Viewing profile — truculation

>I do wish folks who’ve never had to navigate the internal landscape of a body would stop offering their opinions on how one should learn it. I'm not recommending we end the use of…

Eww. I suspect that in the computer age the enduring value of dissecting dead bodies is that it's even more repulsive than cutting open live bodies (which trainee medics will have …

>Of course, we know that today the Luddites are not viewed particularly kindly On the contrary, it is technology and progress that are viewed with scepticism -- watch almost any re…

>The sense we have that someone is fit generally comes from their posture. Exceptions I've noted are joggers with hunched shoulders, splayed feet, leaping too high off the ground, …

It's a reason why some people become social cynics, I think, and this reason is represented in their brains. However they may not be able to articulate it, partly because they need…

No doubt, but consider that some people will then become cynical about society in order to become freeloaders. (Rather as in Upton Sinclair's famous quote: 'It is difficult to get …

Debate and criticism are defence , it seems to me; their value lies in averting heartache and war. For the purpose of changing the world, the ultimate argument is to create somethi…

Rainbow theme music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJsaujSs7Fw

Are mirror neurons really a thing? Why can't the neurons which govern my arm be used to help predict the actions of other people's arms?

My idea of middle-class existence is a thrifty but relatively happy family life with an emphasis on education. The budget could vary enormously depending on how this is implemented…

Thanks! Took me a minute to work out which planet was which (Jupiter being the one just outside the 'belt').

Superb stuff. On a more mundane level I hope we'll soon also have a chart of all the asteroids in our solar system (to the most realistic extent possible).

Yes and it's not just at work: most of us feel we should fill every hour of our non-working lives with activities . Especially our kids' lives (no wonder people are having fewer ki…

Yep, high speed can definitely ruin a wheel(!): https://twitter.com/machinepix/status/969654857895301120

If the sci-fi I've been reading lately is any guide, one of the greatest threats to humans in stasis will be sabotage by ideological fanatics.

In another sense, 'Goodhart' seems like a splendid cosmic coincidence. Instead of obsessing over targets, try to perceive the whole system. And who can do that? Good-hearted indivi…

Feynman again, on the topic of prizes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEUcmKDaklY So the real prize is seeing one's work used by others in their work.

The way I see it. Exams can check recall of facts, names, definitions. Also skill at identifying narrow classes of problems (which resemble facts) and extracting them from unrealis…

>stupid gimmick like anti-suicide ceiling fan Yep. It matters less apparently if millions of people wander around feeling suicidal as long as they don't actually commit suicide. Fo…

The ridiculous thing is that exams are irrational: they don't measure knowledge and ability, i.e. they don't measure what they purport to measure. It makes the societal scale suffe…

>we have largely moved away from some of the nastier edges of "traditional" parenting, with good reason Corporal punishment, you mean. Yes. However we've regressed in at least one …

>if by “intention” you mean “clumsily projected attitude”. Nah, just intention. For example, teaching children arithmetic with great moral seriousness, as we do, doesn't produce gr…

>Are you saying you or anyone else is equipped to be a decent parent just because you were a child and maybe had a parent? Yes. I think that, as things stand, good parenting is lar…

Fine, as long as you accept that the main purpose of reading a story aloud is to relax and enjoy the story together rather than to develop skills. Just as the main purpose of lego …