I've never had a Linux system where an application magically corrupts itself to the point where you need a fresh reinstall of the operating system
That happens with Windows because it uses a centralised registry. For one thing, it's too easy to interrupt processes while they are in the middle of updating it. For another, even if writing to the registry isn't interrupted it is still possible for the contents of the file system to get out of step with what's in the registry. In a more general sense, it makes the system less transparent and puts all your eggs in one vulnerable basket.
On Linux, applications never interferes with each other or with the system as a whole (system-wide libraries are always shipped separately).
Although things can break (say if the power goes off suddenly and fsck can't retrieve all the files that were open at the time) the worst you'd ever have to go through is to reinitialise the affected package's/var files, or just reinstall that package and restore your config files (always keep a current backup of/etc).
There are a lot of know-nothings raised on Windows who are desparate to see a registry on Linux. Occasionally they even pop up on Slashdot. Don't listen to them, fight them with every breath in your body. In their ignorance they'd destroy Linux's greatest asset - stability.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's not Jim's web site, that's the web site of a company that makes the sort of LEP displays he was talking about. If the guy is broke I imagine his "corporate headquarters" is probably in his spare bedroom.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Mother Nature likes to be in the lowest energy state possible. If she gould have squeezed more energy out of hydrogen atoms, she would have already done so.
According to Mills, she already has. He claims the apparent energy deficit in our Sun is due to the presence of these hydrinos.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
They forgot hairdressers and those people who clean the telephones.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Is the Metaverse nearing practicality?
on
Quake 1 GPL'ed
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· Score: 2
I'm not an expert in VR simulation technology but since the sort of implementation we're discussing is still some way off, I doubt it matters very much. anyway, it seems to me that some parts of your argument are somewhat misdirected.
You need near-zero latency between servers to handle synchronization.
This is undoubtedly true, since predictive methods will not be very accurate when dealing with humans in a more or less unrestricted situation.
You need to be able to have servers dynamically hand off clients to one another without the user being able to perceive it happening.
It'd be nice but it's hardly necessary. You could have quite a fulfilling time in an extended VR world even without having the option of walking everywhere. It seems unlikely to me that this would be allowed to hold up development. Instead, visitors will put up with virtual subway and elevator rides between locations which stand in for a "windows hourglass" during transit.
You need to be able to support the one guy wandering off by him/herself in the "frontiers" of the metaverse.
I don't see any problem there as long as the relevant server is up. The load on the server ought to comparatively low when minimal when serving just one user, so infrequently visited locations could be hosted on small machines or a number of them could share a single server.
You need to be able to support the virtual stadium containing 100K independent spectators...
This is interesting. Actually I don't think it will present a huge problem because a member of the audience can only interact fully with his immediate neighbours, can only observe or signal to the next distant ones, and can only observe more distant ones at comparatively low resolution. People on the other side of the stadium won't amount to much more than a colored dot. Also, interactions in such a setting are fairly limited. So, each visitor's environment only contains full information about a handful of neighbours and much less rich data about people further away. The total amount of interaction going on could be less than with say 20 people in a room having a party with conversations, subtle body language etc. If someone sitting three rows behind you recognises your avatar and calls out to you, the system detects this and upgrades your representations in each other's sensoria while communication takes place.
...(plus the 30 or so guys playing Rocket Arena down on the field), and handle collisions and other object/object interactions between all of them
Well, that's just another game of Quake. I believe they already have that working:o)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Good point. Though I think a better analogy than your ethnic groups adopting the mores of their host society would be the domestication of animals. Farm animals and pets were selectively bred according to clear preferences on the part of the breeders (and the markets they were selling to). In the case of dogs and cats, bred for companionship, this resulted in a set of behaviours which seem at least quasi-human even when you allow for the anthropocentrism of the pets' owners.
The same thing applies to domestic AI's right now. Just look at Aibo and the domestic robot under development by NEC. Both are playing to highly emotional preferences of the target market.
If the latter example is any indication, then in future the domestic robots with the most sophisticated intelligence will be those intended to provide companionship for the owner and interact with other humans in the manner of a servant. Just as in Asimov's fiction I suppose. Simply because that's what people will most likely be prepared to pay a lot of money for.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
...if behaviourism were true, we could teach pigs to sing...There are built-in functions in the brain that make a difference in intelligence...
...Children will learn whatever language they are exposed to. They learn the rules of their language without ever understanding them as rules. They do not make the type of mistakes a trial-and-error behaviour renforcement model would require of them...
...large areas of human behaviour are biologically influenced...
...humans are not tabula rasa...
I'm fairly certain konstant was using a broader definition of behaviourism than you imply. I don't think any modern (mainstream) psychologist would argue against the above assertions, but given that behaviourism isn't just about classical Pavlovian conditioning, it is not only still very much alive but arguably the only school of psychology which is remotely scientific.
I refer to the sort of behaviourist stance set out by Daniel Dennett: roughly, that there is no "Cartesian Theatre"; that we are pure mechanism and any mystical notion of self awareness beyond that of simple internal feedback is merely an illusion; and that it is useless to speculate about unmeasurable experiental qualities (of internal states) which aren't necessary to explain observable behaviour.
The strength of this behaviourist hypothesis is that it has the advantage of simplicity (no deus ex machina) and yet still can't be disproved. I'm not asking you to take my word for it, there's hardly space here to paraphrase the position let alone justify it. Do read Dennett though.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I saw "The World is Not Enough" on Saturday, and when I saw Q's final scene I thought it was a little sad.
