That sounds an awful lot like a 'yes' to me...sure, I can't prove it, but if Microsoft didn't pay or offer incentives, I don't think Adelman would have had any trouble making that known.
I disagree. The standard response "We can't comment on rumors or speculation" (of which this is a variation) is given regardless of whether the rumor is true or not. Think about it: if a company said "We can't comment on rumors or speculation" when the rumor was true, but clearly said "No" when the rumor was false, they'd be giving it away. So they just say "No comment" to everything, and that way you never know whether it's true or false.
I'm not saying that your implication is correct or incorrect. I'm just saying that his response was perfectly standard, regardless of what the truth is.
But it is legal. Anything you can see from your property is fair game to look at, at least in the USA. Probably not legal to record it; almost certainly not legal to distribute if you do.
It's totally legal to look at naked people in their own house if you can see them without trespassing. If you choose not to cover your windows you give up your reasonable expectation of privacy.
Spying on people when they have a reasonable expectation of privacy (as when in a darkened room) is illegal in most localities in developed countries throughout the world. The US is no exception -- most states have anti-voyeurism laws which would prohibit using night-vision scopes to peer into darkened windows.
It makes much less sense to license receivers. The radiation is there, passing through people, even. Frankly, I don't understand why anyone would think that I don't have the right to intercept any signal which passes through my personal space and process it however i please.
So it should be legal for me to use a night-vision scope to look into my neighbor's bedroom window at night? After all, her naked body is reflecting electromagnetic radiation into my personal space. Amplifying it into a visible image, digitizing it, and making it available on the Internet seems like a perfectly logical step, doesn't it?
People have an expectation of privacy. They expect you won't be sneaking around peering into their windows at night, and they expect you won't be intercepting and decoding their personal telephone calls. Yes, you have the right to decode electromagnetic radiation. And yes, the callers have a right to privacy. Any time two different rights conflict, one or the other has to take precedence. Privacy is a much more desirable-to-society right than is the ability to spy on our neighbors, and so privacy wins.
Sounds like you're talking about Multiplicity, although unfortunately it is Windows-only. Does everything else you want, though, and it's really well implemented.
When I asked a professor point blank why the need for art and culture would develop through the course of evolution, he responded that he doesn't believe those traits would stem from evolution.
Then your professor is an idiot. Art and culture are deeply rooted in evolution. Think about a famous artist... say, a rock star. Now, who do you think has gotten more tail, and therefore more chances to propagate his genes, during his life? You, or a rock star? The ability to entertain people -- whether by producing music, or paintings, or poetry, has always correlated with the ability to get laid. The more you get laid, the more likely you are to successfully pass on your genes. There is therefore a strong selection pressure to develop artistic and creative abilities.
Culture is also easily explained. A cohesive culture makes it possible for a group of humans to identify themselves as a single unit, and leads to the ability to form the "us versus them" mentality that modern humans have. The "us versus them" mentality, while unfortunate, was indeed a survival strategy. By uniting in the battle for food and water against competitors, a cohesive unit is going to survive where individual humans or small family groups would fail. They will help one another out in times of trial (benefitting the entire tribe in the long run) and unite against common foes. In the extreme, a tribe with a strong cultural identity could justify going to war and eliminating other, competing humans. Less tightly-coupled groups would not band together in defense, and would be eliminated. We descended from the winners.
The "unit" we humans form has shifted from extended family to tribe to state to country over the years, but we still very much have the "us versus them" mentality. This mentality was a survival benefit in the early years of human development, and of course in the modern world has become the exact opposite. Without strong cultural identities, war would not exist.
You could just as easily argue that this is an advantage of the Wii -- games can be made by smaller teams on tighter budgets. That's one of the reasons Nintendo's handhelds enjoy such strong third-party support: it isn't a huge investment to develop a game for the GBA or DS, at least compared to the home consoles.
So if Wii is cheaper to develop for and has innovative features which get people excited about gaming again, it may mean that developers will be more amenable to the idea of developing for it. After all, nobody seems to mind that the DS doesn't have the same horsepower that the PSP does -- if they likewise don't care that the Wii doesn't have the same horsepower as its competitors, then developing for it is going to look very attractive.
Speaking only for myself, I don't really give a rat's ass that the Wii isn't as powerful as the competition. Sure, high-def support would have been nice, but saving $350 by getting a Wii instead of a PS3 is damned nice too. And as a jaded adult with a wife and kid who has very little time for gaming anymore, it's been really hard to get excited about games lately. Sure, I bought a GameCube and a PS2 and (eventually) an XBox, but I don't remember being really excited about any of them. The Wii, on the other hand, has me positively giddy with anticipation. I'll get a PS3 and an XBox360 after a few price drops when I have nothing better to do with my time and money. I'll get a Wii at midnight on launch day.
