The new Linguistics scenario—where you might ask your native whether “BBRBRG” is a grammatical sentence—is all about syntax, not semantics.
That is, it’s only about the structure or grammar of the language, not its meaning. You might reasonably ask, what’s the point of simulating learning a language if you don’t know what the language means?
What do the colors mean in the linguistics scenario?
They’re not really words—they’re parts of speech. If you think of blue-red-green-blue as noun-verb-adjective-noun, it may make more sense.
When esteemed designer Ann Lasko-Harvill was trying out the Ideal Gas scenario, she found that her temperature data didn’t appear in her tables. When I told her she had to type in the temperatures herself, she asked me to explain my thinking.
Why did I set up this elaborate computer-based system so that you have to enter data by hand? There are three basic answers.
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Good morning!
I have just posted a new build of the system at http://www.bigtimescience.com that fixes a few bugs. Most importantly, you can now get an email from our system when you sign up for a subscription account. Still doesn’t work with pay-as-you-go, but we’re working on it!
Also, although I am not supposed to be writing new scenarios, I have posted prototype code for a “linguistics” scenario that, in a way, is the most deeply scientific of the whole set.
The new, improved-we-hope latest version of the simulation system is now available at http://www.bigtimescience.com. It will keep changing and improving over the next couple months, but it should be usable. There are some important changes…
Years ago, the brilliant Peggy Noone showed me how some science activities work because they slow down the process you are studying. A classic example is how Galileo studied acceleration on a ramp (partly) because falling objects are too fast. Peggy showed us ways to slow down the process of dissolving so we could see it in greater detail (and learn a great word: schlieren).
Our system deliberately slows down the investigative process as well. And the chief way we do this is with money.
Back in the 60s, Garrett Hardin wrote a paper called The Tragedy of the Commons, in which he set out a problem we all now recognize:
When people share a limited resource, it often happens that somebody takes more than their fair share.
Josh mentioned the idea of wanting to know the answer. Others, notably Ann M, have pointed out how important and satisfying it can be to have closure when working on a problem. This is a long-standing issue that I may eventually cave on, but my basic idea is this:
In science, you never find out the answer. You learn about the answer, but part of what’s wonderful about science is that you never get to the end.
In a daring (or perhaps foolish) bit of file munging, we are changing the overall look of the simulation system to reflect ideas some designers have been throwing our way. The two most important ideas are:
Josh Lake, at the Pomfret School, tried out the four-color universe scenario with real live students without even having been through it himself. According to my records, he attended a 15-minute talk I gave in Anchorage in January 2006. Here is what he said (Josh, if you want me to take this out, just let me know):
We wrapped up the third and final day of 4 color Universe sims in two of my classes today.
On the first day, as I said earlier, they dove in an wrote papers, generally focusing on what colors existed or didn’t, which colors there were more of (based on their small experiments), and which regions had what colors. This led to good discussion about extrapolation, assumptions, and the nature of evidence and proof in science.