Well, there has been some philosophy of science since, and much of it has been realist.
This is an option that, if workable, is preferable. Many philosophers of science believe it is workable -although admittedly, some don't.
> The worst, that could happen for a physicist, would be that the observations could be explained with GR.
This kind of (extremely common) remarks strike me as frivolous. It is one thing to say that physicists enjoy being disproved, because this shows the length of the road ahead; it is another thing to say that physicists would hate to attain knowledge in one particular area or other. Science is in the business of securing truths, not in the business of idly advancing ever-refutable theories.
At least in Spain, where I live, it is not illegal to copy copyrighted material if it is for non-for-profit, personal use. More precisely, judges sistematically dismiss complaints by copyright owners in those cases.
Me, instead, I think of Asimov's "The Last Question". In that story the journey "towards the light", or some such, begins when humankind learns how to obtain energy directly from the Sun; inserting a plug in the yellow ball so to speak. This happens in year 2056, so there you are.
Something a bit more serious: even if one of these grandiose schemes works, it is not the solution. What we need is not a forfait for endless energy-consumption, but to reduce it: unlimited energy goes with unlimited waste.
It is slightly sad to see people concentrating their efforts in trying to keep the resource-depleting party on forever.
The Nature Podcast -which, by the way, all of you nerds should listen to if you do not already do- covered this story some three weeks ago. They say Titan. Their reasons are, roughly:
* Although Europa is our best bet for an independent origin of life -life on Mars may share causes with life of Earth- studying this would involve intimate measuring below the surface. Drilling in Europa, though, may be a century, and not just two or three decades, away.
* A Titan mission, although unlikely to find life, may more easily and more thoroughly study the surface of the satellite. This has to do with Titan's atmosphere, and the possibility of launching a hot-air balloon to map the surface.
* The third reason: hot-air ballons are cool and romantic. Also, we could for the first time devise a floating lander. More fun and romanticism. Floating on lakes may be a one-off, but ballooning may be useful for many other cellestial bodies in the Solar System.
Aeronautical designs do reproduce: It is neither merely by chance, nor because they are responses to the same engineering problems, that planes are similar to one another. It is, rather, that good designs serve as the starting point for other designs, which copy well-tested features of the former. The keyword here is "copy".
I don't think many popular science writers, or whoever it is that shapes the public understanding of scientific issues, have read, let alone endorse, The Origin of Species. It is truer that most of them do endorse the so-called Modern Synthesis, a synthesis between evolution-theoretic ideas and genetics, which cristallised around the mid-40s and is, arguably, not the last word in the theory of evolution. But I don't see how having Darwin's name associated -in all justice- to the Modern Synthesis cluster is any more harmful to the theory than having Einstein's name associated -in all justice- to the theory of relativity.
On the other hand, from TFA:
"Using phrases like "Darwinian selection" or "Darwinian evolution" implies there must be another kind of evolution at work, a process that can be described with another adjective. For instance, "Newtonian physics" distinguishes the mechanical physics Newton explored from subatomic quantum physics. So "Darwinian evolution" raises a question: What's the other evolution?
Into the breach: intelligent design."
Of course. This is just as it should be. Intelligent design is a powerful source of evolution. Or how does the writer think Airbuses emerged from the Wright brothers' prototype? The passage I just quoted implies that there is no legitimate evolution that is not Darwinian. This is plain silly.
Apparently, winter of 2009 will be one of the coldest in the last 30 or 40 years. Many people is saying that we should find such extreme temperatures increasingly common as a result of global warming.
Is it impossible that this particular result is being publicised to remind the general public that we have been like this before in history, and that global warming may not be to blame as regards are current weather? At the very least, I am afraid this piece of news may have this as a result.
It is remarkable that not a single post in this thread has been modded below +4. Really all of them are that interesting, or is it rather that/.ers find this issue particularly Interesting, Insightful and Funny?
Many people (I venture to say that the majority, in the US) think that business success is a clear sign of overall excellence. A extreme version of this line of thought is Calvin's doctrine that worldly success was a clear sign of being pre-destined for salvation. Mutatis mutandis with Microsoft and being the saviour of higher education.
There is no justification for Calvin's version of this idea, neither is there for most of its contemporary counterparts.
The summary (and TFA as well) seem to be committed to the following two points:
1. Finite state machines will be unrealistically simple when simulating emotional responses.
2. Behavioural-feedback is a necessary condition for realistic emotional displays.
Point number 1 is unwarranted. Finite state machines may elaborate their input at an arbitrarily high level of complexity -finite may still be very large. Part of such an elaboration, of course, may be inner transitions between states that effectively amount to behavioural-feedback. There is nothing intrinsically un-dynamic to FSM.
I love Wii; actually, I'm currently giving my life away to Super Mario Galaxy. But, having said that, I think this initiative is a clear case of overgadgetting. When playing Wii Fit, one already feels stupid when "jogging around Wii island" - that is, running on the spot with the Wii Controller in your pocket- but, making it part of a corporate health package? Come on. There must be some better use for that money. Better dental coverage, for instance, or whatever.
