If *you* are going to attempt to make religious arguments *pro* science, at least understand the religion first. Come back when you do.
I'm back. And I do.
And I understand the key difference between science and religion.
Religion is a belief system. Science is a belief system. However, a belief system does not a religion make.
Science is always subject to change, based on evidence accumulated. Sometimes the change happens fast, as with the acceptance of relativity over Newtonian mechanics, sometimes it's slow, as with plate techtonics. But it changes.
Religion is never subject to change. Infact original thought is prohibited (don't question, just believe, god works in mysterious ways) and punished (think inqusition, think about women in Muslim countries, think about Scientology and lawsuits).
A major goal of creation science is to point out the weakness of evolutionary theory, because basically there are only two alternatives for how we got here, and if naturalistic processes are incapable of the task, then special creation must be the correct answer.
This is not science. And your premise, that there are two alternatives and if one is discproved the other must be true is incorrect in two senses. First, it is incorrect to say that there are just two theories. Second it is incorrect to claim that if one theory is shown to be false the other, by default, must be true.
In addition to your two theories there are the thoeries of spontanious generation and panspermia.
Disproving one theory does not prove another. If evolution is shown to incorrect, then we are back to square one. If creationism is to be accepted scientifically, it must be done via scientific evidence for creationism. All the evidence against other explanations does nothing to advance creationism as a scientific theory.
A trivial example of what I mean. Suppose someone tells you that red crows exist. To test this proposal you go bird watching. You see plenty of black crows. Each black crow that you see just tells you that black crows exist. It says nothing about the existance or non-existance of red crows. The only way to prove that red crows exist is to see one (or by analogy with creationism, paint one).
In the same way, each argument against evolution is a minus for evolution. It is not a plus for any other theory.
You again show your ignorance of what science is about by stating,...but much scientific energy has been wasted over the last century in the search for evolutionary evidences and experimental proofs, which have been unsuccessful so far and will continue to be.
Science works by amassing evidence, such work is never wasted. And by claiming that it will continue to be wasted effort, you show your true stripes. Any scientific theory is only provisional. It represents our best understanding at this time, but is subject to chance as new evidence comes in. (As humans are involved it can be a messy process, but over the long run it works.) By your statement you are stating that there is no evidence that could show evolution to be true. That's not science, that's faith.
I have taken philosophy classes. And I've read quite a bit of philosophy since them. And as K. posts below, most of the philosophers that still cling to a Cartesian type mind/brain duality have not kept up with what we have discovered about this system.
t could be that mind supervenes on the brain (ie, things that affect the brain will have affects on the mind, but not necessarily visa versa)
Then what purpose would this 'mind' serve? A mind that can't effect the brain would have no input to your life at all. Here's a thought experiment. Imagine that there are two types of beings in the world. Those with a brain/mind of the type you propose, and those with just a brain. Under what circumstances would the behavior of these to types of entities differ? None, since the 'mind' can have no effect on the brain. This argument isn't original with me, and is the type of argument that has been used to show that duality (of the non-physical non-interacting type) just doesn't work. Duality of the software/hardware type, where mind & brain have effects on each other, doesn't suffer from this flaw.
If you're interested in reading a philosopher that has kept up with research in cognitive science and AI I suggest a good start is Daniel Dennett. His works are readily accessable and fun to read too.
I don't expect you'll agree with all his arguments. I don't, and my world view is much closer to his than I gather yours is.
Well, I'm not sure I understand your argument, so my response might be off base but here goes...
I agree (I think) that human's are not limited to whatever it means to be a physical entity. At least from the inside. I think therefore I am and all that. I 'know' I have free will. I 'know' my feelings are real.
But none of that changes the fact that I am a physical entity in this universe and subject to the laws and constraints there in. I cannot do anything that isn't possible under those constraints. And if that means that my 'knowledge' of free will is in error, then so be it. (We used to 'know' that the earth was flat.)
Thus all those things you seem to be saying are uniquely human are so because physical law allows them to happen. Claiming that this is akin to falling into some kind of intellectual trap is to deny reality.
Maybe it is true as Penrose argues that we need new physics (i.e. quantum gravity) before we can fully explain the mind. Maybe, but I doubt it. I think he is several levels to far down.
I have no idea what your reeference to Schrodinger's cat is about. (I'm familiar with said cat, I just don't see your point.)
I don't see any dichotomy between physical or magical, I just deny that there is anything truely magical, in the sense that it is non-physical. Thus I see no reason that something like 'mind' could not be artificially created. I see no reason that 'mind' can't be revese engineered. I see no reason that what was developed under a methodology of blind search under constraints (i.e. evolution) can't be duplicated via a directed search (engineering).
And finally, the fact that you spice up (I was going to 'litter' by I think 'spice up' has better connotations:) with statements like, I magically appreciate...and Sorry, just my intuition talking. Oops! That's not physical either...just human. doesn't change the fact that they are physical, in that they are allowed/enabled by the physical laws of this universe, although I would agree that it doesn't make sense to talk about them in physical terms. Just as it doesn't make sense to talk about software in terms of electrons and holes migrating through semiconductors.
