And putting all Apple apps back onto the desktop and at the top level of the Windows start menu every time you upgrade, irrespective of where you'd tidied the previous version up to.
Quite. After all, reducing the emotional response to a Shakespeare sonnet to a set of quantum states is well within the reach of an undergraduate Physics course nowadays, isn't it? Er, isn't it? Oh, in that case maybe a physics degree doesn't qualify a person to report on whatever the hell they like after all.
Yeah, cuz it's not like Galileo was purposefully designed to be easy to jam in the event of hostilities..... oh wait......:
Any satnav system is going to be easy to jam. I used to know somebody who had a cottage industry manufacturing GPS jammers for the UK military; commercialised they would have been cheap enough to drop as chaff. The only issue with Galileo is that it and GPS can be jammed independently.
The US did not want to lose the ability to themselves use accurate [Global navigation satellite system] while denying enemies the use of accurate GNSS. Some US officials became especially concerned when Chinese interest in Galileo was reported.
This is what led to some US officials to go as far as threatening to potentially shoot down Galileo satellites in the event of a conflict.
Even before Galileo was announced -- and certainly before the Chinese became interested -- the US DoD announced that in a conflict any ground stations for such a system would be "valid military targets, even if on friendly soil". So that bit about setting up your own satnav system also needed to have the rider "and you are confident that you can take on the US military and win".
Well, if you don't like it, you're free to build and deploy your own damned GPS system. Don't have hundreds of billions of dollars to spare? Don't have a national interest in precision, real-time mapping? Then shut the hell up.
I'm mostly convinced that whatever you learn first (a procedural language or an object-oriented language) will warp you for life - and once having learned one, you'll never really master the other.
Nope. I started with FOCAL, then FORTRAN, then TRS-80 BASIC, but had no problems transitioning to OO programming. It probably helped that before OO languages became commonplace I was already hand-rolling dynamic despatch tables in Pascal because that seemed to be the only way to handle the way I was thinking about design.
It's the "useful in 20 years" criterion that convinces me that the *most practical* language to teach in colleges is Unix shell scripting
If you read what I wrote, you'll find that I consider the "useful in 20 years" completely irrelevant. We have no idea what will be useful in 20 years -- we have no idea what will be useful to undergraduates in even 3 years, because we have no idea who they will end up working for and what tools they will be expected to use. If we teach them a language then we are crippling their prospects. If we teach them to program then we are helping them. I came out of university and spent 27 years with a company that used PDP8s, then a brief diversion into VMS, them Microsoft Windows. I was never allowed to install Cygwin, and still wouldn't be if I were still with that company. What the hell use would Unix shell programming have been to me, had they taught it at university?
It's a scientifically vetted point, and rather the point of Darwinism (and neo-Darwinism). Survival of the fittest is survival of what is fittest at the time, not the survival of what may become fittest. There's no mechanism to look ahead, which is what a teleological interpretation would entail.
Things do admittedly get muddier when you put human intentionality into the equation. A eugenics programme, for example, is teleological -- it has a purpose -- and can influence the direction of evolution. But that's a confusion of levels. The eugenics programme can be regarded as part of the environment, and the genes that thrive will be those that produce phenotypes that are adaptive at any given moment in the presence of that eugenics programme. The eugenics programme itself may turn out to be adaptive or not in the context of the wider environment, but again that will depend on whether the relevant phenotypes are adaptive at the time rather than in some possible future. Evolution still operates in the moment, even in the presence of purpose.
I note that you were careful to say a scientifically vetted point, rather than scientifically proven, which is quite right. Evolutionary theory has no need of "purpose" to explain what we observe in nature. That doesn't prove that there is no purpose driving evolution, but the scientific mind is likely to prefer the simpler explanation without it.
Careful with "purpose" -- Evolution is non-teleological, and "purpose" has no place in evolutionary explanations. I think you mean that everything has to ba adaptive, but even then I wonder how you know -- surely evolution would allow characteristics that are not adaptive as long as they have no cost. In fact, evolution depends to some extent on things that are not necessary, as Stephen J Gould pointed out -- a part of an organism can only adapt to a new function if it's not needed for something else.
