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His argument was more like: "Human are capable of recognizing when an algorithm will halt (or not); computers are not; therefore thought cannot be reduced to computation".

That is patent nonsense, though, and if it is better than the caricature of your parent, it is only very barely so. There is no proof, nor even the shadow of a supporting argument, to the idea that humans are capable of recognizing when an algorithm will halt, for all possible algorithms.

First, only an astonishingly small subset of all algorithms is even intelligible to a human - if a computer was to solve the halting problem for "intelligible" programs, but was not itself "intelligible", how would you go about proving that such a program can't exist? All the proofs I know of imply applying the algorithm to a derivative of itself, but you can't do that if the algorithm does not belong to its own domain. And I see no reason - much to the contrary - to think that the brain is intelligible to itself (maybe the big picture is, but you don't solve the halting problem with an overview of the code).

Second, if you say an algorithm will not halt, how do you think you can be sure, without resorting to formal proofs... which are isomorphic to programs via the Curry–Howard correspondence?

Third, humans often miss rare or fringe cases, leading them to be overconfident in their answers for as long as these cases do not occur. I mean, if humans truly can solve the halting problem, they are not doing a very good job.

And then there is the fact that the halting problem is vastly overstated: by waiting long enough, a Turing machine can come arbitrarily close to solving it. Furthermore, there is a very large number of algorithms that pretty obviously halt/do not halt, for reasons that can be codified. There is nothing at all controversial with the idea that a computer could figure out whether the vast majority of programs halt or not. It just can't work for *everything*, but the idea that humans do is nothing short of laughable.

What you meant to type was, "I'm so arrogant that anyone who disagrees with me must have misunderstood me."

Just taken a quick browse through your posting history, skippy, and your bile is so formulaic you're practically a caricature of what you represent. A cheek swab would allow me to determine whether it's Charles or David you personally assist for.

Indeed, I waded though The Emperors New Mind when it was first published and was very disappointed. As far as I could tell, the argument was something along the lines of "consciousness is mysterious and complex and hopefully non-deterministic. Quantum effects are mysterious and complex and non deterministic. Consciousness is probably a quantum-based phenomenon then".

So I went back to reading Dennett and Hoftstadter.

Then you didn't understand it. His argument was more like: "Human are capable of recognizing when an algorithm will halt (or not); computers are not; therefore thought cannot be reduced to computation". It has nothing to do with the non-deterministic nature of quantum mechanics because even non-deterministic outcomes are computable. His speculation about consciousness and quantum mechanics is based on an analogy between the "collapse of the waveform" and thought. Even though the analogy is suggestive, according to Penrose, quantum mechanics cannot fully explain consciousness (because of consciousness's supposed non-computability) and to the extent that it cannot quantum mechanics is incomplete. It's still a crap argument but it's a hell of a lot better than your caricature. Dennett and Hoftstadter are even worse in many ways. They, like Penrose, are stuck on artifacts of theory. Stick with people that know how the brain actually works, like Edelman.

Takes too long and is unworkable. If I had to figure out that gravity would pull me downwards I would have broken all of my legs multiple times.

We do this little thing called "learning" that teaches us to recognize situations or objects which are similar to others and we can transpose characteristics we know from past experience onto new experiences. It's the fundamental basis of our intellect and intelligence. You can look at a Ford Taurus and know that it's a car. That cars generally travel on roads. And that you shouldn't walk in front of them. If you judged each car differently then you would have to re-learn the entire traffic system to remain safe. It's untenable.

If someone looks like a hippie then they 95% of the time generally fit into hippie culture. I've never run into a conservative right wingnut who has dreadlocks and natural fiber clothes.

There are also cultures. I have a bunch of French friends. They're definitely united by a common culture. I can't easily recognize a Frenchman from an Italian on the street but I certainly have a baseline expectation for people with a French upbringing. And I from experience know how to adapt to interact best with their mannerisms. Countries and cultures have personalities. Not everyone matches one personality obviously but the range tends to be skewed in one direction.

Most people the world over are generally pretty similar at some level. Starting from species and working our way through culture, sub-cultures and ultimately individual personality you're getting progressively less insightful about the variation.

Two random hippies are probably more similar than a shy Hippie and a shy Glenn Beck aficionado.

The trouble is when you start putting unjustified qualifiers on it.

"Hippies can't came up with any practical ideas. They're useless bums.
They contribute nothing to society.
They're just leeches."