Summed up, it is Everything degenerates, it does not spontaneously develop, or advance. We see examples of this everywhere ie paint decays to dust, people age and die.
Yes of course, why didn't I see this! Why isn't every physicist proclaiming loud and clear that evolution is a fraud?!
Hmmm... Why is it when I put water in a freezer it turns to ice, that can't happen, it would clearly violate the second law. Therefore: ICE DOES NOT EXIST!
And wait a minute, how do humans form in the first place, taking raw materials from food and arranging then in a quite complex manner, into livers and brains and muscles. Oh my! All clearly forbidden by the second law. Thus: HUMANS CANNOT EXIST!
Hmmm... Yo bible boy, go get a good physics text book at your local library (you are permitted to read physics books aren't you, or have they been banned (which would explain why you don't understand the 2nd law, or evolution either for that matter)).
The second law applies to closed systems. The earth is not a closed system. We get plenty of energy from the sun. So while the entropy of some systems on the earth goes down, the entropy of the earth/sun system goes up. And the second law isn't violated.
So, summed up, things spontaneously develop all the time. Just add energy.
How self-righteous we are to think that we can accellerate it!
We will very shortly be able to accelerate it. As we learn more about DNA and how to read and then write programs in genetic code, we will start to experiment on 'improving' ourselves.
We will be adapting ourselves to the environment, side stepping evolution, and at a much faster pace.
Look for example at Deep Blue. How exactly did it beat Kasparov? By using brute force to identify all next possible moves.
While we know how Deep Blue plays chess, we do not know how Kasparov or anyone else does.
We can ask them, and they'll tell us that they analyzed the moves and chose the best one. But what does that mean?
The brain is a massively parallel system capable of some incredible feats of compution. Close your eyes. Now open them. The brain rendered the scene in realtime. When you play catch, how do you solve the differential equations to determine where the ball will end up, and how to move yourself and your hands into place to catch it? How do you search through everything you know to answer the question, "what is the capital of Afganistan?" The search is usually quite speedy coming up with the answer, Kabul, or with the knowledge that you do not know the answer. How do you do these things?
My point is that we do not know how the brain does these things. Yet we talk as if we do, when we claim that computers do things differently than humans do. As far as we know, Kasparov did use brute force to evaluate moves, with only the good choices being passed to his concious awareness.
Do I believe that this is how he plays chess? No. But neither I, nor anyone else, can currently rule it out.
...the belief that human thought -- and speech -- is just computer processing with a big wet mushy chip.
If you are taking a mystic or religious position, and arguing that there is something magical and non-physical about humans (ie not subject to physical laws) then I can't argue with you.
But if you are not claiming the above, then at one level of description (and by no means the only valid level) humans are physical entities that are subject to the laws of physics. AI argues that we should be able to create physical systems that are isomorphic to humans.
Now, it may be very hard to do this and our technology may not be up to the task. Or maybe the only physical system that exhibits these properties is regular old humans. But as a scientific discipline AI is in no way stupid.
The AI folks are counting on the fact that mind != brain, otherwise "minds" could not be realized on a different hardware platform. What the AI folks do believe is that minds are physical (and not mystical) entities. They believe, and rightly so, that Cartesian duality is wrong.
We need to understund that an intelligence can not understund itself...
Why not? I've never understood this argument. The basis seems to be that in order to understand the mind, we would need to model the mind, and since if I try to model the mind in my mind then the model will be incomplete because I then need to model the mind with the model of the mind... and so on down an infinite regress.
I don't buy it. Just as I can understand a computer without needing to know every program that runs on it, I expect that I can do the same with the brain/mind system. I see no reason that I couldn't understand a mind that could, aong other things, understand a mind. Short circuiting the infinte regress.
And even if I can't, as one person, understand it, why can't two people each understand half? Or ten people? Or a thousand? And so forth.
Secondly, you don't have to understand something to build it (although it certainly helps). Alchohol was used by humans long before anyone knew what was going on. Superconducting was known and usable well before the physics that explained it was worked out.
... while modern physics has basically only given us nuclear weapons
And lasers, x-ray machines, MRI machines, PET scanners, CAT scanners, semi-conductor electronics (i.e. transistors and thus microchips...), radar, superconductors, electron microscopes, carbon dating and other dating techniques, solar cells,...
I'm not sure how big they were (and some are still around in altered form) but...
DEC, Prime, Data General, Wang, Computer Vision, NCR, Cray, Amdahl, Thinking Machines, RCA, CDC, Hayes, Ashton-Tate, Software Publishing Corp,...
What were the companies that produced VisiCalc? CP/M?
Non-computer related companies include the entire US television industry and much of the consumer electronics industry. American Motors. The British aerospace industry. Digital watches pretty much wiped out the Swiss mechanical watch industry.