I wouldn't choose it as a first language, but I think if you're doing Computer Science then I think it's a useful set of concepts to be aware of. Not to mention the fact that I have a real-world need to hack some Scheme at the moment -- a language I don't know yet -- so it's on my mind:-)
Yes, absolutely. People studying linguistics learn Latin and Old English, so I see FORTRAN having a place on an equivalent computing course. Not necessarily to use it, but to understand how we got here.
If it were a computer science course then I'd say that something in the Lisp family, something in the OCAML or Haskell family, and somthing from the Prolog family. I agree that they're likely to encounter static typing at some point but this isn't a computer science course so it shouldn't try to teach everything, and static typing shouldn't come as too much of a shock. Heck, my first language was FOCAL, and I managed to learn to cope with it.
Not all scientific programming is heavy duty number crunching -- I'd suggest that only a minority is. My postgrad research proposal (involving Monte-Carlo simulation) said that I'd use Python for the framework and would swictch to C/C++ where Python got too slow. Python never did get too slow, and I never needed a single line of a C-derivative language. I also used Python for some continuation of Robert Axelrod's classic work on game theory (is that science, math, or psychology?).
Anyway, you're making the classic assumption that undergrads are taught the language for the sake of the language; that it will be the language they will use in the real world. Rather (even in the sciences, not just in computing) it's programming that's being taught, and the language is simply a means to an end. It's futile to try to double-guess what they will be using when they get out into the real world; even if you look at what's in demand now, no language has a monopoly and the language-of-the-moment will change anyway during their career. The person who can program Python will pick up any other procedural language quickly enough, because Python has pretty much all of the relevant constructs, and Python has the advantage of being easy to learn. FORTRAN certainly isn't easy to learn (I did my undergraduate project in FORTRAN), and even the newer versions of FORTRAN that have things like Object Orientation don't present the constructs as clearly as modern languages such as Python. I agree that Python is unlikely to be the only language they'll ever need (don't try saying that on the Python mailing list, though!) but it's at least a contender for the best first language.
I did not write "it is impossible to justify not trusting them" -- your contrapositive is the contrapositive of a straw man.
I know you did not say that. I said it. I was assuming you had some background in basic logic. You don't, and that's fine - most people don't.
I do have extensive training in formal logic, thanks very much -- I'm a Z and VDM practitioner. Now look at what I actually wrote, and try forming the contrapositive of that, without rewording it first to something you wish I had said because it's easier to knock down. If you can't form a simple contrapositive you're in no position to get snarky about other people's logic.
I think you are confused here, or maybe it's just a terminology problem. If I say "I believe x" I certainly don't mean the same as if I say "I know x". "Believe" is (for me at least) a much weaker claim than "know"
You are actually quite amusing. I see you write things with "I think...", "I certainly...", "... is.... " - these are all statements of knowledge.
The next time you write back to me, try removing all forms of the verb "to be", since if you don't really know if anything really is anything in particular, then you certainly shouldn't be using the verb "to be" in a sentence.
I have taken care to justify the use of the verb to be. You are arguing against your preconception of what solipsism is, which seems to be metaphysical solipsism, without actually reading what I am arguing for, which is epistemiological solipsism. There is no problem with using the verb "to be" in epistemiological solipsism because I believe (but do not know) that the external world exists.
You start your sentence with an identification of yourself. What makes you think there is a "you". If you can't know there is a "you", why are you flapping about on the internet?
I don't need to know: belief is sufficient for me to make that statement. The rest of your point by point analysis fails on the same grounds, because it all attacks the metaphysical solipsism that I do not hold.
every time you try to convey a thought to me, you are betraying yourself.
