The Axon Terminal - 2014-05-02

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Artem Kaznatcheev

12:09 AM

@NickStauner I worried about that sometime in the long past. I realized that the rep effects of downvotes (both for the voter and the receiver) are actually completely inconsequential. The point of the votes is not to punish or reward the person asking/answering the question, but the point is to help other community members to decide what is worth reading. And I am willing to pay that <0.1% of my 'hard earned rep' for such a public good.

Although I guess I downvote too much. My account says I have cast 451 downvotes (wow :() and probably 1/3 to 1/2 of those are on answers, so I probably cost myself maybe 200 rep? Which is really just two good answers or four good questions.

@ArtemKaznatcheev Yep. I know it's essentially true, but I still gotta admit that I hesitate. I've been telling myself that if I ever make it to 10K, I'll stop sweating the rep...but I just realized the last privilege unlocks at 20K on graduated sites, so I'm not sure I can stick to that. The whole train of thought is getting way ahead of myself in any case.

@ArtemKaznatcheev I don't think you downvote too much. You do more than I do of course, but everybody's entitled to their own voting preferences, and the site probably benefits from a little variety in levels of sensitivity on both the upvotes and downvotes among its members. Gives it more meaning when you get a lot of votes in one direction or another, after all.

Artem Kaznatcheev

@NickStauner well, we are nowhere close to graduation. So I wouldn't sweat it. Also, there is very little 'useful' privileges even on graduated sites after 3k.

Also, given your heavy involvement with the site, if you wanted those privileges then you could just run for moderator once the site graduates.

@ArtemKaznatcheev Agreed on both points, sadly...but I still want this site to graduate badly enough that I'm inclined to unlock 'em all just to be able to say someone does. Of course, no ensuring that won't change either. I think I'm describing my preconscious thoughts rather than rational conclusions here...

@ArtemKaznatcheev I'm sure I will when given the opportunity :) That is...if it comes anytime before I get painfully busy with other work.

Artem Kaznatcheev

@NickStauner well, if you want then you are welcome to compete with me and get that 2nd place rep position

Haha...I figure I'm on track to take everybody on! stackexchange.com/leagues/179/year/cogsci

Artem Kaznatcheev

12:19 AM

Oh wait, I just mistook you for user what, my bad. You have a few more positions to climb

@NickStauner haha, doing the 'only counts in the year' version, eh?

I had a bit of fun with that gamification part when I first started.

But overtime I got bored of it.

@ArtemKaznatcheev psh...I just started this year!

@ArtemKaznatcheev Yeah, I'm still waiting for that to happen to me too.

Artem Kaznatcheev

@NickStauner now I just collect announcer, booster, and publicist badges.

I have yet to catch Jeromy on the last one...

At the moment I can't tell if I'm getting better or worse. I'm gaming the gold voting badge presently...but I hope to start competing for sharing badges sometime too. I suppose I've already started by sharing a link or two on ResearchGate, but IDK if those will ever generate much traffic. Safer to be pessimistic I'd wager.

Artem Kaznatcheev

@NickStauner oh gosh... you're a ResearchGate user?

@ArtemKaznatcheev Well, I started an account a week or two ago...Pretty disappointed with the Q&A section there, but it could be a nice way to push my publications in the long run. I see quite a few colleagues over there.

Artem Kaznatcheev

12:26 AM

It sends me so much spam, and I don't even have an account with them.

All the cool kids hang out on Google Scholar :P

Oh yay! My new preprint is live

Er...hang out? I think I do that too, but I wouldn't have thought of looking up articles on Scholar left and right as hanging out there...

Artem Kaznatcheev

@NickStauner well, by hang out I mean that I use the "follow author" feature

so everytime somebody whose research I like publishes something

Ohh...I'm not cool after all! I'll work on that.

Artem Kaznatcheev

(or a day or so later, when Google learns about it)

I get an email

Similar whenever somebody cites my work

but right not that happens much more seldom

3 hours later…

3:04 AM

@NickStauner I worry about drawing this crowd with such a question: cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/6360/…

3:30 AM

@jonsca Yeah, understandable, but that would be another excuse to promote our popular pseudoscience-debunking answers :)

8 hours later…

11:19 AM

0

Q: 'We all are from SO': A probable promotion issue?