Bad business decisions, complacency, market chages and reluctance to change with it, delusions of grandeur, loss of focus, dabbling in businesses outside your core competencies, and inertia all can lead to business failure. And it can happen quite fast.
Talk about mixing apples and oranges! Is any of this post relevant or even factual? Very clever use of red herrings and argument switching, and confusing the general with the specific. Also note the use of the two wrongs make a right argument.
But it is true. MS Windows is one of the cheapest OSes available to run on the PC. There are few that are cheaper or free.
A quick tour around the net produced these prices for PC and Desktop OS's: (obviously not a definitive or complete survey)
Linux free or nominal cost, less than $50, for CD MS DOS 6.22 upgrade $46.95 from beyond.com PC DOS 7.0 upgrade $51.45 from beyond.com MacOS 8.5 $99 from Apple BeOS R4 $99.95 ($69.95 special offer) from Be Amiga OS 3.1 $90 to $104 (depending on model) from Compuquick Windows 98 $177.95 from beyond.com Windows 95 $178.94 from beyond.com OS/2 Warp 4.0 $275 from IBM Windows NT Workstation 4.0 $281.95 from beyond.com
These are the prices for the OS by itself.
So, while the statement is *correct*, since there are so few desktop OS's, Windows is at the high end. Next time, check the facts.
Caution, content free statement ahead! However, if Justice plans to throw the price of the OSin Microsoft's face then all they will end up doing is playing the OJ glove trick.
Here comes the old apples and oranges trick, flavored with rumor and innuendo (the Apple won't share with Be argument - LinuxPPC shows how real that one is, see also here.) along with that problem with the facts, see prices above. Let's see... on Mac you only have ONE commercial choice (Be used to be a choice, which is still is provided you don't have a G3 - because be proprietary they won't let Be in on the specs). Mac OS is NOT cheap. They have a monopoly on their side.
Curious. The article was about MS not Apple, and yet here we have Apple dragged in as a red herring. So if what Apple is doing is wrong then it is ok for MS to do it. Clever argument indeed.
And a bogus one. Yes Apple has a monopoly on Apple systems. MS has a monopoly on Windows. No one else makes Windows. IBM did for a time, but MS went out of their way to stop IBM. Another example of an apples and oranges argument. The monopoly MS has is with the desktop OS market. That's what the article is about.
The problem with MS is that by their own success they got even more successful and larger. Try to find apps in a store for other than Windows.
Can you say monopoly? But the point that there are plenty of applications for Windows is not a problem. The problem is that MS uses its monopoly power to set prices above the industry norms. That's the point of the article, the profit margins. Its called gouging, and it is in no way good for the consumer.
So what was the point of this news article? If anything it supports MS's claim about pricing. OS/2 has always been priced too high.. its one reason I gave up following it. Any of the commercial Unix softwares is priced in la-la land.
The point, as I mentioned above, is that due to their monopoly hold on the desktop OS market, MS can set the price to whatever they want. Again, it is the profit margin that is the key number here. Capitalism is designed to prevent such price fixing. If the market cannot then the Government needs to step in. Thus we have antitrust law.
The question that begs to be anwsered... just what does Justice consider a fair price for an operating system?
Say what? Have you completely missed the point of not just the article but the entire trial? This has nothing to do with the price of operating systems. The article raises a specific question about the price of MS OS's in relation to the market and whether or not MS abuses their monopoly on desktop OS's when it comes to pricing.
Stay tuned for more Apple bashing. (Feel free to skip this part as it is irrelevant blathering.) When will Justice tag other manufacturers about their proprietary stance on their platforms? Since they are beating on MS for dominating their market why not beat on Apple? After all its not like you can go outside of Apple easily for your OS. Hell, Apple went out of their way to stop clone makers. If that isn't the definition of a monopolistic attitude then nothing is.
MS is a bunch of money-hungry we have to control the world of PCs, but they are not unique in their actions, and definitely not unique in the monolopistic state that Justice claims.
MS is not unique in their desires to rule the market. They are unique in that they do have an monopoly on desktop OS's and seem to be using that monopoly illegally.
(ps... I work on an AS/400 - as if anyone else could write an OS for it... )
I hope you are keeping your skills up to date, because MS is hoping to take over this part of the business with Windows NT. Now I think the AS/400 is a fine system. Until recently I too worked on them. But why aren't you leveling your monopoly/proprietary arguments against the AS/400? Could it be that you like the AS/400 but dislike the Mac?
Stop MS from short-selling the server market. Just get off the desktop market for PCs. No one cares, and its better that there is one dominating standard. The best bet for Justice is to prevent Microsoft from creating exclusive deals for their server and hand-held Operating systems. That is where real competition still exists. If Justice had come to the desktop around the time OS/2 and Win 3.1 were fighting it out they could have made a difference. Now, they are just making press stories.