I would do a lot better if you actually read what I wrote, rather than responding to what you wanted me to write. As homework, I suggest you learn the difference between metaphysical and epistemiological solipsisms, and check your stock arguments to see whether they apply to both. Before you accuse somebody of hypocrisy, at least do them the decency to read what they're actually saying.
it seems to be impossible to justify trusting them.
Just look at the contrapositive: it is impossible to justify not trusting them (without actually relying on them in the justification)
As I said, precision is important. I did not write "it is impossible to justify not trusting them" -- your contrapositive is the contrapositive of a straw man.
That seems to be a problem of terminology. As I intend it, "belief" is less than knowledge. You have to believe something to know it, but you do not have to know it to believe it.
You are confusing certainty with knowledge. A belief, a fact, a supposition - are all knowledge. They only differ in how you know them, and how certain you are.
I think you are confused here, or maybe it's just a terminology problem. If I say "I believe x" I certainly don't mean the same as if I say "I know x". "Believe" is (for me at least) a much weaker claim than "know"
The way you are trying to define would make it sound that nobody can know anything unless they are omniscient (i.e. only a person who knows everything can know anything).
Also you don't build a model in physics to make random predictions then see if someone of them turn out to be right, you build a model which is useful in explaining the results you already have and then if that works you can see what other predictions your model can make.
Yes, I'm well aware of that, except I'd dispute the "other" predictions when it hasn't actually made any. By claiming string theory was making predictions, the headline was saying that string theory is at the second stage which is false: as the article shows, it's still at the first.
Yes, that was my thought too. This work hasn't predicted anything at all, it's simply consistent with what was already known. To predict it has to tell us something we don't know that then turns out to be the case.
I was thinking a bit in line with all those silly a priori proofs of, say, God's existence or whatnot.
The trouble I have with those a priori proofs of God's existence is that the thing they end up (often quite convincingly) proving never seems to have any relationship to anything I'd think of as "God" -- they end up proving the existence of the laws of physics or something like that.
Good, but I don't find it to be a problem really. At least not one that is inescapable.
I find it inescapable -- after all, what is there to escape into?
it seems to me to be impossible to justify why what we perceive as reason can actually be trusted
And just how do you intend to prove that one cannot trust reason without using reason and logic?
It's important in philosophy to be very precise with language. I didn't say that one cannot trust reason and logic, just that it seems to be impossible to justify trusting them. In practice I don't seem to be able to avoid trusting them, but I'm conscious that the skyscraper I'm sitting in has no foundations.
it's this argument that has led me to believe (not "know", obviously!) that nothing can be known.
This doesn't even make sense. A belief in something is a form of knowledge. Specifically, it is a type of "knowing" in which you have some evidence, some logical reasoning that lends credibility.
That seems to be a problem of terminology. As I intend it, "belief" is less than knowledge. You have to believe something to know it, but you do not have to know it to believe it. And it doesn't need evidence or logical reasoning -- it could be an "irrational belief". Actually, I prefer the term "arational", because "irrational" commonly suggests contrary to reason, and as you point out reason itself depends on axioms that are not supported by reason -- reason does not support itself, lifting itself up with a skyhook -- but are not contrary to reason.
If you want to say you literally don't know anything, then please - don't even bother opening your (what would logically have to be) useless mouth (I say useless because if our minds are actually incapable of doing the kind of processing you claim you don't believe in, then why inundate the world with the meaningless dribble of vocal vibrations?)
I don't claim that I don't believe in that sort of processing -- I do believe in it. I just don't know it.
"Publishers Want a Slice of Used Game Market". And I want a torrid night of passion with Keira Knightley. I'm expecting to be disappointed. I hope the publishers are, too.
Slashdot Mirror
And putting all Apple apps back onto the desktop and at the top level of the Windows start menu every time you upgrade, irrespective of where you'd tidied the previous version up to.
Still, it's a nice little tribute anyway.
If a trifle premature, at least in the case of some moderated specialist forums.
