Are just going to pretend that driver don't get distracted already with GPSs? with conversations with other passengers? with phone conversations?
What if is way more safe to use your voice than your hands to communicate? (and some people is going to do it anyway despite laws against texting while driving)
What if is way faster to change your eye-focus than to move your eyes and head to see the GPS?
Many of you guys commenting here are acting like this thing is black-and-white when is clearly not.
“Look, NSA has platoons of lawyers and their entire job is figuring out how to stay within the law and maximize collection by exploiting every loophole,”
Interesting how agencies, corporations and alike have the collective maturity of children. A grown up will say to a kid "you can't play with fire with your friend" and the kid immediately will think "he didn't say I can't play with fire with my other friend".
>> Does anyone honestly believe the Germans aren't regularly trying to figure out ways to listen to American officials' communications?
Your statement seems to equate "it's usual to spy" with "it's alright to spy". Spying on close allies only pays off if you are not caught. It's risky to do it and I expect each Nation State weights that in when deciding to do it or not. If the Germans do try to spy on US and they get caught, there will be fallout on relations.
The US got caught spying on several allies. They took the risk. There will be repercussions on diplomatic relations. There will be repercussions on public image and trust.
Apparently from the leaked memo, the intelligence gained didn't really pay off this time around, and since they got caught, all they did was break the trust.
I agree. While reading the article I can't help but, sort of, empathize with modern AI programs. Me and Watson are very similar, Watson can win Jeopardy but has no understanding why, I can recognize a handwritten 'a' and I too have no understanding why.
When I look at my daughter developing, from baby to infant to child. Hasn't that been a constant, intensive training? As she recognizes stuff, I give feedback. After a while she starts correlating stuff, and signals for me to give feedback. By the time she's an adult, she will have full control of her intelligence, but also no understanding.
Maybe what we are missing is just the algorithm for information storage and retrieval. If we can master Genetic Algorithms, why not Celular Databases? Or Chemical Procedures?
> Me and Watson are very similar, Watson can win Jeopardy but has no understanding why, I can recognize a handwritten 'a' and I too have no understanding why.
So, you and Watson are "very similar" just because both systems don't have a perfect understanding of themselves? You don't know that. Your premises look true, but your conclusion don't follow from them (or at all). Actually you probably know that no matter how you spin it, you and Watson are very different.
So don't say you aren't, it's misleading. Not only to others, but to yourself as well. Try to find a meaningful similarity instead.
I find myself doing poor pattern recognition at times (eg always choosing the wrong key for a particular door), and realizing just after that a machine learning library could well make the mistake I just did. This isn't a new insight, but it still feels like an epiphany when you realize it as it happens.
We also have a cronic underdog syndrome perpetuated by countless broad opinions such as this. That only helps to undermine any kind of effort to change the culture of low self-esteem into a culture of excellence.
Feel free to demand more, but please do not undervalue every thing.
> We also have a cronic underdog syndrome perpetuated by countless broad opinions such as this.
You not noticing my acknowledgement of the pockets of excellence further demonstrates this point. I am not perpetuating this underdog syndrome, but I am pointing out several failures brought by a systemic attitude of politeness over correctness. Academic research thrives on correctness alone.
I fail to see why I should take your feeling driven anecdote backed position over your interlocutor's feeling driven anecdote backed position.
I watched all the porn I could get my hands on and turned out fine is evidence. It's not conclusive or anything but you wouldn't see it in a world where porn was the devil. The below articles certainly don't support demonisation of porn.
I don't think your point's valid either. Driving is operating heavy machinery, plain and simple. Driving without a seatbelt is totally different than using Facebook, or eBay, or Craigslist, unrestricted. They really couldn't be more dissimilar.
Just like being in the real world. Make smart decisions to the best of your ability and you'll be alright. There's nothing inherently wrong with the internet. Some people have things inherently wrong with them, and some of those people use the internet. Nothing to see here.
Wow... I had only ever used Craig's List for buying and selling goods. I had no idea there were people raping and murdering each other on there. You'd think that the admins would try to put a stop to that.
Normally that's a valid complaint but it's pretty obvious in this case that by fine he means "not so addicted to his 'phone or porn that it has a negative effect on his life".
Not all psychologists see eye-to-eye on the tests issue.
In the case mentioned in the article, even a professional that truly trusts the tests should have taken into consideration:
1) make his own assesment and check against the test score,
2) realize that the test is supposedly validated against a sample, and if the candidate falls out of that sample (non-native english speaker), the test should probably be disregarded.
Carefull when disregarding a whole field based on preconceptions. All fields have different branches and disagreements. True some fields like psychology have a harder time producing great professionals, in my assesment. I think it's because of it being a young field and it's hard to agree on what the standards are to measure good/bad practice.