Why change your argument now? Why shouldn't there be "one dominating standard" for servers and handhelds? Why is competition good in these markets but not in the desktop market? Wouldn't a Windows everywhere be the logical extension of your "one dominating standard" argument? And by using their profits from their desktop monopoly, they will be very nicely situated to go after these markets.
In general, Open-source software is superior to proprietary. A company must do a *damn good* job to beat OSS,...
Without starting a regligious crusade here, could someone tell me where the particular meme above came from, and what the justification for it is?
Before you start taking pot shots, I use Mac, Windows, Linux and find then all useful. I've used open source and proprietary code and have found good and bad in both groups.
So I find statements like the one above to be more based on faith then on facts. I think open source is a good idea. I don't think it's the only good idea.
One problem with QM is that creates various paradoxes, one of which was introduced by Einstein and his colleague.
The Einstien-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment is the basis for the quantum teleportation of a photon's spin (see here ). This property of entanglement is what wires together the qubits in a quantum computer (see Scientific American, June 1998).
Pretty handy that paradox.
What we forget is that Newton's mechanics "laws" which are supposedly wrong (according to Einstein's theories) also work.
Of course they work. Newton's laws are derivable from Einstein's under the assumptions of relatively (no pun intended) slow speeds and low masses. Newton's and Einstein's laws both break down in the quantum domain. Thus the search for a theory of quantum gravity.
One big problem with Quantum Computing is that, we require an entire industry scale laboratory to store _1_ bit!@$$@
Curious...
ENIAC required 150 KW of power and filled a room 30x50 feet. It stored numbers in decimal format, using ten flip-flops to store a single decimal digit. The machine could store twenty digits. But for some reason, the developers went ahead even though abaci, slide rules, and even mechanical calculators were available!
Electromechanical calculators were also available, but they were somewhat on the larger side also. For example, the IBM Automatic Sequential Calculator, aka the Harvard Mark I, weighed five tons, and was 51 feet long.
Today,commercial NMR spectrometers are used for experimenting with quantum computing. I don't know exactly how large such devices are, but the NMR equipment I used as an under grad was somewhat smaller than an "industry scale laboratory". In any case, Neil Gershehfeld (at MIT) and Isaac Chuang (at IBM) are currently building a desktop quantum computer.
The ENIAC project started April 9, 1943. The PalmPilot Professional, which is somewhat more portable, uses two AAA batteries, and has 2M RAM, was introduced in 1997.
Pretty good for 54 years. I expect we'll see similar reults with quantum computing.
I don't expect a GR based computer either...
The entire universe could be considered a GR computer. Although it is somewhat larger than that "industry scale laboratory"
What you have to realize is that QM is an incomplete theory and is as close to reality as Einstein's SR & GR and Newton's Mechanics (not close at all).
Quantum Mechanics is single most successful scientific theory humans have devised. The predicted values from thoery don't vary from the experimentally measured values until the 10th decimal place!* That's pretty damm close to reality.
You are correct in saying QM is incomplete. Every theory is incomplete! However, given the success of QM, any new theory will be an extention of, not a replacement for, QM. Just as relativity is an extention of Newtonian mechanics.
SteveM
*references (two that I quickly pulled off my book shelf, I'm sure there are better ones): QED by Feynman Dreams of a Final Theory by Weinberg
... Excessive idiot-proofing ends up hurting users, confusing them even more by isolating them from what's really going on. You should want to engage users in the details...
NOT!
You do not want to engage users in the details! You want to make the system transparent. The fact that the system crashes is a flaw in the system, not an "opportunaty for learning". Think of the phone system or television.
Think about it, how many people use computers? How many read/.? Or another example, how many people listen to CDs? How many people have component stereo systems? The fact is the majority don't care about, nor are they interested in the details. Their interest is not in the computer, but in what they can do with the computer (i.e. games, word processing, browsing the internet, etc.). Again think of the phone system. Most people don't care about the network or the switch, they just want to talk.
One last example, how many people own cars? How many people change their own oil? Some people enjoy working on cars and some people enjoy working on computers. Most people don't, and never will. They are interested not in the tool, but in using it.
Slashdot Mirror
If *you* are going to attempt to make religious arguments *pro* science, at least understand the religion first. Come back when you do.
I'm back. And I do.
And I understand the key difference between science and religion.
Religion is a belief system. Science is a belief system. However, a belief system does not a religion make.
Science is always subject to change, based on evidence accumulated. Sometimes the change happens fast, as with the acceptance of relativity over Newtonian mechanics, sometimes it's slow, as with plate techtonics. But it changes.
Religion is never subject to change. Infact original thought is prohibited (don't question, just believe, god works in mysterious ways) and punished (think inqusition, think about women in Muslim countries, think about Scientology and lawsuits).
No, science is not a religion.
SteveM
A major goal of creation science is to point out the weakness of evolutionary theory, because basically there are only two alternatives for how we got here, and if naturalistic processes are incapable of the task, then special creation must be the correct answer.
