1. [root@localhost ~]# adduser ii 2. [root@localhost ~]# sed -i 's/ii/8i/g'/etc/passwd 3. [root@localhost ~]# su 8i
So "sed" is the tool "creating" the user, at least it (re)defines the user name. It could have been some text editor, or "echo", or someone could mount the filesystem with/etc/passwd file in some other operating system and edited in a million ways imaginable.
Do you propose sed and all software directly or indirectly used for text editing under any operating system "validate" user names ? How about direct access to storage device with a magnet or firmware interface to storage device ?
In case of non-shill conditions, I would stop replying if radical misstatements start, but not here, at least without calling them out.
I'm talking about the inherent opacity of ML-based algorithmic decisionmaking. The origin or purpose of the algorithms doesn't affect that. It would be the same if we were talking about a non-profit search engine (or anything else).
Proof awaited of the impossibility of sharing data and programs. Proof given of moral right of people over that data.
but corporations are far from the only entities with access to large
Ok, so when the head line is about $government abusing closed algorithms (needless to say it includes data, at least if data is collected from people), I will comment about governments. At that time if you work for $government you can shill for them saying governments are far from the only entities with access to large....
Do you deny that the more a meme is used the more powerful it becomes?
I see the power of a meme as helping build a clique. The fun is in a particular group using it (maybe a lot), and others, let's call them muggles, don't understand the memes much.
But are you saying memes are actually "effective" the way these people are believing about "sad" ? That would be a different take on memes altogether.
The pleasure I see in memes is similar to meeting someone speaking your language in a far-off land. Say when a Belgian an Rwandan both speaking French meet in Sri Lanka, they hit it off quite nicely in spite of the difference in dialect. If everyone in Sri Lanka were speaking French well, that hit off would reduce drastically wouldn't it ?
If the same meme is used by everyone, it becomes an idiom. At this point occasionally it may become an interesting way of making a point, but nowhere as influential as something "kind of scientifically" called "effective".
Used by even more people even more frequently, and it becomes a language peculiarity like "it is raining". There is no "it" that is raining, but we English speaking fools just say it. Far from effective, people find no other way of communicating than using the peculiarity.
It's still not clear that laboratories manufacturing "meat" on a large scale would be any better for the environment. The labs may claim it is, but that does not make it so.
1. There is a possibility of it being better for the environment - their claim may or may not be true, which has a "may be true" component.
2. There is a lot of energy wastage in animals. They think, move around needlessly, want to have sex, sometimes even run around. All of this also wastes water and needs real estate. Of course, the lab will have its own energy / environmental costs - but if overall costs for the lab are lower we win environmentally. Again, possible but not necessarily.
3. Companies developing this kind of lab meat might go for the "cheap meat", as the traditionalists, "appeal to nature" fallacists, general ignoramuses might make it difficult to sell it. Cheap has won many battles in the world of technology over quality - there is no reason it may not be true in this case too. And one good way to produce cheaply is use less resources, and that in turn might harm the environment less.
Society is going to have to come to terms with this somehow
What is going to happen completely depends on profits. That doesn't mean we stop thinking logically about the fundamental untenability of it.
Human decisionmaking is just as opaque, in reality, but humans continually invent self-explanations for their decisions, and when we scale human decisionmaking processes we have to codify simple rules to provide some semblance of consistency across the many people doing the deciding
1. Humans are rarely so powerful as corporations 2. Humans can go to jail. 3. Nobody in this post is asking any humans to do the searching or ranking.
The analogy is not making any sense.
machine learning is used to get them... and the result is algorithms that work measurably better in all the test cases, and in production use, but are almost as opaque as the decisionmaking of any individual human.
Yes, but this learning is captured by corporations. The input is overwhelmingly that of the people using it, little realizing the power of their contribution, getting very little accountability from the hoarder of their information.
Yes, but I see it being inexplicably forgotten that bygones are bygones. The court ruling, is not about the days when we had Hotbot/Inktomi and Altavista.
Since there's no way to readily prove that they're not putting their thumb on the scales
This is essentially the tyranny of the closed algorithm. The reason why the society should refuse to deal with a powerful entity (corporations being a subset of powerful entities) hiding behind - "the algorithm ate my homework".
In my country, for my tests, I don't see a problem with the alleged Google search results, but I still empathize with those seeing problems. Why should they have to prove what a hidden algorithm is doing without having control over it so that they could debug it ? What if Google starts giving malicious results to only selected users - so that even if they blow the whistle the rest of the world disbelieves them - "Something must be wrong with you, I don't see bad results."
