Hi, I'm the fact your $20M trip to space only costs one lump sum of $20M. I'm wishing that, in addition, you would be charged in some way for each of your vacuum-sealed meals and packets of Tang. I'm wishing that different modules in the space station and future space hotels would charge admission. I'm wishing there was a way for these goals to be achieved that would cost you outrageous sums of money that you could never get back, even if you didn't use them, yet still seemed to be value-added products and services. Could you help me out?
If you believe that the creator (we'll assume this entity exists for the purpose of this discussion) has the ability to simply reveal itself to us, from outside the universe, at its whim, then you believe in miracles.
This is OK, I'm not intolerant, but you're suggesting that within the context of our universe, this entity is not constrained by the physical laws of our universe, and therefore, those laws are not applicable at all times and in all places. Therefore, you assert that any observations we come up with may not be valid in the future and may not have been valid in the past because they can be invalidated on a whim. Essentially, we can learn nothing definitive.
Thus, I cannot believe that the creator can simply reveal itself, because to believe that is to reject science entirely.
Kepler's calculations were considered very accurate until Newton came along, and Newton's calculations are still very accurate despite the fact that he believed in instantaneous gravitational reactions, which we would consider ridiculous today.
Dark Matter is a convenient metaphor for something we don't really understand at all.
It's good that people are working on that, and I suppose I typed hastily on that one.
I acknowledge the reality that there are reactions in the universe we don't understand, and that dark energy and dark matter are metaphors for that lack of understanding. In that sense, I "believe" in dark matter and dark energy, but they're not (or may not be) real things.
I don't believe in a "god" as organized religions would define them. I don't believe in an afterlife, and I don't believe that life has an inherent, divine purpose, so I would say I was an atheist.
But I consider the idea that an outside entity may have created our universe to be a reasonable one. If you think that that entity must be labeled "god", then I suppose you could call me an agnostic.
I'm sure this isn't enraged/disgusted response you were looking for, since you're admittedly trolling, but as an atheist I have to agree with you.
I don't believe in a personal god, and I consider the existence or nonexistence of a universal creator to irrelevant, as it cannot be known. Same goes for parallel universes. I won't believe in them unless or until we can interact with them in some determinable fashion.
And the whole dark matter/dark energy thing strikes me as a load of humbug... saying there must be some undetectable, magical force acting on all the matter in the universe because the calculations we've come up with so far are inaccurate strikes me as lazy and uncreative.
The US needs to look at the rest of the world as equals rather than sneer down their noses at us.
I don't know what country you're from, but I can assure you I don't look down at you. What makes you think I do? What rights or freedoms have I taken from you?
How much longer can the US keep up its huge military spending necessary to support an empire of it current size? We know from history that every empire falls eventually.
Of course, it's naive for anyone to think their society will last until the end of time. What, specifically, makes you think our demise is so immanent?
You might not think of the US as currently having an empire as such but it does have the largest military on the planet and bases in an awful lot of other countries. Some of those countries are happy with the US presence but some are not.
It's unfortunate that we have offended some cultures or have over-stayed our welcome, but, apart from the last few years under our current overlord, (who, unless you're an Iraqi, I assure you has done as much or more to harm us than he has to harm you), we haven't committed too many terrible wrongs against the nations where have military bases, compared to other empires in the past.
Will it be possible to support such a huge military when the worlds oil supplies run even lower.
No. From your post, it's clear that my country has done some terrible, personal wrong to you, and I apologize for it, but do think that your nation will be able to sustain whatever level of prosperity you now have when all of the oil runs out? If so, how?
Eclipse makes Java development easier? That's crazy! What's next, "Water is Found to be Wet"? Maybe "Sky Confirmed Blue"? How about "2+2 May Equal 4!"?
Sorry, I'm not trying to troll, but where is the "news" in this story?
Plus you can't buy new games there without pre-ordering them. They act like you *need* to pre-order and can't just go over the local Best Buy, which will happily sell you one of the dozens of unreserved copies they've got on the shelf.
