No, not everybody can be a success. If everybody put in 10,000 hours training as children, there would just be a whole lot more people competing for that one top spot, but still only one top spot.
You have a lot to learn about business. As a Software Engineer, your best approach would be to make software products that your company can sell. That means you listen to sales and marketing, and anyone else who knows what its like trying to shift copy on the ground. When they say you have to release as version 6.3, that's what you do. If 1.0 doesn't sell, you're out of a job.
A bad doctor may make a misdiagnosis and end up treating the cause or symptoms of a problem the patient doesn't even have.
My best guess would be that this patient needs to see a Psychiatrist and should be given a placebo (in fact, that's exactly what all of these "climate change" schemes and policies amount to).
If you want to build 1,500 idiotic little boats, 2,000 idiotic pairs of giant sun-glasses, 3,000 idiotic "sequestration" plants then do it with your own money.
Your statement about scientists not being able to predict the climate is an extreme generalization. It's difficult to predict where a particular patch of clouds will be at a particular point in time, but it's not hard to develop a model that closely approximates a number of environmental conditions over the entire Earth and then apply it to make predictions about trends based on current conditions. We have a decent understanding of what's generally going on, how fast energy is being radiated out into space versus how fast its being absorbed, and the factors which affect this. To say that the model isn't a good approximation is to ignore years of good research into the global environment.
Your model has many limitations and assumptions, includes positive feedbacks that should be negative and has incomplete, missing or downright wrong starting data. If you think that will give you a prediction about actual future climate, you couldn't be more wrong. What it will do is give you some indication of what would happen if the assumptions and data were as they are. Big difference. Due to the way the models are initialised, all they are capable of doing is providing an accurate fit with past data!
I also don't need to point out that the models aren't fine grained enough to provide any degree of accuracy and if they were they'd need to take the effects of things like turbulence into account; a whole new level of complexity. In conclusion, this whole debate is idiotic. The solutions are also idiotic as is the economics of "fixing" the "problem".
I think the entire Warmist community has succumbed to a kind of insane environmental group-think.
You're making the assumption that the doctor has made a correct diagnosis. The whole concept of "controlling climate change" is utterly idiotic.
Whatever next, give the Earth a giant pair of sunglasses?
True enough, but Ive always thought of Conscious Experience as being your last chance to modify a behaviour or sequence of actions that might be detrimental to your survival, otherwise evolution would never have endowed us with this ability and wéd all be walking around like Zombies (ordinary philosophical arguments about the nature of consciousness aside!).
I couldn't disagree more. I was so enthused by this book that I went to University to study AI. After a couple of years of that I decided that what I was being taught was a load of rubbish and that as Penrose had claimed, "machines" (i.e. computational devices such that exist today) could not "think" (i stil graduated with a first however and it was some use to me in my future career).
The problem I had with Hofstadter was that he assigned the concept of recursion an almost magical property. Dennett does a similar thing with his "multiple drafts" theory. They may in themselves be enough to describe complex functioning in the brain (or any other system come to think of it), but as Chalmers points out, at present a Materialist model of thought (or rather, consciousness, which we assume is required for thought) is impossible.
I find Penrose and Hameroff's ideas of conscious action in the brain to be both fascinating and intuitively correct, even if the evidence does not exist at present. I noted with interest that scientists have recently discovered large-scale quantumn effects in the leaves of plants when photo-synthesizing. However, any such action in the brain will be difficult to pin down, for obvious reasons. I expect the science of consciousness to progress rather more slowly than other fields for this reason.
Yes, just like recent wars. Oh well. They've only been in the single-trillion range by now, so the evidence requirements are significanly lower.
Your criticism rests on the assumption that anyone who denies AGW supports the Iraq war, which is obviously rubbish.
What level of catatastrophe has to befall us before you'll consider the case "proven?" You seem to be on the side of the precautionary principle. You know, don't get out of the bed in the morning and go to work just in case you're hit by a car when you cross the road outside. And what's the point of going to work anyway? You're contributing to the inevitable destruction of the planet by existing. What an immense weight of guilt you must feel.
