On Not Reading - <AUTHOR> http://www.chronicle.com/article/On-Refusing-to-Read/237717 <comment><USER2> In 8th grade I had a great teacher in a class called "Literary French". This was in a French-oriented high school in a boring Nordic city. Usually the teachers there were a motley crew of random francophones with no credentials whatsoever... Except for this one incredibly smart guy, who was actually a published author from Paris. (The general assumption was that he had ended up as a teacher in that nowhere place because of a woman.)

This being a literature-oriented full-year class, there was naturally a list of books to be read. Somebody asked: "Do we have to actually read these?" His answer was: "No. In school, you can almost always manage if you read 30 pages from the start, 30 pages from the end, and the author's bio. The important thing is not to read every page but that we talk about the books."

No other teacher at that school would have said that. For an 8th grader, it was like turning a key to unlock something that felt fundamental: books are not checkmarks on an assignment list; school is not a collection of tightly defined rote tasks to be performed for their own sake; what you get out of books and school depends entirely on what you bring to the table yourself.

<comment><USER3> Initially I thought you were advocating only reading the start and end of books. I was going to make a comment about only running the start and end of a marathon - you might get the best bits of the atmosphere, and afterwards be able to discuss it as if you'd run it all - but you'd have missed the core of the experience.

But, on reflection, maybe you are actually saying that the teacher meant you could _get away_ with only reading the start and end; but the point was that you got out what you put in, and so the focus shouldn't be on what you _have_ to do, but on what you _choose_ to do?

I'm not sure which you're saying :)

<comment><USER4> I'm over forty now and I am only starting to read the books we were assigned to read at school, e.g. Stendhal, Flaubert, Dostoevsky and the likes. In fact I guess I read these books as a kid but got nothing out of them, except grades. These are actually very good books, but being forced into reading them is the very way to make them unpalatable for life. If I didn't gave them a second try, I would still consider that as "literature" in the pejorative sense. In fact they are life, just more concentrate and immersive.

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, a lot of the books I had to read for assignments weren't good reading, but did convey good messages.

1984: A HORRID read, but a very telling archetype of distopia.

The Great Gatsby: It really took 8 chapters to cover the thin vain outer shell before cracking in to the empty but interesting destruction of it all? Maybe a good metaphor for market crashes and corrections, but not a good read.

The discussion part; I don't recall having a single meaningful actual /discussion/ of the books in class. That might have actually helped make the mindless drudgery of reading them have more meaning and allowed for deeper reflection about the meaning of the content we head read.

<comment><USER6> Gatsby is not about being a metaphor for anything in particular; it's a snapshot of a particular time and place, an account of _what a certain society was like_. It's just an intriguing (and quite beautiful) story that captures the spirit of a certain era.

By analogy, what you wrote is like saying:

> The Mona Lisa? Roughly 75% of it is just kind of blurry. I can see her face > in the middle, which I guess captures her likeness, but a photograph > would've probably been better.

It's easy to miss the point or merit of these books in class: often they're forced reading, you read them too early, etc. I would strongly encourage you to pick up 1984 or The Great Gatsby again, and read it one of these days. You'll probably get much more out of it.

These books are considered among the greatest ever for good reason, and I'm sure you'll pick up on that if you give them another try. I think that Gatsby is so good that I re-read it once a year.

<comment><USER7> Gatsby is really superficial, uncompelling, flat. I picked it up because it's referenced so much in USA media as being the book kids read at high-school.

Personally I don't think anyone would be missing out by not reading it. It's just a weirdly written snapshot of life that's presented in such a tedious and uninspiring way ... what do you like about it?

One of the worst books I've read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel like many books (especially non-fiction) have this predisposition of making their books much longer than it needs to be. In essence, unless it's highly technical/informational, their book is usually making some sort of an argument that they sometimes stretch out to a certain number of pages to make it seem to have more "depth". I feel like you can summarize a book down to it's essence making it something like 20-50 times shorter, which I do by highlighting and adding notes.

<comment><USER9> For fiction, there's the separate aspect of enjoying the writing style (including the more verbose ones, or the ones with more "unnecessary" flourish) by itself. Obviously this is very subjective and depends on the reader - just keep in mind that if you find the book too long and tedious because it dwells too much on "uninteresting" points, or repeats itself, someone else might actually find all that enjoyable.