...but much scientific energy has been wasted over the last century in the search for evolutionary evidences and experimental proofs, which have been unsuccessful so far and will continue to be.
This is not science. And your premise, that there are two alternatives and if one is discproved the other must be true is incorrect in two senses. First, it is incorrect to say that there are just two theories. Second it is incorrect to claim that if one theory is shown to be false the other, by default, must be true.
In addition to your two theories there are the thoeries of spontanious generation and panspermia.
Disproving one theory does not prove another. If evolution is shown to incorrect, then we are back to square one. If creationism is to be accepted scientifically, it must be done via scientific evidence for creationism. All the evidence against other explanations does nothing to advance creationism as a scientific theory.
A trivial example of what I mean. Suppose someone tells you that red crows exist. To test this proposal you go bird watching. You see plenty of black crows. Each black crow that you see just tells you that black crows exist. It says nothing about the existance or non-existance of red crows. The only way to prove that red crows exist is to see one (or by analogy with creationism, paint one).
In the same way, each argument against evolution is a minus for evolution. It is not a plus for any other theory.
You again show your ignorance of what science is about by stating,
Science works by amassing evidence, such work is never wasted. And by claiming that it will continue to be wasted effort, you show your true stripes. Any scientific theory is only provisional. It represents our best understanding at this time, but is subject to chance as new evidence comes in. (As humans are involved it can be a messy process, but over the long run it works.) By your statement you are stating that there is no evidence that could show evolution to be true. That's not science, that's faith.
SteveM
I have taken philosophy classes. And I've read quite a bit of philosophy since them. And as K. posts below, most of the philosophers that still cling to a Cartesian type mind/brain duality have not kept up with what we have discovered about this system.
t could be that mind supervenes on the brain (ie, things that affect the brain will have affects on the mind, but not necessarily visa versa)
Then what purpose would this 'mind' serve? A mind that can't effect the brain would have no input to your life at all. Here's a thought experiment. Imagine that there are two types of beings in the world. Those with a brain/mind of the type you propose, and those with just a brain. Under what circumstances would the behavior of these to types of entities differ? None, since the 'mind' can have no effect on the brain. This argument isn't original with me, and is the type of argument that has been used to show that duality (of the non-physical non-interacting type) just doesn't work. Duality of the software/hardware type, where mind & brain have effects on each other, doesn't suffer from this flaw.
If you're interested in reading a philosopher that has kept up with research in cognitive science and AI I suggest a good start is Daniel Dennett. His works are readily accessable and fun to read too.
I don't expect you'll agree with all his arguments. I don't, and my world view is much closer to his than I gather yours is.
SteveM
Well, I'm not sure I understand your argument, so my response might be off base but here goes ...
:) with statements like, I magically appreciate...and Sorry, just my intuition talking. Oops! That's not physical either...just human. doesn't change the fact that they are physical, in that they are allowed/enabled by the physical laws of this universe, although I would agree that it doesn't make sense to talk about them in physical terms. Just as it doesn't make sense to talk about software in terms of electrons and holes migrating through semiconductors.
I agree (I think) that human's are not limited to whatever it means to be a physical entity. At least from the inside. I think therefore I am and all that. I 'know' I have free will. I 'know' my feelings are real.
But none of that changes the fact that I am a physical entity in this universe and subject to the laws and constraints there in. I cannot do anything that isn't possible under those constraints. And if that means that my 'knowledge' of free will is in error, then so be it. (We used to 'know' that the earth was flat.)
Thus all those things you seem to be saying are uniquely human are so because physical law allows them to happen. Claiming that this is akin to falling into some kind of intellectual trap is to deny reality.
Maybe it is true as Penrose argues that we need new physics (i.e. quantum gravity) before we can fully explain the mind. Maybe, but I doubt it. I think he is several levels to far down.
I have no idea what your reeference to Schrodinger's cat is about. (I'm familiar with said cat, I just don't see your point.)
I don't see any dichotomy between physical or magical, I just deny that there is anything truely magical, in the sense that it is non-physical. Thus I see no reason that something like 'mind' could not be artificially created. I see no reason that 'mind' can't be revese engineered. I see no reason that what was developed under a methodology of blind search under constraints (i.e. evolution) can't be duplicated via a directed search (engineering).
And finally, the fact that you spice up (I was going to 'litter' by I think 'spice up' has better connotations
SteveM (did I pass the test?)
Clarke didn't invent the satellite either, he's a fucking pompous moron for thinking that and ought to be shot for suggesting it.
But he was the first to suggest geostationary orbits. And for that and 2001 (and a few other novels) his life should be spared!
SteveM
The universe as a whole will run down and be incapable of supporting life. In about 100 billion years.
During this time energy flucuations may come into being that will allow local pockets of order to arise.
One such fluctuation is the sun. One such pocket is the earth.
If you are going to attempt to make religious arguments via science, at least understand the science first. Come back when you do.
