OK, I've submitted. It's neither as comprehensive nor as rigorous as I would like it to be, and I suspect that there are a few bits of woolliness in there still, but I have no more time, so it'll have to do for now.

If anybody wants to provide nits and crits, I'll attempt to address them later.

I did take a look at it hack, and I think that it is good work.

Entropy is maybe the most difficult concept in physics, along with the principle of relativity. Entropy has so many "definitions", and despite each of them adding something to the whole, they are confusing to the non-expert. And there is the whole confusion about systems.

As for the principle of relativity, most people have taken it to mean that "everything is relative". I initially wanted to go down that road, but it probably would have turned ugly for me, as it would delve into philosophy... Maybe another time, when I've had more time to think about it.

I had actually considered dealing with the principle of relativity, but the concept of entropy has long been a real bugbear of mine, and I thought this a useful opportunity to tackle it.

katja z wrote:Oh, that's simple. Divide the essay in two parts, create another account and submit part 1 as palindnilap and part 2 as palindnilap's sockpuppet. Er ... why are you giving me funny looks?

Oh great idea ! You even gave me the inspiration for the introduction of the second article. "Please allow me to build up on the splendid work of my esteemed colleague...".

It looks like I have very interesting reading to do, but if I do it now, I will risk being late on schedule. I'll keep the reading for after Christmas.

I'm directly typing on the forum for the last hour or so and it's so bad that I'll have to kill myself before I hit 'submit'.

Phew! After 2 hours, I've managed to produce an absolute shit of an article. I'm too knackered to add the citations now. Will do it tomorrow.

And fucking Douglas Hofstadter never told me how difficult it is to write something based on a musical model.

Excellent work everybody, that was a fun morning reading through everybody's work - I particularly liked the different angle Darkchilde took to tackle the problem of astrology

And Medgen: Your article was great. I read up on the "Gene for X" problem when I was doing a little background reading on my topic and found the "promiscuity gene" report too, I'm glad you covered it because I don't know enough to address it as well as you did. I also liked your introductory reference to Gattaca, that's a good way to catch your audience's attention..

Hack: Great work as always, even though it's a field that takes me a few re-reads to wrap my head around

Nats: Nice choice of topic! Only suggestion, in the section about the presentation of 3 boxes, perhaps it would be good to explicitly mention that it's the Monty Hall Dilemma so that people can read up on why common sense is wrong? Otherwise it was a good article, I love illusions

I think you're being too hard on yourself, Nats. A good article, although I'll have to re-read, and I'll be interested to follow your refs when you ha ve posted them.

Thanks, Mr.S, although I still think it's a little woolly in places. I'm not absolutely sure that I've made it any clearer.

hackenslash wrote:Thanks, Mr.S, although I still think it's a little woolly in places. I'm not absolutely sure that I've made it any clearer.

If it helps, that sort of material normally flies right over my head but it made sense to me

I suppose the test is when I try to explain it back to other people, and I find I didn't quite understand some of the specific aspects of it...

I have a small problem. My topic is within decision theory, and I intended to rely heavily on backgammon for my examples, since it is an area where I can produce competent insight without doing research. But what knowledge of the rules can I presuppose ? Is a link to the rules enough ? Or a quick and dirty summary ? I fear that either the examples will be wasted, either I will have to pad them with so many words that nothing will be left for the theoretical part. Should I just scrap the backgammon completely and replace it with something more sexy ? It would be helpful to know what proportion of readers can play backgammon.

palindnilap wrote:I have a small problem. My topic is within decision theory, and I intended to rely heavily on backgammon for my examples, since it is an area where I can produce competent insight without doing research. But what knowledge of the rules can I presuppose ? Is a link to the rules enough ? Or a quick and dirty summary ? I fear that either the examples will be wasted, either I will have to pad them with so many words that nothing will be left for the theoretical part. Should I just scrap the backgammon completely and replace it with something more sexy ? It would be helpful to know what proportion of readers can play backgammon.

If you think of readers from Greece, then we are borne with the knowledge. Tavli, as backgammon is commonly known, is a favorite pass time, and almost every coffee shop in Greece, has a backgammon to offer to his clients.