Quite. After all, reducing the emotional response to a Shakespeare sonnet to a set of quantum states is well within the reach of an undergraduate Physics course nowadays, isn't it? Er, isn't it? Oh, in that case maybe a physics degree doesn't qualify a person to report on whatever the hell they like after all.
Actually, uncut guys often have issues with the condom sliding around
Sounds like you should be using a smaller condom!
Divorce pictures, then!
I don't think the UK MOD were particularly concerned about that.
Yeah, cuz it's not like Galileo was purposefully designed to be easy to jam in the event of hostilities..... oh wait......:
Any satnav system is going to be easy to jam. I used to know somebody who had a cottage industry manufacturing GPS jammers for the UK military; commercialised they would have been cheap enough to drop as chaff. The only issue with Galileo is that it and GPS can be jammed independently.
The US did not want to lose the ability to themselves use accurate [Global navigation satellite system] while denying enemies the use of accurate GNSS. Some US officials became especially concerned when Chinese interest in Galileo was reported.
This is what led to some US officials to go as far as threatening to potentially shoot down Galileo satellites in the event of a conflict.
Even before Galileo was announced -- and certainly before the Chinese became interested -- the US DoD announced that in a conflict any ground stations for such a system would be "valid military targets, even if on friendly soil". So that bit about setting up your own satnav system also needed to have the rider "and you are confident that you can take on the US military and win".
I work at Microsoft, we just ship, ship and ship. What is this testing you speak of?
It's what you do to the installed software, to make sure the user has paid for it.
Well, if you don't like it, you're free to build and deploy your own damned GPS system. Don't have hundreds of billions of dollars to spare? Don't have a national interest in precision, real-time mapping? Then shut the hell up.
You called?
I'm mostly convinced that whatever you learn first (a procedural language or an object-oriented language) will warp you for life - and once having learned one, you'll never really master the other.
Nope. I started with FOCAL, then FORTRAN, then TRS-80 BASIC, but had no problems transitioning to OO programming. It probably helped that before OO languages became commonplace I was already hand-rolling dynamic despatch tables in Pascal because that seemed to be the only way to handle the way I was thinking about design.
It's the "useful in 20 years" criterion that convinces me that the *most practical* language to teach in colleges is Unix shell scripting
If you read what I wrote, you'll find that I consider the "useful in 20 years" completely irrelevant. We have no idea what will be useful in 20 years -- we have no idea what will be useful to undergraduates in even 3 years, because we have no idea who they will end up working for and what tools they will be expected to use. If we teach them a language then we are crippling their prospects. If we teach them to program then we are helping them. I came out of university and spent 27 years with a company that used PDP8s, then a brief diversion into VMS, them Microsoft Windows. I was never allowed to install Cygwin, and still wouldn't be if I were still with that company. What the hell use would Unix shell programming have been to me, had they taught it at university?
So what you are saying is: evolution serves no purpose.
Whose purpose would it serve?
It's a scientifically vetted point, and rather the point of Darwinism (and neo-Darwinism). Survival of the fittest is survival of what is fittest at the time, not the survival of what may become fittest. There's no mechanism to look ahead, which is what a teleological interpretation would entail.
Things do admittedly get muddier when you put human intentionality into the equation. A eugenics programme, for example, is teleological -- it has a purpose -- and can influence the direction of evolution. But that's a confusion of levels. The eugenics programme can be regarded as part of the environment, and the genes that thrive will be those that produce phenotypes that are adaptive at any given moment in the presence of that eugenics programme. The eugenics programme itself may turn out to be adaptive or not in the context of the wider environment, but again that will depend on whether the relevant phenotypes are adaptive at the time rather than in some possible future. Evolution still operates in the moment, even in the presence of purpose.
I note that you were careful to say a scientifically vetted point, rather than scientifically proven, which is quite right. Evolutionary theory has no need of "purpose" to explain what we observe in nature. That doesn't prove that there is no purpose driving evolution, but the scientific mind is likely to prefer the simpler explanation without it.