What are you talking about psychology is awesome i am quite interested in the field however HR's use of psychology by just ticking boxes is not correct.
They don't understand it so they are unable to apply it without ticking boxes.
That form is completely useless in London for example where about 50% of the population is a non native English speaker.
> What are you talking about psychology is awesome i am quite interested in the field however HR's use of psychology by just ticking boxes is not correct.
I think you should ask yourself some hard questions about psychology. It's true that psychology's current practices are rather unreliable, but it's not obvious how to solve that problem, given the field's subject, the human mind. If the target were the brain, that would be different, but the mind is not the brain.
If you're trying to say psychology is not an exact science I agree. You can't use psychology to make exact predictions of how people will behave however the more you learn about psychology the better you get at figuring out people and make a educated guess what motivates them.
The solution is simple teach HR psychology but don't make it the be all end all solution in hiring people it should however be a tool in their tool box and they should use their best judgement. Or thrust the IT staffs judgement at least.
> If you're trying to say psychology is not an exact science I agree.
It's not a science at all. Sciences make observations, then craft generalizing theories to explain the observations, then test the theories in unrelated contexts, then discard those theories that fail. This is certainly not how psychology works. In psychology, it's commonplace to see a therapy for a disease whose existence hasn't yet been established, or that was brought into being by a secret vote rather than a microscope (as was true during the DSM-5 editorial process).
Am I exaggerating the requirements for real science? Let's perform a thought experiment to see. Let's say we can have science without theories, only with observations, as in modern psychology. Here goes ...
Let's say I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works. My method is repeatable and perfectly reliable, and I've published my cure in a refereed scientific journal (there are now any number of phony refereed scientific journals). And, because (in this thought experiment) science can get along without defining theories, I'm under no obligation to try to explain my cure, or consider alternative explanations for my breakthrough — I only have to describe it, just like a psychologist.
Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that psychology recognizes for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes or no?
Ask yourself what's wrong with this picture, and notice that the same thing is wrong with psychology — all description, no explanation, no established principles on which different psychologists agree, no effort to build consensus, and no unifying theories.
> You can't use psychology to make exact predictions of how people will behave however the more you learn about psychology the better you get at figuring out people and make a educated guess what motivates them.
Only if you're suffering from a bad case of confirmation bias. You need to understand that psychology is undergoing a major upheaval eight now, mostly because of improvements in neuroscience that suggest neuroscience will eventually replace psychology, in the same way that astronomy replaced astrology in the 17th century.
Quote: "the medical specialty devoted to the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders."
See the word "mental" in both definitions? Neither studies the brain, neither is scientific, and the distinction between them is more a matter of history than topic.
I ask that you think about what you're saying. If human psychology were a science, then its two major subfields, psychiatry and psychology (there are actually 54, but never mind), would be looked on as intimately related to human psychology and to each other.
Would you argue that cosmology and particle physics aren't related to each other because they study different things, i.e. one studies the universe at the largest possible scale and the other at the smallest? Most scientists would disagree because these two fields rely on physics and physical theory for their scientific standing.
> but it applies to psychiatry (more specifically, the DSM) rather than to psychology.
False. Both psychiatry and psychology rely on the DSM as a diagnostic guide.
Quote: "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States ... It can be used by a wide range of health and mental health professionals, including psychiatrists and other physicians, psychologists, social workers, nurses, occupational and rehabilitation therapists, and counselors. "
> I agree with your major point, but it applies to psychiatry (more specifically, the DSM) rather than to psychology.
On the contrary, it applies to both, because both psychiatry and psychology depend on the DSM's imagined authority for diagnosis and treatment guidance.
If the DSM were to suddenly disappear, psychologists would have no therapeutic guidebook. That wouldn't stop them, of course, but it would be disrupting and embarrassing.
If human psychology were a science, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because psychiatry and psychology would be looked on as branches of a science with more similarities than differences, just as with cosmology and particle physics.
I would urge you to realise that psychology!=psychotherapy.
I hate with the blinding passion of a thousand fiery suns psychotherapy, but I find much (experimental) psychology rather interesting.
Seriously, one of the very first things they tell you in a psychology degree (at least in Europe) is that its not about therapy, and in fact that most therapists are not psychologists. The study of the human mind and what is essentially a form of confession are very, very different.
But hey, you'll believe what you want to on this one, it doesn't look like I can convince you.
Have you read any of the work of Daniel Kahneman? Thats what I would consider as psychology (even if his System One and Two stuff is a dirty hack that provides little useful insight to the field).
> I would urge you to realise that psychology!=psychotherapy.