SteveM
Summed up, it is Everything degenerates, it does not spontaneously develop, or advance. We see examples of this everywhere ie paint decays to dust, people age and die.
Yes of course, why didn't I see this! Why isn't every physicist proclaiming loud and clear that evolution is a fraud?!
Hmmm...
Why is it when I put water in a freezer it turns to ice, that can't happen, it would clearly violate the second law. Therefore: ICE DOES NOT EXIST!
And wait a minute, how do humans form in the first place, taking raw materials from food and arranging then in a quite complex manner, into livers and brains and muscles. Oh my! All clearly forbidden by the second law. Thus: HUMANS CANNOT EXIST!
Hmmm...
Yo bible boy, go get a good physics text book at your local library (you are permitted to read physics books aren't you, or have they been banned (which would explain why you don't understand the 2nd law, or evolution either for that matter)).
The second law applies to closed systems. The earth is not a closed system. We get plenty of energy from the sun. So while the entropy of some systems on the earth goes down, the entropy of the earth/sun system goes up. And the second law isn't violated.
So, summed up, things spontaneously develop all the time. Just add energy.
SteveM
We're still here, and we're still human. And we will forever be human.
Are you saying that evolution stops with us! How very arrogant.
SteveM
How self-righteous we are to think that we can accellerate it!
We will very shortly be able to accelerate it. As we learn more about DNA and how to read and then write programs in genetic code, we will start to experiment on 'improving' ourselves.
We will be adapting ourselves to the environment, side stepping evolution, and at a much faster pace.
I hope we know what we're doing.
SteveM
Look for example at Deep Blue. How exactly did it beat Kasparov? By using brute force to identify all next possible moves.
While we know how Deep Blue plays chess, we do not know how Kasparov or anyone else does.
We can ask them, and they'll tell us that they analyzed the moves and chose the best one. But what does that mean?
The brain is a massively parallel system capable of some incredible feats of compution. Close your eyes. Now open them. The brain rendered the scene in realtime. When you play catch, how do you solve the differential equations to determine where the ball will end up, and how to move yourself and your hands into place to catch it? How do you search through everything you know to answer the question, "what is the capital of Afganistan?" The search is usually quite speedy coming up with the answer, Kabul, or with the knowledge that you do not know the answer. How do you do these things?
My point is that we do not know how the brain does these things. Yet we talk as if we do, when we claim that computers do things differently than humans do. As far as we know, Kasparov did use brute force to evaluate moves, with only the good choices being passed to his concious awareness.
Do I believe that this is how he plays chess? No. But neither I, nor anyone else, can currently rule it out.
SteveM
...what it meant to be human...
...the belief that human thought -- and speech -- is just computer processing with a big wet mushy chip.
If you are taking a mystic or religious position, and arguing that there is something magical and non-physical about humans (ie not subject to physical laws) then I can't argue with you.
But if you are not claiming the above, then at one level of description (and by no means the only valid level) humans are physical entities that are subject to the laws of physics. AI argues that we should be able to create physical systems that are isomorphic to humans.
Now, it may be very hard to do this and our technology may not be up to the task. Or maybe the only physical system that exhibits these properties is regular old humans. But as a scientific discipline AI is in no way stupid.
SteveM
I think the problem is this - mind != brain.
Mind is to brain as digestion is to stomach.
The AI folks are counting on the fact that mind != brain, otherwise "minds" could not be realized on a different hardware platform. What the AI folks do believe is that minds are physical (and not mystical) entities. They believe, and rightly so, that Cartesian duality is wrong.
SteveM
We need to understund that an intelligence can not understund itself...
... and so on down an infinite regress.
Why not? I've never understood this argument. The basis seems to be that in order to understand the mind, we would need to model the mind, and since if I try to model the mind in my mind then the model will be incomplete because I then need to model the mind with the model of the mind
I don't buy it. Just as I can understand a computer without needing to know every program that runs on it, I expect that I can do the same with the brain/mind system. I see no reason that I couldn't understand a mind that could, aong other things, understand a mind. Short circuiting the infinte regress.
And even if I can't, as one person, understand it, why can't two people each understand half? Or ten people? Or a thousand? And so forth.
Secondly, you don't have to understand something to build it (although it certainly helps). Alchohol was used by humans long before anyone knew what was going on. Superconducting was known and usable well before the physics that explained it was worked out.
SteveM
And lasers, x-ray machines, MRI machines, PET scanners, CAT scanners, semi-conductor electronics (i.e. transistors and thus microchips
SteveM
I used NT Workstation for over a year (I no longer have that job) switching from OS/2. I shutdown everynight and booted up every morning.
Over that time my system crashed on average once a week. The other NT users in the office experienced similar problems.
Unfortunately, it was a corporate directive to migrate from OS/2 to NT.
We also used AS/400s. Not very sexy. But very stable.
SteveM
I'm not sure how big they were (and some are still around in altered form) but ...
...
