jacobolus

1135 ms·

1. 3721.▲
   by jacobolus 9y ago

   There exists interesting interactive technical software (not just glorified flash cards). For instance I can remember playing some puzzle game about optics circa 2000, and another about mechanical devices. I’ve never heard of such software
2. 3722.▲
   by jacobolus 9y ago

   Yeah, fair enough. TI has a very effective racket going, and a lot of people and institutions have bought into it wholesale, and the main marks are uninformed and easily pressured students and parents who think it will help lead to success.
3. 3723.▲
   by jacobolus 9y ago

   A calculator that can handle logarithms and trigonometric functions can be had for a few dollars second-hand (on ebay I see some for $3.50 with free shipping). Slide rules can be found at yard sales and flea markets for next to nothing.
4. 3724.▲
   by jacobolus 9y ago

   I got all the way through high school (AP calculus, etc., high school class of 2004) and through lots of technical courses in college without ever needing a graphing calculator, except once during the AP exam, and possibly once for an in-cl
5. 3725.▲
   by jacobolus 9y ago

   I don’t know whether there has been large-scale empirical testing of this, but anecdotally it sounds plausible. I can typically have a deeper and more efficient knowledge-sharing conversation about some technical topic 1:1 than 1:4 (e.g. in
6. 3726.▲
   by jacobolus 9y ago

   That’s precisely the point. Having a fear of people who you haven’t heavily interacted with, when wandering about in public in highly trafficked spaces, is irrational, because the risks are vanishingly small. I’ve e.g. personally watched a
7. 3727.▲
   by jacobolus 9y ago

   There are people talking about it, but there’s enough profit and personal identity at stake that it’s hard to have real society-wide conversations about what we really want to value as a society. There exist countries where automobile death
8. 3728.▲
   by jacobolus 9y ago

   I should say that homicide and suicide by gun are causes of death #2 and #3 for that age group (the order of the two is different between 15–25 vs. 25–35 year olds). Successful suicide rate is notably higher in places chock full of guns. Wh
9. 3729.▲
   by jacobolus 9y ago

   People die in huge numbers in very violent automobile accidents. For young people in the US (15–35), the leading causes of death are car accidents and gunshots (homicide, suicide, accidents). Most physical violence (assault, murder, rape, .
10. 3730.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    I recommend you read http://toomandre.com/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf
11. 3731.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    > we deliberately used old "hard science" (math, physics, chemistry) textbooks from 70'-80', because they were much more advance level than modern ones. The same is generally true in the USA. I’d recommend going bac
12. 3732.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    Your link is about an entirely different format of debate (“policy debate”) from the one under discussion in this thread (“parliamentary debate”). The two are unrecognizably different. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki&
13. 3733.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    You could try Polya’s How to Solve It , and follow up with Schoenfeld’s Mathematical Problem Solving (which cites a lot of other material). These are rather focused on problem solving per se, and don’t really discuss larger-scale strateg
14. 3734.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    Moreover, as people practice, they can get generically better at meta-skills such as (in no particular order) skimming, close reading, constructing mental outlines of arguments, drawing diagrams and pictures, inventing examples to match giv
15. 3735.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    I don’t understand what you think my point is or what I am “pretending”, but you’re answering something different than anything I have argued. These tests are very clearly learnable, and nobody said anything about “lost causes” or “innate t
16. 3736.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    Believe it or not, there exist people who can skim for key points, make fast mental diagrams, “instantly recognize” what task is being asked, and quickly solve a wide variety of standardized test questions of types they have not explicitly
17. 3737.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    I know a guy (with BA in physics) who almost aced the LSAT going in cold (i.e. had never seen a practice test), on a dare, without any intention of becoming a lawyer. At some point a decade ago I was vaguely curious to try the same, but not
18. 3738.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    The 'product' is expected bank profit.
19. 3739.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    I don't think so. 'Language' per se is inherently abstract-symbolic and serial. Other types of thought rely on non-symbolic types of metaphor, often quite concrete ones, and on more graph-like connections between ideas. Somet
20. 3740.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    Those sweet sweet neurotoxic solvent smells. Also provide a nice dizzy feeling, as a bonus feature.
21. 3741.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    Leaded solder is actually generally better for your health (just don’t eat it). The unleaded stuff has really nasty flux, and requires much higher temperatures, meaning the fumes are quite a bit worse. Make sure you have very good ventilati
22. 3742.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    Folks interested in the history should read Rosemary Sassoon’s book Handwriting of the Twentieth Century . It mainly focuses on England, but is quite comprehensive and America and other countries writing in Latin scripts are also discussed
23. 3743.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    Your video link just shows the common lattice method for writing the standard multiplication algorithm, used since at least the 1200s by Arabs and common around the world ever since. Napier's bones is a physical artifact, which tries t
24. 3744.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    Low doses of alcohol are a very effective anxiolytic medicine for many people. I don’t drink too much, but when I’m extremely stressed out (e.g. when enraged, extremely scared, in shock, etc. to the point of being unable to use higher brain
25. 3745.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    We are talking about high school students (14-18 years old), playing tackle football, with all the helmet bashing (and concussions, if you read the article) that entails. Many of these kids weigh 250+ lbs and hit each-other hard on every pl
26. 3746.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    There were several waves of smallpox, influenza, measles, mumps, typhus, cholera, bubonic plague, tuberculosis, yellow fever, whooping cough, etc., which ran rampant through the Americas, often simultaneously ripping through the same commun
27. 3747.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    I would guess that even in northern Europe there has probably been a substantial reduction of kids’ roaming distance and time spent unsupervised compared to 2 or 3 generations ago. This seems to be a worldwide trend (if not to the same exte
28. 3748.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    This is why it’s tragic to have the primary public gathering spaces be privately owned and controlled with little insight or accountability from the public, only accessible by car and therefore cut off from the rest of the community by an o
29. 3749.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    I’d put the number at much higher than 25%. And not just “tech” knowhow, but knowhow about any subject, whether that is archaeology, law, clothing production, journalism, astrophysics, or web programming. Schools are in general pretty bad a
30. 3750.▲
    by jacobolus 9y ago

    Pointing out that poor people (especially poor ethnic minorities) have cellphones and TVs and that many have trouble finding and holding jobs without doing any further investigation of people’s circumstances or any attempt at empathy is a f