What you aren't taking into account is the law of unintended consequences, which works both in favour of your argument and against it (bio-fuels for example). In my view, if you can point to one catastrophy, of even minor significance, that you can firmly lay at the door of Anthropogenic Global Warming, then you might be taken seriously. The last I heard, the error bars on the IPCC `predictions' were less than those on the actual data they use to make those predictions. Remind me how that works again?
In the absence of evidence to justify a roll-back of the industrial age, it's business as usual. If you want to contribute to the environment, you could make a start by culling the thiestic morons who run around Africa and South America telling people that contraception is evil.
All very interesting, but temperature change may also be affected by cosmic rays, i.e. their interaction with the suns magnetic field. Cloud chamber anyone? Svensmark has an experiment up at CERN going online around 2010 I think to test this theory.
Do you honestly think climate scientists don't take this into account Frankly, yes; at least the "adjusters" (Hansen et al). As for having a lack of respect for science, I refer you to the Wegman Report.
Stating objectively verifiable facts is not trolling, fucktard mod. Sea levels are confirmed as haven risen some inches between 1900 and 2000, and are likely to rise half a foot to a foot this coming century (assuming no catastrophes like the collapse of the Ross ice shelf), which would endanger numerous low-lying islands in the Pacific.
Sticking your neck out there with your predictions aren't you, given that the sea level has risen approximately 400 feet since the last ice age!
I must be the only one who didn't think the first prequel star-wars movie was awful. I thought it was well put together and entertaining. I suppose those who did were expecting something genre defining and ground-breaking. You can't do that twice. The same goes for the Indiana movies.
I call troll on this post as the OP obviously hasn't used WPF, VB.NET, C#.NET, etc. Yes, coding against Win32 APIs has always been bad (MFC didn't help much), but Microsoft have definitely picked the ball up again with.NET. It's a joy to use from a developer point of view. As I switch between.NET and C++/Win32/COM projects, I feel well qualified to judge. Perhaps the OP should broaden his experience away from Win32, unless he wants to debate legacy support, which is where this thread is going to end up.
Error messages are getting better, and VS2005/2008 have really good intellisense features, I would say so good that there is nothing other there on the market commercial or free that even comes close.
You say that, but you are comparing one version of C++ with another. That's a little like saying reading a map is better than navigating by the stars, when you could have a sat nav. Even if the error messages are getting better, a lot of them are still barely comprehensible. I could apply the same argument here I think. My overwhelming feeling is that C++ is the best of old technology and that it shouldn't be beyond the wit of 21st century man to come up with something better.
The language is a mess, really. It is very powerful, and the existing code generators are very good at optimizing stuff, but writing in C++, or any subset thereof, requires a very good understanding of subtle details.
I couldn't agree more. I've recently returned to C++ after 5 years of VB.NET and am gobsmacked all over again at just how mastery of subtle detail is so important. I'm quite lucky in that I have an "expert" with me, providing the framework I'm using. Even so, there are so many "gotchas" you need to be aware of. The programmer isn't helped by the incomprehensible error messages and lack of intellisense (I'm talking VC++ here of course).
I honestly believe that compiler technology is at such a stage now where it must be possible to produce a consistent, easy to use language that is also highly efficient, but without all of the potential pain and sufferring involved with C++. The cognitive burden of working with it is far greater than other languages, for little obvious gain.
"The brain is considerably more formidable as a mass of immensely complex moderated connectivity than it is as a collection of cellular-level mystery machines, and a good deal of the complexity at the cellular level is almost certainly irrelevant to the task of thought -- keeping the cell alive is probably in no way related to non-pathological mental operation, yet there's a lot of hardware and systems involved in the task."
You (and most proponents of AI) have failed to answer any of the philosophical/metaphysical questions one inevitably becomes confronted with, by using the analogy of the brain as "software" and stating that the hardware is irrelevant. I suspect there are cellular-level mysteries yet to be discovered, including possibly quantum action at a low level, that would have a strong influence on the facts of the matter here. It is a rather simple-minded and arrogant "faith" that leads you to believe we have anywhere near a good understanding of how the brain works.
we've discovered nothing whatsoever that is non-reproducible about the brain's structure and function
I'm sorry, but this is such a poorly constructed thesis that I have to respond. I studied AI at University some 10 years ago and there was absolutely NOTHING in the area that one would suppose could "produce" intelligence just by scaling it up or via. simple modelling/simulation. Sure Neural Netoworks have some good pattern classification properties but I am personally in the camp that thinks the real problem isn't reproducibility, it's non-computability. I'm with Penrose and, to an extent, Hameroff. It seems every decade someone comes along and says, "only 20 years to go". I will believe it when I see it.