They'd just introduced his replacement which under other circumstances would have been OK, but Llewellyn was looking fragile with age (his speech had become rather slurred too). So much so that it was almost shocking to see him like that. It struck me even then that it was unlikely he'd live long enough to appear in another film.
As he descended through the trap door, his witty line about "always having an escape route" seemed like a half-hearted attempt to inject humour into a literally very morbid scene. which was really about a admission about something that was happening in real life.
Ironic indeed that an accident should claim him before natural causes. Of course it's not beyond credibility that his condition might have contributed to the accident in some way.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
But where is analogue now? A niche split between rich die-hards and poor elderly people who can't afford to replace their existing LPs
Hey, I resent that. I'm only 37 (that's hardly elderly) and I'm not exactly poor either. But I like my old LPs. And even in those cases where I've bought the CD version of a particular album which I already owned on vinyl, I still use the LP when I can because it sounds better, even on my cheap, 15-year-old Technics linear tracking direct drive turntable (i.e. the argument that you can only get quality analogue reproduction at very high cost doesn't correspond with my experience).
This isn't, for me, a matter of techno-ideology. I just know what kind of sound I like.
Digital systems by their very nature cannot reproduce a real-world analogue signal perfectly any more than analogue equipment can - digital systems are not perfect, they just distort the signal differently than analogue. So a lot of the statistics you might quote in defence of digital aren't necessarily relevant. Human vision and hearing are *not* digital, nor do they respond to stimuli in a linear fashion. So the distortion inherent in analogue recording and playback might well be less destructive to the perceptual qualities of the medium than a digital process.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
First of all, Apple doesn't even own Sorenson, so stop bashing them without reason.
This is a very misleading statement, if not a bald lie. The reason Sorenson won't open up the codec is because Apple won't let them, it's written into their agreement. Apple are indeed attempting to corner the market in Internet video, which is directly against what most Slashdot readers stand for: open standards. you might not agree but I'm 100% certain you are in the minority at least amongst Slashdot readers.
Anyway, what's with the bad attitude? I mean, all the four-letter words - can't you disagree without being rude and offensive? I think it's fairly obvious to everybody that it's you that needs to grow up.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
The teacher I referred to went to Brazil for a year during his teacher training studies. Afterwards he also spent time in Ghana and Australia (he was training to be a geography teacher). He took my final year Geography class in high school. Believe me he was one of the best teachers I ever had, his classes were fascinating, he had hundreds of cool slides he'd taken himself, and press cuttings showing articles in the (serious) international press relating to the very things he'd seen. I scored an A in that subject thanks to him.
He didn't really preach about the sleaze in Sao Paulo, he just reported the statistics and showed us his own pictures of life in the shanty towns. The disgust is purely my own.
I hear what you're saying about how it's just isolated events and only in some places - and indeed my teacher's visit to Sao Paulo was way back in the late 1970's. But from what I've seen in the papers since then, neither Sao Paulo nor Rio de Janeiro have changed for the better. The thing that really gets me is the lack of regard Brazilian society apparently has for children.
Are we to consider Brazil a "third world" country? There can be no excuse for a modern civilised society to allow children to remain homeless, let alone to ignore child murder and child prostitution. This could all be prevented if the Brazilian government - or the Brazilian people - only gave a damn about what was going on under their noses.
Flame away, but that's my stance on the issue.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's fair comment. But my information is not from the newspapers, it came from an old schoolteacher of mine who spent a year living and working there.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Brazil is one depraved country and Sao Paula is truly one of the most evil places on Earth. Apart from all the drug abuse that is.
Homeless orphaned children are routinely gunned down by policemen (the city authorities treat them as a pest). Child prostitution is rife - including children as young as nine or ten years of age. And young men pay plastic surgeons to mutilate them, turning them into "ladyboys" so they can earn more money as prostitutes.
It seems as if the whole country has adopted Rimbaud's nihilism: Nothing is forbidden, everything is permitted. The ultimate in liberalism. Some of you may recognise similarities to the Netherlands (particularly Amsterdam).
The people of that country have seriously lost their way and now their society bears many of the hallmarks some of us associate with hell itself. Will the West go the same way? Will we also, in the name of tolerance and political correctness, relinquish the right to judge others for their behaviour and/or morals?
The police and courts in Brazil will likely jump on game playing because it's practiced by too narrow a section of the population over there to have gained any political protection. Drugs and child prostitution, OTOH, are probably secretly encouraged by their corrupt politicians who derive both revenue and venal pleasure frm both.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
No, what you said is perfectly correct in all important respects. Thought, decision, will, action, all require causality which in implies progress though time.
A being is something which experiences a sequence of internal states, with later states causally related to earlier ones; the passage of time is implicit in our evolving point of view. An information structure without an evolving point of view can hardly be called a 'being' - it's more like an 'is'! That's been at least anticipated in some cultures for thousands of years. The Hebrews called their God YHVH (Jehovah) which, if I'm not mistaken, translates as "I am that I am".
Understanding this doesn't deny the existence of God, but it does mean that God cannot be a 'being' in any meaningful sense. It certainly makes nonsense of the claim that Man was made in God's image, and removes any possibility of a compassionate God likely or able to intervene in individual human affairs. Any stipulations to the contrary found in the Bible must, on that account, be no more than fairy tales laced with understandable anthropomorphism.
Kintanon's glib, mystical cliches ("crystal moment" my ass!) are empty propositions because they cannot be used to draw further conclusions - in other words, there is no way to test his hypothesis. Morover, since he does not claim that his hypothesis is founded upon any repeatable observations, one may infer that his sole justification is that it satisifies Kintanon's spiritual needs.