It's also an effective style because it's really easy for others to pick up and use as well, with increases the power of the term...
How so? According to the study / theory, it is not so. "Sad" distinguishes from the hyper ventilation that is found everywhere else on the internet.
Do you have another theory where if many newspaper headlines , articles, tweets, facebook posts end with ", sad.", it will increase the power of the term? My guess is that the audience would stop noticing "sad" soon, or at least stop paying much attention to it. Thereby reducing its power.
1. The most dangerous ones can easily pretend to be non-Muslim, or having converted to Christianity to enter the US and wreak havoc. So security improvement argument doesn't hold much. See the solution to all computer security problems : Evil bit.
2. If the country (say the US) wants to prohibit wife hitting, they should prohibit wife hitting. Why the round-about way of reducing the number of Muslims brought in from abroad ? This will protect against lunatics , whether Muslim or followers of phalrehuq religion, whether already in the country or coming in from abroad.
In even more generality, just prohibit hitting.
3. Practically, being an interconnected country and the world - we are in more danger from people being offended in a real or perceived fashion. So this unnecessary, insufficient "ban" would make the country even more insecure from the people having say business or family impact from this move.
Doesn't public discourse define / redefine / modify language? E.g. the covfefe bill (not sure if it is a law yet). If law were only using fixed language of the time the country was founded, it would be difficult to make sense of it for people of today.
Not only political campaign, even popular movies / literature routinely change language.
If language were static, dictionaries wouldn't have to add words and change the meanings of words frequently. If language is not static, how can the influencer of language , which includes public discourse and political campaign, be not a concern in any statement that is made in "language" ? This , in turn includes laws and executive orders.
Do you agree that even seemingly initially clear laws can run into situations when there is slight ambiguity ? Say hundreds of years later? Can there be a difference between the letter and the spirit of some law ? Are laws , or to a lesser extent executive orders, as clear as CPU instructions where there can be no dispute whatsoever ?
In case of these ambiguities, intent is typically "guessed". When judges guess intent, they legislate by proxy. Sometimes there are other proofs of intent - e.g. founding fathers of countries / drafters of constitutions have had expressed their opinion in other ways which is taken into account long after their death. In guessing intent, "spirit" of law is highlighted.
The "letter" problem is typically fixed (talking about English common law philosophy , which is becoming more and more common) : by quoting the judgement of a court in relation with original , now deemed ambiguous , law.
As far as executive statements go - the same applies to a lesser extent. The ambiguity there should be resolved by implementers / bureaucrats asking questions to the executive through established channels, or people complaining and higher bureaucrats providing more detailed guidelines as a result. But any ambiguity will have to be resolved by the "guessed" intent of the executive order by the bureaucrat / implementer of the law. Even executive orders are unlikely to be as clear as CPU instructions - though they have the advantage of typically not being needed after hundreds of years.
I do meet people who insist on discussing topics for which they don't meet the prerequisites. Just an example : discussing differential calculus while making basic algebraic mistakes.
Some people refuse to discuss further. My way to make the conversation interesting again is to switch topics to the prerequisites : about algebra in the above example.
People generally don't like it, in their own minds it is beneath them, but from my point of view do you see another way to make the conversation interesting?
So here goes
- Say you have an ampule of ordinary water, not being sold nor treated in a homeopathic way, and you drip that on a small, white pill and give it to a person with some illness, and you do not see any measurable effect. Thus, it does not work. You now drip it on a large, colored pill, and you measure an effect. Would you say that effect is caused by the ordinary water, or the placebo effect of having the large, colored pill?
With a sample size of 1, an extremely retarded "scientist" would conclude causation. We have not begun noting elementary correlation yet.
I know, science is boring if you want a result every second sentence, but that's "het leven" if my faint memory of the language serves.
A. The original question *is* about language and meaning of words - what does autopilot mean ?
B. The parable is invalid. My questions / points about "language and meaning of words" are directed at clarifying that. So even from the perspective of this parable being supreme, there is no progress without addressing them.
So you are fitting your own definition (characteristic ?) of a troll : "a troll would have just gone on about his analogies and insisting that one would answer those first".
Doesn't even mention the ingested material to be a meaning of "homeopathy".
C. This might help : the very fact that there *is* no substance is one of the things to understand when discussiing homeopathic medicine.
D. I don't think you understand how language, communication and words work. Evidence
1. Your initial claim about words not meaning what they are widely considered to mean.
2. Your initial claim and my reaction being about homeopathic medicine, but a lot of your subsequent discussion being about homeopathy.