Careful with "purpose" -- Evolution is non-teleological, and "purpose" has no place in evolutionary explanations. I think you mean that everything has to ba adaptive, but even then I wonder how you know -- surely evolution would allow characteristics that are not adaptive as long as they have no cost. In fact, evolution depends to some extent on things that are not necessary, as Stephen J Gould pointed out -- a part of an organism can only adapt to a new function if it's not needed for something else.
I wouldn't choose it as a first language, but I think if you're doing Computer Science then I think it's a useful set of concepts to be aware of. Not to mention the fact that I have a real-world need to hack some Scheme at the moment -- a language I don't know yet -- so it's on my mind :-)
Yes, absolutely. People studying linguistics learn Latin and Old English, so I see FORTRAN having a place on an equivalent computing course. Not necessarily to use it, but to understand how we got here.
If it were a computer science course then I'd say that something in the Lisp family, something in the OCAML or Haskell family, and somthing from the Prolog family. I agree that they're likely to encounter static typing at some point but this isn't a computer science course so it shouldn't try to teach everything, and static typing shouldn't come as too much of a shock. Heck, my first language was FOCAL, and I managed to learn to cope with it.
Not all scientific programming is heavy duty number crunching -- I'd suggest that only a minority is. My postgrad research proposal (involving Monte-Carlo simulation) said that I'd use Python for the framework and would swictch to C/C++ where Python got too slow. Python never did get too slow, and I never needed a single line of a C-derivative language. I also used Python for some continuation of Robert Axelrod's classic work on game theory (is that science, math, or psychology?).
Anyway, you're making the classic assumption that undergrads are taught the language for the sake of the language; that it will be the language they will use in the real world. Rather (even in the sciences, not just in computing) it's programming that's being taught, and the language is simply a means to an end. It's futile to try to double-guess what they will be using when they get out into the real world; even if you look at what's in demand now, no language has a monopoly and the language-of-the-moment will change anyway during their career. The person who can program Python will pick up any other procedural language quickly enough, because Python has pretty much all of the relevant constructs, and Python has the advantage of being easy to learn. FORTRAN certainly isn't easy to learn (I did my undergraduate project in FORTRAN), and even the newer versions of FORTRAN that have things like Object Orientation don't present the constructs as clearly as modern languages such as Python. I agree that Python is unlikely to be the only language they'll ever need (don't try saying that on the Python mailing list, though!) but it's at least a contender for the best first language.
I did not write "it is impossible to justify not trusting them" -- your contrapositive is the contrapositive of a straw man.
I know you did not say that. I said it. I was assuming you had some background in basic logic. You don't, and that's fine - most people don't.
I do have extensive training in formal logic, thanks very much -- I'm a Z and VDM practitioner. Now look at what I actually wrote, and try forming the contrapositive of that, without rewording it first to something you wish I had said because it's easier to knock down. If you can't form a simple contrapositive you're in no position to get snarky about other people's logic.
I think you are confused here, or maybe it's just a terminology problem. If I say "I believe x" I certainly don't mean the same as if I say "I know x". "Believe" is (for me at least) a much weaker claim than "know"
You are actually quite amusing. I see you write things with "I think...", "I certainly...", " ... is .... " - these are all statements of knowledge.
The next time you write back to me, try removing all forms of the verb "to be", since if you don't really know if anything really is anything in particular, then you certainly shouldn't be using the verb "to be" in a sentence.
I have taken care to justify the use of the verb to be. You are arguing against your preconception of what solipsism is, which seems to be metaphysical solipsism, without actually reading what I am arguing for, which is epistemiological solipsism. There is no problem with using the verb "to be" in epistemiological solipsism because I believe (but do not know) that the external world exists.
You start your sentence with an identification of yourself. What makes you think there is a "you". If you can't know there is a "you", why are you flapping about on the internet?
I don't need to know: belief is sufficient for me to make that statement. The rest of your point by point analysis fails on the same grounds, because it all attacks the metaphysical solipsism that I do not hold.
every time you try to convey a thought to me, you are betraying yourself.