That's not to say that his position cannot be supported at all. Tipler reached broadly similar conclusions and (despite some excursions into pure speculation) is much more convincing.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
If you want to know about the issues involved in such a journey you ought to read Stephen Baxter's novel "Titan". Damn good story, and the science and technology content is all meticulously researched. The spacecraft used is basically leftover space shuttles from a dying space program, with a few basic modifications.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
There are a couple of theories that suggest life may have got started in conditions similar to the volcanic vents at the bottom of our oceans and not the 'still, warm pond' than Darwin suggested and that the early Earth was pretty nasty and harsh when life got started.
As long as chemical reactions can take place, there is probably a chance for *some* sort of life
The key requirement is that there must be some means of concentrating the reagents to enable chemical reaction to proceed at a significant rate, and to trap the products of these reactions so they are available for further reactions in a loosely anabolic sequence.
The absence of this requirement in early theories of chemical biogenesis led to the charge that not nearly enough time had elapsed for life to have evolved from the simple compounds available in the primordial atmosphere.
Fumaroles on the sea bed not only provide a steady stream of heat and activated molecules, they also supply a rich soup of silicates, and other minerals. I don't know much about the chemistry of these smoker chimneys but I'll bet that the materials deposited around the vent include decent surface catalysts like clays for example. Prior to discovery of the smokers, there were theories that life might have evolved in shallow tidal pools scooped out of clay at the ocean's edge. But it can be no coincidence that the oldest life forms on the planet (the archaeobacteria) are found in and around these fumaroles both below and above ground.
As a side note, most theories still assume that the raw material for organic chemistry came out of the atmosphere. But one scientist I read about recently thinks there is evidence that there are massive quantities of hydrocarbons migrating slowly out from the core of the planet (this is where he thinks our oil and natural gas really comes from), and thus the fumaroles would have their own concentrated supply of reactants. I'm still betting on atmospheric carbon for now though.
(says the non-biologist who has merely read a book or two:) ).
I'm an armchair theorist too. What's wrong with that?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Agreed. However, if you go back an read my posts--as I've just done--I never said anything to the contrary. (Well, except in my first post, where I accidentally ommited the PVC and simply refered to 'cortex processing' instead of 'SVC porocessing' and 'temporal lobe' processing.) This little war started when you said the cortex has a direct connection to the retina.
Ah, so when we get down to it do we actually agree on a supportive role of the LGN? And "quality" processing in the cortex? All that flameage was for nothing then. That's the problem with taking a position - one can inadvertently make a remark more extreme than was intended. I myself prefer less, er, polarised debate.
I'm still not sure about the relative importance of feature/motion detection in human retinae (which is where this thread really started). The lowest levels of processing in primate cortex are occupied with precisely what you attribute to the retina. The only animals I *know* for sure to use the retina as a primary feature and motion detection system are amphibians, which don't even have a geniculate body.
It seems to me that *if* there is any similar wiring still present in the human retina then it's probably just a relic, too much trouble to get rid of so to speak, although it might still be used in very primitive subcortical vision pathways well below the LGN (terminating at the superior colliculus). The only retinal wiring I know about for sure is the layer that groups rods with overlapping receptive fields such that a smooth picture can be generated. This is the "packaging" for transmission that you refer to.
This little war started when you said the cortex has a direct connection to the retina.
Well I meant it, but you must have misinterpreted what I meant by "direct". I didn't mean the pathway consisted of a bundle of single unbroken axons in a straight line! I meant it in the same sense that a telephone call is end-to-end even though it passes through switches in at least one telephone exchange; even if there are wiretappers on the line, the conversation itself gets through undistorted.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
True enough, mostly. However, you can make a case for using behavior to discern whether a subject is conscious (e.g. blindsighted people behave differently than either blind or normal people). Such research has been done of reptiles, as reported in, I believe Science News a few months ago.
...I don't [define consciousness broadly]. Unfortunately, no one, myself included, makes their definition clear at the outset. I define consciousness as being almost synonymous with experience, that is, possessing qualia. I say "almost" because I tend to follow Whitehead in the details.
That said, I have seen no reason why lower mammals, reptiles, and birds, can't be conscious. In fact, if Panksepp and Watt are correct--expirimentally correct, not simply theoretically--then reptiles mark the emergence of consciousness.
I've probably said more about consciousness than I really intended and perhaps even more than I really meant. If you want to know my position on consciousness then have a look at my signature. If you can't be bothered to enable signatures, it's probably enough to know that I believe Daniel Dennett to be one of the very few people making any sense of the subject.
You could save a lot space if you stopping stating things we both know.
Sorry, but you seemed to imply that some blindsight symptoms may be due to having the language centres disconnected. I was merely pointing out why this cannot provide the explanation.
I said it implies a compartmentalized introspective consciousness, one that is lacking information-rich connections beyond the cortex. The blinsighted subjects may be lacking an ability to introspect consciously, while still being able to have 'external' conscious experiences.
That's fairly horrific. You mean that a chunk of rational "thinking" brain is cut off, blind and deaf, whilt the rest of the brain continues experiencing life unaware of its silent passenger? You're going to give me bad dreams mate. At least both halves of a post-surgical epileptic get an roughly equal share of effect and affect. Still, the picture you paint is only speculation isn't it? I have a hard time sometimes figuring out which of your arguments are straw men and which are real.
...people's behavior, abilities, etc, change drastically when they are asked to report about them, vs. when they are simply using them.