"Right Wingnuts hate poor people.
They are incapable of intelligent though.
They abhor human rights."

Often we mis-attribute motivations to people. "African Americans have higher unemployment because they're Lazy."
"Or there is another underlying social cause that's preventing them from finding employment or disproportionately eliminating the jobs that they previously had."

If you simply ignore the fact that African Americans *are* factually experiencing higher unemployment then you will never figure out why it's occurring and what can be done to fix it. It's not judgmental, since you're still operating from the basic assumption that we're all pretty much the same as far as personality goes genetically--but culturally and socially we by and large still have a notably different upbringing.

So then you have to start refining to figure out specifically which group of African Americans are disproportionately unemployed. If you go across economic lines is it affecting everyone with dark skin (implying it's purely a racial discrimination problem) or is it only affecting the poorer African Americans? Etc...

If you put too great of an emphasis on individual analysis starting from a completely blank slate you'll spend an eternity just getting to the interesting distinguishing factors.

For instance I would describe my dad as a "University philosophy teacher who lives to paint." There are only four descriptive words in there, but I think if you decompressed the sub-cultures and connotations you would probably be able to extract a relatively accurate caricature. It certainly lacks nuance but you would be about 95% right.

I can nearly very accurately describe myself in even less characters: ENTP. If you start from that assumption you would not be far off in your assumptions about me.

I realize this is supposed to be some kind of reverse caricature troll but, please, make it a little more believable next time, douche bag.

Those who know me personally or know my online record know that I'm one of the biggest deficit and debt hawks around, but I'll provide a contrarian opinion of sorts in this debate. It's not just the hunt for Bin Laden that cost us $3 trillion in this war on terrorism. If tracking down and eliminating Bin Laden was the only thing we spent that money and the rest of our treasure on (most importantly precious American lives), then that would be an unmitigated disaster. But it's obviously farcical and disingenuous to make that claim because killing Bin Laden wasn't the only accomplishment. We took away the safe haven Al Qaeda had in Afghanistan, and then, like it or lump it, we removed a vile dictator named Saddam Hussein and liberated Iraq. Now with the "Arab Spring" setting the Middle East ablaze, we have at least one marginal beachhead Arab state in a semi-stable, semi-functional, semi-democratic Iraq. It's also important to recognize that at the very least we have killed a lot of terrorists and would-be terrorist radicals who otherwise would have been left to plan attacks against us in the future.

Was it necessary to fight these wars? It's an arguable point. At the very least they weren't a total waste, but their efficacy, efficiency and opportunity costs can and should be examined. Did these wars do their part to massively increase our indebtedness? Absolutely they did, but not solely - they were coupled with out-of-control, unconstitutional Entitlements and bloated federal bureaucracies. (It must also be said that national security and national defense are responsibilities of the federal government under the Constitution, whereas the vast majority of Congress' other expenditures are unconstitutional and only permitted because of the post-FDR-New-Deal perversion of the Constitution that Americans have complacently allowed to remain and grow for 80 years.) But to paint the wars as caricatures, which is what is done when people say we spent $3 trillion killing Bin Laden, is at best satire and at worst historical revisionist propaganda.

It's a caricature. Somewhat like BadAnalogyGuy only less amusing. A successful toll campaign though it would seem.

A law is supposed to protect something or someone from damage.

Please elaborate and show me the damage done to anyone by a ... cartoon. I could see it if the people depicted resemble some real person (i.e. caricature) and this person has to suffer the fallout from it, but, well, I'm no manga expert but in general the drawings don't even come close to being realistic, let alone allow any comparison with a real person.

So please show me the damage done. Just saying "it's gay kiddy porn" isn't enough for me, sorry. A law should protect someone from damage that cannot protect himself. And somehow I do not recognize the rights of imaginary characters in a comic book, sorry.

Here is what the Bible teaches: God created the heavens and the earth. The earth brought forth plants and animals. There was no explicit creation mentioned, but rather a flow out of the initial created state. God created the soul and breathed it into Adam and then by implication Eve. The soul was another explicit creation. God created a garden for Adam and Eve. God gave dominion over the world to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve sinned, thereby passing on dominion of the world to Satan. Consequently all creation began drifting away from the original creation. Satan is the prince of this world. It is his domain for now, but it will be reclaimed. His defeat has already been accomplished, but not completed.

