4 ms·

Agreed. After doing 2 years I left with a masters and never looked back. What is even scarier than the minuscule contributions you might make is the few that ha

Agreed. After doing 2 years I left with a masters and never looked back. What is even scarier than the minuscule contributions you might make is the few that have done anything but minuscule. Those people are amazingly smart. By the way, cats do like vacuums... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCzkm2z4-6g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCzkm2z4-6g

Widdershin 14y ago
That's the part of the article that stuck out to me. I mean, I used to have a lovely ginger cat who liked nothing more than to be vacuumed. I think that the author should ensure that his cat vacuuming experiments are more rigorous in future.
- iliis 14y ago
  Well, my cat gets scared to death by a vacuum cleaner. She darts out of the room as soon as it's turned on.
  - VLM 14y ago
    Its the motor noise. Once the cat is 20 years old and totally deaf (depends on breed...), I can verify the cat will love the vacuum cleaner. It feels like being brushed and massaged at the same time. I'm surprised day spas don't do this to humans. Needless to say this is using the hose and brush attachment, not the carpet beater.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      If the nozzle is too large, or the cat too skinny, it risks getting sucked into the machine. Fair enough the cat is scared. Cats don't do math either. Well, perhaps Schrödinger taught his cat, but I hear it had a sticky end. Nobody is really sure.
SilasX 14y ago
If they're so smart, why aren't they any better at bringing newcomers up to speed?
- omaranto 14y ago
  Some thing are hard no matter how you try to explain them. There's lots of stuff that seems to require working through it yourself to understand.
  - SilasX 14y ago
    Oh, I don't disagree; some topics are inherently intractable. It's just that, in all my experiences, the numbers are more like 1 truly intractable topic for every thousand that some expert will mistakenly claim is intractable simply because they haven't put the effort into tracing out the connections to other topics. The woman top row of this xkcd pretty much sums up my life: http://xkcd.com/566/ http://xkcd.com/566/
- thomaslee 14y ago
  Probably because it's hard to distill years of work connecting the dots (which at first don't appear to be connected in an obvious way) in a way that is easily digestable by somebody new to the field. In any case, I imagine there's more glory in digging further into intellectual stuff than spending time making it palatable for newbies. :)
- devb 14y ago
  It's the newcomers' faults, clearly.

Widdershin 14y ago

That's the part of the article that stuck out to me. I mean, I used to have a lovely ginger cat who liked nothing more than to be vacuumed. I think that the author should ensure that his cat vacuuming experiments are more rigorous in future.

iliis 14y ago
Well, my cat gets scared to death by a vacuum cleaner. She darts out of the room as soon as it's turned on.
- VLM 14y ago
  Its the motor noise. Once the cat is 20 years old and totally deaf (depends on breed...), I can verify the cat will love the vacuum cleaner. It feels like being brushed and massaged at the same time. I'm surprised day spas don't do this to humans. Needless to say this is using the hose and brush attachment, not the carpet beater.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    If the nozzle is too large, or the cat too skinny, it risks getting sucked into the machine. Fair enough the cat is scared. Cats don't do math either. Well, perhaps Schrödinger taught his cat, but I hear it had a sticky end. Nobody is really sure.

SilasX 14y ago

If they're so smart, why aren't they any better at bringing newcomers up to speed?

omaranto 14y ago
Some thing are hard no matter how you try to explain them. There's lots of stuff that seems to require working through it yourself to understand.
- SilasX 14y ago
  Oh, I don't disagree; some topics are inherently intractable. It's just that, in all my experiences, the numbers are more like 1 truly intractable topic for every thousand that some expert will mistakenly claim is intractable simply because they haven't put the effort into tracing out the connections to other topics. The woman top row of this xkcd pretty much sums up my life: http://xkcd.com/566/ http://xkcd.com/566/
thomaslee 14y ago
Probably because it's hard to distill years of work connecting the dots (which at first don't appear to be connected in an obvious way) in a way that is easily digestable by somebody new to the field. In any case, I imagine there's more glory in digging further into intellectual stuff than spending time making it palatable for newbies. :)
devb 14y ago
It's the newcomers' faults, clearly.