That's a tricky point because it can be interpreted in two ways. One interpretation is that the problem only appears under unnatural conditions of laboratory testing and so is not quite genuine. This doesn't really explain anything though. The other interpretation is that the problems in reporting experience are a direct consequence of the functional asymmetry of the brain. The experiments are intended to show how the left side doesn't know directly what the right side is doing, and sometimed in particular to show how one hemisphere is inarticulate and the other has a poor visiospatial sense. Which explains the inability to talk about what the inarticulate side is doing quite well IMO.
Speaking as a (semi)professional philosopher, and JCS subscriber, I should probably be insulted.
Don't be. I had this to say about philosophy earlier tonight.
You keep assuming that your opinion has the validity of objective fact, to the extent that you will deny any and all evidence I present.
I'm not "denying" the "evidence". I just don't place the same interpretation on these observations as you do. And I hardly regard it as uniquely "my opinion". I didn't make this stuff up myself.
This is ridiculous. Are you so unwilling to lose this argument that you would actually claim that every description of the visual system I've found (there were many I didn't include above) is wrong? Look at the last link I tossed re: the LGN (labeled "This"). That is an anatomical description of the visual paths from the retina. Not a theory, nor a proposal for research. A simple description of what connections exist, and where they go.
These are apparently college lecture notes. Not exactly authoritative. And they are brief to the point of obfuscation. For example the section "LGN->Primary Visual Cortex" doesn't make explicit on which end of that pathway the "primal sketch" is formed or if it's even known. I can see how you might have been led astray if your reading did not include certain earlier cortical research.
Skepticism is one thing, but you're bordering outright solipsism.
*sigh*. And you started out so well. I'm finding this constant hostility a bit wearing but I'll try to ignore it just one more time.
The important thing is that you don't admit to the limited scope of the descriptions to which you're referring. They omit to mention (perhaps because it's generally so well known from classic empirical studies and therefore assumed) that the visual field is also represented to the Primary Visual Cortex in its entirety and in all the available retinal detail. If you're still demanding citations, I'm sorry but this is so elementary you're only going to find them in freshman neurology textbooks, which I no longer have.
Everybody knows it goes through the Lateral Geniculate Body, so what? It does not change the fact that the Primary Visual Cortex gets *all* the retinal data in a mostly raw form. The LGN does not need to generate that information since it is already available in a suitable format at the LGN's inputs. The information that came from the retinae is simply forwarded more or less "as is". Even though modulated to some degree the full extent of which is still an open question. Even though the LGN also sends its own higher-order information to the PVC, eg maybe some depth processing information.
Nor does the presence of simple visual processing pathways in the LGN change the fact that the Primary Visual Cortex possesses much more detailed and extensive visual processing equipment better suited to processing high resolution "conscious" vision from, for want of a better term, a pixel-by-pixel basis upward.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's an absurd comment. Everyone knows that stock prices these days aren't driven by the price of the company... they're driven by supply and demand.
That's precisely my point. The intrinsic value of the company has nothing to do with it. The stock price is driven by confidence in the market. When that gets shaky because of perceived risks, the bottom falls out.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
My feelings exactly. You put that very well. Your other respondent "Saige" points out that investigating the unknown is precisely what scientists are for. But in your words, "dicking around with things they know very little of" the word "things" implicitly refers to powerful, dangerous things that they don't even know for sure that they can control. Things that could hurt us all if it goes badly.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Sure, some educated people turn to religion but most do not - it's mainly the province of the poor and undereducated these days.
Maybe it was always so; just a couple of hundred years ago atheism carried horrific penalties in most Christian countries (some Islamic countries are still like that of course). So most atheists would have kept quiet about it anyway.
My contention is that the default belief system for the educated in our society today is secular. People who are unhappy or confused about their place in life will sometimes turn to religion if it is readily available. But if the poor were educated, and the number of believers dwindled, there soon wouldn't be any organised religions to speak of. Inevitably a lot of those unhappy people who today turn to religion would then more readily find something else to turn to.
Don't believe it can't happen; belief systems lose popularity and finally disappear to be replaced by something else. It has occurred again and again throughout history.
I'm not against God BTW, I'm just against superstition and ignorance.
--
With regard to philosophy, it's not essentially anti-scientific. Science was once regarded as a branch of philosophy, it still is really in that it contains its own axioms and its own system of logic. The basic methodology was laid down by Sir Karl Popper who was himself a philosopher. Science is still policed by epistemiology which is about the nature of knowledge, whether, how and what we can know, and whether we can know that we know.
Another branch of philosophy important to scientists is ontology, the only tool we possess for the exploration of the unobservable: the quantum realm, the origin and ultimate fate of the universe; what lies beyond it in other dimensions. Even the nature of ourselves, our consciousness.
In its most general sense, philosophy is the science of how to think in a rational manner.
When I was a young man I thought all philosophy was all meaningless twaddle. This was basically due to a fault in my education, I'd simply not been shown anything really interesting. Since then however I've seen a lot of really thought provoking stuff right at the bleeding edge of scientific discourse.
So I believe teaching philosophy in our schools would be a good thing. It would make people learn to think rationally for themselves. If it ever made them "lose faith in science" it would only be for the right reasons, in injecting a healthy modicum of scepticism and enabling everybody to make up their own minds logically about the latest proposed experiment.
That would be better than the typical responses seen today: whether blindly assuming the scientists know what they are doing and have everyone's best interests at heart; or obediently accepting the condemnations handed down by their high priest; or recoiling in simple ignorance and fear.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Slashdot Mirror
I've never had a Linux system where an application magically corrupts itself to the point where you need a fresh reinstall of the operating system
/var files, or just reinstall that package and restore your config files (always keep a current backup of /etc).