DEC, Prime, Data General, Wang, Computer Vision, NCR, Cray, Amdahl, Thinking Machines, RCA, CDC, Hayes, Ashton-Tate, Software Publishing Corp,
What were the companies that produced VisiCalc? CP/M?
Non-computer related companies include the entire US television industry and much of the consumer electronics industry. American Motors. The British aerospace industry. Digital watches pretty much wiped out the Swiss mechanical watch industry.
Bad business decisions, complacency, market chages and reluctance to change with it, delusions of grandeur, loss of focus, dabbling in businesses outside your core competencies, and inertia all can lead to business failure. And it can happen quite fast.
So, where does Microsoft want to go today?
SteveM
Talk about mixing apples and oranges! Is any of this post relevant or even factual?
... I work on an AS/400 - as if anyone else could write an OS for it... )
Very clever use of red herrings and argument switching, and confusing the general
with the specific. Also note the use of the two wrongs make a right argument.
But it is true. MS Windows is one of the cheapest OSes available to run on the PC.
There are few that are cheaper or free.
A quick tour around the net produced these prices for PC and Desktop OS's:
(obviously not a definitive or complete survey)
Linux free or nominal cost, less than $50, for CD
MS DOS 6.22 upgrade $46.95 from beyond.com
PC DOS 7.0 upgrade $51.45 from beyond.com
MacOS 8.5 $99 from Apple
BeOS R4 $99.95 ($69.95 special offer) from Be
Amiga OS 3.1 $90 to $104 (depending on model) from Compuquick
Windows 98 $177.95 from beyond.com
Windows 95 $178.94 from beyond.com
OS/2 Warp 4.0 $275 from IBM
Windows NT Workstation 4.0 $281.95 from beyond.com
These are the prices for the OS by itself.
So, while the statement is *correct*, since there are so few desktop OS's, Windows
is at the high end. Next time, check the facts.
Caution, content free statement ahead!
However, if Justice plans to throw the price of the OSin Microsoft's face then
all they will end up doing is playing the OJ glove trick.
Here comes the old apples and oranges trick, flavored with rumor and innuendo (the
Apple won't share with Be argument - LinuxPPC shows how real that one is, see also
here.) along with that problem with the facts, see prices above.
Let's see... on Mac you only have ONE commercial choice (Be used to be a choice,
which is still is provided you don't have a G3 - because be proprietary they won't
let Be in on the specs). Mac OS is NOT cheap. They have a monopoly on their side.
Curious. The article was about MS not Apple, and yet here we have Apple dragged in
as a red herring. So if what Apple is doing is wrong then it is ok for MS to do it.
Clever argument indeed.
And a bogus one. Yes Apple has a monopoly on Apple systems. MS has a monopoly on
Windows. No one else makes Windows. IBM did for a time, but MS went out of their
way to stop IBM. Another example of an apples and oranges argument. The monopoly
MS has is with the desktop OS market. That's what the article is about.
The problem with MS is that by their own success they got even more successful
and larger. Try to find apps in a store for other than Windows.
Can you say monopoly? But the point that there are plenty of applications for Windows
is not a problem. The problem is that MS uses its monopoly power to set prices above
the industry norms. That's the point of the article, the profit margins. Its called
gouging, and it is in no way good for the consumer.
So what was the point of this news article? If anything it supports MS's claim about
pricing. OS/2 has always been priced too high.. its one reason I gave up following it.
Any of the commercial Unix softwares is priced in la-la land.
The point, as I mentioned above, is that due to their monopoly hold on the desktop OS
market, MS can set the price to whatever they want. Again, it is the profit margin
that is the key number here. Capitalism is designed to prevent such price fixing. If the
market cannot then the Government needs to step in. Thus we have antitrust law.
The question that begs to be anwsered... just what does Justice consider a fair
price for an operating system?
Say what? Have you completely missed the point of not just the article but the entire
trial? This has nothing to do with the price of operating systems. The article raises
a specific question about the price of MS OS's in relation to the market and whether
or not MS abuses their monopoly on desktop OS's when it comes to pricing.
Stay tuned for more Apple bashing. (Feel free to skip this part as it is irrelevant
blathering.)
When will Justice tag other manufacturers about their proprietary stance on their
platforms? Since they are beating on MS for dominating their market why not beat on Apple?
After all its not like you can go outside of Apple easily for your OS. Hell, Apple went
out of their way to stop clone makers. If that isn't the definition of a monopolistic
attitude then nothing is.
MS is a bunch of money-hungry we have to control the world of PCs, but they are
not unique in their actions, and definitely not unique in the monolopistic state
that Justice claims.
MS is not unique in their desires to rule the market. They are unique in that they
do have an monopoly on desktop OS's and seem to be using that monopoly illegally.
(ps
I hope you are keeping your skills up to date, because MS is hoping to take over this
part of the business with Windows NT. Now I think the AS/400 is a fine system. Until
recently I too worked on them. But why aren't you leveling your monopoly/proprietary
arguments against the AS/400? Could it be that you like the AS/400 but dislike the Mac?
