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April 23 2007

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Shift Happens -- Some of the Most Amazing Statistics You Never Knew

The United States may be the world's leading power in terms of economic, social, political and technological impact, but you might think twice about how long that'll continue.

Watching this short and very interesting video from glumbert.com, which compares America to other countries by the numbers, along with huge shifts in technology may change your mind.

What follows are just a few of the many amazing statistics that will shock and concern you, especially if you're an American. Then, click the video below to watch the entire list.

  • An American student will have as many as 14 jobs by the time he or she turns age 38.
  • More than 3,000 new books are published in the United States every DAY.
  • The amount of new technical information doubles every two years, which means students attending a technical school will learn information that will be outdated by their third year.
  • The number of words in the English language is 540,000 -- that is FIVE times the number of words present during Shakespeare's time.




 
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Posted On Apr 23, 2007
Logical fallacy: "New technical information doubles in two years - therefore half of what a student learns is outdated in 2 years. "
Correction: none of what he/she learns is outdated in two years.  The only way this "problem", if it were real, could be solved is to compress the educational timescale, so in one year 1-1/(2^½) = 1-1/1.414...= 1-.707= .3 of what they learned is outdated, so then shorten the educational timeframe to 1/2 year and get 1-1/(2^¼) = ...  and you'll find you never quite get to "0" outdated  information.  But time continues marching on after you get out of school, and you keep falling behind anyway. Okay, so why is the model useless to help solve the perceived problem?  Because it claims that the amount you learn in that one or two years is irrelevant, only how long you spent learning it.  So if you pick your nose and learn nothing else in two years, you're at the same disadvantage as someone who crams it all in.  The only way out of the trap this information model presents is this to learn at an ever-increasing rate every day of you're life, 'til you're brain explodes.  Nope - all wrong.  You just need more people who are educated, more specialization, and as natter taught us: (link) "A functioning socio-economic infrastructure (as in, one that is automated and self-organising) is all that's needed"  Duane

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Posted On Apr 23, 2007
Um, ok.

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Posted On May 08, 2007
Good job Duane, I think you got a little bit technical but it is completely correct except that if we do advance in the technology industy then the people learning it now will be disadvantaged when there is new ways of doing thing, new prducts and new tools to use, seeing as though they wont know the up to date information. The state that the USA is in at the moment is at a peek and its declining fast, get ready for a depression! This may seem like im saying that the sky is falling but, the nobel prize winning economist said that americas economy will only last a few more years. So, what ever happeneds i would hate to be the person who said told you so! 

                 Alias

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Posted On May 08, 2007
Nothing of the stated things will  Happen in SriLanka

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Posted On May 08, 2007
"You just need more people who are educated, more specialization, and as natter taught us: (link) "A functioning socio-economic infrastructure (as in, one that is automated and self-organising) is all that's needed"  Duane"

I would disagree that what we need is MORE specialization. I think we are specializing too much already. We need more people capable of a broad range of skills, who are ALSO capable of thinking and extrapolating from information they already have, so that they can expand their skills-base as needed. We need people who can use Mac, Windows, and Linux. We need people who can cook -and- do dishes.

Specialization is -killing- us. Right now, so many people are so specialized that they are incapable of changing directions if they need to -- when their area of specialization becomes obsolete, so do they! We need more GENERALISTS -- you know... the people your momma said were "Jacks of all Trades".

Storm

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Posted On May 08, 2007

Nope! What we need is more GOD! Not more education.

Example 1:
A pastor invented the most powerful digital camera in the world today. A reporter interviewed him and asked him what university he attended. The pastor said he didn't go to a university, to which the reported said, "You're lying."


Search the web for "Audience of One", a documentary made on the pastor. [but the camera invention was left out in the film; also left out was the info that God gave the invention to the pastor in a dream.’

Example 2:
The greatest inventions mostly came from godly, Bible-believing men who gave the credit to God. But the school books don't tell the students this truth, this secret for greatness.  Humanists took God out of American school books, and the power for greatest also went out of the people to hear from God, and to do great things.

Example 3:
Specialization is a way corrupt Medical Authorities keeps doctors in the dark. They can look at the trees, and cannot see the forest. Naturopaths, in contrast, see a connection between body, mind, spirit, and soul. They often see people cured of multiples diseases by simply detoxing, de-worming, and feeding the body what it needs.

 

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Posted On May 08, 2007
Glad to see this topic revived!

storm weaver - my secret's out.  I hoped everyone would specialize, stay stuck, and us generalists could rise to the top of the pile...

ObeyGod - well, if we educate ourselves, we can still credit God.

Alias - Thanks.  It is creativity, the hitherto unknown advances, that will drive our economy.  Only fear will stop it.

printha - perhaps.  Who is holding Sri Lanka back?

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Posted On May 09, 2007
I found the video to be very interesting.  I whole-hearted agree with ObeyGod; that is the truth we need to focus on.  In my own life, I've found when I worry about the future and what could or couldn't happen, if I turn my trust in God, it takes away some of the anxiety.  This world is a scary place, and the way technology changes, it seems those of us not in the loop will be lost.  As individuals, we need to be on guard and seek out knowledge and do with it what we feel is best. 

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Posted On May 09, 2007
Logical fallacy or not, information is self perpetuating.  What we learn today helps create tomorrow's new knowledge.  Even though, when we graduate some of the information we learned in the beginning may be outdated, speaking only in terms of new, rapidly growing technology, we could not have gotten to where science is then without the previous knowledge.  There is no way to short cut learning.   Just take it slow and easy and it will all work out.

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Posted On May 25, 2007
Ray Kurzweil is ( or will be ) right...Shift Happens.  His name for this concept is what he calls The Singularity.