That happens with Windows because it uses a centralised registry. For one thing, it's too easy to interrupt processes while they are in the middle of updating it. For another, even if writing to the registry isn't interrupted it is still possible for the contents of the file system to get out of step with what's in the registry. In a more general sense, it makes the system less transparent and puts all your eggs in one vulnerable basket.
On Linux, applications never interferes with each other or with the system as a whole (system-wide libraries are always shipped separately).
Although things can break (say if the power goes off suddenly and fsck can't retrieve all the files that were open at the time) the worst you'd ever have to go through is to reinitialise the affected package's
There are a lot of know-nothings raised on Windows who are desparate to see a registry on Linux. Occasionally they even pop up on Slashdot. Don't listen to them, fight them with every breath in your body. In their ignorance they'd destroy Linux's greatest asset - stability.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
How about FedEx shipping labels
That's already been done, I'm sure it was reported here on slashdot a few weeks ago.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's not Jim's web site, that's the web site of a company that makes the sort of LEP displays he was talking about. If the guy is broke I imagine his "corporate headquarters" is probably in his spare bedroom.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Mother Nature likes to be in the lowest energy state possible. If she gould have squeezed more energy out of hydrogen atoms, she would have already done so.
According to Mills, she already has. He claims the apparent energy deficit in our Sun is due to the presence of these hydrinos.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
They forgot hairdressers and those people who clean the telephones.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I'm not an expert in VR simulation technology but since the sort of implementation we're discussing is still some way off, I doubt it matters very much. anyway, it seems to me that some parts of your argument are somewhat misdirected.
...(plus the 30 or so guys playing Rocket Arena down on the field), and handle collisions and other object/object interactions between all of them
:o)
You need near-zero latency between servers to handle synchronization.
This is undoubtedly true, since predictive methods will not be very accurate when dealing with humans in a more or less unrestricted situation.
You need to be able to have servers dynamically hand off clients to one another without the user being able to perceive it happening.
It'd be nice but it's hardly necessary. You could have quite a fulfilling time in an extended VR world even without having the option of walking everywhere. It seems unlikely to me that this would be allowed to hold up development. Instead, visitors will put up with virtual subway and elevator rides between locations which stand in for a "windows hourglass" during transit.
You need to be able to support the one guy wandering off by him/herself in the "frontiers" of the metaverse.
I don't see any problem there as long as the relevant server is up. The load on the server ought to comparatively low when minimal when serving just one user, so infrequently visited locations could be hosted on small machines or a number of them could share a single server.
You need to be able to support the virtual stadium containing 100K independent spectators...
This is interesting. Actually I don't think it will present a huge problem because a member of the audience can only interact fully with his immediate neighbours, can only observe or signal to the next distant ones, and can only observe more distant ones at comparatively low resolution. People on the other side of the stadium won't amount to much more than a colored dot. Also, interactions in such a setting are fairly limited. So, each visitor's environment only contains full information about a handful of neighbours and much less rich data about people further away. The total amount of interaction going on could be less than with say 20 people in a room having a party with conversations, subtle body language etc. If someone sitting three rows behind you recognises your avatar and calls out to you, the system detects this and upgrades your representations in each other's sensoria while communication takes place.
Well, that's just another game of Quake. I believe they already have that working
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
My researches indicate two alternative methods of getting written up on slashdot:
1) Code up some brilliantly clever software and release it under the GPL.
2) Cut your penis in half and hammer some nails into your head.
...now, where in hell did I put that hammer...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Good point. Though I think a better analogy than your ethnic groups adopting the mores of their host society would be the domestication of animals. Farm animals and pets were selectively bred according to clear preferences on the part of the breeders (and the markets they were selling to). In the case of dogs and cats, bred for companionship, this resulted in a set of behaviours which seem at least quasi-human even when you allow for the anthropocentrism of the pets' owners.
The same thing applies to domestic AI's right now. Just look at Aibo and the domestic robot under development by NEC. Both are playing to highly emotional preferences of the target market.
If the latter example is any indication, then in future the domestic robots with the most sophisticated intelligence will be those intended to provide companionship for the owner and interact with other humans in the manner of a servant. Just as in Asimov's fiction I suppose. Simply because that's what people will most likely be prepared to pay a lot of money for.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
There are serious problems with behaviourism.
...There are built-in functions in the brain that make a difference in intelligence...
...if behaviourism were true, we could teach pigs to sing
...Children will learn whatever language they are exposed to. They learn the rules of their language without ever understanding them as rules. They do not make the type of mistakes a trial-and-error behaviour renforcement model would require of them...
...large areas of human behaviour are biologically influenced...
...humans are not tabula rasa...
I'm fairly certain konstant was using a broader definition of behaviourism than you imply. I don't think any modern (mainstream) psychologist would argue against the above assertions, but given that behaviourism isn't just about classical Pavlovian conditioning, it is not only still very much alive but arguably the only school of psychology which is remotely scientific.
I refer to the sort of behaviourist stance set out by Daniel Dennett: roughly, that there is no "Cartesian Theatre"; that we are pure mechanism and any mystical notion of self awareness beyond that of simple internal feedback is merely an illusion; and that it is useless to speculate about unmeasurable experiental qualities (of internal states) which aren't necessary to explain observable behaviour.
The strength of this behaviourist hypothesis is that it has the advantage of simplicity (no deus ex machina) and yet still can't be disproved. I'm not asking you to take my word for it, there's hardly space here to paraphrase the position let alone justify it. Do read Dennett though.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I saw "The World is Not Enough" on Saturday, and when I saw Q's final scene I thought it was a little sad.
