Jeff Lichtman once claimed that learning after birth consists only of synaptic pruning :-)
- Björn Brembs
So we "lose" 9.0*10^15 (~9000000000000000) synapses somehow? What's the number of synapses that are being killed by binge drinking for example? I doubt such activities could account for it though?
- Alexander Kruel
Chris, that number seems off by a factor of ten. I thought that I have typically seen 10^14 as the estimate for adults...?
- Noah Gray
@Björn A lot of work conducting longitudinal microscopy of dendritic spines (putative synapses) in rodents suggests exactly that: major pruning. In fact, although learning or experience can induce more spines in the short term, over long periods, most are subsequently loss; i.e., there is no net gain.
- Noah Gray
For the non-experts like me it sounds like a child has at least 9 times more synapses than an adult. This may help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... (Heard about it for the first time.)
- Alexander Kruel
@Noah I got those numbers from some lecture notes, very recent notes but probably just lifted out of a textbook, and I guess everyone's counting method is different. I was just struck by the 10-fold difference. No surprise kids can learn 3 languages simultaneously to the point of fluency. Wonder what else they learn..
- Christopher Harris
I suppose as long as you're not entering a different universe for everything else you'll have to learn, the residual synapses and the knowledge they represent are enough to build on for prevailing similarities of artifacts, actions and frameworks of the intermediate world in which we reside? Maybe that's why it is so hard to learn about quantum phenomena, grasp relativistic circumstances and make sense of probabilistic behavior within artificial frameworks and of quantum/cosmologic scales?
- Alexander Kruel
Fortunately someone fought that battle for me, before I joined the company. The concept of confidence intervals has made its way into the QA department, thank $deity.
- Bill Hooker
That's actually part of the problem, being a clinical chemistry lab they are used to giving out quantitative results with confidence intervals - setting a cut-off that makes the lab-answer qualitative (POS/NEG) makes them uncomfortable. Nevertheless what you normally do in microbiology....and the sensible thing in my mind.
- Nils Reinton
Badger!!!!!! Aaaaaargh this feels like a lifetime ago... university would not have been the same without the never-ending badger badger badger mushroom mushrooms!
- Kris-Stella
The key to both Indian and Chinese applicants seems to be a very close knowledge of which institutions have the highest standards and local contacts. I used to try and reply individually to these but now get about ten a week even without positions advertised.
- Cameron Neylon
My search in the U.S. turned up more than 666, and the first hit is a real winner, from a blog called "Jesus Loves Everything" -- it's so over the top that it seems like a parody site.
- The Neurocritic
"Instead of biotechnology and computer science, we can focus on Jesus Loves Everything Superstores, reforming our economy so it's better prepared for the end times. Then we will no longer need to teach science in schools, thus depriving our children of the seeds of doubt in the power of our Lord, that He created the world in six days, and that we did not descend from apes."
- The Neurocritic
I got 7100 results this time, guess science is getting eviler by the day. maybe we should think seriously about investing in one of them JLE Superstores..
- Christopher Harris