Recently I invited one of my colleagues to CS.SE to improve her ideas while doing cognitive neuroscience research in the graduate school. I usually use StackOverFlow website more and get answers very quickly there. I also used Stats.SE and get good results. But I feel that the community here is n...

discussion site-promotion

11 hours later…

Bio Neuroscience Questions

10:34 PM

0

Q: How does an axon "know" it's not connecting to it's own neuron?

I recently read about an experiment where they removed the dendrites and axons from rat neurons and placed them on a grid. After a while they started reconnecting and were able to learn things. Since I'm trying to create a model simulating this, I'd like to know (as much as is needed to make it ...

neuroscience brain

Artem Kaznatcheev

10:47 PM

@NickStauner it isn't even a debunking. Understanding what 'particle' means in quantum mechanics is actually a non-trivial discussion. From the effort the user has put it in asking his 'questions', it is a discussion that is simply not worth having.

It is also a discussion that has been had everywhere on the internet.

Of course, the last sentence of that post is simply nonsensical. It is just words following each other, I have not figured out how to attach any semantic meaning to it.

@jonsca :(

@ArtemKaznatcheev He's on a roll with the nonsensical, though his most recent question creeps a little bit into the "far flung philosophical" realm.

Artem Kaznatcheev

@jonsca I agree, meaning can be extracted from his nonsense

however, this is a common problem faced in machine learning

when you know too much (i.e. have too many potential hypotheses) then it is easy to find sense in almost anything

Actually, I blogged about it just two weeks ago :P.

I am pretty sure that whatever meaning you are extracting from his questions @jonsca is internal to you, not to the OP.

Just that last one, the others were just a salad of words all mixed together and dumped in a landfill, run over by a garbage truck, and carried away by a buzzard.

FWIW, I don't think the self as a construct is unknowable, in as much as it can be defined according to theories that know very well what they mean by "the self" within the context of the theory itself...but of course, without specifying any particular theory of interest, it's entirely unclear which "self" this question pertains to. — Nick Stauner 6 mins ago

It refers to "Self on a Shelf", the kids philosophy toy.

Artem Kaznatcheev

I want to post the following comment

but maybe I need a calmness check

can you oblige @jonsca ?

I was going to post:

As an example, look at the last question that was asked by somebody other than you (happens to be me). Can you notice some differences between that question and your posts? Do you see how it lays out what I already know, what studies I already read, and what I expect a sensical answer to look like?

No, I think that's a fine approach.

One should always mod angry, it gets the point across ;)

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:02 PM

@jonsca I just feel like a boggy man

all I do is vote down and close questions :(

I think that's what we need right now...

Artem Kaznatcheev

I suspect it is because of pseudonyms

I feel like if people all used their real, traceable identities then a lot of this (sadly not all of it) would be stopped by people being too embarrassed to ask zero effort things

and I realize that I am saying this to pseudonym @jonsca

I resemble that remark

I think people just wander in and say "Cool, brain! That's what the newsman tells me about" and they don't bother to look into it any further than that.

Artem Kaznatcheev

Is this comment thread getting out of hand @jonsca?

-2

Q: is there thought without memory?

what do you think about it? im sure you know very well the nature of thought. i dont know, so what you say about it is the truth and i will take it as my certainty

cognitive-neuroscience

I think it's okay, you should probably leave it at that, though

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:09 PM

yes, I think I will. Thank you @jonsca

Also, there have never been any studies of complete amnesia. Ever. No one has ever looked at it.

Artem Kaznatcheev

I need to get better at battling my inner 386

I just asked a question with little initial research on MathEd and someone called me out on it. Karma, lol

Artem Kaznatcheev

@jonsca haha. Man, there are SO MANY stackexchanges... I feel like an old grouch "why ain't the SEs good like they were back in my day?"

I except there will soon be an SE SE where you can ask where to ask questions, and how to ask questions, how to game the voting system, etc

1

Q: Who put the skew in my Skittles? Have there been studies as to which candy has a fairly uniform distribution of flavors?

Since the beginning of time, candy has been used to illustrate the principles of distributions in early lessons on statistics. A recent informal study seems to indicate that the flavors of Skittles are not uniformly distributed. While it would be a great exercise for more advanced students to...

secondary-education primary-education statistics

I did find a study some Yalies has done as part of their undergrad research.