They'd just introduced his replacement which under other circumstances would have been OK, but Llewellyn was looking fragile with age (his speech had become rather slurred too). So much so that it was almost shocking to see him like that. It struck me even then that it was unlikely he'd live long enough to appear in another film.
As he descended through the trap door, his witty line about "always having an escape route" seemed like a half-hearted attempt to inject humour into a literally very morbid scene. which was really about a admission about something that was happening in real life.
Ironic indeed that an accident should claim him before natural causes. Of course it's not beyond credibility that his condition might have contributed to the accident in some way.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
But where is analogue now? A niche split between rich die-hards and poor elderly people who can't afford to replace their existing LPs
Hey, I resent that. I'm only 37 (that's hardly elderly) and I'm not exactly poor either. But I like my old LPs. And even in those cases where I've bought the CD version of a particular album which I already owned on vinyl, I still use the LP when I can because it sounds better, even on my cheap, 15-year-old Technics linear tracking direct drive turntable (i.e. the argument that you can only get quality analogue reproduction at very high cost doesn't correspond with my experience).
This isn't, for me, a matter of techno-ideology. I just know what kind of sound I like.
Digital systems by their very nature cannot reproduce a real-world analogue signal perfectly any more than analogue equipment can - digital systems are not perfect, they just distort the signal differently than analogue. So a lot of the statistics you might quote in defence of digital aren't necessarily relevant. Human vision and hearing are *not* digital, nor do they respond to stimuli in a linear fashion. So the distortion inherent in analogue recording and playback might well be less destructive to the perceptual qualities of the medium than a digital process.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
a far easier proposal would be that some company that makes an existing player could license the codec.
I believe Apple have an exclusive agreement so that just isn't possible at present.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
First of all, Apple doesn't even own Sorenson, so stop bashing them without reason.
This is a very misleading statement, if not a bald lie. The reason Sorenson won't open up the codec is because Apple won't let them, it's written into their agreement. Apple are indeed attempting to corner the market in Internet video, which is directly against what most Slashdot readers stand for: open standards. you might not agree but I'm 100% certain you are in the minority at least amongst Slashdot readers.
Anyway, what's with the bad attitude? I mean, all the four-letter words - can't you disagree without being rude and offensive? I think it's fairly obvious to everybody that it's you that needs to grow up.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Your point is well taken. However...
The teacher I referred to went to Brazil for a year during his teacher training studies. Afterwards he also spent time in Ghana and Australia (he was training to be a geography teacher). He took my final year Geography class in high school. Believe me he was one of the best teachers I ever had, his classes were fascinating, he had hundreds of cool slides he'd taken himself, and press cuttings showing articles in the (serious) international press relating to the very things he'd seen. I scored an A in that subject thanks to him.
He didn't really preach about the sleaze in Sao Paulo, he just reported the statistics and showed us his own pictures of life in the shanty towns. The disgust is purely my own.
I hear what you're saying about how it's just isolated events and only in some places - and indeed my teacher's visit to Sao Paulo was way back in the late 1970's. But from what I've seen in the papers since then, neither Sao Paulo nor Rio de Janeiro have changed for the better. The thing that really gets me is the lack of regard Brazilian society apparently has for children.
Are we to consider Brazil a "third world" country?
There can be no excuse for a modern civilised society to allow children to remain homeless, let alone to ignore child murder and child prostitution. This could all be prevented if the Brazilian government - or the Brazilian people - only gave a damn about what was going on under their noses.
Flame away, but that's my stance on the issue.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's fair comment. But my information is not from the newspapers, it came from an old schoolteacher of mine who spent a year living and working there.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Brazil is one depraved country and Sao Paula is truly one of the most evil places on Earth. Apart from all the drug abuse that is.
Homeless orphaned children are routinely gunned down by policemen (the city authorities treat them as a pest). Child prostitution is rife - including children as young as nine or ten years of age. And young men pay plastic surgeons to mutilate them, turning them into "ladyboys" so they can earn more money as prostitutes.
It seems as if the whole country has adopted Rimbaud's nihilism: Nothing is forbidden, everything is permitted. The ultimate in liberalism. Some of you may recognise similarities to the Netherlands (particularly Amsterdam).
The people of that country have seriously lost their way and now their society bears many of the hallmarks some of us associate with hell itself. Will the West go the same way? Will we also, in the name of tolerance and political correctness, relinquish the right to judge others for their behaviour and/or morals?
The police and courts in Brazil will likely jump on game playing because it's practiced by too narrow a section of the population over there to have gained any political protection. Drugs and child prostitution, OTOH, are probably secretly encouraged by their corrupt politicians who derive both revenue and venal pleasure frm both.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
No, what you said is perfectly correct in all important respects. Thought, decision, will, action, all require causality which in implies progress though time.
A being is something which experiences a sequence of internal states, with later states causally related to earlier ones; the passage of time is implicit in our evolving point of view. An information structure without an evolving point of view can hardly be called a 'being' - it's more like an 'is'! That's been at least anticipated in some cultures for thousands of years. The Hebrews called their God YHVH (Jehovah) which, if I'm not mistaken, translates as "I am that I am".
Understanding this doesn't deny the existence of God, but it does mean that God cannot be a 'being' in any meaningful sense. It certainly makes nonsense of the claim that Man was made in God's image, and removes any possibility of a compassionate God likely or able to intervene in individual human affairs. Any stipulations to the contrary found in the Bible must, on that account, be no more than fairy tales laced with understandable anthropomorphism.
Kintanon's glib, mystical cliches ("crystal moment" my ass!) are empty propositions because they cannot be used to draw further conclusions - in other words, there is no way to test his hypothesis. Morover, since he does not claim that his hypothesis is founded upon any repeatable observations, one may infer that his sole justification is that it satisifies Kintanon's spiritual needs.
