I can see the difficulty of integrating with Anki if you're trying to implement a sophisticated system for tracking a user's progress, however I would definitely want some way of studying vocabulary with spaced-repetition flashcards I could have on my phone for something like this, Anki or otherwise. I've personally found traditional flashcards and (even more so) writing words with pen on paper to be the most effective ways of absorbing vocabulary. I've found that I don't ultimately absorb vocab as well using other self-quiz methods like multiple-choice / fill-in-the-blank / matching / etc. in Duolingo and similar apps (though I've had the false impression of learning from these methods). Just my personal experience.
It seems we're on the same page regarding specific word-meanings, comprehensive linguistic information provided along with a word, and using good dictionaries.
I would suggest including at least the option of viewing the full conjugation / declension / etc. associated with a word, and not just that used in the context of the text. I don't know any Japanese (though I recognize the example character you provided from the little Chinese I've studied), but something like this full conjugation of that verb is roughly what I'd want to see for any conjugated/declined language: http://www.japaneseverbconjugator.com/VerbDetails.asp?txtVer....
I understand parsing and matching up parallel texts is difficult, but I thought NLP would help with that, and if the software fails at matching up individual words, you could default to matching up clauses or sentences, which the user could study (with flashcards or something similar) alongside the individual words taken from the dictionary.
I took a look at the app, but I see the currently-available demo is only English-Japanese, and I'm also consistently getting "API Error: Request failed with status code 412" in multiple browsers.
Exactly what parts of the app are you looking for someone else to work on?
I've studied a few languages and have long wished for / thought of making software roughly along the lines of what you're suggesting here. While tackling a text, looking up words one-at-a-time can be painfully inefficient and break the flow. Digital dictionaries are quicker than paper ones, but don't resolve the fundamental problem. Nothing as advanced as natural language processing crossed my mind, but I did imagine software that would take a target text and generate a vocabulary list that the user could then study efficiently, allowing the user to then read the text fluidly without need for looking up words. There is a long tradition of human-produced "readers" that do this, but software would allow generating this for any text the user wanted and with much greater flexibility and learning options (e.g. auto-generated Anki flashcard decks).
I looked into LingQ (mentioned in another comment here), which promises just this idea, but found that it failed pretty badly in execution, to the point that a paper dictionary and notebook just worked better.
I know you're seeking a cofounder, but here are some suggestions I hope you find useful:
- I think it's essential to use a top-quality dictionary for something like this. I've found Oxford to produce excellent bilingual dictionaries in the languages I've studied. Of course these are copyright-protected and so would require paid purchases or licensing of some kind to use. I think there's a tendency to use generic free-license dictionaries for software like this, and these really aren't good enough.
- There's also a tendency to bake into the software the false assumption that "a word is a word", when of course words can have many different meanings, words in different languages do not have one-to-one correspondence, and for most languages, learning a word requires also learning extra information such as gender, conjugation, declension, pronunciation/stress, etc. This goes hand-in-hand with using a top-quality dictionary, which lists multiple word meanings, phrases, and extra linguistic information that poorer-quality dictionaries omit or get wrong.
- I would suggest incorporating human-produced translations in the user's native language of the texts in the user's target language, at least as an option that the user could upload. Even the best machine translation software can miss quite a lot.
Out of curiosity, did you get a microbiome test (e.g. from Viome) before and after removing each one of these elements from your diet, or did you make conclusions based on how you felt? Of course everyone is different, but I think published research supports your suggestion that sugar and alcohol are "bad" and fruits, vegetables, and resistant starch are "good", but disagrees on coffee. Here's a recent study showing association between high coffee intake and "good" gut microbiome [1]. I put good and bad in scare quotes because it seems the science around this is still pretty weak, mostly based on associations rather than clear and verified mechanisms.
[1] https://gi.org/media/press-info-scientific-meeting/featured-...
Jason Fung explains his theory of type 2 diabetes / metabolic disorder, and how it is addressed by fasting, in detail in episode #59 of Peter Attia's "The Drive" podcast [1].