I would do a lot better if you actually read what I wrote, rather than responding to what you wanted me to write. As homework, I suggest you learn the difference between metaphysical and epistemiological solipsisms, and check your stock arguments to see whether they apply to both. Before you accuse somebody of hypocrisy, at least do them the decency to read what they're actually saying.
it seems to be impossible to justify trusting them.
Just look at the contrapositive: it is impossible to justify not trusting them (without actually relying on them in the justification)
As I said, precision is important. I did not write "it is impossible to justify not trusting them" -- your contrapositive is the contrapositive of a straw man.
That seems to be a problem of terminology. As I intend it, "belief" is less than knowledge. You have to believe something to know it, but you do not have to know it to believe it.
You are confusing certainty with knowledge. A belief, a fact, a supposition - are all knowledge. They only differ in how you know them, and how certain you are.
I think you are confused here, or maybe it's just a terminology problem. If I say "I believe x" I certainly don't mean the same as if I say "I know x". "Believe" is (for me at least) a much weaker claim than "know"
The way you are trying to define would make it sound that nobody can know anything unless they are omniscient (i.e. only a person who knows everything can know anything).
How so?
Also you don't build a model in physics to make random predictions then see if someone of them turn out to be right, you build a model which is useful in explaining the results you already have and then if that works you can see what other predictions your model can make.
Yes, I'm well aware of that, except I'd dispute the "other" predictions when it hasn't actually made any. By claiming string theory was making predictions, the headline was saying that string theory is at the second stage which is false: as the article shows, it's still at the first.
Yes, that was my thought too. This work hasn't predicted anything at all, it's simply consistent with what was already known. To predict it has to tell us something we don't know that then turns out to be the case.
I was thinking a bit in line with all those silly a priori proofs of, say, God's existence or whatnot.
The trouble I have with those a priori proofs of God's existence is that the thing they end up (often quite convincingly) proving never seems to have any relationship to anything I'd think of as "God" -- they end up proving the existence of the laws of physics or something like that.
Good, but I don't find it to be a problem really. At least not one that is inescapable.
I find it inescapable -- after all, what is there to escape into?
it seems to me to be impossible to justify why what we perceive as reason can actually be trusted
And just how do you intend to prove that one cannot trust reason without using reason and logic?
It's important in philosophy to be very precise with language. I didn't say that one cannot trust reason and logic, just that it seems to be impossible to justify trusting them. In practice I don't seem to be able to avoid trusting them, but I'm conscious that the skyscraper I'm sitting in has no foundations.
it's this argument that has led me to believe (not "know", obviously!) that nothing can be known.
This doesn't even make sense. A belief in something is a form of knowledge. Specifically, it is a type of "knowing" in which you have some evidence, some logical reasoning that lends credibility.
That seems to be a problem of terminology. As I intend it, "belief" is less than knowledge. You have to believe something to know it, but you do not have to know it to believe it. And it doesn't need evidence or logical reasoning -- it could be an "irrational belief". Actually, I prefer the term "arational", because "irrational" commonly suggests contrary to reason, and as you point out reason itself depends on axioms that are not supported by reason -- reason does not support itself, lifting itself up with a skyhook -- but are not contrary to reason.
If you want to say you literally don't know anything, then please - don't even bother opening your (what would logically have to be) useless mouth (I say useless because if our minds are actually incapable of doing the kind of processing you claim you don't believe in, then why inundate the world with the meaningless dribble of vocal vibrations?)
I don't claim that I don't believe in that sort of processing -- I do believe in it. I just don't know it.
"Publishers Want a Slice of Used Game Market". And I want a torrid night of passion with Keira Knightley. I'm expecting to be disappointed. I hope the publishers are, too.
If a bookstore can sell used books without giving any money to the publisher, I fail to see why a game store can't sell used games.
Which might just be why one particular (online) bookstore would like you to use an e-reader that can prevent you selling on the (e)books that you buy.