That's not to say that his position cannot be supported at all. Tipler reached broadly similar conclusions and (despite some excursions into pure speculation) is much more convincing.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
By your definition of God, God=The Universal Wave Function.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
If you want to know about the issues involved in such a journey you ought to read Stephen Baxter's novel "Titan". Damn good story, and the science and technology content is all meticulously researched. The spacecraft used is basically leftover space shuttles from a dying space program, with a few basic modifications.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
There are a couple of theories that suggest life may have got started in conditions
:) ).
similar to the volcanic vents at the bottom of our oceans and not the 'still, warm pond'
than Darwin suggested and that the early Earth was pretty nasty and harsh when life
got started.
As long as chemical reactions can take place, there is probably a chance for *some*
sort of life
The key requirement is that there must be some means of concentrating the reagents to enable chemical reaction to proceed at a significant rate, and to trap the products of these reactions so they are available for further reactions in a loosely anabolic sequence.
The absence of this requirement in early theories of chemical biogenesis led to the charge that not nearly enough time had elapsed for life to have evolved from the simple compounds available in the primordial atmosphere.
Fumaroles on the sea bed not only provide a steady stream of heat and activated molecules, they also supply a rich soup of silicates, and other minerals. I don't know much about the chemistry of these smoker chimneys but I'll bet that the materials deposited around the vent include decent surface catalysts like clays for example. Prior to discovery of the smokers, there were theories that life might have evolved in shallow tidal pools scooped out of clay at the ocean's edge. But it can be no coincidence that the oldest life forms on the planet (the archaeobacteria) are found in and around these fumaroles both below and above ground.
As a side note, most theories still assume that the raw material for organic chemistry came out of the atmosphere. But one scientist I read about recently thinks there is evidence that there are massive quantities of hydrocarbons migrating slowly out from the core of the planet (this is where he thinks our oil and natural gas really comes from), and thus the fumaroles would have their own concentrated supply of reactants. I'm still betting on atmospheric carbon for now though.
(says the non-biologist who has merely read a book or two
I'm an armchair theorist too. What's wrong with that?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Agreed. However, if you go back an read my posts--as I've just done--I never said anything to the contrary. (Well, except in my first post, where I accidentally ommited the PVC and simply refered to 'cortex processing' instead of 'SVC porocessing' and 'temporal lobe' processing.) This little war started when you said the cortex has a direct connection to the retina.
Ah, so when we get down to it do we actually agree on a supportive role of the LGN? And "quality" processing in the cortex? All that flameage was for nothing then. That's the problem with taking a position - one can inadvertently make a remark more extreme than was intended. I myself prefer less, er, polarised debate.
I'm still not sure about the relative importance of feature/motion detection in human retinae (which is where this thread really started). The lowest levels of processing in primate cortex are occupied with precisely what you attribute to the retina. The only animals I *know* for sure to use the retina as a primary feature and motion detection system are amphibians, which don't even have a geniculate body.
It seems to me that *if* there is any similar wiring still present in the human retina then it's probably just a relic, too much trouble to get rid of so to speak, although it might still be used in very primitive subcortical vision pathways well below the LGN (terminating at the superior colliculus). The only retinal wiring I know about for sure is the layer that groups rods with overlapping receptive fields such that a smooth picture can be generated. This is the "packaging" for transmission that you refer to.
This little war started when you said the cortex has a direct connection to the retina.
Well I meant it, but you must have misinterpreted what I meant by "direct". I didn't mean the pathway consisted of a bundle of single unbroken axons in a straight line! I meant it in the same sense that a telephone call is end-to-end even though it passes through switches in at least one telephone exchange; even if there are wiretappers on the line, the conversation itself gets through undistorted.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
True enough, mostly. However, you can make a case for using behavior to discern whether a subject is conscious (e.g. blindsighted people behave differently than either blind or normal people). Such research has been done of reptiles, as reported in, I believe Science News a few months ago.
...people's behavior, abilities, etc, change drastically when they are asked to report about them, vs. when they are simply using them.
...I don't [define consciousness broadly]. Unfortunately, no one, myself included, makes their definition clear at the outset. I define consciousness as being almost synonymous with experience, that is, possessing qualia. I say "almost" because I tend to follow Whitehead in the details.
That said, I have seen no reason why lower mammals, reptiles, and birds, can't be conscious. In fact, if Panksepp and Watt are correct--expirimentally correct, not simply theoretically--then reptiles mark the emergence of consciousness.
I've probably said more about consciousness than I really intended and perhaps even more than I really meant. If you want to know my position on consciousness then have a look at my signature. If you can't be bothered to enable signatures, it's probably enough to know that I believe Daniel Dennett to be one of the very few people making any sense of the subject.
You could save a lot space if you stopping stating things we both know.
Sorry, but you seemed to imply that some blindsight symptoms may be due to having the language centres disconnected. I was merely pointing out why this cannot provide the explanation.
I said it implies a compartmentalized introspective consciousness, one that is lacking information-rich connections beyond the cortex. The blinsighted subjects may be lacking an ability to introspect consciously, while still being able to have 'external' conscious experiences.
That's fairly horrific. You mean that a chunk of rational "thinking" brain is cut off, blind and deaf, whilt the rest of the brain continues experiencing life unaware of its silent passenger? You're going to give me bad dreams mate. At least both halves of a post-surgical epileptic get an roughly equal share of effect and affect. Still, the picture you paint is only speculation isn't it? I have a hard time sometimes figuring out which of your arguments are straw men and which are real.