3. Wrongly interpreting me to be saying voodoo magic works, multiple times.
4. Your incorrect uses of phrases like "homeopathic substances" and "adding placebo effect" could be a language problem, language theory problem, or lack of clarity on the subject matter. But they are the reasons i don't dabble into the worse ones among your analogies.
5. Your lack of follow up on my further questions on your definition of characteristic even after a reminder could mean you don't understand that within a single dictionary meaning there could be ways in which a word has a meaning in a particular context. Or it could mean you don't care, not sure.
5a. In this post again you pretend to have given a complete definition of characteristic, so my guess is more about your ignorance of subtleties.
Yes, English, Romance languages, Germanic languages have subtle connotation differences. So people might think they know multiple of these languages and yet get tripped up on these subtleties. But completely ignoring the existence of these subtleties after my multiple attempts to highlight them disqualifies you from 2 things :
1. Making claims about what autopilot means 2. My participation in your faulty parables, after i highlight the fault in the parables.
Some of my best friends don't understand how language works. I don't broach the subject with them, but i do answer their questions on related subjects without much hope of getting through.
If someone asks me if red air-conditioners work, i say yes. That working may not be because of the red color. Homeopathic medicine working may not be due to the philosophy of homeopathy.
1. In my first post, i said homeopathic medicine works. Not homeopathy works.
2. The word homeopathy has various connotations : the theory, the field of study, the philosophy, a particular course of treatment, the industry manufacturing these medicines etc.
you make the statement that homeopathy, on itself, works (aka, the effect is due to the homeopathic nature of the 'medicine'),
Where did I say that ? Exact link please, for once. No misquotes, no quoting half-sentence out of context. Not some hand-wavy excuse involving "any 2 nouns in an analogy must be analogous and all discussed properties must hence be the same".
2)Do you think the placebo effect works, yes or no?
Yes
3)Do you agree they are distinct and one is not characteristic of the other and vice versa?
You have not replied to my questions about your meaning of the word "characteristic", after the first one where you referred to the dictionary. I am not sure which of the meanings of the dictionary apply in which way , so I would say I do not understand the question.
However placebo effect and homeopathy are different.
4)Do you think that, if the difference between receiving nothing and receiving a homeopathic treatment show no difference in effect, while if one adds a placebo effect (like coloring the pills) shows an equal difference in effect as with something which is not homeopathic at all, it means that homeopathy has no effect, and the effect is purely due to the placebo effect?
You did say homeopathy works. Since voodoo is the analogy used for homeopathy, then the claim is 'voodoo works
Ok, then put 25 times more effort into reading my posts. Just because there is an analogy doesn't mean any 2 nouns in the conversation become direct analogies for each other. There are other words , which together form a meaning, which need to be understood to come up with a coherent response.
Already we have split the original problem to a far smaller portion so that we don't get distracted by various misreadings you subject the discussion to. We'll have to split further if we are to reach anywhere . Let's understand the voodoo part of my posts first:
N3wsByt3 : Then you say an air conditioner works even if one says it's due to voodoo magic
N3wsByt3 quoting BingoUV : "An air conditioner created for voodoo purposes works exactly as an air conditioner created for cooling one's living room"
Problems : 1. Dropped part of the sentence : if the air conditioner is otherwise identical. Read the original here. 2. "works even if one says " : air conditioners hardly listen to "one" saying anything, so even if one says is quite stupid in the context of air conditioners working.
We are continuing, but in the context of your post:
Let me guess. You're now going to say: ah, but I said FOR voodoo purposes, not BY voodoo purposes? In that case, your analogy makes no sense at all.
Your guess is wrong.
Imagine 2 air conditioners, identical except that one was created for the purpose of voodoo, the other was created for the purpose of cooling. Answer correctly :
1. Do they work identically ? 2. If yes, I agree with you. Does their working identically mean some of the statements you have imagined me asserting , or you stated an opposite of : 2a. "voodoo magic works" 2b. An airconditioner works by voodoo-magic 2c. voodoo magic works because the airconditioner works 3. If no, why do you think they work differently ?
The point is that saying voodoo magic works (thus, in the analogy: homeopathy works) is demonstrably false.
Maybe, but since nobody around us is saying "voodoo magic works", you are distracting from the topic to avoid having to concede the point.
since YOU seem to conflate the two when talking about what works and doesn't work
Why don't you quote my statement where I "conflate the two" ?