Why do you people assume that drilling is our best shot against an asteroid? Despite Armaggedon, it is not.
Somewhat more likely, apparently, we may send an
aircraft to travel near the asteroid and try to use its small but constant gravitational pull to modify its course.
Galileo discovered the law of inertia and formulated the equations of uniformly accelerated movement, helped improve the telescope and the microscope, described the orbits of Jupiter's satellites and, apparently, drew a map of the Moon.
On the other hand, Thomas Harriot drew a better, earlier map of the Moon.
In conclusion, and given that we know who Galileo is, it is a historical injustice that we don't know who Thomas Harriot is.
Somehow the conclusion does not seem to follow, does it.
The note only says that if you are familiar with Blue-ray rips found on BitTorrent sites you will instantly recognise Matroska + H.264. No "automatic equality" is involved in this (largely correct) claim, that I see.
And, yes, anyone familiar with BitTorrent will instantly recognise pirated software -some prefer to talk of software being shared, what with no pirates being involved in the activity.
I think you are right, and I made my point in a careless way. I stand corrected.
It is nevertheless still the case that scientists tend to think these days that computer simulations do explanatory work of the other kind. It is still an interesting question: do computer simulations provide evidence at all that some events in the real world have turned out one way or another?
There is something wrong but interesting about the idea that a computer simulation can explain what happened in a real-life incident. In the normal usage of "explain", only causally-related events can explain other events.
There is undoubtedly something to the contention that a computer simulation does some explanatory work, but it must be in a roundabout way. Maybe this: the computer simulation provides evidence to the effect that some prior event was able to cause the known outcome; but then it is the prior event (the bad choice of spin rate in this case) that explains the loss of the Beagle 2, not the computer simulation.
Those myths are useful because teachesr, just like doctors, are way lower in public appreciation and social status than they should be.
Both these occupations I've just mentioned -and a bunch of others, to be sure- are fundamental for a society to get going, but somehow we have managed to hold in greater steem Procter and Gamble Brand Managers and (until recently, at least) Wall Street brokers.
Doctors prevent people from dying; teachers teach people how to read. Some praise of their jobs is simply a small step towards setting the record straight.
So, democracy is fascism too, right? What with putting the interest of the community -as expressed by its elected representatives- as prioritary to the interest of its individual members, and stuff.
Your answer implies that:
It is true that depriving someone of something makes them a victim even if it doesn't leave them struggling to survive, only if we accept premise "sharing is immoral" as true.
I can't see the relation between consequent and antecedent there.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, there has been some philosophy of science since, and much of it has been realist.
This is an option that, if workable, is preferable. Many philosophers of science believe it is workable -although admittedly, some don't.
> The worst, that could happen for a physicist, would be that the observations could be explained with GR.
This kind of (extremely common) remarks strike me as frivolous. It is one thing to say that physicists enjoy being disproved, because this shows the length of the road ahead; it is another thing to say that physicists would hate to attain knowledge in one particular area or other. Science is in the business of securing truths, not in the business of idly advancing ever-refutable theories.
Not that I wish to start a heady argument, but I doubt the result of replacing your brain with a chip would still be you.
At least in Spain, where I live, it is not illegal to copy copyrighted material if it is for non-for-profit, personal use. More precisely, judges sistematically dismiss complaints by copyright owners in those cases.
Let us hope it remains so.
Me, instead, I think of Asimov's "The Last Question". In that story the journey "towards the light", or some such, begins when humankind learns how to obtain energy directly from the Sun; inserting a plug in the yellow ball so to speak. This happens in year 2056, so there you are.
Something a bit more serious: even if one of these grandiose schemes works, it is not the solution. What we need is not a forfait for endless energy-consumption, but to reduce it: unlimited energy goes with unlimited waste.
It is slightly sad to see people concentrating their efforts in trying to keep the resource-depleting party on forever.
The Nature Podcast -which, by the way, all of you nerds should listen to if you do not already do- covered this story some three weeks ago. They say Titan. Their reasons are, roughly:
* Although Europa is our best bet for an independent origin of life -life on Mars may share causes with life of Earth- studying this would involve intimate measuring below the surface. Drilling in Europa, though, may be a century, and not just two or three decades, away.
* A Titan mission, although unlikely to find life, may more easily and more thoroughly study the surface of the satellite. This has to do with Titan's atmosphere, and the possibility of launching a hot-air balloon to map the surface.
* The third reason: hot-air ballons are cool and romantic. Also, we could for the first time devise a floating lander. More fun and romanticism. Floating on lakes may be a one-off, but ballooning may be useful for many other cellestial bodies in the Solar System.
So, Titan.