All the marketing hype behind HDTV has duped the general public into believing that a higher definition actually makes a difference. Unless you sit eighteen inch's away from your sixty inch screen, there is no difference between a traditional television and an HDTV.
I'm being completely serious: if you can't tell the difference between HDTV and standard def, you need to see an optometrist.
I sit about 12' away from my 50" plasma, and I can easily see a dramatic difference between HD content and standard-definition content. At one point I accidently set my cable box for 480p output, and for the next day or two happened to be watching only standard-definition programming so of course I didn't notice anything wrong. Then I tried to watch a high-definition show, and within five seconds I was hunting through the settings trying to figure out why the picture looked so blurry. It really is that dramatic. I also have a smaller plasma which is farther away from the viewing position (42" at 18') and I can easily tell on that one as well.
Have you actually seen HDTV and standard-definition on the same TV set? I doubt it, or you wouldn't be making claims like this. Or perhaps the set you were comparing on was marked "HDTV compatible" or something equivalent, which just means that it can accept a high-definition signal, but can't actually display it at its full resolution -- typical "EDTV" sets have 480 lines of vertical resolution just like standard-definition TVs do.
It happens when there are two or more shows that the box would like to record coming on at the same time -- try picking five shows that are all on at the same time. When that time rolls around, you will be prompted to change channels to see one of the shows. If you say no, it will switch to one of the OTHER shows instead of remaining on the current channel. Then when you cancel the recording of that show, it will switch to the next show in the list, etc.
On my boxes (which I believe are Explorer 8000HDs) this is 100% reproducible.
You're suggesting that it's NOT a bug when the box:
A) Asks you if you would like to change the channel B) Allows you to say "No, don't change the channel" C)...and then changes the channel anyway?
This is a bug. I had my TiVo for around five years before getting the Time Warner box, so I know how a DVR is supposed to work. The TiVo also asked if you would like to change channels, but amazingly enough actually listened to the answer.
I wish my cable company would consider that. I can't stand the DVRs Time Warner provides. I used to have a TiVo, but "upgraded" to the Time Warner DVRs (made by Scientific Atlanta) in order to get high-def and on-demand content. They are such awful pieces of junk that it's difficult to fully describe the magnitude of difference between them and TiVos.
Just to give a single example, suppose you're watching a show. Another show is scheduled to record, and it tells you it's going to have to switch the channel. You cancel the recording of the other show, because you're trying to watch something. It does indeed cancel the recording -- but only of that particular show. If there are five other things it would also like to record during this particular time slot, it will immediately switch to one of them with no warning or option to cancel. You say "WTF?" and switch back to what you were watching. The DVR then immediately switches to the second thing on the list, again giving you no warning or option to cancel. It will continue to do this until you have exhausted all of the things it would like to record, finally letting you actually watch your show. It's basically punishing you for creating season passes to a bunch of stuff, because it does this every time several shows happen to come on the same time. There are so many more brain-dead things like this that I can't even begin to list them all.
Unfortunately I consider high-def and on-demand content (marginally) more important than having a TiVo, but it's a close thing. If I could upgrade to TiVos for a reasonable price (DirecTV wanted $1000 for theirs, compared to $10/month for Time Warner's DVRs), I would do it in a heartbeat. The Scientific Atlanta boxes suck ass.
You have completely and utterly misunderstood my argument.
You can indeed eliminate all external causes in this case. The two factors that are correlated are "student was in the experimental group" and "student experienced increased permissiveness of violence and drugs". Since the first factor (student was in the experimental group) was random, it by definition cannot have any influencing factors. It is therefore impossible for there to be a common cause of both "student was in the experimental group" and "student experienced increased permissiveness of violence and drugs".
The only possible conclusions are:
A) The experiment showed a genuine effect B) The effect was introduced by randomness (a result of the small sample size) or C) The experiment was badly designed (the selection was not truly random, for instance)
Shouldn't it be correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation?
Because correlation != causation would mean correlation does not equal causation, which may or may not be true.
Or am I wrong?
"Correlation != causation" is a reminder that the two words mean different things, because people often seem to forget that. Of course they sometimes overlap -- by definition any time you have a cause you are also going to have a correlation.