It stands to reason that, if one knows the effect of a placebo, and you know the effect of a non-homeopathic substance, you can also derive the effectiveness of the homeopathic substance on itself
2 points : A. In many homeopathic medicines, there is no "homeopathic substance".
B. I am not quite grasping who knows what. One knows one thing, and "you" know another thing. How can "you" derive something from the two things without knowing what "one" knows ?
If your comfort in some other language is better , could you also add an explanation in that language? I'll try Google translate along with your English to make sense, in case that language is also beyond me.
Or do you not understand the placebo effect? The way you keep talking about homeopathic medicine without placebo effect, one would think you have no clue what placebo effect means. Another instance raising suspicion of your ignorance of placebo effect is your statement from an earlier post "If you add a placebo effect to a homeopathic preparation".
Seriously ? Add ?
Similarly, you do NOT have to remove the placebo effect from the world to show what effect it has. It is sufficient that you can quantify the effect and the level of it, to determine what an additional substance (homeopathy) adds to it
Again, "additional substance" implies two things : 1. You think placebo effect is a substance ? 2. Homeopathy must be a substance ? Homeopathic medicine frequently is not a substance.
Then you say an air conditioner works even if one says it's due to voodoo magic
Please quote me saying this. I really want to meet this "one" guy of yours, he (or is it a she ?) is quite mysterious.
So claiming voodoo magic works is false.
Glad we can agree on something. Now why it is relevant, I have no clue, but hey! Look on the bright side !
Are you saying Charles' law is a characteristic of air conditioners according to dictionary definition of characteristic ? In the sense of feature ? Quality ? Does Charles' law identify an air conditioner ?
Therefor saying voodoo magic works because the airconditioner works, is faulty reasoning
Can you demonstrate where anyone said "voodoo magic works because the airconditioner works" ?
The two are not interchangeable, just as the placebo effect and homeopathy are not interchangeable.
Who said "placebo effect and homeopathy are interchangeable" ? Same as Charles' law and air conditioners are not interchangeable. Exhibit 1.
That's fairly simple: you do not need to remove the law, only the effects that the law pertains to. Since Charles' law (also known as the law of volumes) is an experimental gas law that describes how gases tend to expand when heated, it suffices to go into an environment which does not contain gases, such as a vacuum. Logic would dictate, then, that the air conditioner will not work in a vacuum. And indeed, it doesn't. In contrast, however, if the the air conditioner would work by voodoo-magic, it would still work in a vacuum. Therefor, the logical conclusion is that an air conditioner works by Charles' law, NOT by Voodoo magic.
Great. Now again 2 points : A. who said air conditioners work by voodoo magic ? B. Original context was "1)You have homeopathy without a placebo effect: this does not work"
So you have air-conditioners without a effect pertaining Charles' law (as you describe above) also not working. And homeopathy also not working without placebo effect. Exhibit 2.
A placebo effect, I repeat, is NOT homeopathy
2 points : A. Who said that it is ? B. Charles' law is also not an air conditioner.
No. It can easily be shown homeopathy doesn't work. This is because, just like with your question of charles' law, it's not necessary tn remove the placebo effect 'from the world', but rather see to it that it has no measurable effect
Exhibit 3.
This is because, just like with your question of charles' law, it's not necessary tn remove the placebo effect 'from the world', but rather see to it that it has no measurable effect
Exhibit 4.
homeopathy with and without a placebo effect
You forgot to document how to remove the placebo effect from the world.
that there is no effect due to the homeopathy, but only due to the placebo effect
From the exhibits 1, 2, 3 and 4 above, you seem to have understood that Charles' law is to air conditioners what placebo effect is to homeopathy, at least as far as an analogy goes. (Although sometimes you start addressing someone who said something that I never said, but let us ignore that until you explain those times.)
Now combined with this statement, would you also design an experiment to determine that there is no effect of air conditioners, but only of Charles' law ?
Slashdot Mirror
the tool creating the user
Ok, consider this :
1. [root@localhost ~]# adduser ii /etc/passwd
2. [root@localhost ~]# sed -i 's/ii/8i/g'
3. [root@localhost ~]# su 8i
So "sed" is the tool "creating" the user, at least it (re)defines the user name. It could have been some text editor, or "echo", or someone could mount the filesystem with /etc/passwd file in some other operating system and edited in a million ways imaginable.
Do you propose sed and all software directly or indirectly used for text editing under any operating system "validate" user names ? How about direct access to storage device with a magnet or firmware interface to storage device ?
In case of non-shill conditions, I would stop replying if radical misstatements start, but not here, at least without calling them out.