You can spin any story you want from scripture. Out of the bitterness of your soul you can blame God for evil and excuse yourself. After all that is what satan does. He aspires to make himself, a created being, greater than the creator and uses some of the very same arguments that are common today. Jesus told us that much of scripture was written to hide it's truth from the eyes of unbelievers. Belief is the key, not certain knowledge. It is very great mystery that belief should be at the core of so many things. Reason is simply machinery that operates from some starting point and upon some set of fixed assumptions. Nature is an orderly system, created by an orderly God and thus reason works well to understand nature. But there is no inherent truth in reason - it is process - and reason does not provide any path to truth outside of the system it processes.

Without belief your understanding of Christianity is simply caricature. I understand your scorn of Jesus as so much myth...that is what your belief leads you to. Given your belief, it is not an unreasonable conclusion.

Oh my, the bitch is even more morally repugnant than I thought. It's pretty much easy to understand what she wrote - the constant butthurt wining of a priviledged asshole over the loss of her servants in the russian revolution. You don't need to caricature Rand - that's like caricaturing an amoeba to point out that it is slimy. And don't you dare talk about "intellectual dishonesty" in the context of Rand critique. Rand never had any idea what either of those terms actually means.

She explained why she took those checks.

It was in response to questions about taking student grants. Her position is that it is moral to attempt to recoup from people (or governments) that have taken from you without your permission, so long as you continue to advocate and work to stop the initial theft in the long term. I.E., collect social security because the government has taxed you for your life, as long as you advocate against SS's existence. If you advocate for the taxation to end, you're morally free to attempt to reclaim some of the money taken from you in the meantime.

There's problems with Ayn Rand, and there's more problems with the dogmatic modern Objectivist movement, but I've found that most of her critics have a very poor understanding of what she actually said and wrote. There's a lot of posts in this discussion that are attacking strawmen, ridiculous and inaccurate caricatures of her position. It's intellectually dishonest.

A bit of both. Its intent was as a caricature. Fortunately, I wrote a Slashdot comment, not a formal mathematical proof, so I'm not particularly worried about set theory's incompatibility with exaggeration.

There are certainly a lot of Slashdot users who are generally sane and reasonable folks. However, there are enough people with biases to form a critical mass of bad mods and metamods. One post with careless wording offends someone, and gets marked as a troll. There's enough others who see it as a troll that that knee-jerking mod can get good metamod results, and can go on to jump to conclusions about other posts. Other users see the troll label, assume the post is trolling, and then read with biased eyes. As a result of Slashdot's entirely-crowdsourced modding system, biases never really go away.

I chose one particular bias to pick on for my caricature. There's lots of others. If you'll allow me to pick on another, I'll take a look at your signature. I personally have nothing to hide, and will gladly give up my privacy for fairly small (even some ideological) reasons. Try to force other people to give up their privacy without a damned good reason, and I'll fight it to the bitter end. Now, if I were to post the first half of my opinion in a discussion without the second half, you'd apparently think I'm a "goddamned idiot". Would you mod under the assumption that I'm either stupid or trolling?

Similarly, I get annoyed by heavily-slanted posts about how governments and corporations are evil. Post something saying that you understand a company's position, make a few decent points I hadn't thought of, and I'm likely to give an "insightful" mod. That's a bias, too. I intentionally never excluded myself from the community I talked about.

Effectively everyone in the community is biased in some way. That's okay. The original post in this thread was modded "troll" apparently because of these biases. The modding system certainly can't be perfect, but with so many different opinions, the system as a whole ends up in a pretty reasonable center. Slashdot's moderation system is the worst, except for all the others.

On the other hand, who's currently doing a shit-ton of damage to the US? Take one guess.

Both?

I'm neither - I have no love for the left-wing nutcases (the "open borders, one world government, woohoo communism" types) nor do I have any love for the Retardican/Ree Tardier types.

In my experience no one really lives up to the full list of those stereotypes. Living in Arizona I know tons of "open borders" types, but not a single one of them wants a "one world government", and I don't think any of them are "woohoo communism" types, though many of them are more socialist than is strictly fashionable in the U.S. at the moment (i.e. real, single payer public healthcare, not Obamacare).

I know several people on the right-to-far-right too; though not a single one of them will accept the Tea Party designation since it doesn't reflect good on the right/conservatives. Some of them are atheists, I know a Randroid who supports limited gun control, I know a hardcore hawk who supports the gays, and is critical of Israel. Etc...