A valuable thing to remember, but completely irrelevant here.
The "correlation != causation" caution applies when it is possible for there to a third, unexplained phenomenon which causes both the supposed cause and the supposed effect. For instance, ice cream consumption and heart attacks both increase in the summer -- but the actual cause of both increases is the summer heat.
That sort of relationship isn't possible here. The "cause" in this case is whether or not the students were assigned to the experimental group -- students in the experimental group had a different experience than students in the control group. Given that the students were (presumably) properly randomly assigned, no factor can possibly have influenced whether or not they were in the control group, and therefore the only possible causes for the differences in the experimental group are the experiment itself or randomness. The latter can be largely controlled by increasing the size of the trial to increase our confidence that we are seeing a real effect.
Think about it this way: imagine the experiment were to decide the effects of gunshot wounds to the head. You divide the students into two groups, and shoot all of the experimental group students in the head. They all die. None of the control group students die. Now, say "but correlation doesn't equal causation!" and realize that it doesn't make any sense. There just isn't any way for some unexplained effect to have altered both which group the students were assigned to and whether or not they died.
This is a very small trial -- only 50 people in each group. I wonder how significant the results are, and if they would still exist in a larger trial (my guess is most of the effects would disappear). While I can certainly believe blood pressure increases and other physiological effects, I'm very skeptical that a short time playing a violent videogame would somehow change your attitude towards marijuana.
It's not impossible, of course, I just want to see the results validated in a larger trial. At the very least I want to see the numbers from this trial -- I suspect that the effects are very small and just on the edge of statistical significance.
Aha, but your given is anything but, and hence your asumption isn't so safe.
I never said that we had complete knowledge of the laws of physics. The point was that it seems pretty safe to assume that if we had complete knowledge of the laws of physics, we could fully simulate physical interactions on a computer.
There's no way to know for sure, of course, but so far all of the physical laws we know are computable. There is no particular reason to suspect that any of the remaining ones aren't.
I believe you are wrong and we already possess sufficient physical knowledge and have for years. As far as I understand it, the Schrödinger equation (and perhaps some other quantum mechanical theories) allows us to model the behavior of electrons completely. All the interactions involved in biochemistry are simply a result of electron behavior (nuclear reactions do not affect life significantly). This is not to say that there is not still work left to be done in the field as modelling at such a low level is probably impractical.
We do not have sufficient knowledge to simulate a working cell. That was all I meant.
If they can simulate something else than a virus (because I don't think viruses are intelligent) could they by this way obtain intelligence by simulating an intelligent animal?
Of course. It would take an absolutely colossal amount of computing power, but given sufficient resources and a complete understanding of the basic physics and chemistry involved (neither of which we have yet) you could absolutely simulate a living creature, and the simulation would be intelligent. There have been many sci-fi stories that have used this basic concept. In fact I expect the first intelligent machine will attain its intelligence by simulating a living brain (although at a much higher level than individual atoms).
If we assume that all physical processes can be simulated by a computer (given complete knowledge of the laws of physics), which seems to be a safe assumption, the question boils down to "is intelligence a physical process?" Everything we know about the brain's operation says that the answer is a resounding "yes" -- and if intelligence is merely a manifestation of the physical operation of the human brain, then there is nothing about it that can't, at least in theory, be simulated.
1. Geological layers and fossil age. He quotes directly from textbooks used at school exhibiting this circular reasoning. As his objective is to eliminate lies from textbooks, I think this point alone fulfills the thesis of his talk.
There is nothing wrong with a textbook containing a simplified version of reality in order to get the point across. I might say that "a thrown baseball flies in a parabolic arc". And you could answer "no it doesn't, you forgot air resistance." And that's true. So, "a thrown baseball flies in a parabolic arc in a vacuum". And then you point out that as the height and speed of the baseball change, incredibly miniscule amounts of time dilation and length contraction alter its path in accordance with general relativity. I'm sure there are quantum effects as well that (again, incredibly slightly) affect its path.
That, of course, is entirely correct. But that doesn't make the statement "a thrown baseball flies in a parabolic arc" a lie, it just makes it not quite as precise as it could be. So when a textbook says that fossils can be dated using radiocarbon dating, well, that's close enough for anyone that doesn't intend to become a paleontologist.
2. He argues that if geological layers are formed chronically, the same ordering of layers should be widely observable, but only a few sites today show the correct layer order.