I'm talking about the inherent opacity of ML-based algorithmic decisionmaking. The origin or purpose of the algorithms doesn't affect that. It would be the same if we were talking about a non-profit search engine (or anything else).
Proof awaited of the impossibility of sharing data and programs.
Proof given of moral right of people over that data.
but corporations are far from the only entities with access to large
Ok, so when the head line is about $government abusing closed algorithms (needless to say it includes data, at least if data is collected from people), I will comment about governments. At that time if you work for $government you can shill for them saying governments are far from the only entities with access to large ....
Are you really expecting slashdot users to help facebook for free ? Did you think this through ?
http://www.bbc.com/news/techno...
The tax software's update mechanism got compromised.
Mikko Hypponen, a security expert at F-Secure, is saying - "If you do business in Ukraine, the software (MEDoc) appears to be de facto,"
Microsoft is saying : "Active infections of the ransomware initially started from the legitimate MEDoc update process,"
Do you deny that the more a meme is used the more powerful it becomes?
I see the power of a meme as helping build a clique. The fun is in a particular group using it (maybe a lot), and others, let's call them muggles, don't understand the memes much.
But are you saying memes are actually "effective" the way these people are believing about "sad" ? That would be a different take on memes altogether.
The pleasure I see in memes is similar to meeting someone speaking your language in a far-off land. Say when a Belgian an Rwandan both speaking French meet in Sri Lanka, they hit it off quite nicely in spite of the difference in dialect. If everyone in Sri Lanka were speaking French well, that hit off would reduce drastically wouldn't it ?
If the same meme is used by everyone, it becomes an idiom. At this point occasionally it may become an interesting way of making a point, but nowhere as influential as something "kind of scientifically" called "effective".
Used by even more people even more frequently, and it becomes a language peculiarity like "it is raining". There is no "it" that is raining, but we English speaking fools just say it. Far from effective, people find no other way of communicating than using the peculiarity.
It's still not clear that laboratories manufacturing "meat" on a large scale would be any better for the environment. The labs may claim it is, but that does not make it so.
1. There is a possibility of it being better for the environment - their claim may or may not be true, which has a "may be true" component.
2. There is a lot of energy wastage in animals. They think, move around needlessly, want to have sex, sometimes even run around. All of this also wastes water and needs real estate. Of course, the lab will have its own energy / environmental costs - but if overall costs for the lab are lower we win environmentally. Again, possible but not necessarily.
3. Companies developing this kind of lab meat might go for the "cheap meat", as the traditionalists, "appeal to nature" fallacists, general ignoramuses might make it difficult to sell it. Cheap has won many battles in the world of technology over quality - there is no reason it may not be true in this case too. And one good way to produce cheaply is use less resources, and that in turn might harm the environment less.
Society is going to have to come to terms with this somehow
What is going to happen completely depends on profits. That doesn't mean we stop thinking logically about the fundamental untenability of it.
Human decisionmaking is just as opaque, in reality, but humans continually invent self-explanations for their decisions, and when we scale human decisionmaking processes we have to codify simple rules to provide some semblance of consistency across the many people doing the deciding
1. Humans are rarely so powerful as corporations
2. Humans can go to jail.
3. Nobody in this post is asking any humans to do the searching or ranking.
The analogy is not making any sense.
machine learning is used to get them... and the result is algorithms that work measurably better in all the test cases, and in production use, but are almost as opaque as the decisionmaking of any individual human.
Yes, but this learning is captured by corporations. The input is overwhelmingly that of the people using it, little realizing the power of their contribution, getting very little accountability from the hoarder of their information.
What don't you believe is about Freischutz ?
Did you just randomly select a place to spew the cliche (no unicode ? é) about customer and product ?
Or are you saying users being customers makes Google's situation not monopolistic but monopsonistic ? Does that change anything materially ?
Yes, but I see it being inexplicably forgotten that bygones are bygones. The court ruling, is not about the days when we had Hotbot/Inktomi and Altavista.
In other words, how is that relevant today ?
Since there's no way to readily prove that they're not putting their thumb on the scales
This is essentially the tyranny of the closed algorithm. The reason why the society should refuse to deal with a powerful entity (corporations being a subset of powerful entities) hiding behind - "the algorithm ate my homework".
In my country, for my tests, I don't see a problem with the alleged Google search results, but I still empathize with those seeing problems. Why should they have to prove what a hidden algorithm is doing without having control over it so that they could debug it ? What if Google starts giving malicious results to only selected users - so that even if they blow the whistle the rest of the world disbelieves them - "Something must be wrong with you, I don't see bad results."