I'm real big on freedom. I'm offended by many of things we've (as a society) come to accept in the name of "preventing terrorism", but if there's even a grain of truth to "the man"'s side of the story, this is pretty obviously a case of some naive college kid trying to provoke a reaction.
I'm not totally convinced on the whole brute-force thing. AFAIK, we don't have any real indications that raw computational power really has anything to do with actual creative intelligence, so an AI that could access its innate computing ability may have no practical difference from a human using a dumb computer.
But you acknowledge that that's not the important question. I believe there is a [vague and currently undefined] threshold between intelligence and non-intelligence, and I believe we have crossed it. I could see an AI exhibiting superior creative problem-solving ability only if it had vastly superior perception, which I suppose it might.
I would also wonder if perhaps an AI wouldn't be burdened with insecurity, social bias, arrogance or other emotional flaws that we possess. We have no evidence to indicate that intelligence can exist in a social or emotional vacuum.
...its intelligence will quickly surpass a human's. Someone, somewhere, will give it (or a version of it) the means to replicate and improve upon itself, and eventually it will emerge from that as an unstoppable being....
That's a common viewpoint, but I believe it stems more from human arrogance and fear than from logic or fact.
What qualification would make one intelligence "better" than another? What can a machine intelligence possibly learn that an organic intelligence could not?
I know people who, apart from some casual console gaming, hated video games and thought all game players were hopeless nerds before starting up WoW, dropping out of school, quitting their jobs and leeching off their friends/family/SOs. The really ironic part is that one of those people still hates games and gamers and thinks that playing WoW 20 hours a day actually makes them cool.
But having a flash intro or whatever isn't really their goal. If they're a for-profit company, ultimately their goal is increasing their profits. They probably have other secondary goals related to accomplishing that goal, such as growing their brand awareness or providing better customer service. Those are the goals they need to accomplish with their website, not "having a flash intro". So if a client asks for something that I know from experience and observable metrics will run contrary to their real goals, it would be unprofessional of me not to explain that to them and to try to help them figure out a better way to accomplish those goals.
He was an inventor, but he didn't invent the internal combustion engine or the automobile, in that context he was primarily a skilled manager and salesman.
If you don't think it's a relevant quote, try asking a client what they want rather than helping them determine what they want. Most of them want boring, annoying flash intros, background music, annoying sound effects, all-flash layouts for what is essentially a brochure, etc. They're not stupid, they're just lay-people who've been exposed to 15 years of terrible websites, just like consumers at the turn of the 20th century who've only been exposed to horses for transportation.
I didn't mean to suggest that they need to provide any benefit to *us*. I'm personally against killing dolphins, they seem like nice people, but I've heard for the last few years that they were extinct or virtually so, and yet I haven't heard of any horrible effects on their ecosystem from losing them.
Bees, for example, provide an invaluable service to their environment by pollinating a wide variety of plants. If they went extinct, we would notice immediately because of the plant species struggling to maintain their populations.
When wolf populations are diminished, deer populations rise to ridiculous levels until they manage to starve themselves back to sustainable numbers.
I've just never really heard anyone offer any reasons for them to exist other than being cute and cuddly, and nature doesn't care if you're cute and cuddly. In fact, being ugly and devoid of any emotions seems to be generally more preferable in evolutionary terms.
I could probably manage to find a couple of people who need me for something, but you're right if you're suggesting that I don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Will civilization collapse when you die?
I understand that biodiversity is important, but if the evolutionary niche that they fill is no longer viable, they will become extinct. It's been happening for millions and millions of years. Now, TFA said they've become extinct to due to human factors, and that's unfortunate, but what did you do about it? Did you try to move the 700 million people away from their habitat? Did you shut down any Chinese factories or stop any fishing boats?
Climb down off your high horse and stop taking things so personally. Unless you're a Baiji river dolphin, in which case I apologize for my insensitivity to your plight.
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Hi, I'm the fact your $20M trip to space only costs one lump sum of $20M. I'm wishing that, in addition, you would be charged in some way for each of your vacuum-sealed meals and packets of Tang. I'm wishing that different modules in the space station and future space hotels would charge admission. I'm wishing there was a way for these goals to be achieved that would cost you outrageous sums of money that you could never get back, even if you didn't use them, yet still seemed to be value-added products and services. Could you help me out?
