. (I have no study, only the experience in tutoring on how many women said that a teacher told them not to bother, and could never make it over that hump.) Now you say that it's merely psychological for them and that they could. I'm telling you that for as much work as some of these people I tutored put in, they had a mental block that they simply could not overcome, fighting their way to a C in college algebra so they could get to where they're going. I can give as an example my boyfriend, who can speak and teach two languages better than most people here can in their native language, and is a promising Ph.D candidate in his program. He worked for a month straight (with my help) to raise his GRE math to a minimum score. His limit may be calculus, but certainly not higher math, and not upper level sciences. Yet I have seen this man wake up, read, write, sleep, and repeat for weeks straight. He's a gifted writer and academic, but even if he could muddle through (say...) managed information systems, he'd never be more than mediocre because his brain simply does not work that way. (He still asks for help with his Mac.) Square peg, round hole. It doesn't benefit those who have a passion for the sciences to put him and dozens of others in the same class, wearing down the professor because they struggle to grasp concepts that future scientists understood in fifth grade.
    - hessenwolf 15y ago
      1. I worked for a few years in the remedial math centre for mature students in my university, and one of my best friends did his doctorate in teaching mature students mathematics. Based on my experience, had I taken your attitude then I would have just not shown up for work. 2. I disagree that it doesn't benefit the stronger students. It was awfully hard for me to learn to teach mathematics, because I had never really had to learn it in a step by step way myself. However, when I did learn to teach an area, my understanding was orders of magnitude higher because I had the understanding of somebody gifted in the area but the method and the attention to detail of somebody who has learned it the hard way. If you mix classes with high and low skilled students, you just have to make sure you rely on the high skilled students as a teaching resource.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
rquantz 15y ago
And what do you propose we do with our long lives without literature and the arts?
- herdrick 15y ago
  Studying art and literature isn't the same as creating it.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    Studying engineering isn't the same as innovating, but you accept that people need to know the field first. the same is true for other fields, even if the domain knowledge isn't obvious to you.
    - rat87 15y ago
      What about editing, critiquing, or writing pop novels(perhaps somewhat equivalent to overseeing new devices or just engineering common devices). That also needs to get done.
    - herdrick 15y ago
      Can you point to some great artists and writers who studied art history or literature? I agree that formal study and practice of music (not the same as studying music history btw) has lead to a lot of great music.
brettnak 15y ago
Isn't the whole point of STEM to better the human experience? Without the liberal arts, I would argue there wouldn't be much of a human experience.
- mattgreenrocks 15y ago
  Without the humanities, I'm not a big fan of the human experience. And I say that as someone who quite enjoys STEM. There's a lifetime of wonderful experience to be had outside of STEM.
  - possibilistic 15y ago
    My argument is that we have a surplus of humanities majors and the funding for them is disproportional to our basic need to advance scientific knowledge. Additionally, we must remain competitive with other countries that realize that STEM is the way to economic dominance. The humanities are subjects that can be explored at home by anyone who has the luxury of free time. While I admit that a hand-holding professor can help you traverse the field quicker and lead you to insight that would be difficult to divine on your own, there are books and audio lectures that can do the same job. And what's stopping anyone from joining a mailing list on the topic of interest? Even "big" art projects pale in comparison to the funding requirements of basic science research. We need to make sure every lab is fully-stocked with not only minds, but the latest equipment necessary to keep pace with the advancements being made at the top institutions.
- tryitnow 15y ago
  The commenter did not say kill the liberal arts, he said to stop funding them. Many of the best thinkers and artists I know are self taught. Liberal arts costs a lot less to learn and teach than most STEN subjects. Liberal arts should be clearly defined as a leisure activity, one that everyone has a right to, but not something that we should subsidize at the expense of advances in human health. You can enjoy the liberal arts if you're dead. It's just a matter of priorities.
  - _delirium 15y ago

eurleif 15y ago

Unless we're just talking about adding an aspect of fun to research so existing scientists enjoy their work more (or tend to pursue it more eagerly, etc.), a necessary but insufficient condition for gamification is simplicity; and if we can find a way to break complex research down into tasks that are simple enough for almost anyone to complete, why not just underpay people on Mturk to do it and skip having to make it fun?

tripzilch 15y ago

Not living to (say) 150 is humanity's greatest problem?? And you're serious?? Ever stop to think of world hunger? Malnutrition still is the global leading cause of mortality in the world. And you're arguing to crowdsource a solution to aging which is supposedly "humanity's greatest problem" because us first-worlders can't live to 150, because having their genes fortified (or whatever) most certainly is not going to do much good for those that simply can't get enough nutrients. This is only a problem to that tiny privileged part of humanity that has no worries whatsoever about the two lowest levels of the Hierarchy of Needs. And you must be well aware which side of the fence you're on, how many there are suffering on the other side, and you have the gall to pose THIS as humanity's greatest problem? No. I don't easily use a "but the starving kids in Africa have it so much worse" argument, except in this case it's directly relevant. And don't get me wrong, I'm not against longevity research, cancer research or any kind of medical advances but at least they don't fucking claim they're solving a greater problem than fucking World Hunger.

reasonattlm 15y ago
Aging kills something of the order of 100,000 people every day, about twice as many people as all other causes put together: hunger, violence, accidents, etc. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outrage-1.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2002/12/death-is-an-outra... The majority of those deaths are amongst the poor. Aging also causes great suffering for hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. The majority of those people are also poor - the poor suffer far more greatly than the wealthy because of degenerative aging due to their comparative lack of access to what palliative treatments do exist. If not for aging, the poor might have a far better chance of bettering their lot in life - they'd have no imposed time limit on working their way out of poverty, no need for large families to support them in their old age, and so forth. So your hair shirt view of the world is completely wrong. Aging is the greatest problem, and like all universal problems falls most heavily on the poor.
- DennisP 15y ago
  That's an interesting point about large families...birth rates would probably fall pretty dramatically. Another potential benefit is that really long-lived people might take a longer-term view on other problems. It'd probably change the global warming debate pretty significantly, for example, if everybody right now had a life expectancy of a thousand.