It's also an effective style because it's really easy for others to pick up and use as well, with increases the power of the term...
How so? According to the study / theory, it is not so. "Sad" distinguishes from the hyper ventilation that is found everywhere else on the internet.
Do you have another theory where if many newspaper headlines , articles, tweets, facebook posts end with ", sad.", it will increase the power of the term? My guess is that the audience would stop noticing "sad" soon, or at least stop paying much attention to it. Thereby reducing its power.
Dark but true, deal with it
Don't you mean - "sad" ?
1. The most dangerous ones can easily pretend to be non-Muslim, or having converted to Christianity to enter the US and wreak havoc. So security improvement argument doesn't hold much. See the solution to all computer security problems : Evil bit.
2. If the country (say the US) wants to prohibit wife hitting, they should prohibit wife hitting. Why the round-about way of reducing the number of Muslims brought in from abroad ? This will protect against lunatics , whether Muslim or followers of phalrehuq religion, whether already in the country or coming in from abroad.
In even more generality, just prohibit hitting.
3. Practically, being an interconnected country and the world - we are in more danger from people being offended in a real or perceived fashion. So this unnecessary, insufficient "ban" would make the country even more insecure from the people having say business or family impact from this move.
Doesn't public discourse define / redefine / modify language? E.g. the covfefe bill (not sure if it is a law yet). If law were only using fixed language of the time the country was founded, it would be difficult to make sense of it for people of today.
Not only political campaign, even popular movies / literature routinely change language.
If language were static, dictionaries wouldn't have to add words and change the meanings of words frequently. If language is not static, how can the influencer of language , which includes public discourse and political campaign, be not a concern in any statement that is made in "language" ? This , in turn includes laws and executive orders.
Do you agree that even seemingly initially clear laws can run into situations when there is slight ambiguity ? Say hundreds of years later? Can there be a difference between the letter and the spirit of some law ? Are laws , or to a lesser extent executive orders, as clear as CPU instructions where there can be no dispute whatsoever ?
In case of these ambiguities, intent is typically "guessed". When judges guess intent, they legislate by proxy. Sometimes there are other proofs of intent - e.g. founding fathers of countries / drafters of constitutions have had expressed their opinion in other ways which is taken into account long after their death. In guessing intent, "spirit" of law is highlighted.
The "letter" problem is typically fixed (talking about English common law philosophy , which is becoming more and more common) : by quoting the judgement of a court in relation with original , now deemed ambiguous , law.
As far as executive statements go - the same applies to a lesser extent. The ambiguity there should be resolved by implementers / bureaucrats asking questions to the executive through established channels, or people complaining and higher bureaucrats providing more detailed guidelines as a result. But any ambiguity will have to be resolved by the "guessed" intent of the executive order by the bureaucrat / implementer of the law. Even executive orders are unlikely to be as clear as CPU instructions - though they have the advantage of typically not being needed after hundreds of years.
I do meet people who insist on discussing topics for which they don't meet the prerequisites. Just an example : discussing differential calculus while making basic algebraic mistakes.
Some people refuse to discuss further. My way to make the conversation interesting again is to switch topics to the prerequisites : about algebra in the above example.
People generally don't like it, in their own minds it is beneath them, but from my point of view do you see another way to make the conversation interesting?
So here goes
- Say you have an ampule of ordinary water, not being sold nor treated in a homeopathic way, and you drip that on a small, white pill and give it to a person with some illness, and you do not see any measurable effect. Thus, it does not work. You now drip it on a large, colored pill, and you measure an effect. Would you say that effect is caused by the ordinary water, or the placebo effect of having the large, colored pill?
With a sample size of 1, an extremely retarded "scientist" would conclude causation. We have not begun noting elementary correlation yet.
I know, science is boring if you want a result every second sentence, but that's "het leven" if my faint memory of the language serves.
A. The original question *is* about language and meaning of words - what does autopilot mean ?
B. The parable is invalid. My questions / points about "language and meaning of words" are directed at clarifying that. So even from the perspective of this parable being supreme, there is no progress without addressing them.
So you are fitting your own definition (characteristic ?) of a troll : "a troll would have just gone on about his analogies and insisting that one would answer those first".
A. No succinct questions, no succinct answers.
B. The single definition here : http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/...
Doesn't even mention the ingested material to be a meaning of "homeopathy".
C. This might help : the very fact that there *is* no substance is one of the things to understand when discussiing homeopathic medicine.