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:17 PM

Ahh, the old "Let me google (scholar) that for you"

Yeehah! Except 3/4 of those articles are not even about using them as a classroom demo

(I don't think he tried it before recommending it)

Artem Kaznatcheev

@jonsca yeah, I think your question is fine. Super weird... but fine.

lol

It was inspired by a large bag of Jolly Ranchers that had a disproportionate number of apple flavor

Artem Kaznatcheev

I also have a hard time imaging somebody getting a grant to buy lots and lots of bags of candy to estimate their skew...

which is presumably what would be required to have studies on this

but maybe people in MathEd are mad good at writing grants

(although I guess the actual process would involve just examining the factories and packaging process instead. Still, I want my grants to have a for purchasing candy section.)

I am genuinely interested if it's a good tool to use in the classroom, I think that's what I'm really asking.

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:23 PM

Why does the skew of the skittle distribution matter for its use in the classroom?

can't you just count out the right number of skittles before class?

or by weight or something

or do you just hand out bags of skittles to kids?

I mean, I did my early schooling in Russia, and Russia isn't the kind of place where kids are taught with candy.

Yeah, I think people just hand bags out and have kids do the counting. It's supposed to introduce sampling, too.

You will count farm machinery and like it!

Artem Kaznatcheev

@jonsca in Soviet Russia, farm machinery count you

Exactly. I couldn't come up with a good one.

Artem Kaznatcheev

brings a whole new meaning to cabbage patch kids

lol

The actual answer is 75 less, as that is the amount taken by the Politburo

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:27 PM

@jonsca yes, it is really annoying when the bags come with only 20 candies

We'll see how that question goes over, I suppose I can always purge it. I like reading the site, but I don't always have stuff to ask.

Artem Kaznatcheev

@jonsca I still have to convince you to ask a CogSci Q :P

I've got plenty of stuff I've been thinking about for a while. I have a question about fear of fire in animals that I've been trying to formulate properly.

(and multimodal integration in general)

Artem Kaznatcheev

AHHAHAHA

oh man... you know your most recent question?

Which one?

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:35 PM

the one that just got an upvote :P

the one you asked most recently

Yeah. What about it?

Artem Kaznatcheev

I was trying to make sense of the deleted comment

it took me a while

I don't remember what it was, I don't have the secret mod powers to see it. I think it was a Skippy original, though.

Was it the one where she was trying to get ahold of me after getting kicked out of Pets?

Artem Kaznatcheev

I assume it came from here:

11

Q: Why does my tortoise make a peeping or whistling sound while breathing?

I'm not asking for health-related advice, as I've had the vet following this for many years to make sure it's not respiratory-related, but this is more of a "does it fit the animal's natural history" question. I have a Redfoot tortoise that tends to make a peeping or whistling sound when she's b...

behavior reptiles tortoises

Yeah.

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:37 PM

That's pretty cool that your tortoise whistles...

my dog just sleeps and/or whines

It evidently wasn't an emergency ;)

Artem Kaznatcheev

@jonsca can you get a galapagos turtle?

That would be cool, except I have a hard enough time making room for the small one. I'd have to buy it its own house

Artem Kaznatcheev

I was very sad when I found out that Komodo dragons were too small to use as mounts :(

You could always shrink yourself

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:42 PM

@jonsca if I ever have a child, s/he will ride a Komodo dragon to school

well, until social services intervenes

It's always fun until CPS shows up.

Or until someone loses an eye, whichever comes first

Or your memory is erased

0

Q: In a seizure, does the person have nothing being recorded into memory? Or erased all at once?

Please consider a type of seizure that originates in the occipital lobe. It lasts less than one second and erases the sense of front / back / left / right, but over several minutes that orientation returns. In an unfamiliar location, one must stop and wait several minutes for orientation to retur...

Artem Kaznatcheev

@jonsca I am not sure about this user, but he looks great in comparison to the discussion we just had

It's a great question if someone irons out that bit of vocabulary, hehe

Artem Kaznatcheev

@jonsca looks like a task for you! :P

They really should give rep or something for good edits

I don't know what to substitute for "erased" though.

"forgotten" kind of paves over the root of the question

Artem Kaznatcheev

11:54 PM

yeah

I have to go for a bit

will check in later

Okay. Later

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