In fact, that someone else may even be yourself at some later date - I have found that some previously read books make more sense and become more enjoyable after having personal life experiences that enable you to relate emotionally, or just get you interested in the subject.

<comment><USER10> > just keep in mind that if you find the book too long ...

... maybe you are reading too slow. I know I was reading faster when I was much younger

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I could never get through Pynchon or whatever but Infinite Jest wasn't a slog at all. Wonderful prose full of hilarious details and moments. Wacky sci-fi alternative universe stuff. Great descriptions of dynamics in a tennis match.

It's certainly a _long_ book but you don't have to treat it like a academic paper to enjoy reading it. It's a fun read, for real! Well actually it's kind of depressing but moment to moment it's fun.

<comment><USER12> Couldn't get into Infinite Jest. Still sitting on my bookshelf; ~50 pages in, I really just didn't care.

DFW's Kenyan commencement speech is what got me interested in his writing. I'd like to go back and finish Infinite Jest at some point, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

<comment><USER6> The first 100 pages are by far the hardest. They contain the stylistically most challenging passages, and DFW introduces nearly all characters and settings within those 100 pages, in a non-linear fashion to boot. For that reason, it takes a while to get into. You'll get the hang of it between page 150 and 250, and from there on, it's an absolutely riveting read.

<comment><USER13> I'd mostly agree, but say that it took me more like 300 pages to "get" his style and an additional 200 pages to actually enjoy. Its a serious investment, but absolutely worth it. Easily one of my two favorite books of all time, next to GEB. I finished it and had a strong urge to start reading it from the beginning again immediately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Actually, she's got a point.

The stuff you don't read don't become part of a knowledge base. Figuring out how to circumvent that in order to learn and think is a huge issue, especially if you want common culture and/or more knowledge growth.

EG: You could read about the nuance of every computer language by every author out there - how does this help you become a better programmer? Alternatively, how do you know when you should read something, especially if it isn't about your language/issues you are dealing with right now, because it could be insightful to problems you will be about to have in general. Multiply by lots of people facing the same choices, and then what?

<comment><USER15> You should read a lot early in life - give youself a good education, and kindle your imagination.

Then, at some point, start building on that foundation and get some work done :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Real life:

"Did you read Infinite Jest?"

"No"

"Okay"

Academia:

"Did you read Infinite Jest?"

"My small act of countercultural scholarly agency has been to refuse to continue reading or assigning the work of David Foster Wallace. The machine of his celebrity masks, I have argued, the limited benefits of spending the time required to read his work. Our time is better spent elsewhere. I make this assessment given the evidence I have so far accumulated"

"Okay"

<comment><USER17> This comes off as one of the more annoying articles I've ever read in my entire life.

<comment><USER18> After about two paragraphs I chose not to read it.

<comment><USER19> I'm glad I'm not the only one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't really care that many people have a hard time with DFW's pretentious style or book length. I enjoyed infinite jest immensely—there are some really golden scenes that will stick with me forever. Would I read it if I was overworked or busy? no.. but I wouldn't read Shogun or Shantaram if I was too busy either.

My point is, if you don't feel like doing something, great—but then getting prescriptive about it & trying to dissuade others seems like an error.

"Abundance" is not a personal problem in the arts - maybe it's a professional one, but that is addressing an entirely different goal of curation rather than as a recipient of art.

It is the idea that one is supposed to "keep up" or "know everything" ala "last person to know everything" e.g. leibniz, is absurd.

The author has kind of buried the lede and is actually against subjugating herself to accepting what "the literary marketplace put forward as worthy of attention".

</comment><comment><USER21> I think this is a much more interesting problem in the sciences than in literature.

There is too much high literature for a scholar to read it all. So like everyone else, the scholars mostly read what makes the popular bandwagon by virtue of reaching a critical mass of interest.

But in the sciences, people are writing about things that matter! The overlooked articles are missed progress.

In literature, writers are writing to write. If masterieces go unnoticed in the avalanche of quotidian works...oh well? There are plenty of perfect wildflowers which go wholy unappreciated as well. Should we mourn the missed opportunity?

<comment><USER22> In the sciences, people in different fields are each reading from much smaller subsets of the available papers (which are much shorter to start with), and there's a system in place that means most reasonably competent papers will get read by at least a few people in the field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This argument applies to all forms of media. As the barrier to entry to create plummets, there's going to be an insane amount of noise, even if there's tons of good stuff around. If you don't need a publisher's/editor's approval, no one is going to tell you your work is not worth distributing.

