vortmeester's comments

All of your points are sound. But notice what's not on your list: generating new ideas, the ostensible goal of many brainstorming sessions.

From what I've read elsewhere, the "alternative suggestion" that you asked for is actually a two step process:

(1) Everyone, working alone, comes up with as many new ideas as they can, writing them down. It's best if you write down some crazy ones too.

(2) Everyone comes together to discuss all the ideas on all the lists, in a more classic brainstorming format. Here is where your points apply.

The reason for doing it this way is that people universally self censor in groups, often without knowing it, and don't contribute ideas that are too far outside the previous consensus. By taking off the immediate social pressure during ideation, you get a wider range of ideas that is more likely to contain useful new ones.

Edit: I'd forgotten where I got this, until another comment mentioned Quiet by Susan Cain.

As best anyone knows, quantum mechanical effects (like radioactive decay) really are purely and objectively random -- i.e., it is not the case that they appear random because of our ignorance of some deterministic processes. The not-actually-random scenario is called Local Hidden Variable Theory [1], and is ruled out by a series of remarkable experiments based on Bell's Theorem [2].

You can, if you are stubborn, create a theory of QM with non-local hidden variables, but it turns out to be just as weird as orthodox QM; but instead of accepting objective randomness, you have to accept faster-than-light interactions. One example is David Bohm's "pilot wave" theory. [3]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_hidden_variable_theory

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie-Bohm_theory

As an experimental physicist, I want to point out that negative results do get published -- for example, much of the experimental work on gravity amounts to the showing of no measurable difference from theoretical expectation, to a high degree of accuracy [1] -- but writing the papers for them is much harder than writing up positive results. The reason is simple: you have to convincingly show that your failure to show a result is not just due to your mistakes.

Here is an analogy to a trivial situation. Which is more convincing?

Positive result: By following the steps in the documentation, I installed MS Word on my computer. Therefore, MS Word can be installed on my computer.

Negative result: I followed the steps in the documentation, but MS Word still doesn't work on my computer. Therefore, MS Word cannot be installed on my computer.

If you're like me, you barely pause after reading the positive result, but the negative one brings to mind piles of questions: did you have the right version for your OS? Do you have enough disk space? Does your computer work properly in other respects? A really tricky problem could take ages to figure out. At some point it's probably going to seem wiser just to abandon the problem, and get a different computer or a different program.

So, as a scientist, when you're faced with a negative result, you know you have a battle ahead of you. If you don't think anyone will care very much about your result, moving on to the next project may seem to be the right choice. It's a tough situation, and I sympathize with anyone facing it. And is it the right choice for science as a whole? Sometimes it isn't, but sometimes it is.

[1] For one such example, check out the Eotvos experiment and its many descendants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eötvös_experiment

It's true that increasing trail and rake both increase stability. But curiously, a bicycle can be made stable with both negative rake and negative trail.

An interesting take on this, with both mathematical modeling and real prototypes, can be found at [1]. Note also that gyroscopic stabilization is not necessary: in the prototypes, a counter-rotating extra wheel cancels out the angular momentum of the front wheel.

According to the authors, it's not yet even proven that a stable bicycle must turn towards a fall. Almost the only sure thing, so far, is that "at least one factor coupling lean to steer must be present". We know a lot of sufficient conditions for stability, but not what is necessary.

The conclusion of the paper: "As a rule, we have found that almost any self-stable bicycle can be made unstable by misadjusting only the trail, or only the front wheel gyro, or only the front-assembly center-of-mass position. Conversely, many unstable bicycles can be made stable by appropriately adjusting any one of these three design variables, sometimes in an unusual way. These results hint that the evolutionary, and generally incremental, process that has led to common present bicycle designs might not yet have explored potentially useful regions in design space."

EDIT: here's a not-paywalled version of the paper linked in the submitted article.

[1] PDF link: https://scholar.vt.edu/access/content/group/141943de-4222-46...

They are getting 12 kbit/s right now, and claim they could get Mbit/s to Gbit/s using very fast light modulators (which themselves are research-lab projects, to my knowledge).[1]

The phrase "ultra-fast" laser is a term of art, which really means "laser with ultra-short pulses". They are using a laser with pretty short, 280 fs, pulses, but only a 200 kHz repetition rate.[2] It evidently takes several pulses to write one bit. Due to the physics of femtosecond lasers, you can't easily increase the rep rate without compromising the pulse length and intensity, which both need to be very good in this application.

The readout "should" be faster than "conventional" methods, but no details are given.[1] I don't see evidence that they have shown even moderate speed readout. It looks like they took micrographs and then inspected the images to determine the values of the bits.

[1] Gizmag article referenced in another comment, http://www.gizmag.com/superman-memory-crystal/28231/?utm_sou...

[2] Authors' original paper, http://www.orc.soton.ac.uk/fileadmin/downloads/5D_Data_Stora...

An interesting idea, but I think this argument leaves out an important fact: money in the present is more useful than money in the future. This is often captured in accounting by use of a "discount rate". A pretty conventional number is 10% per year: waiting an extra year to receive some money makes it worth 10% less, all else equal. Comparing a typical interest rate and a typical discount rate, I would conclude that you should donate now.

Furthermore, if this is really the best way to do charity... well, charities could just invest the donations they receive and cash out when the time is "right". But since organizations don't die, when would that ever be?

Lastly, the idea that you should invest in a single "best" charity entails the idea that your donation is too small to make much difference in which charity is best. But some problems have already been solved! More problems will surely be solved in the future. It seems that charities could face diminishing returns -- like most other investments -- so your most effective strategy should sometimes be to split among more than one. Especially if you have followed the advice to invest for your entire life, and you do have a huge sum to donate.

You could rephrase the weak version to make it undeniable (if banal): the whole point of language is to influence the way others think! If I want to create thoughts in your brain, language is a pretty effective means.

(I got this from Stephen Pinker's books.)