"like that planet coming from the solar system itself would be unlikely, since it would have to have a vastly different speed and/or direction in any case": I would have thought so too, but look at Ultima Thule, which clearly formed from such a low speed collision. And it's way the heck out there, were the average distance between large objects must be much larger, hence--one would think--collisions would be much rarer.
I believe the point was that the life-giving chemicals (carbon and nitrogen, among others) were also hidden in the core of that body. That body had to be shattered to get the chemicals out of that core.
That said, I already posted above that a couple other planets and at least one large moon in our solar system have carbon (and some have nitrogen) at the surface.
That was my initial thought too. However: we've now landed on several planetary bodies, including large moons (hey, no Star Wars cracks, please!): Venus, Mars, and Titan; plus several asteroids. (Earth's moon doesn't count, since it was involved in this same collision, and came out the loser.) Mars has some carbon in the form of its (thin) carbon dioxide atmosphere, but not much nitrogen afaik. Similarly Venus's thick carbon dioxide atmosphere, with a little nitrogen. Titan seems to be abundantly provided with both carbon, in the form of methane, and nitrogen, which constitutes most of its thick atmosphere.
At any rate, we do have a sample size > 1, and either all these planets and moon were formed by collisions like Earth, or else there are alternative ways a planet can acquire carbon and nitrogen.
I read an article back in the early 60s in which the author graphed man's speed from cave man times to the present (1960 or so). The graph is of course not linear, and the author argued that based on that, FTL travel was inevitable in the next decade or so.
That said, as you suggest, a 200x increase in 200 years does not seem impossible: 1400 miles/ second.
I'm assuming your para about thousands of people learning Chinese in three years is a joke. I believe there are also documented cases in medieval times of Krakens and Griffins and Basilisks, oh my...
And yes, people can pick up a half dozen languages. If you add together the languages I've learned (and mostly forgotten), you could come up with a number like that: Spanish, German, Tzeltal, Shuar, French, Italian (plus of course English). (It helps that all but two are related, and three are closely related.) I suppose if I put them to use on a frequent basis, I might not have forgotten so much. But I would never have passed for a native speaker in any but English.
Few adult learners of languages are fluent, and almost none get to the same level in a language that native speakers of that language do, regardless of the teaching method. It's also the case that children learn their first (and sometimes second, if they grow up in a bilingual environment) almost automatically, without being taught; whereas very few adults can learn a language (well or otherwise) that way.
BTW, I'm talking about spoken languages. Learning to read--whether it's Chinese writing or otherwise--is not "language learning" per se, although it may have some resemblance.
Nuts, you beat me to it! I'll just add some another link to places the numerous places the story has appeared: https://www.roalddahlfans.com/.... There seem to be excerpts of the story in various places, but I believe this is the complete written version: http://fliphtml5.com/ppjz/hbbt..., in case anyone would prefer to read instead of listen.
I was at the Performers' Meeting today, and the presenter made explicit reference to Schank. They are well aware of that work. The problem (or should I say, one problem) was that it didn't scale easily. Making a restaurant script/ schema was easy; now think of all the other schemas that would be needed to handle lots more events, and think of trying to write them all by hand.
If you want to know what it's about, you might read the BAA.
Speaking as someone who has learned (and mostly forgotten) more than five natural languages and more than five programming languages, no. Natural (human) languages are far more complicated.
I believe that what he meant was that the meter was originally supposed to be defined relative to the size of the earth: on ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. It was later re-defined.
"the car won't make it yet as car speeds are in land miles which are shorter than survey miles": Huh? Are you saying the survey miles are measured through the earth, as opposed to over its surface?
I haven't seen anyone selling expert systems since the 1980s. (Disclaimer: I worked for an AI groups at what was then Boeing Computer Services in the 1980s. One of the groups was developing expert systems. I was in the natural language processing group.)
Slashdot Mirror
"like that planet coming from the solar system itself would be unlikely, since it would have to have a vastly different speed and/or direction in any case": I would have thought so too, but look at Ultima Thule, which clearly formed from such a low speed collision. And it's way the heck out there, were the average distance between large objects must be much larger, hence--one would think--collisions would be much rarer.
I believe the point was that the life-giving chemicals (carbon and nitrogen, among others) were also hidden in the core of that body. That body had to be shattered to get the chemicals out of that core.
