What kind of hardware was he rocking? Was he an infidel Windows-user? I guess you'd want something that had good heat-management. Do laptops handle very warm climates?
Nonsense. The view you are dressing up as postmodernism is in fact relativism, a position that very few people hold. All postmodernism states is that you never have bare facts, they always come about within a certain interpretative framework. You can see numerous examples of this if you look at the history of science and see how you get sweeping changes in interpretation moving around data that remain the same (phlogiston anyone?).
He wrote at the end of the first world war, when it was still called "Shell Shock". He probably would have written about it in German too. That doesn't mean he wasn't talking about what we'd eventually come to know as PTSD.
In looking at people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Freud surmised from their compulsive re-living of a life-threatening event that they were trying to somehow "master" it and make it no longer a danger to them. Human beings have a strong desire to only die on their own terms. You can extend the same feeling to people who watch scary movies or seek out disturbing news stories. They are defusing these things as potential threats to them, either by convincing themselves they wouldn't get into that situation in the first place, or by coming up with a "better" response (and maybe shouting it at the film screen). Because this is a survival mechanism, there is a "thrill" involved in doing it.
Can't they at least make it a small range of integers? I was meaning to delete my account for awhile, the thing that made me do it was this burnout dude from over two decades ago whom I hung out with in study hall a couple times wanted to friend me, and I'm thinking, so this dude and my wife are supposedly on the same level, according to facebook's way of thinking?
This is troubling you because you are letting Facebook influence the way that you're thinking. It is not some official list for keeping track of what your relationships are with the people that you know. I'd actually find such a thing abhorrent. What it does let you do is let you communicate selectively with a pre-defined (by you!) group of people. Is there really much you'd want to communicate privately to your wife that you wouldn't say or do in-person anyway?
Except the retinal image in the brain is not "upside-down", because there is no such thing as "upside-down" when it comes to patterns of electrical activity in your brain. This guy's behaviour is strange because relative orientation in the outside world is something that does really exist.
I've heard people complaining that the data is not being leaked from countries considered to be the "enemies of America", like China, Russia or Iran. Two points in that vein...
1. Strictly practical. There is a sense in which America is so arrogant that leaks are more likely to happen when some disillusioned individual who has been permitted access to the data decides to cash his chips. Government employees in Iran are much more likely to feel like they are part of a valiant and worthy battle against foreign oppressors.
2. It is actually far more powerful to release this sort of information about a country that claims to be "the land of the free". If you live in a country where government censorship and control is considered a fact of life, you're not going to find the fact that your government keeps secrets from you outrageous. Obviously the danger of claiming that you are the only force in the world that believes in Freedom and Democracy (tm) is that you might someday be expected to live up to those ideals.
To go further: when you're in a culture that is as materialist as the one we have in the west, there is NO escape from it. There are two (both flawed) escapes that people claim to work.
The first is the classic "Oh, I've retired to my house in the countryside now. We don't spend much money, get all of our vegetables locally, etc.", i.e. those people who think they have climbed their way out of it. In reality they are just worms in the apple of materialism. They have consumed a certain amount of "living space" for themselves and while they are in it (and stay away from the edges) they can feel free.
The second is the hermit who goes and lives in the wilderness. Then you have completely redefined yourself in terms of your relationship with materialism, which is no escape at all.
You're confusing "unconscious" with "unaware". We are mostly unconscious of our environment in day-to-day life, that doesn't mean we go walking into walls, tables etc.
Continuity of the "self" is a very interesting question which was considered by the philosopher John Locke, among many others (I mention Locke here because Lost fans might be reading who hadn't realised the connection).
I think most people are familiar with The Ship of Theseus in some form or another.
"Reward" is an interesting word to use. In whole brains there are entire systems of neurons which control motivation and reward (dopamine, endorphins, etc.). "Reward" at the level of a single neuron means nothing. There are ways of encouraging a particular input/output association (LTP), which I guess is as close as you'd get at the level of a single neuron, but there doesn't seem to be much info on what Warwick et al. actually DID here.
Yes, but the signals for visual input, pain input, motor output, etc. are all the same. The significant thing is whether the neuron they are sent along is one which communicates "large object to my left", "pain" or "move left leg forwards".
(This is still a bit of a simplification, but it's closer to the truth.)
I was surprised to see that this wasn't even mentioned in the article. The problem with this system is that it blurs the line between criminals and "free" citizens. Once this becomes cheaper, and the technology is less obtrusive, will there be any reason to not make the devices permanent? Once it is shown to be effective for preventing people reoffending for serious crimes, what will stop them rolling it out to people who commit even minor crimes (the article even mentions using it being used for truancy).
Although this sounds like it will help with a few of the issues that are faced with managing the criminal population, I don't see any way of preventing it's eventual use to control society as a whole. Though if history has taught us anything it's that the eventual measures of control which are used will be more insidious than we could imagine from looking at this technology now.
Citing sources and synthesising information together is an essential skill to being an academic. If it was all in one place then you'd be (redundantly) performing the function of one of those historical monks who just copied out books.
Medieval inquisitors who produced the Malleus Maleficarum from the confessions of tortured witches? The book which describes how those witches made pacts with the Devil in return for supernatural powers?
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What kind of hardware was he rocking? Was he an infidel Windows-user? I guess you'd want something that had good heat-management. Do laptops handle very warm climates?
Because we can finally boss around some astronauts. "PUT SPACEBOOT ON HEAD!"
I'm sure you meant to say: "What'chu talkin' 'bout, Wii-less?"