Stop MS from short-selling the server market. Just get off the desktop market for
PCs. No one cares, and its better that there is one dominating standard. The best
bet for Justice is to prevent Microsoft from creating exclusive deals for their
server and hand-held Operating systems. That is where real competition still exists.
If Justice had come to the desktop around the time OS/2 and Win 3.1 were fighting
it out they could have made a difference. Now, they are just making press stories.
Why change your argument now? Why shouldn't there be "one dominating standard" for servers
and handhelds? Why is competition good in these markets but not in the desktop market?
Wouldn't a Windows everywhere be the logical extension of your "one dominating standard"
argument? And by using their profits from their desktop monopoly, they will be very
nicely situated to go after these markets.
And that scares the hell out of me.
SteveM
The base price of the Mac OS X Server is $4999. That's the system he was refering to. The base price of the new G3 is $1599.
SteveM
In general, Open-source software is superior to proprietary. A company must do a *damn good* job to beat OSS, ...
Without starting a regligious crusade here, could someone tell me where the particular meme above came from, and what the justification for it is?
Before you start taking pot shots, I use Mac, Windows, Linux and find then all useful. I've used open source and proprietary code and have found good and bad in both groups.
So I find statements like the one above to be more based on faith then on facts. I think open source is a good idea. I don't think it's the only good idea.
SteveM
One problem with QM is that creates various paradoxes,
...
...
one of which was introduced by Einstein and his colleague.
The Einstien-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment is the basis for
the quantum teleportation of a photon's spin (see here ).
This property of entanglement is what wires together the qubits
in a quantum computer (see Scientific American, June 1998).
Pretty handy that paradox.
What we forget is that Newton's mechanics "laws" which are
supposedly wrong (according to Einstein's theories) also work.
Of course they work. Newton's laws are derivable from Einstein's
under the assumptions of relatively (no pun intended) slow speeds
and low masses. Newton's and Einstein's laws both break down in the
quantum domain. Thus the search for a theory of quantum gravity.
One big problem with Quantum Computing is that,
we require an entire industry scale laboratory to
store _1_ bit!@$$@
Curious
ENIAC required 150 KW of power and filled a room 30x50 feet.
It stored numbers in decimal format, using ten flip-flops
to store a single decimal digit. The machine could store twenty
digits. But for some reason, the developers went ahead even
though abaci, slide rules, and even mechanical calculators
were available!
Electromechanical calculators were also available, but they
were somewhat on the larger side also. For example, the
IBM Automatic Sequential Calculator, aka the Harvard
Mark I, weighed five tons, and was 51 feet long.
Today,commercial NMR spectrometers are used for experimenting
with quantum computing. I don't know exactly how large such
devices are, but the NMR equipment I used as an under grad was
somewhat smaller than an "industry scale laboratory". In any
case, Neil Gershehfeld (at MIT) and Isaac Chuang (at IBM) are
currently building a desktop quantum computer.
The ENIAC project started April 9, 1943. The PalmPilot
Professional, which is somewhat more portable, uses two
AAA batteries, and has 2M RAM, was introduced in 1997.
Pretty good for 54 years. I expect we'll see similar reults
with quantum computing.
I don't expect a GR based computer either
The entire universe could be considered a GR computer.
Although it is somewhat larger than that "industry scale
laboratory"
Steve M
What you have to realize is that QM is an incomplete theory and is as close to reality as Einstein's SR & GR and Newton's Mechanics (not close at all).
Quantum Mechanics is single most successful scientific theory humans have devised. The predicted values from thoery don't vary from the experimentally measured values until the 10th decimal place!* That's pretty damm close to reality.
You are correct in saying QM is incomplete. Every theory is incomplete! However, given the success of QM, any new theory will be an extention of, not a replacement for, QM. Just as relativity is an extention of Newtonian mechanics.
SteveM
*references (two that I quickly pulled off my book shelf, I'm sure there are better ones):
QED by Feynman
Dreams of a Final Theory by Weinberg
... Excessive idiot-proofing ends up hurting users, confusing them even more by isolating them from what's really going on. You should want to engage users in the details ...
/.? Or another example, how many people listen to CDs? How many people have component stereo systems? The fact is the majority don't care about, nor are they interested in the details. Their interest is not in the computer, but in what they can do with the computer (i.e. games, word processing, browsing the internet, etc.). Again think of the phone system. Most people don't care about the network or the switch, they just want to talk.
NOT!
You do not want to engage users in the details! You want to make the system transparent. The fact that the system crashes is a flaw in the system, not an "opportunaty for learning". Think of the phone system or television.
Think about it, how many people use computers? How many read
One last example, how many people own cars? How many people change their own oil? Some people enjoy working on cars and some people enjoy working on computers. Most people don't, and never will. They are interested not in the tool, but in using it.
Steve M