You have just described the basic tenets of the AGW hypothesis. It would be more appropriate to teach children about the limitations of peer review (see Wegman), the miss-application of statistical methods (see McIntrye), the more plausible alternative theories (see Svensmark) and the complicity of the media in the promotion of political agendas (see Gore). You didn't once mention the scientific method (hypothesis, falsification, and proof) and how it can be misappropriated by special interest groups (environmentalists). You have failed to include the psychology and history of catastrophism. All in all, C-. Could do better.
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No, not everybody can be a success. If everybody put in 10,000 hours training as children, there would just be a whole lot more people competing for that one top spot, but still only one top spot.
You have a lot to learn about business. As a Software Engineer, your best approach would be to make software products that your company can sell. That means you listen to sales and marketing, and anyone else who knows what its like trying to shift copy on the ground. When they say you have to release as version 6.3, that's what you do. If 1.0 doesn't sell, you're out of a job.
A bad doctor may make a misdiagnosis and end up treating the cause or symptoms of a problem the patient doesn't even have.
My best guess would be that this patient needs to see a Psychiatrist and should be given a placebo (in fact, that's exactly what all of these "climate change" schemes and policies amount to).
If you want to build 1,500 idiotic little boats, 2,000 idiotic pairs of giant sun-glasses, 3,000 idiotic "sequestration" plants then do it with your own money.
Your model has many limitations and assumptions, includes positive feedbacks that should be negative and has incomplete, missing or downright wrong starting data. If you think that will give you a prediction about actual future climate, you couldn't be more wrong. What it will do is give you some indication of what would happen if the assumptions and data were as they are. Big difference. Due to the way the models are initialised, all they are capable of doing is providing an accurate fit with past data!
I also don't need to point out that the models aren't fine grained enough to provide any degree of accuracy and if they were they'd need to take the effects of things like turbulence into account; a whole new level of complexity. In conclusion, this whole debate is idiotic. The solutions are also idiotic as is the economics of "fixing" the "problem".
I think the entire Warmist community has succumbed to a kind of insane environmental group-think.
You're making the assumption that the doctor has made a correct diagnosis. The whole concept of "controlling climate change" is utterly idiotic. Whatever next, give the Earth a giant pair of sunglasses?
This idea is almost as unbelievably stupid as the previous, geo-sequestration idea.
True enough, but Ive always thought of Conscious Experience as being your last chance to modify a behaviour or sequence of actions that might be detrimental to your survival, otherwise evolution would never have endowed us with this ability and wéd all be walking around like Zombies (ordinary philosophical arguments about the nature of consciousness aside!).
Thanks for the heads-up. I guess I won't be buying these games, unless they are released on Steam.
I couldn't disagree more. I was so enthused by this book that I went to University to study AI. After a couple of years of that I decided that what I was being taught was a load of rubbish and that as Penrose had claimed, "machines" (i.e. computational devices such that exist today) could not "think" (i stil graduated with a first however and it was some use to me in my future career). The problem I had with Hofstadter was that he assigned the concept of recursion an almost magical property. Dennett does a similar thing with his "multiple drafts" theory. They may in themselves be enough to describe complex functioning in the brain (or any other system come to think of it), but as Chalmers points out, at present a Materialist model of thought (or rather, consciousness, which we assume is required for thought) is impossible. I find Penrose and Hameroff's ideas of conscious action in the brain to be both fascinating and intuitively correct, even if the evidence does not exist at present. I noted with interest that scientists have recently discovered large-scale quantumn effects in the leaves of plants when photo-synthesizing. However, any such action in the brain will be difficult to pin down, for obvious reasons. I expect the science of consciousness to progress rather more slowly than other fields for this reason.