The review of Fung's "The Obesity Code" on Red Pen Reviews [2] details some serious flaws in the scientific claims in the book related to calories, insulin, and fasting, and their relation to obesity and fat loss.
Relating to nutrition/health/longevity, they aren't books, but I've found the podcasts, blogs, YouTube videos, and even tweets by Rhonda Patrick (FoundMyFitness), Peter Attia (The Drive), Stephan Guyenet, and Chris Masterjohn quite enlightening.
The general concept is that tilling/plowing is used to mow over weeds, and killing weeds with chemicals is an alternative.
Your question is a good one. I don't know the answer. The articles listed above describe the environmental and health downsides.
A distinct problem - also described in these articles - that may spell doom for Roundup-Ready crops is the emergence of resistant weeds.
There are alternatives to industrial-scale weed control outside of tilling and herbicides. One way is to grow cover crops in the "off season", then cut them and leave them in a thick mat that starves weeds of sun while also gradually rotting and fertilizing the soil, then cut little holes in this mat where you plant seeds. The USDA NRCS promotes methods like this largely through educational programs. Farmers adopt them because they ultimately save costs on herbicides and fertilizer.
Who knows maybe in a few decades we'll produce all food through some industrial process resembling hydroponics, with energy from Nuclear Fusion replacing sunlight, and weeds will be a distant memory.
I hate to sound like a shill for an evil company, but I've read that even Roundup-Ready crops have an environmental advantage in allowing greater use of low- and no-till methods on industrial farms, which sufficiently reduces erosion of soil (with all the fertilizer that causes algae blooms and other problems) into public waterways. I was stunned to read that a majority of US industrial farms - not only permaculture hippies - now employ such methods.
Your characterization better fits someone like Thomas Friedman, not Pinker. Pinker absolutely acknowledges the many problems of the current system and the need to devise solutions to these problems. His argument is that things have, on the whole, been improving, we've solved big problems in the past, and we can solve current problems so long as we hold with Enlightenment and humanist / liberal values and put the effort in. He's arguing against those who want to throw away liberalism and replace it with some form of mystical authoritarianism, whether that be socialist, fascist, or whatever. And there are many such people, who take the benefits brought from liberalism for granted and would throw them all away for some romantic wishful thinking. His argument reminds me of essays written by Albert Camus defending liberalism against fascism during WWII and against the communism that was en vogue in France after the war among Sartre and others that Stalin referred to as his "useful idiots".
By liberalism here, I mean the original (and only sensible) meaning of a system of individual freedom in social, religious, and economic spheres, equality before the law, and democratic representation, not the New Left's utter misappropriation of the term to represent tribal resentment and mob justice.
> If you don't feel like a criminal in today's society, you are complicit.
Which society exactly are you referring to? What crime are you claiming that every single member of this society is complicit in? How does feeling like a criminal itself absolve someone of complicity in this crime?
You seem to be saying we should take on guilt for something precisely in order to free ourselves of this guilt. This seems like a paradoxical admonition. Could you please clarify?
It seems we're on the same page regarding specific word-meanings, comprehensive linguistic information provided along with a word, and using good dictionaries.
I would suggest including at least the option of viewing the full conjugation / declension / etc. associated with a word, and not just that used in the context of the text. I don't know any Japanese (though I recognize the example character you provided from the little Chinese I've studied), but something like this full conjugation of that verb is roughly what I'd want to see for any conjugated/declined language: http://www.japaneseverbconjugator.com/VerbDetails.asp?txtVer....
I understand parsing and matching up parallel texts is difficult, but I thought NLP would help with that, and if the software fails at matching up individual words, you could default to matching up clauses or sentences, which the user could study (with flashcards or something similar) alongside the individual words taken from the dictionary.
I took a look at the app, but I see the currently-available demo is only English-Japanese, and I'm also consistently getting "API Error: Request failed with status code 412" in multiple browsers.
Exactly what parts of the app are you looking for someone else to work on?