Nonsense. The view you are dressing up as postmodernism is in fact relativism, a position that very few people hold. All postmodernism states is that you never have bare facts, they always come about within a certain interpretative framework. You can see numerous examples of this if you look at the history of science and see how you get sweeping changes in interpretation moving around data that remain the same (phlogiston anyone?).
It's accurate in that you don't want this particular Trojan to open and release all of your little Greeks into your partner's Troy.
He wrote at the end of the first world war, when it was still called "Shell Shock". He probably would have written about it in German too. That doesn't mean he wasn't talking about what we'd eventually come to know as PTSD.
In looking at people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Freud surmised from their compulsive re-living of a life-threatening event that they were trying to somehow "master" it and make it no longer a danger to them. Human beings have a strong desire to only die on their own terms. You can extend the same feeling to people who watch scary movies or seek out disturbing news stories. They are defusing these things as potential threats to them, either by convincing themselves they wouldn't get into that situation in the first place, or by coming up with a "better" response (and maybe shouting it at the film screen). Because this is a survival mechanism, there is a "thrill" involved in doing it.
Can't they at least make it a small range of integers? I was meaning to delete my account for awhile, the thing that made me do it was this burnout dude from over two decades ago whom I hung out with in study hall a couple times wanted to friend me, and I'm thinking, so this dude and my wife are supposedly on the same level, according to facebook's way of thinking?
This is troubling you because you are letting Facebook influence the way that you're thinking. It is not some official list for keeping track of what your relationships are with the people that you know. I'd actually find such a thing abhorrent. What it does let you do is let you communicate selectively with a pre-defined (by you!) group of people. Is there really much you'd want to communicate privately to your wife that you wouldn't say or do in-person anyway?
You're probably thinking of Ben Goldacre.
It's been done.
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Except the retinal image in the brain is not "upside-down", because there is no such thing as "upside-down" when it comes to patterns of electrical activity in your brain. This guy's behaviour is strange because relative orientation in the outside world is something that does really exist.
I've heard people complaining that the data is not being leaked from countries considered to be the "enemies of America", like China, Russia or Iran. Two points in that vein...
1. Strictly practical. There is a sense in which America is so arrogant that leaks are more likely to happen when some disillusioned individual who has been permitted access to the data decides to cash his chips. Government employees in Iran are much more likely to feel like they are part of a valiant and worthy battle against foreign oppressors.
2. It is actually far more powerful to release this sort of information about a country that claims to be "the land of the free". If you live in a country where government censorship and control is considered a fact of life, you're not going to find the fact that your government keeps secrets from you outrageous. Obviously the danger of claiming that you are the only force in the world that believes in Freedom and Democracy (tm) is that you might someday be expected to live up to those ideals.
To go further: when you're in a culture that is as materialist as the one we have in the west, there is NO escape from it. There are two (both flawed) escapes that people claim to work.
The first is the classic "Oh, I've retired to my house in the countryside now. We don't spend much money, get all of our vegetables locally, etc.", i.e. those people who think they have climbed their way out of it. In reality they are just worms in the apple of materialism. They have consumed a certain amount of "living space" for themselves and while they are in it (and stay away from the edges) they can feel free.
The second is the hermit who goes and lives in the wilderness. Then you have completely redefined yourself in terms of your relationship with materialism, which is no escape at all.
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Maybe we could build cheap housing on it?
We had Newswipe with Charlie Brooker.
You're confusing "unconscious" with "unaware". We are mostly unconscious of our environment in day-to-day life, that doesn't mean we go walking into walls, tables etc.
Continuity of the "self" is a very interesting question which was considered by the philosopher John Locke, among many others (I mention Locke here because Lost fans might be reading who hadn't realised the connection).
I think most people are familiar with The Ship of Theseus in some form or another.
"Reward" is an interesting word to use. In whole brains there are entire systems of neurons which control motivation and reward (dopamine, endorphins, etc.). "Reward" at the level of a single neuron means nothing. There are ways of encouraging a particular input/output association (LTP), which I guess is as close as you'd get at the level of a single neuron, but there doesn't seem to be much info on what Warwick et al. actually DID here.
Yes, but the signals for visual input, pain input, motor output, etc. are all the same. The significant thing is whether the neuron they are sent along is one which communicates "large object to my left", "pain" or "move left leg forwards".
(This is still a bit of a simplification, but it's closer to the truth.)
I was surprised to see that this wasn't even mentioned in the article. The problem with this system is that it blurs the line between criminals and "free" citizens. Once this becomes cheaper, and the technology is less obtrusive, will there be any reason to not make the devices permanent? Once it is shown to be effective for preventing people reoffending for serious crimes, what will stop them rolling it out to people who commit even minor crimes (the article even mentions using it being used for truancy).
Although this sounds like it will help with a few of the issues that are faced with managing the criminal population, I don't see any way of preventing it's eventual use to control society as a whole. Though if history has taught us anything it's that the eventual measures of control which are used will be more insidious than we could imagine from looking at this technology now.
Citing sources and synthesising information together is an essential skill to being an academic. If it was all in one place then you'd be (redundantly) performing the function of one of those historical monks who just copied out books.
Bingo. "Thought" is a function of living creatures - attempts to apply the term to machines will always result in nonsense.
That definition doesn't hold up in the face of colour constancy.
Medieval inquisitors who produced the Malleus Maleficarum from the confessions of tortured witches? The book which describes how those witches made pacts with the Devil in return for supernatural powers?