I can't comment on this without more information, but I've seen claims like this before -- and they always turn out to be based on complete and utter misunderstandings of what geologists are actually claiming. How likely is it that tens of thousands of geologists haven't noticed something as simple and basic as layers being "in the wrong order", while some random high school science teacher has?
3. He argues that geological layers can be formed in a matter of a few years due to relative particle density, similar to the way a stirred glass of mud water quickly settles down to layers. He uses the findings of standing trees that crosses geological layers to support this argument.
When did anyone claim otherwise? Yes, catastrophic events like floods and mudslides can build up huge amounts of silt and debris very quickly. The fact that it can happen doesn't mean that it's the norm.
4. He argues that the Grand Canyon cannot result from Colorado river cutting the rocks slowly, since the peak of the rocks are much more elevated than the source of the river, and that water does not flow uphills.
That assumes that the source of the river is still at the same elevation it was millions of years ago. Since the river itself is obviously much lower than it was millions of years ago (it's at the bottom of a canyon now), why assume that the height of the source has remained constant?
5. He uses the Grand Canyon example to show how Evolutionism and Creationism can cause people to interpret natural phenomenon differently. Evolutionists would claim that Grand Canyon is formed over a long period of time even when the conjecture clearly violates laws of physics.
So his point is that people can look at natural phenomena and reach incorrect conclusions? Wow, stop the presses, I never would have suspected that. Religious types have been rejecting rational explanations for millenia, that's hardly news. In what way does he claim a violation of the laws of physics?
6. Furthermore, he argues that Grand Canyon was formed due to a large body of water breaking through the surrounding land that was what the canyon used to be. The outburst of water body etched the canyon in a short amount of time.
Based on what evidence? It is, of course, possible that EVERY SINGLE GEOLOGIST IN THE WORLD is wrong. But unless I hear some damned good arguments, I'm tending to side with the geologists.
7. He argues that, since some fossilized ancient creatures, onced believed to be extinct, are still found alive today, it is generally not possible to iden
If your brain cells committed suicide because of the annoying way Kent Hovind talks, I agree with you. I find his accent extremely annoying. But how does it have to do with his actual argument? Does his accent make his argument automatically wrong?
I admit, I find the manner in which he speaks intensely irritating. Not the accent so much as the smug self-righteousness of it. I watched about five minutes of this whackjob, and he never actually made any argument. He repeated -- over and over and over again -- that students are being "lied to", but never said anything of substance. I'm sure he says something more substantial at some point, but I'm not interested in watching an hour of mindless evangelical rhetoric just so I can argue with the few actual points he makes.
If someone would care to summarize his arguments, I would be happy to debunk this crap. Otherwise, I have better things to do on a Sunday morning than listen to him.
In fact, I'll bet a U-haul truck loaded with DVDs would still be faster.
Assume the U-Haul truck maintains an average speed of 80km/h (roughly 50mph). It would take 2 hours for it to travel the entire distance. At a speed of 2.56 terabits/sec, this network link could transmit 2.25 petabytes over 2 hours. 2.25 petabytes = about half a million DVDs.
I'd love to see a U-Haul truck carrying half a million DVDs. More than that, I would love to see the effort involved in burning, packing, loading, unloading, unpacking, and reading half a million DVDs -- none of which is counted against the U-Haul's bandwidth.
I hope you are being facetious when you suggest that the ability to transmit 250,000 DVDs an hour is "still pretty slow".
If fossils cannot generally be carbon dated, how do you tell the age of it? We can also date fossils by geological layers in which the fossils are found. But how are geological layers dated? By the fossils that are found in them! This is circular reasoning!
This is a straw man argument. Nobody is claiming you can use radiocarbon dating on anything but recent fossils. Geological layers are dated by a variety of means, including radiological dating of isotopes much longer-lived than carbon-14. I watched as much of the video you linked to as I could stomach, and I think a few of my brain cells committed suicide in protest. Why are you taking this creationist crackpot seriously?
Really? He taught high-school science for fifteen whole years? Wow, I bet he knows more than the millions of serious scientists that disagree with him! Those high-school teachers are smart.
World of Warcraft is a remarkably good couples' game. My wife and I play it whenever we get a chance and she's just as addicted to it as I am. I know a bunch of female WoWers -- it seems to appeal to women (even ones that don't like computer games) far more than most games.
On top of that, it's a cooperative game which requires no particular amount of skill.
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That sounds an awful lot like a 'yes' to me...sure, I can't prove it, but if Microsoft didn't pay or offer incentives, I don't think Adelman would have had any trouble making that known.