You don't need to clarify that, and it lacks any connection with the present topic.
> I find much (experimental) psychology rather interesting.
I would find it much more interesting if it were scientific, if its practitioners crafted and then tested falsifiable theories. But it isn't and they don't.
> But hey, you'll believe what you want to on this one, it doesn't look like I can convince you.
My position isn't based on belief, it is based on evidence. Consider this summary of an investigation into recent egregious and fraudulent psychological research:
Quote: "In their exhaustive final report about the fraud affair that rocked social psychology last year, three investigative panels today collectively find fault with the field itself. They paint an image of a "sloppy" research culture in which some scientists don't understand the essentials of statistics, journal-selected article reviewers encourage researchers to leave unwelcome data out of their papers, and even the most prestigious journals print results that are obviously too good to be true."
Too bad about these academic experts and their "beliefs" about psychological research.
Incidents like the above explains why the director of the NIMH has recently decided to abandon the DSM, psychiatry and psychology's central authority, as unscientific and of no research value:
Quote: "While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."
Too bad about the NIMH director's "beliefs".
> Have you read any of the work of Daniel Kahneman? Thats what I would consider as psychology (even if his System One and Two stuff is a dirty hack that provides little useful insight to the field).
Hmm -- it seems you are now making my argument for me.
Why do I care? Why am I critical of psychology but give sociology a pass? Sociologists don't have clinics in which they tell you how sick you are, using disease definitions they voted into existence.
I call it inexact because you can't use the classical way of proving theories right or wrong. There's no mathematical calculations you can do to figure out all the implications of that theory. The theories are based on observations of human behavior and they most likely do not cover all edge cases they are however the best we got at the moment in describing human behavior and motivations.
If this were to happen in physics we'd call it it a failed or incomplete theory.
> I call it inexact because you can't use the classical way of proving theories right or wrong.
If you cannot clearly and empirically prove a theory wrong (in principle), it is not science. Falsifiability is required for science and scientific theories. This doesn't mean all scientific theories are false, it means all scientific theories must not fail a comparison with reality.
Quote: "The strength of a scientific theory is related to the diversity of phenomena it can explain, which is measured by its ability to make falsifiable predictions with respect to those phenomena."
On that basis, psychology is not a science.
> If this were to happen in physics we'd call it it a failed or incomplete theory.
If this were to happen in physics, people would abandon it, as they abandoned astrology and alchemy.
> Not all psychologists see eye-to-eye on the tests issue.
But psychologists don't see eye to eye on anything -- that's one of the obstacles to turning psychology into a science.
> In the case mentioned in the article, even a professional that truly trusts the tests should have taken into consideration:
> 1) make his own assesment and check against the test score,
On the contrary, if psychology were a science, a clinical psychologist administering a standardized test should produce the same high correlation with reality as a clinical doctor administering a standardized test. But this is certainly not the case, and one of the reasons for this discussion is that psychologists are often married to the outcome of a test that isn't a reliable measure of its subject. A psychologist's confidence in a test's unreliable results is an obvious theme in the linked article.
> Carefull when disregarding a whole field based on preconceptions.
Tell that to Thomas Insel, director of the NIMH, who recently and reluctantly decided to abandon the DSM, psychiatry and psychology's standard diagnostic manual, on the ground that it's becoming less scientific with each new edition:
My point is that, when a field's opinion leaders disregard a whole field, it's no longer a preconception.
> All fields have different branches and disagreements.
When a medical doctor says you have cancer, it's 99% certain you have cancer. When a psychologist says you have Asperger Syndrome, the reliability of the diagnosis is so unreliable and divorced from reality that the diagnosis has been reluctantly abandoned after an epidemic of phony diagnoses.
The same pattern applies to most other psychological diagnoses and decisions -- they are very subjective. Tom Widiger, who served as head of research for DSM-IV, says "There are lots of studies which show that clinicians diagnose most of their patients with one particular disorder and really don't systematically assess for other disorders. They have a bias in reference to the disorder that they are especially interested in treating and believe that most of their patients have."
> I think it's because of it being a young field ...
Psychology and psychologists have been around making pronouncements since before the U.S. Civil War. That makes psychology one of the oldest fields that has scientific pretensions.
> it's hard to agree on what the standards are to measure good/bad practice.
Yes, true, which is why psychology is now being replaced by neuroscience -- the latter can produce more objective results.
The State is the one that must have no expectations of privacy and in fact be held to rigorous transparency an independent audit, not the other way around.
Like in software, security that relies on closed source is in fact more vulnerable.
The burden would be on the maker to ensure that.
Otherwise, it maybe could allow for safer driving, but it sure would allow reckless facebook/driving.