That said, I already posted above that a couple other planets and at least one large moon in our solar system have carbon (and some have nitrogen) at the surface.
"Snowflake"??? Hey, you're going to hear from some Trump supporters here...
That was my initial thought too. However: we've now landed on several planetary bodies, including large moons (hey, no Star Wars cracks, please!): Venus, Mars, and Titan; plus several asteroids. (Earth's moon doesn't count, since it was involved in this same collision, and came out the loser.) Mars has some carbon in the form of its (thin) carbon dioxide atmosphere, but not much nitrogen afaik. Similarly Venus's thick carbon dioxide atmosphere, with a little nitrogen. Titan seems to be abundantly provided with both carbon, in the form of methane, and nitrogen, which constitutes most of its thick atmosphere.
At any rate, we do have a sample size > 1, and either all these planets and moon were formed by collisions like Earth, or else there are alternative ways a planet can acquire carbon and nitrogen.
I read an article back in the early 60s in which the author graphed man's speed from cave man times to the present (1960 or so). The graph is of course not linear, and the author argued that based on that, FTL travel was inevitable in the next decade or so.
That said, as you suggest, a 200x increase in 200 years does not seem impossible: 1400 miles/ second.
Will someone get this walking carpet out of my way?
Pretty sure you're responding to a joke.
You want evidence? Try this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/...
I'm assuming your para about thousands of people learning Chinese in three years is a joke. I believe there are also documented cases in medieval times of Krakens and Griffins and Basilisks, oh my...
And yes, people can pick up a half dozen languages. If you add together the languages I've learned (and mostly forgotten), you could come up with a number like that: Spanish, German, Tzeltal, Shuar, French, Italian (plus of course English). (It helps that all but two are related, and three are closely related.) I suppose if I put them to use on a frequent basis, I might not have forgotten so much. But I would never have passed for a native speaker in any but English.
Where have I seen this before? Robot escapes, hits car... ah, yes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Few adult learners of languages are fluent, and almost none get to the same level in a language that native speakers of that language do, regardless of the teaching method. It's also the case that children learn their first (and sometimes second, if they grow up in a bilingual environment) almost automatically, without being taught; whereas very few adults can learn a language (well or otherwise) that way.
BTW, I'm talking about spoken languages. Learning to read--whether it's Chinese writing or otherwise--is not "language learning" per se, although it may have some resemblance.
You dummy, they were Australian scientists!
Nuts, you beat me to it! I'll just add some another link to places the numerous places the story has appeared: https://www.roalddahlfans.com/.... There seem to be excerpts of the story in various places, but I believe this is the complete written version: http://fliphtml5.com/ppjz/hbbt..., in case anyone would prefer to read instead of listen.
Nor the prior art from The Arrival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... @2:40 and again @6:35
You could try vanishing cream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I was at the Performers' Meeting today, and the presenter made explicit reference to Schank. They are well aware of that work. The problem (or should I say, one problem) was that it didn't scale easily. Making a restaurant script/ schema was easy; now think of all the other schemas that would be needed to handle lots more events, and think of trying to write them all by hand.
If you want to know what it's about, you might read the BAA.
Speaking as someone who has learned (and mostly forgotten) more than five natural languages and more than five programming languages, no. Natural (human) languages are far more complicated.
"the anxiety and depression rates will plummet": Under some scenarios, it will be a divide by zero error. (Not that I buy into those scenarios...)
Didn't the future Marty McFly have one of these, several years ago now? Although at that price, I'm not sure how he could have afforded it.
"beer is sold in pints" Even Pippin was surprised by this.
I believe that what he meant was that the meter was originally supposed to be defined relative to the size of the earth: on ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. It was later re-defined.
"the car won't make it yet as car speeds are in land miles which are shorter than survey miles": Huh? Are you saying the survey miles are measured through the earth, as opposed to over its surface?
How about under the pink slip?
Can you say "reasoning from the converse"? I knew you could. (You might also learn to not take humorous posts seriously.)
I haven't seen anyone selling expert systems since the 1980s. (Disclaimer: I worked for an AI groups at what was then Boeing Computer Services in the 1980s. One of the groups was developing expert systems. I was in the natural language processing group.)
Perhaps you're referring to this: http://www.theinvisiblegorilla...