Your criticism rests on the assumption that anyone who denies AGW supports the Iraq war, which is obviously rubbish.
Unfortunately for you, the confirmation bias is one of the building blocks of NOAA surface station data adjustment and typical climate models!
All very interesting, but temperature change may also be affected by cosmic rays, i.e. their interaction with the suns magnetic field. Cloud chamber anyone? Svensmark has an experiment up at CERN going online around 2010 I think to test this theory.
Fair enough onkel. Sometimes you can't suspend your disbelief and then you do notice all those things.
I must be the only one who didn't think the first prequel star-wars movie was awful. I thought it was well put together and entertaining. I suppose those who did were expecting something genre defining and ground-breaking. You can't do that twice. The same goes for the Indiana movies.
I call troll on this post as the OP obviously hasn't used WPF, VB.NET, C#.NET, etc. Yes, coding against Win32 APIs has always been bad (MFC didn't help much), but Microsoft have definitely picked the ball up again with .NET. It's a joy to use from a developer point of view. As I switch between .NET and C++/Win32/COM projects, I feel well qualified to judge. Perhaps the OP should broaden his experience away from Win32, unless he wants to debate legacy support, which is where this thread is going to end up.
You are absolutely correct Kwirl and that is why people find Windows so frustrating, precisely because it is "must have".
You say that, but you are comparing one version of C++ with another. That's a little like saying reading a map is better than navigating by the stars, when you could have a sat nav. Even if the error messages are getting better, a lot of them are still barely comprehensible. I could apply the same argument here I think. My overwhelming feeling is that C++ is the best of old technology and that it shouldn't be beyond the wit of 21st century man to come up with something better.
I couldn't agree more. I've recently returned to C++ after 5 years of VB.NET and am gobsmacked all over again at just how mastery of subtle detail is so important. I'm quite lucky in that I have an "expert" with me, providing the framework I'm using. Even so, there are so many "gotchas" you need to be aware of. The programmer isn't helped by the incomprehensible error messages and lack of intellisense (I'm talking VC++ here of course).
I honestly believe that compiler technology is at such a stage now where it must be possible to produce a consistent, easy to use language that is also highly efficient, but without all of the potential pain and sufferring involved with C++. The cognitive burden of working with it is far greater than other languages, for little obvious gain.
I have to agree here. If there is one thing MS has done well, it's Duff Studio and, let me say it, that whole .NET malarky.
"The brain is considerably more formidable as a mass of immensely complex moderated connectivity than it is as a collection of cellular-level mystery machines, and a good deal of the complexity at the cellular level is almost certainly irrelevant to the task of thought -- keeping the cell alive is probably in no way related to non-pathological mental operation, yet there's a lot of hardware and systems involved in the task."
You (and most proponents of AI) have failed to answer any of the philosophical/metaphysical questions one inevitably becomes confronted with, by using the analogy of the brain as "software" and stating that the hardware is irrelevant. I suspect there are cellular-level mysteries yet to be discovered, including possibly quantum action at a low level, that would have a strong influence on the facts of the matter here. It is a rather simple-minded and arrogant "faith" that leads you to believe we have anywhere near a good understanding of how the brain works.
I'm sorry, but this is such a poorly constructed thesis that I have to respond. I studied AI at University some 10 years ago and there was absolutely NOTHING in the area that one would suppose could "produce" intelligence just by scaling it up or via. simple modelling/simulation. Sure Neural Netoworks have some good pattern classification properties but I am personally in the camp that thinks the real problem isn't reproducibility, it's non-computability. I'm with Penrose and, to an extent, Hameroff. It seems every decade someone comes along and says, "only 20 years to go". I will believe it when I see it.
You have just described the basic tenets of the AGW hypothesis. It would be more appropriate to teach children about the limitations of peer review (see Wegman), the miss-application of statistical methods (see McIntrye), the more plausible alternative theories (see Svensmark) and the complicity of the media in the promotion of political agendas (see Gore). You didn't once mention the scientific method (hypothesis, falsification, and proof) and how it can be misappropriated by special interest groups (environmentalists). You have failed to include the psychology and history of catastrophism. All in all, C-. Could do better.