How do you know you can comprehend someone's English? You assume you do because the information conveyed isn't self-contradictory or nonsensical, doesn't contradict your observed reality and things you know to be true, and is unlikely to do so by mere chance.
It's disappointing that neither Monika Ścisłowska with Rafał Niedzielski of apnews.com, nor Aleksandra Bogucka of culture.pl - all of them Polish people - bothered at least once to mention how this national dance is called in its mother tongue. So, here it is: polonez.
`polonez` is a deformation from the actual name `polonaise` (cf https://www.reddit.com/r/BoneAppleTea/), it makes sense that they don't mention it since it's obviously not Polish of origin (why would Polish people call it Polish dance ?)
They do mention the original Polish dance chodzony, extensively
And yet, this is exactly how it's been called in Poland for years. [1] Unsurprisingly, you can find "polonez" on gov.pl too. [2]
"a deformation from the actual name" in this context is called a loanword.
Regardless of etymology, an article talking about a national treasure being put on UNESCO list absolutely should mention that, IMO. Can be next to "chodzony". No problem with that. Even better, TBH.
AP didn't write even "chodzony", btw. Only "the «walking dance»".
> Anyone who's looked into creationist arguments, or argued with creationists, will immediately be put on guard by this sentence fragment.
This is neither here nor there, as the paper does not defend "creationism". The sole purpose of this paper is modest: to argue (or cite authors who argue) that natural selection cannot account for reproduction. The subjective suspicions, impressions or concerns a reader might have are totally irrelevant.
> reproduction is necessary for natural selection to take place. It's a precondition, not something to be explained.
Natural selection is taken to be the explanatory mechanism par excellence of evolution and the definitive instrument by which teleology may be eradicated from explanations concerning biological organisms and their origins. Reproduction itself requires an explanation, and as the paper notes, attempts to account for the origins of reproduction through natural selection have been made. What the paper argues, however, is that these attempts are fallacious and circular, precisely because they must presuppose reproduction.
Neither the author nor those he cites deny natural selection or evolution as such. They only argue that natural selection is not capable of explaining reproduction. Their argument allows room for some other explanation of reproduction, but those who reject teleology are now saddled with the burden of providing a non-teleological explanation that does not appeal to natural selection.
> "irreducible" is one of those words that is somehow never given a definition [...etc, etc...]
This is a well understood term in this context, but also not something you need to get hung up on. You can understand the essential argument without worrying about it.
> A philosophical or theological term that invariably gets misused in discussions of biology as a kind of disguised circular argument.
It is more definitely not circular, certainly not according to an Aristotelian understanding (the paper's arguments may be interpreted according to either an Aristotelian or a "Platonic" reading of the term, which is to say, according to either an intrinsic or extrinsic view of telos).
> I'm not saying that this paper is garbage disguised by a big vocabulary, but I would certainly be alert for rhetorical sleight of hand sneaking in creationism of one kind or another.
Again, the reader's vague, subjective worries and fears are of no relevance. The reader must actually address the arguments in the paper. The impression is that you've either not read it or have not understood it, and so you are not yet in a position to critique the arguments made. (I don't know where the accusation of jargon comes from. Very few technical terms are used, but even those that appear in the text are not esoteric, even if commonly misunderstood. It is also not the purpose of every paper to define established terms in a domain of discourse. It is the reader's responsibility to locate these in the appropriate literature.)
The author of the paper is well known for defending Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, and as such, rejects what often falls under the name of "creationism" or "intelligent design" on account of its bad metaphysics, so suspicions along these lines are gravely misplaced.
A sad development is that the current administration is attempting to strangle the curriculum Felleisen et al. have developed over the last 2+ decades in favor of returning to the "old way" of teaching he criticizes in this essay. Their motivation is in large part—though not exclusively; ideological elements also enter into the picture—a consequence of Northeastern recently snapping up various bankrupt colleges worldwide and wanting to homogenize the curriculum across these new satellite campuses. Sadly, this means homogenizing down. Apparently, training faculty in this curriculum is too much for them.
This is so sad. I got an incredible CS education at Northeastern. I’m very successful in my career, and for someone who didn’t know how to program before college, I found that the CS curriculum pioneered by Felleisen prepared me far better than graduates of other colleges. The curriculum was tough and I spent many nights banging my head against homework assignments. But, everything eventually “clicked” and I graduated feeling confident, empowered, and humbled.
Not a single CS major in my graduating class got a 4.0, and I refer to this with honor and respect. The curriculum taught us how to think, how to problem-solve, and how to design programs. It felt like the curriculum was created to foster _understanding_, not to crank out high GPAs.