But "not reading" is click bait. The author is just being more selective in how they spend their time, since they can only afford to consume an increasingly narrow sliver. But you are seriously missing out if you elect to ignore the (good) stuff that will last, like (IMO) GEB and Infinite Jest.

</comment><comment><USER23> I got about one paragraph into this article before deciding to exercise my intellectual freedom to not read it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Happened to me in HS:

Other guy: Why do you read all these books?

Me: I don't know, just to say I've read them I guess.

Other guy: Well I still _say_ I've read them!

Me: (feel dumb)

<comment><USER25> So, does this suggest that the new canon is full of books that are actually uninteresting? Because it seems to me that canonical books should be there because everyone found them worthwhile, even if some of them seem daunting. For example, Les Misérables, is a worthwhile book, fully interesting in my opinion.

I do sometimes read books because of the hype, like Catcher in the Rye, that I later wish I read something better. But the only book I read to say I read it was "The Beautiful and Damned" because I heard it called a book that you always wish you could say you had read but you never did. Of course, it wasn't as good as I hoped.

But, dang, if you are reading just to be able to drop names, get a new hobby...

<comment><USER26> David Foster Wallace (amusingly enough) wrote on such themes. IIRC, the piece I'm thinking of is a review of a biography of Dostoevsky. He talked about how many old classics are full of sincere, deeply held beliefs, that in more modern (postmodern) literature would be mocked endlessly. Strong beliefs are now mainly written about to tear them down with snark, and being ironic/jaded is the default posture of fiction.

Is that accurate, and does that result in less interesting works? I think there's a definite argument to be made there.

<comment><USER27> I think that finding something worth caring about that doesn't prove to be hollow is one of the fundamental problems of modern life, perhaps especially for intellectuals. So those works may be more interesting to people who wrestle with that in their personal lives.

<comment><USER26> Ah, interesting side-question there: does the arrow point both ways? Disillusioned authors writing for a disillusioned public -> increased chance of public being disillusioned in the future if they grow up exposed primarily to media telling them everything is empty?

<comment><USER27> Sure, there's a feedback loop. There always is in culture. But then the voices that go against the culture are sometimes the ones most worth hearing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> tl;dr: Tenured literary critic cautiously questions the usefulness of popularity as a metric for evaluating literary fiction, with specific reference to David Foster Wallace's absurd timewaster _Infinite Jest_. ('Absurd timewaster' is my phrase, not hers, but when you boil down what she said, it's what you have left in the pot.)

<comment><USER29> One thing worth considering is that not everyone considers the same things to be worthwhile, but popularity is too coarse a metric to use to choose what to read. IJ was one of the most valuable (to me) books I've ever read, and I finally read it after about three false starts on the basis of some clues (eg Schwarz' review) that I might find it so valuable. A mainstream full of -you- would have misled me.

Figuring out what books you're going to like is _really hard_. If anyone knows a good way, besides the extensive process of collecting reviewers you trust and making friends who know your tastes - do share.

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure it can be done. Maybe part of the answer is for you to give yourself permission to quit a book after reading, say, one quarter of it. Then you can be the judge for yourself. (Or did your false starts carry you that far through IJ?)

<comment><USER30> Wow, I'm much more petulant. If the first page doesn't capture my attention, I flip somewhere in the middle, randomly, then read. If the author can't engage me on any of a few randomly selected pages, I drop the book.

(Some exceptions are made, for example, if someone recommends the book).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Take her advice, save yourself some time and don't read this article.

<comment><USER32> Oh! I refused to read that article. As I glanced through it, there was some "beautiful comparison between egg and an omelette". I yawned!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Maybe the author should read more......her prose might be more tolerable if she did.

<comment><USER33> This is how people with English degrees write. She said about 3 things in 3000 words. I think it was the years of paper length requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> gwern points this out in his essay, Culture Is Not About Esthetics [1]. He points that even if he read only the books that won awards, there would still be far too many to finish in his lifetime. Given that, it is no crime to ignore recent books, and, in fact, it may be better for us to stop publishing new literary works and concentrate on better appreciating the old masters.