Because all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
...welcome our GTA-satirizing overloards.
I believe the word they were looking for was "metaphorically", but it is USA Today so you can't really expect too much.
If you believe that the creator (we'll assume this entity exists for the purpose of this discussion) has the ability to simply reveal itself to us, from outside the universe, at its whim, then you believe in miracles.
This is OK, I'm not intolerant, but you're suggesting that within the context of our universe, this entity is not constrained by the physical laws of our universe, and therefore, those laws are not applicable at all times and in all places. Therefore, you assert that any observations we come up with may not be valid in the future and may not have been valid in the past because they can be invalidated on a whim. Essentially, we can learn nothing definitive.
Thus, I cannot believe that the creator can simply reveal itself, because to believe that is to reject science entirely.
Kepler's calculations were considered very accurate until Newton came along, and Newton's calculations are still very accurate despite the fact that he believed in instantaneous gravitational reactions, which we would consider ridiculous today.
Dark Matter is a convenient metaphor for something we don't really understand at all.
It's good that people are working on that, and I suppose I typed hastily on that one.
I acknowledge the reality that there are reactions in the universe we don't understand, and that dark energy and dark matter are metaphors for that lack of understanding. In that sense, I "believe" in dark matter and dark energy, but they're not (or may not be) real things.
Depends on your PoV, I guess.
I don't believe in a "god" as organized religions would define them. I don't believe in an afterlife, and I don't believe that life has an inherent, divine purpose, so I would say I was an atheist.
But I consider the idea that an outside entity may have created our universe to be a reasonable one. If you think that that entity must be labeled "god", then I suppose you could call me an agnostic.
I'm sure this isn't enraged/disgusted response you were looking for, since you're admittedly trolling, but as an atheist I have to agree with you.
I don't believe in a personal god, and I consider the existence or nonexistence of a universal creator to irrelevant, as it cannot be known. Same goes for parallel universes. I won't believe in them unless or until we can interact with them in some determinable fashion.
And the whole dark matter/dark energy thing strikes me as a load of humbug... saying there must be some undetectable, magical force acting on all the matter in the universe because the calculations we've come up with so far are inaccurate strikes me as lazy and uncreative.
It's not just Java either. You can use it for PHP or other languages as well.
I don't know what country you're from, but I can assure you I don't look down at you. What makes you think I do? What rights or freedoms have I taken from you?
How much longer can the US keep up its huge military spending necessary to support an empire of it current size? We know from history that every empire falls eventually.Of course, it's naive for anyone to think their society will last until the end of time. What, specifically, makes you think our demise is so immanent?
You might not think of the US as currently having an empire as such but it does have the largest military on the planet and bases in an awful lot of other countries. Some of those countries are happy with the US presence but some are not.It's unfortunate that we have offended some cultures or have over-stayed our welcome, but, apart from the last few years under our current overlord, (who, unless you're an Iraqi, I assure you has done as much or more to harm us than he has to harm you), we haven't committed too many terrible wrongs against the nations where have military bases, compared to other empires in the past.
Will it be possible to support such a huge military when the worlds oil supplies run even lower.No. From your post, it's clear that my country has done some terrible, personal wrong to you, and I apologize for it, but do think that your nation will be able to sustain whatever level of prosperity you now have when all of the oil runs out? If so, how?
Eclipse makes Java development easier? That's crazy! What's next, "Water is Found to be Wet"? Maybe "Sky Confirmed Blue"? How about "2+2 May Equal 4!"?
Sorry, I'm not trying to troll, but where is the "news" in this story?
Plus you can't buy new games there without pre-ordering them. They act like you *need* to pre-order and can't just go over the local Best Buy, which will happily sell you one of the dozens of unreserved copies they've got on the shelf.
I'm real big on freedom. I'm offended by many of things we've (as a society) come to accept in the name of "preventing terrorism", but if there's even a grain of truth to "the man"'s side of the story, this is pretty obviously a case of some naive college kid trying to provoke a reaction.