D. I don't think you understand how language, communication and words work. Evidence
1. Your initial claim about words not meaning what they are widely considered to mean.
2. Your initial claim and my reaction being about homeopathic medicine, but a lot of your subsequent discussion being about homeopathy.
3. Wrongly interpreting me to be saying voodoo magic works, multiple times.
4. Your incorrect uses of phrases like "homeopathic substances" and "adding placebo effect" could be a language problem, language theory problem, or lack of clarity on the subject matter. But they are the reasons i don't dabble into the worse ones among your analogies.
5. Your lack of follow up on my further questions on your definition of characteristic even after a reminder could mean you don't understand that within a single dictionary meaning there could be ways in which a word has a meaning in a particular context. Or it could mean you don't care, not sure.
5a. In this post again you pretend to have given a complete definition of characteristic, so my guess is more about your ignorance of subtleties.
Yes, English, Romance languages, Germanic languages have subtle connotation differences. So people might think they know multiple of these languages and yet get tripped up on these subtleties. But completely ignoring the existence of these subtleties after my multiple attempts to highlight them disqualifies you from 2 things :
1. Making claims about what autopilot means
2. My participation in your faulty parables, after i highlight the fault in the parables.
Some of my best friends don't understand how language works. I don't broach the subject with them, but i do answer their questions on related subjects without much hope of getting through.
Medicine changes the connotation in this case.
If someone asks me if red air-conditioners work, i say yes. That working may not be because of the red color. Homeopathic medicine working may not be due to the philosophy of homeopathy.
1. In my first post, i said homeopathic medicine works. Not homeopathy works.
2. The word homeopathy has various connotations : the theory, the field of study, the philosophy, a particular course of treatment, the industry manufacturing these medicines etc.
Homeopathic medicine has a much narrower connotation. Although "medicine" in general has multiple connotations. The French apparanté "médecine" has the primary connotation of the field of study, and other connotations can be used in the language, but only as a metaphor.
I would never say for a whole field of study that it works. Too vague for my tastes.
Ok, some progress, but
you make the statement that homeopathy, on itself, works (aka, the effect is due to the homeopathic nature of the 'medicine'),
Where did I say that ? Exact link please, for once. No misquotes, no quoting half-sentence out of context. Not some hand-wavy excuse involving "any 2 nouns in an analogy must be analogous and all discussed properties must hence be the same".
1)Do you think homeopathy works, yes or no?
Homeopathic medicine works.
2)Do you think the placebo effect works, yes or no?
Yes
3)Do you agree they are distinct and one is not characteristic of the other and vice versa?
You have not replied to my questions about your meaning of the word "characteristic", after the first one where you referred to the dictionary. I am not sure which of the meanings of the dictionary apply in which way , so I would say I do not understand the question.
However placebo effect and homeopathy are different.
4)Do you think that, if the difference between receiving nothing and receiving a homeopathic treatment show no difference in effect, while if one adds a placebo effect (like coloring the pills) shows an equal difference in effect as with something which is not homeopathic at all, it means that homeopathy has no effect, and the effect is purely due to the placebo effect?
No.
"Adding a placebo effect" is idiocy by the way.
You did say homeopathy works. Since voodoo is the analogy used for homeopathy, then the claim is 'voodoo works
Ok, then put 25 times more effort into reading my posts.
Just because there is an analogy doesn't mean any 2 nouns in the conversation become direct analogies for each other. There are other words , which together form a meaning, which need to be understood to come up with a coherent response.
Already we have split the original problem to a far smaller portion so that we don't get distracted by various misreadings you subject the discussion to. We'll have to split further if we are to reach anywhere . Let's understand the voodoo part of my posts first :
N3wsByt3 : Then you say an air conditioner works even if one says it's due to voodoo magic
N3wsByt3 quoting BingoUV : "An air conditioner created for voodoo purposes works exactly as an air conditioner created for cooling one's living room"
Problems :
1. Dropped part of the sentence : if the air conditioner is otherwise identical. Read the original here.
2. "works even if one says " : air conditioners hardly listen to "one" saying anything, so even if one says is quite stupid in the context of air conditioners working.
We are continuing, but in the context of your post :
Let me guess. You're now going to say: ah, but I said FOR voodoo purposes, not BY voodoo purposes? In that case, your analogy makes no sense at all.
Your guess is wrong.
