martes, 30 de octubre de 2007
lunes, 29 de octubre de 2007
viernes, 26 de octubre de 2007
jueves, 25 de octubre de 2007
miércoles, 24 de octubre de 2007
viernes, 19 de octubre de 2007
Articulo muy interesante: Evolution and Wisdom of Crowds
Conventional wisdom says that the primary reason why so many people do not accept Darwin's theory of evolution is that they find it threatening to their religious beliefs. There is no question that religion is a big part of the reason behind the large number of people who reject evolution. But I am convinced that just as often, the cause and effect is reversed: people hold onto their fundamentalist religious beliefs because evolution by natural selection -- the strongest argument against an Old Testament-type creator -- is so counter-intuitive to so many.
I arrive at this conclusion in a somewhat roundabout way. I have long been fascinated with systems that tap into the "wisdom of crowds" -- systems that, in fact, have much in common with Darwinian evolution. Such systems doubtfully conflict with anyone's religion, and yet, I see the same sort of resistance to them as I see to evolution. The arguments against them are remarkably similar.
This hypothesis, if borne out, suggests that advocates of reason -- moderates, atheists, and the science minded -- might consider a different tact if they wish to convince more people to reconsider their fundamentalist, anti-scientific beliefs. It may be easier to first go after this non-intuitiveness, starting with these places where the conceptual difficulty is not exacerbated by the conflict with their comforting and culturally embedded religious belief.
miércoles, 17 de octubre de 2007
Funny Quotes... by Linus Torvalds
- "How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only coded it" (somewhere in a posting)
- "Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." (NewYork Times interview)
- "Hey, maybe I could apply for a saint-hood from the Pope. Does somebody know what his email-address is? I'm so nice it makes you puke." (taken from Linus's reply to someone worried about the future of Linux)
- "When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare atyou blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*" (source unknown)
- "Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I should use Linux over BSD? No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical." (Linus Torvalds' follow-up to a question about Linux)