[1]: [http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20Esthetics](http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20Esthetics)

<comment><USER35> My main issue with this is that I believe there are certain styles of books that don't exist yet because they are created as societies emerge. And I would very much want them to exist. Just like there are movies I would want to exist, and video games I would want to exist. And, in many cases, there are no proper alternatives.

On a similar note, I'm increasingly less interested in a lot of old literature due to the "I've seen this before, we've already talked about this, and this perspective is massively outdated" effect.

For all the talk of how there's lots of everything, there are still whole categories of topics I have never seen at all, or they were covered really poorly.

I think this concerns are better addressed by superior aggregators and niche audiences than by the banning of production of media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think there is a kernel of truth here (popularity != quality) but that being a truism the rest of the article is just justifying why the author doesn't read books that are considered good books. It's entirely true that large books command more attention than small ones, but I think writing a really good large book is much more difficult than writing a really good small book, which seems reductionist but just considering how quickly you an iterate on a shorter book vs. the time it takes to revise or rewrite a longer one. There's a quote from a review of some Franzen or Safran-Foer novel that talks about how a new writer's first page is brilliant, first chapter is great, and how it basically trails off from there most of the time. Maintaining the prose quality and style and complexity of narrative that Wallace does in Infinite Jest is no mean feat, and this may seem controversial but I think in that sense it is a greater accomplishment than some shorter works.

This isn't to say I don't see the value in brevity or that I don't believe it's difficult to write good short books: I do think it's difficult. However because reading a 1000-page book does take more time (I don't think it's necessarily harder word for word) you have to make the writing worth it, which is undeniably difficult.

</comment><comment><USER37> Somebody should learn how to write more concisely.

</comment><comment><USER38> Not difficult to relate this article to how we use Hacker News..

</comment><comment><USER39> What I'm getting out of this article is another angle on the pointlessness of literary criticism and possibly even literary studies. Let's have the English department focus on teaching people how to write rather than how to analyze, reanalyze and overanalyze works of literature. What all this overthinking leads to is just the muddle found in the posted article.

</comment><comment><USER40> More like: "On Not Reading This Article".

</comment><comment><USER41> Y'know... I use BookTv as a filter these days. Sometimes, the BookTv is all I get. Other times, it's worth getting the book ( at least from a library ).

This is probably somehow a Wrong Thing but I can't help it. Ann Coulter (!!!) was flogging her Trump book recently, and she almost came off as human. There's not the same pressure to be a performer there.

</comment><comment><USER42> I chose not to read this article. Just do it.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm amazed literary critique is a job. Definitely Ark B material. This book fetishism always rubs me the wrong way. A book is a conveyer of thought. Like a conversation, phone, film, comic, game, diagram, chart. As much as I appreciate your agonising over Infinite Jest your opinion of it based on not having read it is not convincing. There is a solution to your conundrum you face in this article - don't talk about Infinite Jest.

The whole idea of the Great Conversation or the like is preposterous and not only because it's not physically possible (and hasn't been for decades). You don't have to have been to all the countries on the planet to find common ground and common language to talk about travelling and contribute to the conversation.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's important to distinguish between books to read and books to inspect.

A vast majority belong in the latter.

 _How to Read a Book_ is a wonderful read on this topic.

<comment><USER45> When you say "How to Read a Book is a wonderful read," do you mean one ought to "read" or "inspect" it? :)

<comment><USER44> Inspecting is probably fine.

I did something in-between. But applying the principles is probably more important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> could be good... didn't read it.

</comment><comment><USER47> Didn't read.

<comment><USER48> Oops. I didnt see your comment before I posted mine.

<comment><USER49> Upvoted comments without reading them

<comment><USER50> Damn, I wish I could unread yours so I could meet my daily duplicates quota.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Didn't read.

</comment><comment><USER51> Can someone please make a TL;DR?