I’m so disappointed that the Northeastern admin is trying to force such an excellent CS program into something more “accessible” a-la a boot camp. That’s not a knock against boot camps, which should be a low-cost way for people to get their foot in the door for this amazing profession! But, for a 4-5 year university costing $60k per year, I would expect to be challenged, learn theory, become versed in things I’ll never use on the job, and come out a well-rounded SE.
Felleisen may be a bit cantankerous, but he sure as hell knows how to approach CS education, and I can’t thank him enough for the opportunity I had to learn via his approach.
Yes, often what is taught is taught in a manner that seems mysterious in origin, as if it were revealed, certain and final, and developing a sensibility like that concerning scientific matters is not good. You could argue that the viability of science as such rests on certain articles of faith, but the particular findings of science themselves are a matter of demonstration, interpretation of demonstration and argument making use of interpreted demonstration, as well as the making of certain working assumptions that do quite a bit of quiet heavy lifting. The last, I think, receives too little attention, but it also supports the idea that practical and pragmatic rather than theoretical motives and habits drive much of scientific activity.
Why assume "that the oil formed a single layer of molecules — a monolayer" ?
That is a very fundamental assumption, and could have been wrong as well (we know it is right, because the values match with more accurate recordings, but still...)
Yes! Not to get too political, but I saw a lot of this during the Covid debates, e.g. "Trust the science!" Noooo! Science is not just something you're supposed to "trust", but something that's supposed to be supported by evidence.
Yes, I definitely understand that most people don't have the training and background to understand complex scientific topics, and in some ways we do have to trust the scientific community if we're not a part of it. And I get frustrated by the common calls of "Do your own research!", which often means "Look at these YouTube grifters with absolutely no training who are just spouting stuff with no research of their own." But even the underlying problem with that is that most people aren't trained to evaluate the quality of data and motivations of people making it, and that is what scientific education should be about. For example, I may have to "trust" the scientific community when it comes to data about infectiousness of COVID because I'm not an epidemiologist, but how that data is translated into rules and regulations is a policy call, and that policy call is not necessarily one where the epidemiologists are the experts. I shouldn't be told to "trust the science" as though I should just accept policy recommendations even if I do accept the underlying data about transmissibility.
It isn't like "scientists" (whatever that means) don't also delegate to equipment or hardware manufacturers or (mathema|statis)ticians or compilers (or grad students, LOL). Sure they calibrate & cross-check, but while oil spread-out over water is easy to replicate at home in a few minutes with an oil dropper (maybe even with precocious (maybe pre-)pubescent kids not just Feynman Lectures on Physics Caltech Undergrads [1]), "more interesting/complex questions" usually have "full stacks" that are impractical to fully vet in general (see, e.g. Ken Thompson's _Reflections On Trusting Trust_). Epidemic disease coupled with human behavior is definitely getting into "holy crap complex" territory.
In its barest essence the problem is this - delegation affords so much that it is basically unavoidable, but trust sure is tricky. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem - searches for how to demarcate trustworthiness. Sorry to say, but there is a long history of failure to get consensus. It's notably a competitive game and as long as anything has been deemed valuable there have been cheap knock-offs (e.g. Fool's Gold), but things like The News you seem to complain of (e.g. Crichton's Gell-Mann Amnesia [2]) or "conclusions", being more abstract than metal (often the metaphorically concrete), are trickier still to discern reliability.
It may be the single most central (in latitude-long's of WHAAA? coordinates) problem of today's human condition / experience. I think it's a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem BUT the problem applies recursively to advice from anyone about trust/delegation (or about anything else). So, don't trust me. LOL. ;-) I don't think others can really answer these questions for someone. Part of life is learning to live with uncertainty, however precisely modeled. I'm just trying to share a perspective (and several relevant links!) on some of the principles involved with someone who seems interested in and frustrated by the questions.
The wording is the confusing bit, if you're not being careful.
> Let f:{0,1}*→{0,1} be the constant 1 function if God exists, or the constant 0 function if God does not exist. Is f computable? (Hint: The answer does not depend on your religious beliefs.) [emphasis mine]
The alternative is not part of the function. The function f does not branch based on the value of "God exists". The branch is in the metalanguage. We don't know whether f = 0 or f = 1, but whichever it is, it is computable because both possible functions are computable.
But, I would go further: if f did include the branch, and the domain of the function is 0 (God doesn't exist) and 1 (God does exist), then we still have a computable function in the sense that we can compute a result for each value of the domain.
The confusion effectively is a matter of pushing a free variable whose value is taken to be unknown into the branch condition in f.
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