I'm not totally convinced on the whole brute-force thing. AFAIK, we don't have any real indications that raw computational power really has anything to do with actual creative intelligence, so an AI that could access its innate computing ability may have no practical difference from a human using a dumb computer.
But you acknowledge that that's not the important question. I believe there is a [vague and currently undefined] threshold between intelligence and non-intelligence, and I believe we have crossed it. I could see an AI exhibiting superior creative problem-solving ability only if it had vastly superior perception, which I suppose it might.
I would also wonder if perhaps an AI wouldn't be burdened with insecurity, social bias, arrogance or other emotional flaws that we possess. We have no evidence to indicate that intelligence can exist in a social or emotional vacuum.
...its intelligence will quickly surpass a human's. Someone, somewhere, will give it (or a version of it) the means to replicate and improve upon itself, and eventually it will emerge from that as an unstoppable being....That's a common viewpoint, but I believe it stems more from human arrogance and fear than from logic or fact.
What qualification would make one intelligence "better" than another? What can a machine intelligence possibly learn that an organic intelligence could not?
I know people who, apart from some casual console gaming, hated video games and thought all game players were hopeless nerds before starting up WoW, dropping out of school, quitting their jobs and leeching off their friends/family/SOs. The really ironic part is that one of those people still hates games and gamers and thinks that playing WoW 20 hours a day actually makes them cool.
But having a flash intro or whatever isn't really their goal. If they're a for-profit company, ultimately their goal is increasing their profits. They probably have other secondary goals related to accomplishing that goal, such as growing their brand awareness or providing better customer service. Those are the goals they need to accomplish with their website, not "having a flash intro". So if a client asks for something that I know from experience and observable metrics will run contrary to their real goals, it would be unprofessional of me not to explain that to them and to try to help them figure out a better way to accomplish those goals.
We're clearly coming at this from different points of view.
You're totally correct, if you accept a job and take someone's money, you do have to give them everything they ask for.
However, if potential clients don't see me as an expert who knows more about my area of expertise than they do, I choose not to work with them.
I recommend the philosophy. I've never made more money or been more satisfied with my work than I am now.
He was an inventor, but he didn't invent the internal combustion engine or the automobile, in that context he was primarily a skilled manager and salesman. If you don't think it's a relevant quote, try asking a client what they want rather than helping them determine what they want. Most of them want boring, annoying flash intros, background music, annoying sound effects, all-flash layouts for what is essentially a brochure, etc. They're not stupid, they're just lay-people who've been exposed to 15 years of terrible websites, just like consumers at the turn of the 20th century who've only been exposed to horses for transportation.
"If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses.' "
-Henry Ford
I didn't mean to suggest that they need to provide any benefit to *us*. I'm personally against killing dolphins, they seem like nice people, but I've heard for the last few years that they were extinct or virtually so, and yet I haven't heard of any horrible effects on their ecosystem from losing them.
Bees, for example, provide an invaluable service to their environment by pollinating a wide variety of plants. If they went extinct, we would notice immediately because of the plant species struggling to maintain their populations.
When wolf populations are diminished, deer populations rise to ridiculous levels until they manage to starve themselves back to sustainable numbers.
I've just never really heard anyone offer any reasons for them to exist other than being cute and cuddly, and nature doesn't care if you're cute and cuddly. In fact, being ugly and devoid of any emotions seems to be generally more preferable in evolutionary terms.
We'll never hear about cockroaches going extinct.
Good answer.
I could probably manage to find a couple of people who need me for something, but you're right if you're suggesting that I don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Will civilization collapse when you die?
I understand that biodiversity is important, but if the evolutionary niche that they fill is no longer viable, they will become extinct. It's been happening for millions and millions of years. Now, TFA said they've become extinct to due to human factors, and that's unfortunate, but what did you do about it? Did you try to move the 700 million people away from their habitat? Did you shut down any Chinese factories or stop any fishing boats?
Climb down off your high horse and stop taking things so personally. Unless you're a Baiji river dolphin, in which case I apologize for my insensitivity to your plight.
Perhaps I do care about the dolphins and I like playing the devil's advocate.