<comment><USER50> DR.</comment></comment>


FizzBuzz, A Deep Navel to Gaze Into - <AUTHOR> http://dave.fayr.am/posts/2012-10-4-finding-fizzbuzz.html <comment><USER2> Actually, the control flow only requires you to know that you've done SOMETHING out of the ordinary, but not WHAT you've done. A C example that is easily extensible:

        void fizzBuzz(void)
        {
            bool alternateUsed = false;
            for(int i = 1; i <= 100; i++)
            {
                if(i % 3 == 0)
                {
                    printf("Fizz");
                    alternateUsed = true;
                }
                if(i % 5 == 0)
                {
                    printf("Buzz");
                    alternateUsed = true;
                }

                if(!alternateUsed)
                {
                    printf("%d", i);
                }
                printf("\n");
                alternateUsed = false;
            }
        }

All you need to know for the decision to print the bare number is whether an alternate (Fizz or Buzz) was used in this iteration. Furthermore, FizzBuzz is described such that you stack alternates (FizzBuzz for values that are multiples of 3 and 5). In this example, they stack automatically, with the order of "if" statements determining the priority. Want to change it to print "BuzzBazzFizz" for multiples of 5, 4, and 3? No problem!

            if(i % 5 == 0)
            {
                printf("Buzz");
                alternateUsed = true;
            }
            if(i % 4 == 0)
            {
                printf("Bazz");
                alternateUsed = true;
            }
            if(i % 3 == 0)
            {
                printf("Fizz");
                alternateUsed = true;
            }

Yes, imperative languages can be a bit cumbersome at times, but elegant solutions are still possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't entirely like his generalized fizz buzz (with the printers and such), because it doesn't capture the way I read the requirements well.

The requirements to me read as: I have pairs of number-sets and strings, and whenever a number is divisible by all numbers in the set, the application is supposed to output the associated string. If multiple sets of numbers fulfill this property, the string associated with the largest set is used. If no group matches, output the number. Note that this specification contains a loophole: What if one set is [1, 2] and the other set is [2, 4] and the number is 4? This is undefined.

From such a data structure, deriving the generalized program is rather simple and straightforward and from there, I don't entirely see the reason to go nuts with functional programming and category theory and whatsoever, because the generalized solution is a rather simple folding operation and the biggest complications come from the hole in the spec.

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems a far more obvious way to code the extensible case:

        def fizzbuzz(max)
          (1..max).each do |n|
            labels = []

            labels << "fizz" if n % 3 == 0
            labels << "buzz" if n % 5 == 0
            labels << "bazz" if n % 7 == 0

            puts labels.empty? ? n : labels.join
          end
        end

        fizzbuzz(105)</comment>


Google is pulling YouTube app from Amazon devices - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/05/google-is-pulling-youtube-from-echo-show-and-fire-tv-as-feud-with-amazon-continues/ <comment><USER2> This is terrible for the consumers but if I were Google I would have done the same. When Amazon pulled the Chromecast(and AppleTV) from their store a few years ago I suggested Google pull Amazon apps from Playstore. I guess this is the start of things.

I ended up with an Amazon prime membership but the only option I have to watch their content on my TV is by casting my chrometab, an inelegant solution because Amazon refuses to support chromecast.</comment>


Researchers 'speak' to dolphins in their own language - <AUTHOR> http://wakeup-world.com//2011/11/28/the-discovery-of-dolphin-language/

<comment><USER2> I don't intend this as an ad hominem, but is there any independent verification of this research?

It might just be me, but it's hard not to be skeptical given that that the website has a banner declaring a campaign to end "chemtrails" and its sidebar is devoted to article topics such as "Ancient Aliens".

<comment><USER3> I linked to the original source below, which is a little woo-ey in spirit, but seems sincere, at least. I agree it's unfortunate that this isn't already wrapped in the language of science and academia, but if these results are true that should happen well within the next decade. I think the point of skepticism or thing to investigate is the CymaScope -- where there is room to falsify these results, it is via that device. <http://www.cymascope.com/cetacean.html>

<comment><USER2> As Figs [1], jgeralnik, and CWuestefeld [2] have pointed out there might also be a huge problem in their methodology.

Let's say that we have created an immersive environment for a mouse, so that we can replay what the mouse would see if it saw a piece of cheese similar to the way they've played back that sonar ping. If the mouse starts running towards it/"identifies" it, would that mean the mouse has developed a complex visual language? No, it would just mean that the mouse has seen the cheese!

Unless they have conclusive proof that a dolphin directly sends a pre- modulated imprint of the object it just revealed, then their experiment is probably making a similar mistake somewhere or the other.

I think that there is a better way to design this experiment. One of the better ways to conclusively test this hypothesis would be to teach a dolphin tool use to get food and see if it can teach others to do the same. To ensure that simple imitation isn't going on, we could keep a hydrophone immersed for the entire duration and continually record what's happening.

If other dolphins learn how to use the tool, then I would move on to the next step and see if they can work together in teams. If they display co-ordination then we would have conclusive proof of language use.

Has anyone ever done rigorous research like this?

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315023> [2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3314522>

<comment><USER4> Well, we already know that they can use tools and teach each other (somehow) how to use tools: <http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7475> and they've been trained to follow some pretty complex commands (e.g. make up your own jump and can synchronize it with other dolphins): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ38sycAITQ>

So, we already know they can coordinate, but it's not clear if there's communication ("hey, let's do XYZ") or if they're just very quick at imitation ("Hmm, looks like Akeakamai is going to do XYZ, better do XYZ").

<comment><USER2> Perhaps what we could do is set up an arena and force them to work together as a team. If we design the experiment with care then we might be able to settle the question of imitation vs. communication.

For example if we hide food beneath inside a container and put several such containers in a grid then we could see if they co-ordinate the search. We could control for imitation by making the pool pitch black _and_ covering the dolphin's eyes, thus forcing them to use echolocation extensively, which we should be able to capture. If we can track the direction and the nature of the clicks as well as the position and subsequent actions of the dolphins after making them, then we might be able to answer this question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To portray imagined objects to other dolphins, are they suggesting that the dolphin can imitate the 'sound echo' directly from their vocal clicks?

Therefore their clicks would have two functions: to make echos reflect from objects around them, and to imitate those echos later on?

<comment><USER6> That was my understanding of it, but I could be completely wrong.

<comment><USER7> +1 but the article isn't very clear about it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This seems to be the original source: I emailed the researcher and asked him to share the full results. <http://www.speakdolphin.com/ResearchItems.cfm?ID=20>

<comment><USER4> _Dolphins in two separate research centers understood the words, presenting convincing evidence that dolphins employ a universal sono-pictorial language of communication._

Hmm... I would have assumed that interpreting dolphin sounds as pictures is the first thing you'd try after realizing they can echolocate... Is this really the first time that's been explored? Or is it just that no one's been able to figure out how to reconstruct an image properly from dolphin clicks, but it was already a widely suspected possibility for a long time? (I'm not really up to date with dolphin research, unfortunately.)

If they're right about this line of reasoning, then I wouldn't be surprised at all if they come back and point out an animation structure soon (akin to sound detection of a moving object over time) -- and if _that's_ the case, I'd bet you that it isn't "universal", and that different groups of dolphins will have different variants in how they communicate more complex concepts. For example, one group might give an animation of a dolphin swimming around something in one direction a meaning that a different group might disagree with. Another sort of animation that might be interesting to look for would be a change in the composition/texture of an object (e.g. animation of dolphin turning to stone, or stone turning into dolphin or something like that). It seems reasonable to me that even if you communicate in animated 3d images, you'd probably still have to have some less literal meanings too... and the sorts of things you could represent with something like that could get pretty complex, actually.

<comment><USER8> Hopefully the depopulation of the dolphin species (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_drive_hunting>) has not caused significant loss of any complex language developed over time.

[In response to responder: Actually I think developing complex language with something like this would be relatively easy. With human language we can't just show a series of events with our words, people need to experience the things with us and then we develop common words to describe them again later. With their system of communication it seems that they could describe pretty much anything they'd find notable and also easily abstract things by just making their clicks less specific or by blending a few specific examples as a form of abstraction. Actually I'd bet on blending first, maybe even a literal superposition of all the possibilities or several of them. Also they might be able to communicate by acting things out physically while they are sounding things out. The combination could be pretty powerful for expression.]

<comment><USER3> I'm still quite skeptical that the dolphins have complex shared language with features like recursion, but it's possible that the storytelling via pictures could get complex... I guess we'll see.

<comment><USER9> It may be possible, but I can imagine that it would be very very difficult for us to grasp since if this research is verified we'd likely have so little in common linguistically. It strikes me as kind of like "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They reflected sounds off of objects and played them back. This is not a language, that's how echolocation works!

<comment><USER11> This is how I read it, too.

It sounds like they showed the dolphin a picture, just using an auditory representation rather than graphical. Then the dolphin pointed to the depicted object.

I'm pretty sure that a human baby, without any language skills, could do the same if the depiction were graphical.

It seems to me that they've found out something about the dolphin perceptual system. This is interesting, but I don't see what it has to do with language.