Imagine 2 air conditioners, identical except that one was created for the purpose of voodoo, the other was created for the purpose of cooling. Answer correctly :
1. Do they work identically ?
2. If yes, I agree with you. Does their working identically mean some of the statements you have imagined me asserting , or you stated an opposite of :
2a. "voodoo magic works"
2b. An airconditioner works by voodoo-magic
2c. voodoo magic works because the airconditioner works
3. If no, why do you think they work differently ?
Please complete this much.
you *are* being beligrant here
Finally you have beaten the dictionary, congratulations : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki....
The point is that saying voodoo magic works (thus, in the analogy: homeopathy works) is demonstrably false.
Maybe, but since nobody around us is saying "voodoo magic works", you are distracting from the topic to avoid having to concede the point.
since YOU seem to conflate the two when talking about what works and doesn't work
Why don't you quote my statement where I "conflate the two" ?
It stands to reason that, if one knows the effect of a placebo, and you know the effect of a non-homeopathic substance, you can also derive the effectiveness of the homeopathic substance on itself
2 points :
A. In many homeopathic medicines, there is no "homeopathic substance".
B. I am not quite grasping who knows what. One knows one thing, and "you" know another thing. How can "you" derive something from the two things without knowing what "one" knows ?
If your comfort in some other language is better , could you also add an explanation in that language? I'll try Google translate along with your English to make sense, in case that language is also beyond me.
Or do you not understand the placebo effect? The way you keep talking about homeopathic medicine without placebo effect, one would think you have no clue what placebo effect means. Another instance raising suspicion of your ignorance of placebo effect is your statement from an earlier post "If you add a placebo effect to a homeopathic preparation".
Seriously ? Add ?
Similarly, you do NOT have to remove the placebo effect from the world to show what effect it has. It is sufficient that you can quantify the effect and the level of it, to determine what an additional substance (homeopathy) adds to it
Again, "additional substance" implies two things :
1. You think placebo effect is a substance ?
2. Homeopathy must be a substance ? Homeopathic medicine frequently is not a substance.
Then you say an air conditioner works even if one says it's due to voodoo magic
Please quote me saying this. I really want to meet this "one" guy of yours, he (or is it a she ?) is quite mysterious.
So claiming voodoo magic works is false.
Glad we can agree on something. Now why it is relevant, I have no clue, but hey! Look on the bright side !
Are you saying Charles' law is a characteristic of air conditioners according to dictionary definition of characteristic ? In the sense of feature ? Quality ? Does Charles' law identify an air conditioner ?
Therefor saying voodoo magic works because the airconditioner works, is faulty reasoning
Can you demonstrate where anyone said "voodoo magic works because the airconditioner works" ?
The two are not interchangeable, just as the placebo effect and homeopathy are not interchangeable.
Who said "placebo effect and homeopathy are interchangeable" ? Same as Charles' law and air conditioners are not interchangeable. Exhibit 1.
That's fairly simple: you do not need to remove the law, only the effects that the law pertains to. Since Charles' law (also known as the law of volumes) is an experimental gas law that describes how gases tend to expand when heated, it suffices to go into an environment which does not contain gases, such as a vacuum. Logic would dictate, then, that the air conditioner will not work in a vacuum. And indeed, it doesn't. In contrast, however, if the the air conditioner would work by voodoo-magic, it would still work in a vacuum. Therefor, the logical conclusion is that an air conditioner works by Charles' law, NOT by Voodoo magic.
Great. Now again 2 points :
A. who said air conditioners work by voodoo magic ?
B. Original context was "1)You have homeopathy without a placebo effect: this does not work"
So you have air-conditioners without a effect pertaining Charles' law (as you describe above) also not working. And homeopathy also not working without placebo effect. Exhibit 2.
A placebo effect, I repeat, is NOT homeopathy
2 points :
A. Who said that it is ?
B. Charles' law is also not an air conditioner.
No. It can easily be shown homeopathy doesn't work. This is because, just like with your question of charles' law, it's not necessary tn remove the placebo effect 'from the world', but rather see to it that it has no measurable effect
Exhibit 3.
This is because, just like with your question of charles' law, it's not necessary tn remove the placebo effect 'from the world', but rather see to it that it has no measurable effect
Exhibit 4.
homeopathy with and without a placebo effect
You forgot to document how to remove the placebo effect from the world.
that there is no effect due to the homeopathy, but only due to the placebo effect
From the exhibits 1, 2, 3 and 4 above, you seem to have understood that Charles' law is to air conditioners what placebo effect is to homeopathy, at least as far as an analogy goes. (Although sometimes you start addressing someone who said something that I never said, but let us ignore that until you explain those times.)
Now combined with this statement, would you also design an experiment to determine that there is no effect of air conditioners, but only of Charles' law ?