I disagree. The standard response "We can't comment on rumors or speculation" (of which this is a variation) is given regardless of whether the rumor is true or not. Think about it: if a company said "We can't comment on rumors or speculation" when the rumor was true, but clearly said "No" when the rumor was false, they'd be giving it away. So they just say "No comment" to everything, and that way you never know whether it's true or false.
I'm not saying that your implication is correct or incorrect. I'm just saying that his response was perfectly standard, regardless of what the truth is.
But it is legal. Anything you can see from your property is fair game to look at, at least in the USA. Probably not legal to record it; almost certainly not legal to distribute if you do.
It's totally legal to look at naked people in their own house if you can see them without trespassing. If you choose not to cover your windows you give up your reasonable expectation of privacy.
Spying on people when they have a reasonable expectation of privacy (as when in a darkened room) is illegal in most localities in developed countries throughout the world. The US is no exception -- most states have anti-voyeurism laws which would prohibit using night-vision scopes to peer into darkened windows.
It makes much less sense to license receivers. The radiation is there, passing through people, even. Frankly, I don't understand why anyone would think that I don't have the right to intercept any signal which passes through my personal space and process it however i please.
So it should be legal for me to use a night-vision scope to look into my neighbor's bedroom window at night? After all, her naked body is reflecting electromagnetic radiation into my personal space. Amplifying it into a visible image, digitizing it, and making it available on the Internet seems like a perfectly logical step, doesn't it?
People have an expectation of privacy. They expect you won't be sneaking around peering into their windows at night, and they expect you won't be intercepting and decoding their personal telephone calls. Yes, you have the right to decode electromagnetic radiation. And yes, the callers have a right to privacy. Any time two different rights conflict, one or the other has to take precedence. Privacy is a much more desirable-to-society right than is the ability to spy on our neighbors, and so privacy wins.
Sounds like you're talking about Multiplicity, although unfortunately it is Windows-only. Does everything else you want, though, and it's really well implemented.
When I asked a professor point blank why the need for art and culture would develop through the course of evolution, he responded that he doesn't believe those traits would stem from evolution.
Then your professor is an idiot. Art and culture are deeply rooted in evolution. Think about a famous artist... say, a rock star. Now, who do you think has gotten more tail, and therefore more chances to propagate his genes, during his life? You, or a rock star? The ability to entertain people -- whether by producing music, or paintings, or poetry, has always correlated with the ability to get laid. The more you get laid, the more likely you are to successfully pass on your genes. There is therefore a strong selection pressure to develop artistic and creative abilities.
Culture is also easily explained. A cohesive culture makes it possible for a group of humans to identify themselves as a single unit, and leads to the ability to form the "us versus them" mentality that modern humans have. The "us versus them" mentality, while unfortunate, was indeed a survival strategy. By uniting in the battle for food and water against competitors, a cohesive unit is going to survive where individual humans or small family groups would fail. They will help one another out in times of trial (benefitting the entire tribe in the long run) and unite against common foes. In the extreme, a tribe with a strong cultural identity could justify going to war and eliminating other, competing humans. Less tightly-coupled groups would not band together in defense, and would be eliminated. We descended from the winners.
The "unit" we humans form has shifted from extended family to tribe to state to country over the years, but we still very much have the "us versus them" mentality. This mentality was a survival benefit in the early years of human development, and of course in the modern world has become the exact opposite. Without strong cultural identities, war would not exist.
You could just as easily argue that this is an advantage of the Wii -- games can be made by smaller teams on tighter budgets. That's one of the reasons Nintendo's handhelds enjoy such strong third-party support: it isn't a huge investment to develop a game for the GBA or DS, at least compared to the home consoles.
So if Wii is cheaper to develop for and has innovative features which get people excited about gaming again, it may mean that developers will be more amenable to the idea of developing for it. After all, nobody seems to mind that the DS doesn't have the same horsepower that the PSP does -- if they likewise don't care that the Wii doesn't have the same horsepower as its competitors, then developing for it is going to look very attractive.
Speaking only for myself, I don't really give a rat's ass that the Wii isn't as powerful as the competition. Sure, high-def support would have been nice, but saving $350 by getting a Wii instead of a PS3 is damned nice too. And as a jaded adult with a wife and kid who has very little time for gaming anymore, it's been really hard to get excited about games lately. Sure, I bought a GameCube and a PS2 and (eventually) an XBox, but I don't remember being really excited about any of them. The Wii, on the other hand, has me positively giddy with anticipation. I'll get a PS3 and an XBox360 after a few price drops when I have nothing better to do with my time and money. I'll get a Wii at midnight on launch day.