<comment><USER12> The trick is that they've observed the dolphins doing the same thing. We've just demonstrated that they can coherently transfer nouns. That's a big deal.

<comment><USER11> I agree that it's interesting. I just don't see that it's language.

Consider this [1] article on language, discussing the properties of language. It seems that what has been discovered fails this in at least two ways. We haven't demonstrated, or even claimed, any sort of grammar; and what's being communicated isn't symbolic, but directly representational.

\- - QUOTE - -

Languages are not just sets of symbols. They also contain a grammar, or system of rules, used to manipulate the symbols. While a set of symbols may be used for expression or communication, it is primitive and relatively unexpressive, because there are no clear or regular relationships between the symbols. Because a language also has a grammar, it can manipulate its symbols to express clear and regular relationships between them.

...

Another important property of language is the arbitrariness of the symbols. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean nothing. That is the meaning all Spanish speakers have memorized for that sound pattern. But for Croatian speakers nada means hope.

\- - END QUOTE - -

[1] [http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Language#Properties_of_lang...](http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Language#Properties_of_language)

<comment><USER13> >Another important property of language is the arbitrariness of the symbols. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean nothing.

How about "mother", "no" sounding so similar in multitude of completely different languages? Your quote mistakenly attributes a property of human's mind - the ability to separate meaning from symbol - as a property of language. Shaka, when the walls fell.

<comment><USER14> _How about "mother", "no" sounding so similar in multitude of completely different languages?_

How many languages are we talking about. The Indo-European languages cover most of Eurasia excluding the far east. They are similar because they are related.

I imagine other large language families on other continents are also related. How similar are "mother" and "no" or "yes" in languages which share no relation? Aboriginal and Spanish? Basque and Japanese? Bantu and Inuit? The click language of the bushmen and Mandarin Chinese? Etc..

<comment><USER13> [http://www.mothersdaycelebration.com/mother-in-different- lan...](http://www.mothersdaycelebration.com/mother-in-different- languages.html)

" The slight smacking movement of the lips made in uttering an m-sound is similar to the lip movement required to suck a nipple."

<http://www.billcasselman.com/wording_room/mother.htm>

<comment><USER14> From your top link:

Africaans is a dialect of Dutch - European language.

Albanian - European.

Arabic - the first non Indo-European language in this list and what do you know, no leading "m-sound". More like the opposite of that.

Aymara, Azeri and Basque are also all non Indo-European and what do you, also no leading "m-sound".

The list continues with a whole pile of Slavic and other European language, holy crap "mother" in Bosnian and Bulgarian sounds really similar - what a shock!

I'm just scanning through the list now, Hawaiian seems to be the firs non Indo-European language to have the "ma" sound. I bet if you look you'll find the "ma" sound in whole pile of other Hawaiian words too! Are they all about sucking?

Hungarian is _in_ Europe but is a Finno-Uguric language and again no "m-sound".

Indonesian no "ma" sound. And I'm tired of proving my point.

This "the sound of the world for mother is similar to suckling" seems like utter bullshit to me.

Leading with the m-sound just happens to be common in the Indo-European language family.

And I don't even know what the heck your second link is!?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Now to setup buoys around Japanese fishing grounds that echo "Danger!"

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting. Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3312324>

</comment><comment><USER17> Let's hope they figure out the rest of the dolphins' vocabulary before they tell us "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!"

</comment><comment><USER18> Uplifting, anyone?

Pump the 'phins full of nootropics and start teaching them useful stuff :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Darwin love Bridger</comment>


Bill on CA Governor's desk would ban mobile device searches without a warrant - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/09/smartphone-warrant/

<comment><USER2> Doesn't much matter, all mobile devices worth using are constantly sending their data up to "the cloud", which, thanks to the USA PATRIOT Act's provisions for National Security Letters (NSLs), the federal government can access at any time, in real-time, without a warrant or even post-hoc judicial review.

The time has come to leave America. No state law can change this. The fourth has been dead for TEN YEARS next month, it is nothing short of naïve now to believe that it will get any better.

There are lots of nice places to live in the first world where the government hasn't gone totally insane. Move there.

<comment><USER3> Say what you say is true, where would you recommend? We can then discuss specifics of those countries. (On a less serious note, you don't have the Silicon Valley there, wherever there is.)