That's a tricky point because it can be interpreted in two ways. One interpretation is that the problem only appears under unnatural conditions of laboratory testing and so is not quite genuine. This doesn't really explain anything though. The other interpretation is that the problems in reporting experience are a direct consequence of the functional asymmetry of the brain. The experiments are intended to show how the left side doesn't know directly what the right side is doing, and sometimed in particular to show how one hemisphere is inarticulate and the other has a poor visiospatial sense. Which explains the inability to talk about what the inarticulate side is doing quite well IMO.
Speaking as a (semi)professional philosopher, and JCS subscriber, I should probably be insulted.
Don't be. I had this to say about philosophy earlier tonight.
You keep assuming that your opinion has the validity of objective fact, to the extent that you will deny any and all evidence I present.
I'm not "denying" the "evidence". I just don't place the same interpretation on these observations as you do. And I hardly regard it as uniquely "my opinion". I didn't make this stuff up myself.
This is ridiculous. Are you so unwilling to lose this argument that you would actually claim that every description of the visual system I've found (there were many I didn't include above) is wrong? Look at the last link I tossed re: the LGN (labeled "This"). That is an anatomical description of the visual paths from the retina. Not a theory, nor a proposal for research. A simple description of what connections exist, and where they go.
These are apparently college lecture notes. Not exactly authoritative. And they are brief to the point of obfuscation. For example the section "LGN->Primary Visual Cortex" doesn't make explicit on which end of that pathway the "primal sketch" is formed or if it's even known. I can see how you might have been led astray if your reading did not include certain earlier cortical research.
Skepticism is one thing, but you're bordering outright solipsism.
*sigh*. And you started out so well. I'm finding this constant hostility a bit wearing but I'll try to ignore it just one more time.
The important thing is that you don't admit to the limited scope of the descriptions to which you're referring. They omit to mention (perhaps because it's generally so well known from classic empirical studies and therefore assumed) that the visual field is also represented to the Primary Visual Cortex in its entirety and in all the available retinal detail. If you're still demanding citations, I'm sorry but this is so elementary you're only going to find them in freshman neurology textbooks, which I no longer have.
Everybody knows it goes through the Lateral Geniculate Body, so what? It does not change the fact that the Primary Visual Cortex gets *all* the retinal data in a mostly raw form. The LGN does not need to generate that information since it is already available in a suitable format at the LGN's inputs. The information that came from the retinae is simply forwarded more or less "as is". Even though modulated to some degree the full extent of which is still an open question. Even though the LGN also sends its own higher-order information to the PVC, eg maybe some depth processing information.
Nor does the presence of simple visual processing pathways in the LGN change the fact that the Primary Visual Cortex possesses much more detailed and extensive visual processing equipment better suited to processing high resolution "conscious" vision from, for want of a better term, a pixel-by-pixel basis upward.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's an absurd comment. Everyone knows that stock prices these days aren't driven by the price of the company... they're driven by supply and demand.
That's precisely my point. The intrinsic value of the company has nothing to do with it. The stock price is driven by confidence in the market. When that gets shaky because of perceived risks, the bottom falls out.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
My feelings exactly. You put that very well. Your other respondent "Saige" points out that investigating the unknown is precisely what scientists are for. But in your words, "dicking around with things they know very little of" the word "things" implicitly refers to powerful, dangerous things that they don't even know for sure that they can control. Things that could hurt us all if it goes badly.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Sure, some educated people turn to religion but most do not - it's mainly the province of the poor and undereducated these days.
Maybe it was always so; just a couple of hundred years ago atheism carried horrific penalties in most Christian countries (some Islamic countries are still like that of course). So most atheists would have kept quiet about it anyway.
My contention is that the default belief system for the educated in our society today is secular. People who are unhappy or confused about their place in life will sometimes turn to religion if it is readily available. But if the poor were educated, and the number of believers dwindled, there soon wouldn't be any organised religions to speak of. Inevitably a lot of those unhappy people who today turn to religion would then more readily find something else to turn to.
Don't believe it can't happen; belief systems lose popularity and finally disappear to be replaced by something else. It has occurred again and again throughout history.
I'm not against God BTW, I'm just against superstition and ignorance.
--
With regard to philosophy, it's not essentially anti-scientific. Science was once regarded as a branch of philosophy, it still is really in that it contains its own axioms and its own system of logic. The basic methodology was laid down by Sir Karl Popper who was himself a philosopher. Science is still policed by epistemiology which is about the nature of knowledge, whether, how and what we can know, and whether we can know that we know.
Another branch of philosophy important to scientists is ontology, the only tool we possess for the exploration of the unobservable: the quantum realm, the origin and ultimate fate of the universe; what lies beyond it in other dimensions. Even the nature of ourselves, our consciousness.
In its most general sense, philosophy is the science of how to think in a rational manner.
When I was a young man I thought all philosophy was all meaningless twaddle. This was basically due to a fault in my education, I'd simply not been shown anything really interesting. Since then however I've seen a lot of really thought provoking stuff right at the bleeding edge of scientific discourse.
So I believe teaching philosophy in our schools would be a good thing. It would make people learn to think rationally for themselves. If it ever made them "lose faith in science" it would only be for the right reasons, in injecting a healthy modicum of scepticism and enabling everybody to make up their own minds logically about the latest proposed experiment.
That would be better than the typical responses seen today: whether blindly assuming the scientists know what they are doing and have everyone's best interests at heart; or obediently accepting the condemnations handed down by their high priest; or recoiling in simple ignorance and fear.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction