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Natalie Portman - Scientist

nytimes.com

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Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#161

Post by geden »

mv wrote: post #125
cdavoren wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is backed up by medical knowledge. It has been repeatedly shown that metabolism varies very little between people when corrected for body mass. What does vary considerably is appetite, and this is the major contributor to body weight.

Do not say 'backed up by medical knowledge' unless you plan on citing sources. I don't have much time right now, but I did find a good starting point: http://www.ajcn.org/content/53/6/1561S.abstract "In this regard, the proneness to store energy primarily as fat or as lean tissue is a major determinant of the response to a caloric surplus." Also: http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v8/n7/abs/oby200063a.html Talks about…

It's not so very hard to understand. Historically people used (and still use) 'differences' as a reason to enslave, murder and other wise subjugate tens of millions of other humans.

So there is a backlash against that. Thankfully. And along the way, in the push back, facts may get lost. Fact's that really, in the context of war, were not helpful.

And now humanity's leading edge seems to be becoming comfortable with that fact we are all different and actually kind of the same and are accommodating of wonderful multiplicity.

Whilst watching the shadow aspects of our egos, in case they come out to grandstand.

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#162

Post by nicpottier »

zavulon wrote: post #55
burgerbrain wrote: post #6

I find this articles lack of hot grits disturbing.

I scrolled all the way to the bottom of the comments, getting more and more depressed thinking as I'm the only old codger who remembers this meme. I am happy to find out I'm not the only one!

Ya, I did the same, and upvoted the comment when I saw it.

Would love to see the battle of votes on that comment. But sheesh, isn't it ok to have a little fun now and then. I mean it is even kinda on topic. :)

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#163

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

eru wrote: post #160
RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I yet may do just that. I have, at various times, had speculative versions running around in my head. Recently a good colleague of mine died very suddenly. I realised that there was so much I had wanted to ask him about, and never got the chance. Last year I got to spend an afternoon with one of my childhood - and adulthood - heroes. That was just 2 months before he died. If you put up a piece of A0 paper marked off…

Please post about your progress.

If there is any, I will.

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#164

Post by mryall »

nostrademons wrote: post #148
richcollins wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that too until I moved to San Francisco and started meeting people that consistently see things that I miss. It wasn't that they had more domain knowledge or worked harder, it was that they were just better at seeing remotely connected things.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they're innately smarter than you. When I first moved out to Silicon Valley and started working at Google, I met lots of people that consistently saw things that I missed. Even ones who didn't have as much experience as I did, at least in terms of year-as-a-computer-programmer. Now that I've been here a couple years, I've found that I'm consistently seeing things that other people a…

> Rather, I've accumulated lots more domain knowledge. ... And if you have that domain knowledge, ... it seems like you're massively smarter than everyone else.

It's interesting many traditional software companies seem to promote the idea of "subject matter experts" (SMEs) as a key part of their software development process. Although I think the concept of SMEs is somewhat flawed, the idea that domain knowledge is vitally important becomes more clear to me the longer I spend working in a particular area. You can't be an effective developer in any industry unless you work on building up your domain expertise.

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#166

Post by jhamburger »

btrask wrote: post #91
jhamburger wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't reality. The genetic factors of intelligence are well documented. I could have played basketball six hours a day, every day for the last 25 years, and I'd be really really good. But I wouldn't be as good as Lebron James was when he was 12 years old.

You'd probably be better than most other basketball players. If you want to be the best in the world, it's true that factors outside of your control come into play. If you can "settle" for being in the top 10, top 100, or top 1000, instead of #1, you probably don't need much besides a lot of well-directed effort. In my experience.

There's a guy who went to my college, Jared Jordan- Fairly nondescript athlete, 6'2 slow white guy. Basketball is basically his life, worked his ass off more than anyone and studied the game to the point where he knows it more than the coaches do. He was drafted in the 2nd round of the NBA draft a few years ago, never made any teams' roster. All the scouts said the same thing- absolutely no upside. Now he's playing in Europe. That is about the ceiling of what you can do without being 'gifted'.

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#167

Post by acconrad »

scotty79 wrote: post #121
acconrad wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this image ( http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KMqOPeCgoT0/S_ABM6dl-II/AAAAAAAAF0... ) atop a radiantly-colorful meme backdrop, a la Courage Wolf, with such sayings as "I Just Divided By Zero" and "Maybe You Should Have Kept Your Documents in the Cloud, Tesla"

Do it. Seriously. I want to see that meme.

http://images1.memegenerator.net/ImageMacro/6023626/I-can-di...

http://images2.memegenerator.net/ImageMacro/6023659/Maybe-yo...

Re: Natalie Portman - Scientist

#168

Post by ori_b »

wtallis wrote: post #137
westicle wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of both taking a cheap shot and perpetuating an industry stereotype, I haven't encountered too many geographically genius-level taxi drivers in my city. I'm just happy if they have a GPS navigation system and can vaguely understand the directions issued from same.

You probably don't live in London, then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#... When taxi drivers are required to demonstrate a deep knowledge of the geography of their area and are not allowed to rely on maps or GPS navigation systems in order to be certified, you end up with taxi drivers that are very good at navigating the city.

Now, you're adding a very strong element of filtering to the process, and you can't really make any statements about how big of a component of the ability to navigate is learned.
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