I think that a link to the rules are enough.

palindnilap wrote:I have a small problem. My topic is within decision theory, and I intended to rely heavily on backgammon for my examples, since it is an area where I can produce competent insight without doing research. But what knowledge of the rules can I presuppose ? Is a link to the rules enough ? Or a quick and dirty summary ? I fear that either the examples will be wasted, either I will have to pad them with so many words that nothing will be left for the theoretical part. Should I just scrap the backgammon completely and replace it with something more sexy ? It would be helpful to know what proportion of readers can play backgammon.

If you wanted an almost universally recognised game that most people know the rules to, then it would probably be checkers. With that said, I've never played backgammon before but after just skimming through the wikipedia page on it, I don't think you'd have any problem just referring people there for the basics.

Ooooh, a couple more to read...



[scoots off to view]

Good work Hack. Again, I learned stuff about a concept I thought I knew a little bit about, but your effort fleshed out a lot of stuff and made it more comprehensible. Well done ! (Personally, I would have added in that FSTDT quote about entropy where the fundie completely neglects the presence of the sun when describing the earth as an alleged closed system).

Nats, I found your submission interesting and engaging. And I loved your sentiment at the end.

Good work gentlemen !

Added the citations.

Now off to read the others' submissions!

Christ, that's a lot of stuff to read.

Mazille wrote:Christ, that's a lot of stuff to read.

Yes, and I don't have time now either to read everything. However, we close the company on Friday, and we open again the 3rd of January, so plenty of time for reading and voting.

Oh god, another essay to read.

From a first glance it looks VERY promising though. Well done, Federico.

I've finally managed to read up on the submissions. Voting is going to be tough work!

Some brief impressions:

Darwinsbulldog, very interesting topic and I liked your relaxed writing style - it seems a bit like the transcription of a lecture A bit terse, maybe you could flesh out some bits if creationists are your intended public (since presumably they don't know these things), but a good read.

I've found MedGen's treatment of "the gene for X" very good (and a welcome contribution given the amount of dumb reporting on "genes for" all kinds of weird things), although I'll have to re-read it to make sure I understand all of the details. I would welcome an example or two of environmental factors in the discussions of sickle-cell anaemia and of multiple sclerosis, but apart from this minor quibble a I found the examples well-chosen and clear. The references to popular culture, to commercial aspects and to general medicine are an excellent way not only to capture the reader's attention but also to provide a context for the discussion.

Darkchilde has done a great job of debunking astrology's potentially (?) sciencey-sounding claims on forces, constellations and assorted celestial objects. The approach to flogging this extremely dead horse is refreshing, and the abstract is a nice touch.

I imagine entropy is not an easy concept to explain to a layperson, but after reading Hackenslash's essay, I'm considerably less confused than I was, so well done! I'm still finding it difficult to wrap my head around all the points that you raised, but I hope a second (or fifth ) reading will sort that out. It is well written as always, so rereading won't be a chore

I loved Natselrox's playful approach. The text seemed a bit disordered until I got to the second part and grasped the logic of it - well, my bad for not paying attention to the title! I thought that was very well done. The examples of the ways common sense gets it wrong were well chosen and clearly explained, and the section on further reading is a very valuable addition. Nats, if that was bad writing, what is your good writing like?

I thought Federico's idea of following up on the thread on The "You Only Use 10pc of Your Brain" Claim was a good one, but IMO the essay would profit from some streamlining and focussing on the main theme announced in the introduction (the 10% myth). This would make it easier to follow, as well as bringing it within the limits of the word count. I've another, more technical quibble with the presentation of references (using brackets instead of embedding ref numbers in the text) and section titles (at least using spacing if not italics or bold text), for example in the following passage:

They speculate that greater energy efficiency in the brains of gifted individuals could arise from increased gray matter, which might provide more resources for data processing, lessening the strain on the brain.
Brain function during Sleep and in Old Age

Sleep 7 in humans is divided in two main phases: non-REM sleep, which occupies most of our early sleep night, and REM sleep, during which our dreams prevail.