Most (informed) people aren't the caricature that the media paints them as, or as much as we want them to be.

Nah, that's just hand waving. Perry and the majority of citizens who have repeatedly re-ellected him are by now means in the fringe. Yeah the equivalents would theoretically exist at both ends of the spectrum, but which side do you think has a somewhat larger percentage of the wingnuts?

You're attempting to sound reasonable by finding a fictional dead-centre that only exists when one extreme is a fashioned in to a exaggerated caricature - a strawman. One may as well try to claim that Raelians are representative of atheism as a whole, and that Fred Phelps is standard Christian fare.

Niven gets a lot of respect for his ideas. He has come up with a ton of great concepts, and he really understands some of the science better than most writers.
But he can't WRITE well. His characters are caricatures. He can set up a short story adequately, but plotting an entire novel is beyond his capability.
But I gotta admit that Puppeteers are still my all-time favorite race of aliens!

Optimism inspires effort, movement, and change. Cynicism inspires fear, hopelessness, and stasis. Optimism may be unrealistic, but it is exactly that unrealistic belief in the possible that motivates people to find a way to make it possible. The only good cynic was Diogenes, and he wouldn't even recognize what his philosophy has become. Cynicism is the last refuge of the lazy and weak.

You both simplify religion down to a cardboard caricature of itself. It is neither all good nor all bad.

I concede your point about my religion remark. My views on religion are significantly more complicated than what I communicated, but there is no way for you to gather that fact out of the three lines that I posted. However, just as I turned religion into a caricature of itself, so did you vastly oversimplify optimism and pessimism. For example, I can say this:

Optimism inspires laziness, complacency, and stasis. A pessimistic attitude drives increased preparation, the creation of backup plans, and fault-tolerant designs. Though a pessimist may focus on a small chance that something can go wrong, he is more likely to prepare for such a scenario than an optimist. Optimism is the last refuge of those unwilling to face negative possibilities.

Nobody can, or should, be entirely optimistic or pessimistic. A blind optimist will get burned; a blind pessimist will never try anything at all.

Optimism inspires effort, movement, and change. Cynicism inspires fear, hopelessness, and stasis. Optimism may be unrealistic, but it is exactly that unrealistic belief in the possible that motivates people to find a way to make it possible. The only good cynic was Diogenes, and he wouldn't even recognize what his philosophy has become. Cynicism is the last refuge of the lazy and weak.

You both simplify religion down to a cardboard caricature of itself. It is neither all good nor all bad.

Point taken. My first impression was that GGGP was caricaturing all Bible-believing folks, but he was really only caricaturing a subclass of those.

It suits certain agendas to maintain a fantasy that there are ordinary Americans being rounded up and "shipped to GTMO", and that this happens routinely, to people who are being targeted as enemies of the state and disappearing as if taken by the Stasi as political prisoners.

There may or may not be people who have been wrongly imprisoned, whether in military prisons or civilian, whether in the United States or elsewhere, but the caricature that is so often painted of masses of completely innocent Americans being rounded up and taken to prison camps without recourse, is at best a fantastic exaggeration. Yeah, I know all about Khaled El-Masri, and I'm already tired of having that one thrown at me to explain how I'm wrong about everything.

Interesting points, but ultimately, regardless if you have used "logical reasoning", the difference between faith and science is that with faith, there is no method of falsification, whereas with science, there is in fact encouragement to attempt to falsify one's "logical reasoning". Two people can (and often do), make the same observations, but using different logical reasoning (that cannot be differentiated because neither is falsifiable), come to completely different beliefs and faiths. Take any two major religions as a case example.

Put another way, you may believe things based on your observation and "logical thinking", but if nowhere in your logic is the explicit statement "and if I observed this, I would be wrong", then you're not doing science. So maybe we have two different routes:

Observation -> Arbitrary Analysis -> Belief -> Faith

Observation -> Falsifiable Hypothesis -> Attempts to falsify hypothesis -> Belief -> Back to Observation

That all being said, I'm more than open to the notion that there are some things that are beyond the bounds of human comprehension, at which point all one can have is an arbitrary faith. While some people may live under the impression that a true scientist believes that anything is subject to the scientific method, I think this is a caricature, and the truth is that in the search of ultimate truths, we often get a clearer understanding of just how little it is possible for us to know.