tassl

Just to be precise, while his feat is incredible, you can't really make this correlation with the WR in 200m (any age), and even less use the absolute difference. The main reason is that the pool of people able to participate is way smaller as age increases.

Also, you are using outdoor times as a reference (the best time for indoor 200m is 19.92, Frankie Fredericks). Frankie Fredericks is the only person that ran 200m indoors under 20 seconds.

And I am extremely impressed by the feat that this man just did; most people would be happy to just reach 95; and those that do reach 95, being able to walk.

Thanks for your answer! I guess I would have to be more precise :)

My intent is to have a technical role in the space, not a management one. I can imagine how most of the problems facing require machine learning and statistics, so I am more interested on how to complement these skills to be able to transition into an space that fascinates me.

I have always been interested on life-extension with a focus on healthy life. My background is mainly engineering (computer science, mechanical engineering) with focus on machine learning and statistics.

I was thinking on taking some graduate program that would help the transition in this kind of companies; does anybody knows a university/program that would help? I have checked some graduate bioinformatics, but I am not sure what would be more helpful in the long term.

Any idea/suggestion?

>It saddens me that modern scientists are such cynics. History has proven that "impossible" is just a point of view and that many things widely believed to be impossible in the past are completely doable.

Science is based on skepticism, you can't believe something just because somebody tells you to or because you hope it is true, and you can't trust all sources of information. This is why there is a system (we can admit it is improvable) where experts on a certain area review the quality and reproducibility of a work to ensure it reaches a certain/minimum level.

Obviously, something that we consider true today can be accepted as false tomorrow (even though usually in science more than false, the change is to not complete). And that's precisely the power of science.

I would add "The cleanest race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Cleanest-Race-Themselves-ebook/dp/...).

I have been reading about North Korea for a while, and I find this book to open a new perspective on the way north korean people see themselves and their leaders. While I haven't had the pleasure to meet any person born and raised in North Korean (or at least, not as far as I know) I find that some of the contents of the book can be applied to South Koreans. Obviously, only up to a certain degree.

Previous discussion on NK:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5817014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3368310

I think it is a pretty fair question, even though I am not entirely sure of what is the definition of minority on this matter. What is the percentage of people that the system should take care of? There are always outliers for which this (or any) transportation will never be a possibility.

Now, I am sure that some variations on the system (have one row with only one chair for obese or no chair to allow people with wheelchair) would increase the % of people that can use the hyperloop.

I think he was being sarcastic on how buying somebody drinks is considered socially ok (even expected on some countries).

> more about the fact that a huge amount of human potential is being wasted in India.

I think your text would make more sense by using "the world" instead of restricting to "India".

I have thought multiple times about the quantity of great people that could be having a great impact in our lives and are "missing". We have examples all over our history (islamic mathematics, old greeks,...) of different civilizations that accomplished huge achievements with smaller populations.

Obviously, I don't think that there is a genetic factor for certain ethnics to be more intelligent, but we still see how jews (13-14 million?) are on top of the Nobel Prizes on science, while arabic contribution is symbolic. The same prizes a few centuries ago would have a completely different destination.

The current distribution of Nobel Prizes surely shocks me more than seeing some Indian IT people on top of great companies (1 billion). Not to remove merit from the individuals, but from the system; I have always thought that there is something more in a person than the results of a "simple" exam.

These numbers are highly exaggerated. For example, the largest christian church has more than 1 billion members (member=baptized) and I don't think that currently there is any way of officially leaving the church after being baptized...

I find it (a bit) ironic that the WikiLeaks lawyer that is giving legal advice to Snowden is Baltasar Garzon, who was suspended for improper eavesdropping.

*As a clarification, this suspension was mostly political, being Spain one of the most corrupt countries in Europe and with a dark and terrible past due the dictatorship that ended 37 years ago. Garzon tried to investigate the crimes committed by Franco (related to the right wind in Spain) and a few years later he was judging a corruption case (called Gürtel), which lead to his suspension.

Can you point to some (respected) publications on the field that can prove cognitive enhancement?

After studying in both Spain and US, I can only say that this is correct (even though I did undergrad in Spain and grad studies in the US I think I have a pretty good idea of how the undergraduate studies work in the US).

Spain has a (more) specialized system in the undergraduate studies, even though it has been shifted lately (with the much hated Bologna process) to a brad system. Prior to the instauration of the Bologna process, an undergraduate student in Spain had two options:

- 1st cycle: 3 years of undergrad. I would say that it was pretty much equivalent to the undergrad in the US, but focusing only in courses relevant to the major. - 2nd cycle: 5 years of undergrad. This is (at least in STEM, the area I know) similar to a undergrad+master in the US (Even though in the US are only considered as a normal undergrad).

It depends on the university; some have a small number of credits that you can/should spend on things separated from your major (even in some cases sports), other have nothing similar to that and 100% of the credits are relevant.

Currently the educational system in Spain is slightly different after trying to merge it with the rest of the educational systems in Europe. In most cases the change has been seen as a shift into an educational system where students are less prepared and have to pay a more expensive Master (after the undergrad) to receive the same education they received with an undergrad years ago.

I am not going to argue against vaccination (which seems to be the target of a lot of conspiration theories), but I am really interested on where are the limits of this logic: are we going to "use" only vaccination or any factor that might/could increase the chances of getting somebody else sick?

Not really commenting on your appreciation (I don't really know the details of Clinton-Bush-Obama's politiques on electric/hydrogen automobiles) but in the university where I studied some of my department-mates were working on fuel cells and their applications.

One of the most interesting (for me) applications was hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and I could talk with some of the students involved in that research about the current state of the technology. I was also fortunate enough to test one of the vehicles they were using. While I still don't know the technical details, they mentioned that the main reason the technology is not yet available (I think Toyota wants to have an hybrid by the end of 2015) was the lack of investment or the shift of investment to battery powered vehicles.

What was more interesting to me is that the difference between an electric car and a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is basically the source of energy used. With that I don't mean the technology if fully ready; as far as I know there are still concerns beyond logistics (for example, temperature problems, security...) but I would say those are part of the novelty of a technology.

It has always puzzled me why a professor would be willing to repeat the answers from previous years. Some account that people that work "harder" would be solving previous exams, but this is given that the exams are available to all the class (which is a prerequisite for this argument to be true).

I've found myself in classes where a group had exams, problem sets and other information from previous years (and solved) and they hid and refused to share those.

The same thing than purchasing something at 3am. Those are only behaviors associated with higher chances of fraud. With the models they work p(fraud|prepaid_card) > p(fraud|!prepaid_card)

Humans lifespan was that low since the high mortality rate the first months of life. After the first years, the expected lifespan increased dramatically. A humans need a few years to be able to reproduce and those who were able to have a longer lifespan. Even if the dogs didn't improve their lifespans (which honestly, I doubt they didn't) we are still in a similar ratio.

> I love to re-examine common knowledge we all take for granted as much as anyone, but there are good, scientific reasons people say "eat lots of whole grains"

Most of the studies you would find are observational studies made comparing processed grains vs whole grains. It seems obvious between those two choices the option with more vitamins/minerals is going to be healthier.

10K years hasn't been enough for cats, apparently. Plus, the lifespan of a dog is ~7 times shorter than the lifespan of a man, which will give them at least 7 generations more to adapt.

Obviously there has been some adaptation to the change of diet, and it is also obvious that this diet was not letal to human (or nobody would have adopt it), but this does not implies that it is optimal for human consumption. Most people in my region are not lactose intolerant... but do you know what? I threw up every time that my mother had me drink a glass of milk because it was "healthy" and good for my bones. If adaptation depends that much between humans (the % of lactose intolerant or lactase persistent is not the same in the US than in China or Africa, for example), trying to correlate anything with animals seem completely off to me.

Our habits, the way of living, having computers, cars, houses, roads... is killing more animals in quantity and variety (and in a more cruel and irremediable way) than they're killed for food.

Everybody in this thread, giving the "right" conditions would kill/eat any kind of animal (I would go farther and include humans [1]). At the end, it only depends on the circumstances (and I would cite Ortega i Gasset here: "I am myself and my circumstances"), and even if we deny it, giving certain circumstances we would have been nazis, assassins, or (almost) anything we can imagine.

At the end of the day, it is just a matter of setting the bar. For some, the logic choice is to be vegetarian or vegan. I have read in this people describing this diet as healthy, and some that don't understand how people eat meat. My answer is that being a conscious choice, I am healthier when I eat meat. Eating grain/soy/dairy products basically affects negatively my body, my mood while eating meat optimizes my lifestyle. So for me the bar is set pretty low. Also, I probably understand healthy living in a different way than most people here, and I am convinced that a vegetarian/vegan diet is far from being healthy.

In any case, my choice goes for grass-fed, range/pasture free animals.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Andes_flight_disaster#Cann...

I don't think you can't really establish a correlation between animal and human diet, and how a specific "balanced" diet might affect them. The difference in diet and life span are two important factors that might affect any study.

