I think there's no reason for infections to be harmful. Why not an infection that benefits the host? Some do, for examples the bacteria in your gut, that help you digest food.
How could we hack the environment to favour beneficial infections?
In the aftermath of a wave of criticism, his company collapsed.
One breast cancer charity that parted ways with Mr. Pallotta began producing its own fund-raising walks, but the net sum raised by those walks for breast cancer research plummeted from $71 million to $11 million.
But because his company collapsed, the true comparison figure that Mr. Pallotta raised became $0 million. As a business, it didn't succeed. And he's blaming the world. People often give to charities to feel charitable, and having a profit-motive undermines that - even if the result is that less money is raised. This is because people making donations are often fulfilling a need to give and help people - not by what is best for those being helped. The latter requires a kind of ruthless saint, quite different from the human motivation of brotherly love.
In contrast, ordinary businesses helps people, or else no one would give them money. A fantastic example of this is Grameen Bank "microcredit": http://www.grameen-info.org/index.php?option=com_content&... Usury (interest for credit) has got to be pretty much the opposite of charity, yet it seems to do tremendous good.
Crows "finding" money is problematic, as it might not be "lost"... intelligence (evolution, flow of water, etc) has a way of finding the shortest path. It seems tricky to specify the goal clearly, so the crows are trained to find only "lost" money. Perhaps only reward them for coins that were on the ground? As opposed to in someone's pocket, purse, on a shop counter, in a cash register, in a bank... hmm, this experiment could end badly.
We try to kill off adaptive pests like roaches, rats and crows, but we're breeding them to be parasites ... a better goal ... is to seek an interspecies harmony.
This “toy” should be the core mechanic of the game minus any goals or decisions. There is no win or lose state, just a fun thing to play with.
I liked ken's comment about Mirror's Edge not unlocking abilities, but you can't use them til you encounter the appropriate geometry in the environment (or I think, maybe you could use them before, but you didn't need to, as there were simpler more obvious ways to complete the task using abilities that you already knew about).
For example: movement in an editor. The cursor keys will allow you to do anything; but the word-movement keys can often do what you need more efficiently. Then, in vim (using it as an example because I know it), you can search to the right using "f<somechar>", and there's also F, t, T, ; and ,.
Interestingly, I've only really started to use the latter ones after years, because I'm having a touch of RSI, and I have a need for fewer keystrokes.
One could convert vim (for example) from a toy into a game by adding goals. These goals would have progressively greater difficulty such that they need the more sophisticated controls to accomplish them.
Having a need for something gives you a motivation for learning it; but it also makes it cognitively easier to learn. When you have a gap or lack in your mind crying out for a solution, acquiring the solution that fits that gap makes you feel "ah, that's better!". This makes it more memorable; and creates a strong link from the problem to the solution, making the solution accessible to you the next time you need it - making it useful to you, in practice.
True, especially for the many people who make one attempt, fail, and stop.
Though if you look at people who make several attempts, and who learn something from each, I think the probability of success fast approaches 1. I think that in practice, if you persevere and are reasonably capable, success is inevitable.
Interesting. It also happens with people newly infatuated with OO, esp design patterns.
I think this is a natural phase of learning - when you first grasp a new concept, you use it everywhere; later, you use it where appropriate. Maybe the first phase is exploratory practice, to grasp its limitations. I'm sure there is a pithy expression for these two phases.
Anyone know it?
The first phase is like "To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail". It's also similar to Fred Brooks' "Second System Effect" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_Seco... , where you try to learn from all the mistakes you made in the First System.
Children learning language will apparently learn and use plurals correctly - until they discover the abstraction that you can add "s" to make a plural. They then apply it everywhere, including the irregular plurals: mans, foots, tooths, mouses etc. (that last one may be legit these days, mouse having acquired a technical referent). Or even like that developmental stage of babies, where they try chewing everything they find.
I enjoy MythBusters, but this video impressed me more than anything I've seen from them on that show. I know it'd probably be too much for most audiences, but I'm more interested in how they build most of the stuff they use than what they do with it.
It's the planned spontaneity that makes the "Anyway." slide work. His setup and delivery of this line is so enthusiastic, natural, sincere that it couldn't be planned... yet there's the slide. Cute theatrical technique.
Here's an idea: treat the slides like a ventriloquist's dummy, so that they counter your argument, mock you, undermine you. You could have a conversation. You'd need theatrical skills to pull this off.
Also, colds being a phenomenally successful disease, I wonder if not impairing the mobility of its victims is part of the reason? http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/paul_ewald_asks_can_we_do... [video]