Just think about the various leaps AND SHORTCUTS in thinking that will have to be made by our newborn's Baby Brains, in comparison to our current style of daily thinking, in order for the various milestones mentioned in the clip to happen.

"Right versus wrong" will have to be replaced by "What Works versus what doesn't work" as the accepted new pattern of reasoning.  The old staid patterns of thinking don't always serve properly.  I had my Aha Moment a few years ago when I taught myself to read much faster than my slow reading speed.  I wish I'd learned to read faster BEFORE I entered university.  Oh well.

I'm going to stop before I inadvertently turn my comment into a political / religious argument.  That would NOT be my intent.

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Posted On May 08, 2007
One rule will always apply:

Keep it simple, and remember it's not about knowing all the answers, it's about knowing where to find them that matters....

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Posted On May 08, 2007
Well said, Robert!  I couldn't agree more!

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Posted On May 08, 2007
robert - good one!  We're (I'm) getting some great advice here on how to prepare ourselves and our children for the inevitable future.

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Posted On May 11, 2007
pray witch doctor do tell your secrets - I'm curious what your thoughts are on preparing for the future.  Something I think we might want to start considering.............

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Posted On May 11, 2007
KathieJamisonCote - Hi!  Is your picture on that website somewhere?  I actually am still working on the past.  I hope I find the secrets there, because that's where I've been looking.  You've planted the seed for future dialog, I hope.

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Posted On May 12, 2007
Good Day Witch Doctor :)
ah, yes it's there - look for the 45 yr old, (althought that was 5 yrs ago)    :)   

I'm most intrigued by your searching the past - as that does make sense.......life continues in continuous circles.  I think it's time we all took a look at just how the past has repeated itself and admit - we're really not any further evolved in "getting it" than we were 2000 years ago.  The wars continue - times changes, situations change, but have we really?  

Maybe the sum of all of us here on "the healthy and conscientious websites" can bring about the positive changes needed in order for this world to continue.

I'm on a path to help world peace see a chance, educate my dancers and their families to the fabulous effects of nourishing eating and healthy lifestyles and help bring down Big Pharma and Factory Farms.............

Well, maybe a little ambitious for this Saturday morning, but what the heck.  We only go 'round once and I'm making it count. 

Have to admit, I'm concerned about the Mayan calendar ending in 2012. 

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Posted On May 12, 2007
KathieJamisonCote - at first glance I saw no 45 year old.

Actually I'm preparing for the future by watching my back...

I'm glad to hear that others are doing the worrying about 2012 and the Mayan calendar stuff  - 'cause that frees me up to work on other things..

Good to talk to you.   W.D.

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Posted On May 08, 2007
Technical knowledge will always become outdated but wisdom never will.

The problem today is specialization. Especially in medicine. One doctor studies the throat, and another the eyeball and another the intestines. As if a human being can be separated into pieces. Who determines where the separations are? The idea of separation is the biggest fallacy of all. This fallacy kills. Another complete fallacy is the Cartesian mind-body split. The psyche quacks thrive on this lie.

Long live the artists and the generalists!

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Posted On May 08, 2007
"Technical knowledge will always become outdated, but wisdom never will."
Well said!

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Posted On May 08, 2007
I'm not necessarily certain that we should be "concerned"... surprised, maybe... encouraged, perhaps... full of ideas, even better -- but not concerned.

Fear is a trap -- people who promote fear are trapping us into believing that we are somehow less, weaker, poorer, and more victimized than we are, in order to claim power over us that they did not earn, and that we are not required to give. We do not have to fear, and, in fact, would be happier and healthier, with many more magnificent ideas to share if we would let go of our fear. EACH and every one of us has the potential for magnificence encoded into us.

I found this video fascinating. One thing that I was thinking, as I was watching the segment about how computers may, very soon, be able to out-process the human brain, was "I am glad that I am not my brain, or my body... that I am more than the sum of my parts, am infinitely creative and adaptive, and will never be able to be replaced as a 'creative, loving, leap-of-faith-making being' by a machine."

Namaste,
Storm

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Posted On May 09, 2007
An insiders comments, computers that are capable of thinking and learning are not science fiction, they are already here and now.  They can not feel, they have no soul, they are still limited to encoding and can not go beyond that encoding.  They are learning for themselves but we are not seeing the end of the world, we are seeing a new technology only.  Better probabilites.  Better predictable outcomes.  Theroies proven or disproven faster than a team of people can do, but still limited to it's encoding. 


   Still only a tool.  I'll worry when we give it arms and legs to build itself and does.  Even then, it would still have to figure out a way to overcome it's own encodings.  Take this into account, cryogenics will never work.  Why?  Once a soul leaves the body, no reason to come back to a spent life.  It's the soul that makes us all.  No soul, no life force, hence no life.  You can do it with an animal as the soul of an animal is not like the soul of a Human.  Cloning a human is also never going to work either.  You can not give a clone a soul.  You can clone the body, but not the life or life force.  So a machine of man's invention will never exceed man.  Only God exceeds man.  So call a tool a tool and a human a human.  No worries.  Shit happens.

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Posted On May 11, 2007
Wonderful post - so true and well written. 
I love the bumper sticker that states "God is larger than any 1 religion can encompass."  Our human spirit and connectness to God is also larger than any future mega machine. 
Am a little concerned though by the date - 2013 being the "year of the super computer - more capable than the human brain"..............since the Mayan Calendar ends 2012 and supposedly with that arrives, the "Angel of Darkness " .......................YIKES!

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Posted On Apr 23, 2007
I'm reminded of the old John Fogarty lyrics, sung moire recently by the lead vocalist from Dire Straits, "Nobody Is Here Anymore."

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