Whilst I understand your point, that's a matter of choice (or needs). You can perfectly buy, cook and eat 3 times/day without wasting too much time. Of course, if you want to have a gourmet experience in every meal it would be complicated.

I have had different phases in my life (currently I eat mostly paleo), and even though now it is the moment of my life when I spent more time cooking, I used to cook only once per week, having to re-heat the food on each meal.

You can also prepare food using slow cooking if you know the time you will be having the meal.

In my case, I "parallelize" and I work/study/work out/whatever while things are being cooked.

I am still unsure of the viability of these systems where they mix every single thing "needed" by the human body. How much time is needed to ensure this method of feeding is viable for humans?

PS: the drink kind of reminds me of Wall-E...

I have always thought that Universities should offer self-contained courses, with original homework and practice, specially in technical courses. Books should be considered as reference/reinforcement materials, never a requirement for anything.

After the irruption of Coursera and Udacity, I heard a couple of professors in my university talking about the impact those courses can have in the future. They saw themselves in the future as TAs of those courses, where the students only "use" them to clarify concepts.

I tried lucid dreaming a few years ago. Initially, the main problem that I was having was to wake up as soon as I realized I was in the middle of a dream. It took me almost no time to go back to sleep but I "was missing" the dream every time I woke up.

After a few days, I was able to control most of my dreams. I never had full control of those (there was a moment where something got out of control) but I liked the experience. I think the best experience I had dreaming was flying.

In any case, I always woke up fully rested (which might have to do with not being able to control it 100%).

The "Robotic Car" is nothing else but a way of attracting people to the course. Reading the contents of the course, we could easily substitute "Programming a Robotic Car" by "Artificial Intelligence for Robotics". I would like to see a bit more of Theory of Control on the topics but I guess it requires advanced Algebra.

Every time that I read about technology I feel like we have to realize that every time more generalists will be needed. Mechanics, dynamics, control, computer vision, energy, fluids, signal processing, artificial intelligence, statistics are some of the skills needed for a real Robotic Car, and of course, nobody can expect to learn them in 7 weeks.

Precisely my point here (as I mention in the last paragraph) is that knowledge is becoming widely available and new ways of learning are arising.

You are no longer an autodidact and you are studying the topics the college is telling you to follow. Some of them you would have never consider if you were to chose, some others you would. But in the "high level" (and probably in the future) you would appreciate the starting point that college has given you.

PS: I agree completely with you regarding attending to classes, even though I would have homeworks/exams to help retention of the material.

During my "learning" life I have been in both sides; in different fields but definitely in both sides. While I have learn most of my knowledge in the university (2 undergrads, 2 masters and finishing a phd) there have been other topics besides CS, mechanical engineering, statistics,... that were interesting to me. Sports and nutrition being the most important, and I have never had any mentor or taking any course on them.

In the University the education has to be focused on teaching what is needed, not what an individual wants to learn. I did not like databases, but I took 2 db courses. I did not like compilers but I took 1 course just focused on this topic. And both topics are useful, and somebody working on CS need to know its basics. This cannot (and should not) be decided by an individual sorely based on his interest or needs. A basic layer of knowledge is decided by experts on the field that consider that ANY xxxx (put here whatever career you want) must have.

What I felt in the fields I am an autodidact is basically a huge lack of basic knowledge. How am I supposed to decide whether the book A is better than the book B for the topic I am trying to learn? Do I need to know something before getting into this other topic? How I decide the path I need to follow to reach a certain knowledge? Those questions are (almost) always solved with somebody guiding you through the process of learning.

There is something that has always shocked me: is that most autodidacts cannot accept that their education might be partial and the lack of base (generalizing here) might affect their adaptation for new projects or their speed on learning new techniques.

Following the structure of a university in careers like CS or engineering should be a must, and new methods of education are stepping on the learning process by helping autodidacts to be directed into a clear path of what-is-needed.

Humans love to classify and compare. Most of us compete to demonstrate we are better and the intelligence is not different. Having a way to measure this human parameter precisely is a normal consequence.

Plus, from a more useful perspective, we need to have some way of measure a parameter if we want to study it. If we were trying to compare the results of two different strategies to improve the intelligence, we would need a precise method to measure the intelligence of every individual.

Any reason on why they are compacting the courses during the Fall quarter? It could be interesting to have AI and ML separated in Fall-Winter quarters.

Anybody knows if they plan on doing something similar in future quarters?

I love the idea, and I am excited to see the results of this methodology.

You're right about the name, but I think they still collect money, what they're not collecting right now is just the digital canon.