<comment><USER4> Norway is great for data privacy, however as you say, there isn't a Silicon Valley or anything similar, even in Oslo. There are some good tech groups, and some good university groups spread around, a good amount of design and media organizations, and a much larger percentage of the population know what Twitter and Facebook are and use smartphones, and youth are basically acquainted with most 4chan memes. The biggest and most notorious tech group really is Opera, which also accounts for a significant chunk of the country's data traffic (Opera also operates a very huge proxy service for mobile devices).

* Norway's Data Authority: <http://www.datatilsynet.no/templates/Page____194.aspx>

Despite what I'd consider to be a fairly (in U.S. terms) progressive government organization that is pro-privacy, Norway has recently enacted its own local version of the E.U. Data Retention Directive.

* EU: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive>

* Norwegian version: [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fno.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FDatalagringsdirektivet&act=url)

So basically, even one of the better countries for data privacy still has its own struggles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A state bill should be totally unnecessary. This is a constitutional right. If we accept this bill as the norm then its no longer a "right" and just a permission by the govt that can be rescinded at anytime.

<comment><USER6> The text[1] of the bill seems to affirm the sentiment that it's a constitutional right; it serves to counteract a California Supreme Court ruling:

"(e) It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting Section 1542.5 of the Penal Code to reject as a matter of California statutory law the rule under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution announced by the California Supreme Court in People v. Diaz."

[1]: [http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0901-0950/sb_91...](http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0901-0950/sb_914_bill_20110902_enrolled.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Governor Jerry Brown

c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173

Sacramento, CA 95814

Phone: (916) 445-2841

Fax: (916) 558-3160

<http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php>

</comment><comment><USER8> It will be interesting to see if this ends up being as abused as other warrant searches are. What is the probable cause of searching a cell phone? Does the guy have to have kiddie porn as his lock screen or is it enough to think he might have a drug dealer's home address in the phone book? People's phones are almost their second homes, and in a way I am glad that the law is catching up with technology, but they need to be prepared for a whole nother set of issues that come with it

</comment><comment><USER9> We desperately need someone to configure Android with LUKS/dm-crypt, which theoretically shouldn't be such a huge leap since Android is based on Linux (I know nothing about Android-specific kernel divergences, but would be interested to know if device-mapper is badly broken in Android kernels).

Another interesting project would be a service that sits on your phone and automatically encrypts all of the automatically synced data, so Google only received encrypted data and your phone transparently decrypted it upon demand. This one would probably require much deeper work than making device-mapper run on Android Linux kernels.

I am grateful to Google for making an open, decent phone system so that this kind of stuff is made possible. Think about the options we'd have if iOS was the only smartphone on the market.

People need to accept that without strong encryption, any and all of their digital storage is open to adversarial or even accidental perusal, and that they should have no realistic expectation of privacy without correct application of cryptographic techniques. This is true across every form of digital storage: mobile, desktop, laptop, cloud, USB stick, etc. Encrypt or suffer.

<comment><USER10> That is how my netbook is configured, EncFS encrypts file names and contents before rsync sends it to a remote backup server.

On the phone, you don't need to encrypt all of the file system (for better performance) but just the parts that hold user data.

Unlocking the screen and encrypted user data by "swiping a pattern" is not a big thing and takes not even a second.

<comment><USER11> A swipe pattern has such low entropy that you may as well not encrypt it.

<comment><USER12> Sure, it doesn't stop a criminal, but it implies privacy that could be held up in court against unlawful search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do we have to have the slightly emotional title of "Bill on X's Desk"?</comment>


Clojure 1.2 adds primitive type support for fns (read, fast fns) - <AUTHOR> http://clj-me.cgrand.net/2010/06/10/primitive-types-support-for-fns-coming-to-a-clojure-branch-near-you/

<comment><AUTHOR> This a really big deal for certain kinds of programs. In particular big loops over primitive data. A lot of people come to Clojure confused as to why certain simple Java iterative algorithms don't convert into the exact same perf in Clojure. This change addresses those kind of programs in a big way while at the same time reducing the amount of manual type hinting.

With deftype, protocols, and statics the foundation for writing Clojure programs that show bare metal JVM perf without resorting to Java or macros is place.</comment>


What caused 11,000 scientists to declare a climate emergency? - rlv-dan https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/what-is-the-significance-of-11000-scientists-declaring-a-climate-emergency/ <comment><AUTHOR> Because their funding would be cut if they said anything else?</comment>