All the marketing hype behind HDTV has duped the general public into believing that a higher definition actually makes a difference. Unless you sit eighteen inch's away from your sixty inch screen, there is no difference between a traditional television and an HDTV.
I'm being completely serious: if you can't tell the difference between HDTV and standard def, you need to see an optometrist.
I sit about 12' away from my 50" plasma, and I can easily see a dramatic difference between HD content and standard-definition content. At one point I accidently set my cable box for 480p output, and for the next day or two happened to be watching only standard-definition programming so of course I didn't notice anything wrong. Then I tried to watch a high-definition show, and within five seconds I was hunting through the settings trying to figure out why the picture looked so blurry. It really is that dramatic. I also have a smaller plasma which is farther away from the viewing position (42" at 18') and I can easily tell on that one as well.
Have you actually seen HDTV and standard-definition on the same TV set? I doubt it, or you wouldn't be making claims like this. Or perhaps the set you were comparing on was marked "HDTV compatible" or something equivalent, which just means that it can accept a high-definition signal, but can't actually display it at its full resolution -- typical "EDTV" sets have 480 lines of vertical resolution just like standard-definition TVs do.
These issues are fixed in Java 1.6 (Mustang), due out Real Soon Now.
It happens when there are two or more shows that the box would like to record coming on at the same time -- try picking five shows that are all on at the same time. When that time rolls around, you will be prompted to change channels to see one of the shows. If you say no, it will switch to one of the OTHER shows instead of remaining on the current channel. Then when you cancel the recording of that show, it will switch to the next show in the list, etc.
On my boxes (which I believe are Explorer 8000HDs) this is 100% reproducible.
You're suggesting that it's NOT a bug when the box:
...and then changes the channel anyway?
A) Asks you if you would like to change the channel
B) Allows you to say "No, don't change the channel"
C)
This is a bug. I had my TiVo for around five years before getting the Time Warner box, so I know how a DVR is supposed to work. The TiVo also asked if you would like to change channels, but amazingly enough actually listened to the answer.
I wish my cable company would consider that. I can't stand the DVRs Time Warner provides. I used to have a TiVo, but "upgraded" to the Time Warner DVRs (made by Scientific Atlanta) in order to get high-def and on-demand content. They are such awful pieces of junk that it's difficult to fully describe the magnitude of difference between them and TiVos.
Just to give a single example, suppose you're watching a show. Another show is scheduled to record, and it tells you it's going to have to switch the channel. You cancel the recording of the other show, because you're trying to watch something. It does indeed cancel the recording -- but only of that particular show. If there are five other things it would also like to record during this particular time slot, it will immediately switch to one of them with no warning or option to cancel. You say "WTF?" and switch back to what you were watching. The DVR then immediately switches to the second thing on the list, again giving you no warning or option to cancel. It will continue to do this until you have exhausted all of the things it would like to record, finally letting you actually watch your show. It's basically punishing you for creating season passes to a bunch of stuff, because it does this every time several shows happen to come on the same time. There are so many more brain-dead things like this that I can't even begin to list them all.
Unfortunately I consider high-def and on-demand content (marginally) more important than having a TiVo, but it's a close thing. If I could upgrade to TiVos for a reasonable price (DirecTV wanted $1000 for theirs, compared to $10/month for Time Warner's DVRs), I would do it in a heartbeat. The Scientific Atlanta boxes suck ass.
You have completely and utterly misunderstood my argument.
You can indeed eliminate all external causes in this case. The two factors that are correlated are "student was in the experimental group" and "student experienced increased permissiveness of violence and drugs". Since the first factor (student was in the experimental group) was random, it by definition cannot have any influencing factors. It is therefore impossible for there to be a common cause of both "student was in the experimental group" and "student experienced increased permissiveness of violence and drugs".
The only possible conclusions are:
A) The experiment showed a genuine effect
B) The effect was introduced by randomness (a result of the small sample size)
or
C) The experiment was badly designed (the selection was not truly random, for instance)
Shouldn't it be correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation?
Because correlation != causation would mean correlation does not equal causation, which may or may not be true.
Or am I wrong?
"Correlation != causation" is a reminder that the two words mean different things, because people often seem to forget that. Of course they sometimes overlap -- by definition any time you have a cause you are also going to have a correlation.
correlation != causation
A valuable thing to remember, but completely irrelevant here.
The "correlation != causation" caution applies when it is possible for there to a third, unexplained phenomenon which causes both the supposed cause and the supposed effect. For instance, ice cream consumption and heart attacks both increase in the summer -- but the actual cause of both increases is the summer heat.
That sort of relationship isn't possible here. The "cause" in this case is whether or not the students were assigned to the experimental group -- students in the experimental group had a different experience than students in the control group. Given that the students were (presumably) properly randomly assigned, no factor can possibly have influenced whether or not they were in the control group, and therefore the only possible causes for the differences in the experimental group are the experiment itself or randomness. The latter can be largely controlled by increasing the size of the trial to increase our confidence that we are seeing a real effect.
Think about it this way: imagine the experiment were to decide the effects of gunshot wounds to the head. You divide the students into two groups, and shoot all of the experimental group students in the head. They all die. None of the control group students die. Now, say "but correlation doesn't equal causation!" and realize that it doesn't make any sense. There just isn't any way for some unexplained effect to have altered both which group the students were assigned to and whether or not they died.
This is a very small trial -- only 50 people in each group. I wonder how significant the results are, and if they would still exist in a larger trial (my guess is most of the effects would disappear). While I can certainly believe blood pressure increases and other physiological effects, I'm very skeptical that a short time playing a violent videogame would somehow change your attitude towards marijuana.
It's not impossible, of course, I just want to see the results validated in a larger trial. At the very least I want to see the numbers from this trial -- I suspect that the effects are very small and just on the edge of statistical significance.
Doesn't matter. The goal is to produce one possible outcome of the laws of physics, not all of them.
Aha, but your given is anything but, and hence your asumption isn't so safe.
I never said that we had complete knowledge of the laws of physics. The point was that it seems pretty safe to assume that if we had complete knowledge of the laws of physics, we could fully simulate physical interactions on a computer.
There's no way to know for sure, of course, but so far all of the physical laws we know are computable. There is no particular reason to suspect that any of the remaining ones aren't.
I believe you are wrong and we already possess sufficient physical knowledge and have for years. As far as I understand it, the Schrödinger equation (and perhaps some other quantum mechanical theories) allows us to model the behavior of electrons completely. All the interactions involved in biochemistry are simply a result of electron behavior (nuclear reactions do not affect life significantly). This is not to say that there is not still work left to be done in the field as modelling at such a low level is probably impractical.
We do not have sufficient knowledge to simulate a working cell. That was all I meant.
If they can simulate something else than a virus (because I don't think viruses are intelligent) could they by this way obtain intelligence by simulating an intelligent animal?
Of course. It would take an absolutely colossal amount of computing power, but given sufficient resources and a complete understanding of the basic physics and chemistry involved (neither of which we have yet) you could absolutely simulate a living creature, and the simulation would be intelligent. There have been many sci-fi stories that have used this basic concept. In fact I expect the first intelligent machine will attain its intelligence by simulating a living brain (although at a much higher level than individual atoms).
If we assume that all physical processes can be simulated by a computer (given complete knowledge of the laws of physics), which seems to be a safe assumption, the question boils down to "is intelligence a physical process?" Everything we know about the brain's operation says that the answer is a resounding "yes" -- and if intelligence is merely a manifestation of the physical operation of the human brain, then there is nothing about it that can't, at least in theory, be simulated.
1. Geological layers and fossil age. He quotes directly from textbooks used at school exhibiting this circular reasoning. As his objective is to eliminate lies from textbooks, I think this point alone fulfills the thesis of his talk.
There is nothing wrong with a textbook containing a simplified version of reality in order to get the point across. I might say that "a thrown baseball flies in a parabolic arc". And you could answer "no it doesn't, you forgot air resistance." And that's true. So, "a thrown baseball flies in a parabolic arc in a vacuum". And then you point out that as the height and speed of the baseball change, incredibly miniscule amounts of time dilation and length contraction alter its path in accordance with general relativity. I'm sure there are quantum effects as well that (again, incredibly slightly) affect its path.
That, of course, is entirely correct. But that doesn't make the statement "a thrown baseball flies in a parabolic arc" a lie, it just makes it not quite as precise as it could be. So when a textbook says that fossils can be dated using radiocarbon dating, well, that's close enough for anyone that doesn't intend to become a paleontologist.
2. He argues that if geological layers are formed chronically, the same ordering of layers should be widely observable, but only a few sites today show the correct layer order.
I can't comment on this without more information, but I've seen claims like this before -- and they always turn out to be based on complete and utter misunderstandings of what geologists are actually claiming. How likely is it that tens of thousands of geologists haven't noticed something as simple and basic as layers being "in the wrong order", while some random high school science teacher has?
3. He argues that geological layers can be formed in a matter of a few years due to relative particle density, similar to the way a stirred glass of mud water quickly settles down to layers. He uses the findings of standing trees that crosses geological layers to support this argument.
When did anyone claim otherwise? Yes, catastrophic events like floods and mudslides can build up huge amounts of silt and debris very quickly. The fact that it can happen doesn't mean that it's the norm.
4. He argues that the Grand Canyon cannot result from Colorado river cutting the rocks slowly, since the peak of the rocks are much more elevated than the source of the river, and that water does not flow uphills.
That assumes that the source of the river is still at the same elevation it was millions of years ago. Since the river itself is obviously much lower than it was millions of years ago (it's at the bottom of a canyon now), why assume that the height of the source has remained constant?
5. He uses the Grand Canyon example to show how Evolutionism and Creationism can cause people to interpret natural phenomenon differently. Evolutionists would claim that Grand Canyon is formed over a long period of time even when the conjecture clearly violates laws of physics.
So his point is that people can look at natural phenomena and reach incorrect conclusions? Wow, stop the presses, I never would have suspected that. Religious types have been rejecting rational explanations for millenia, that's hardly news. In what way does he claim a violation of the laws of physics?
6. Furthermore, he argues that Grand Canyon was formed due to a large body of water breaking through the surrounding land that was what the canyon used to be. The outburst of water body etched the canyon in a short amount of time.
Based on what evidence? It is, of course, possible that EVERY SINGLE GEOLOGIST IN THE WORLD is wrong. But unless I hear some damned good arguments, I'm tending to side with the geologists.
7. He argues that, since some fossilized ancient creatures, onced believed to be extinct, are still found alive today, it is generally not possible to iden
If your brain cells committed suicide because of the annoying way Kent Hovind talks, I agree with you. I find his accent extremely annoying. But how does it have to do with his actual argument? Does his accent make his argument automatically wrong?
I admit, I find the manner in which he speaks intensely irritating. Not the accent so much as the smug self-righteousness of it. I watched about five minutes of this whackjob, and he never actually made any argument. He repeated -- over and over and over again -- that students are being "lied to", but never said anything of substance. I'm sure he says something more substantial at some point, but I'm not interested in watching an hour of mindless evangelical rhetoric just so I can argue with the few actual points he makes.
If someone would care to summarize his arguments, I would be happy to debunk this crap. Otherwise, I have better things to do on a Sunday morning than listen to him.
In fact, I'll bet a U-haul truck loaded with DVDs would still be faster.
Assume the U-Haul truck maintains an average speed of 80km/h (roughly 50mph). It would take 2 hours for it to travel the entire distance. At a speed of 2.56 terabits/sec, this network link could transmit 2.25 petabytes over 2 hours. 2.25 petabytes = about half a million DVDs.
I'd love to see a U-Haul truck carrying half a million DVDs. More than that, I would love to see the effort involved in burning, packing, loading, unloading, unpacking, and reading half a million DVDs -- none of which is counted against the U-Haul's bandwidth.
I hope you are being facetious when you suggest that the ability to transmit 250,000 DVDs an hour is "still pretty slow".
If fossils cannot generally be carbon dated, how do you tell the age of it? We can also date fossils by geological layers in which the fossils are found. But how are geological layers dated? By the fossils that are found in them! This is circular reasoning!
This is a straw man argument. Nobody is claiming you can use radiocarbon dating on anything but recent fossils. Geological layers are dated by a variety of means, including radiological dating of isotopes much longer-lived than carbon-14. I watched as much of the video you linked to as I could stomach, and I think a few of my brain cells committed suicide in protest. Why are you taking this creationist crackpot seriously?
Really? He taught high-school science for fifteen whole years? Wow, I bet he knows more than the millions of serious scientists that disagree with him! Those high-school teachers are smart.
World of Warcraft is a remarkably good couples' game. My wife and I play it whenever we get a chance and she's just as addicted to it as I am. I know a bunch of female WoWers -- it seems to appeal to women (even ones that don't like computer games) far more than most games.
On top of that, it's a cooperative game which requires no particular amount of skill.
What the hell did you spend $70k on, then?
Here's the rough cost breakdown:
Physical construction (walls, floor, etc.): $25,000
Carpet/paint: $4,000
Seats: $8,000
Projector: $6,000
Speakers: $20,000
Electronics: $4,000