Aeronautical designs do reproduce: It is neither merely by chance, nor because they are responses to the same engineering problems, that planes are similar to one another. It is, rather, that good designs serve as the starting point for other designs, which copy well-tested features of the former. The keyword here is "copy".
I don't think many popular science writers, or whoever it is that shapes the public understanding of scientific issues, have read, let alone endorse, The Origin of Species. It is truer that most of them do endorse the so-called Modern Synthesis, a synthesis between evolution-theoretic ideas and genetics, which cristallised around the mid-40s and is, arguably, not the last word in the theory of evolution. But I don't see how having Darwin's name associated -in all justice- to the Modern Synthesis cluster is any more harmful to the theory than having Einstein's name associated -in all justice- to the theory of relativity.
On the other hand, from TFA:
"Using phrases like "Darwinian selection" or "Darwinian evolution" implies there must be another kind of evolution at work, a process that can be described with another adjective. For instance, "Newtonian physics" distinguishes the mechanical physics Newton explored from subatomic quantum physics. So "Darwinian evolution" raises a question: What's the other evolution?
Into the breach: intelligent design."
Of course. This is just as it should be. Intelligent design is a powerful source of evolution. Or how does the writer think Airbuses emerged from the Wright brothers' prototype? The passage I just quoted implies that there is no legitimate evolution that is not Darwinian. This is plain silly.
Apparently, winter of 2009 will be one of the coldest in the last 30 or 40 years. Many people is saying that we should find such extreme temperatures increasingly common as a result of global warming.
Is it impossible that this particular result is being publicised to remind the general public that we have been like this before in history, and that global warming may not be to blame as regards are current weather? At the very least, I am afraid this piece of news may have this as a result.
It is remarkable that not a single post in this thread has been modded below +4. Really all of them are that interesting, or is it rather that /.ers find this issue particularly Interesting, Insightful and Funny?
Many people (I venture to say that the majority, in the US) think that business success is a clear sign of overall excellence. A extreme version of this line of thought is Calvin's doctrine that worldly success was a clear sign of being pre-destined for salvation. Mutatis mutandis with Microsoft and being the saviour of higher education.
There is no justification for Calvin's version of this idea, neither is there for most of its contemporary counterparts.
Maybe initiatives such as these increase the audience's awareness of anonymous P2P.
That would be not completely unfunny.
The summary (and TFA as well) seem to be committed to the following two points:
1. Finite state machines will be unrealistically simple when simulating emotional responses.
2. Behavioural-feedback is a necessary condition for realistic emotional displays.
Point number 1 is unwarranted. Finite state machines may elaborate their input at an arbitrarily high level of complexity -finite may still be very large. Part of such an elaboration, of course, may be inner transitions between states that effectively amount to behavioural-feedback. There is nothing intrinsically un-dynamic to FSM.
I love Wii; actually, I'm currently giving my life away to Super Mario Galaxy. But, having said that, I think this initiative is a clear case of overgadgetting. When playing Wii Fit, one already feels stupid when "jogging around Wii island" - that is, running on the spot with the Wii Controller in your pocket- but, making it part of a corporate health package? Come on. There must be some better use for that money. Better dental coverage, for instance, or whatever.
Why do you people assume that drilling is our best shot against an asteroid? Despite Armaggedon, it is not.
Somewhat more likely, apparently, we may send an aircraft to travel near the asteroid and try to use its small but constant gravitational pull to modify its course.
Galileo discovered the law of inertia and formulated the equations of uniformly accelerated movement, helped improve the telescope and the microscope, described the orbits of Jupiter's satellites and, apparently, drew a map of the Moon.
On the other hand, Thomas Harriot drew a better, earlier map of the Moon.
In conclusion, and given that we know who Galileo is, it is a historical injustice that we don't know who Thomas Harriot is.
Somehow the conclusion does not seem to follow, does it.
The note only says that if you are familiar with Blue-ray rips found on BitTorrent sites you will instantly recognise Matroska + H.264. No "automatic equality" is involved in this (largely correct) claim, that I see.
And, yes, anyone familiar with BitTorrent will instantly recognise pirated software -some prefer to talk of software being shared, what with no pirates being involved in the activity.
I think you are right, and I made my point in a careless way. I stand corrected.
It is nevertheless still the case that scientists tend to think these days that computer simulations do explanatory work of the other kind. It is still an interesting question: do computer simulations provide evidence at all that some events in the real world have turned out one way or another?
There is something wrong but interesting about the idea that a computer simulation can explain what happened in a real-life incident. In the normal usage of "explain", only causally-related events can explain other events.
There is undoubtedly something to the contention that a computer simulation does some explanatory work, but it must be in a roundabout way. Maybe this: the computer simulation provides evidence to the effect that some prior event was able to cause the known outcome; but then it is the prior event (the bad choice of spin rate in this case) that explains the loss of the Beagle 2, not the computer simulation.
Those myths are useful because teachesr, just like doctors, are way lower in public appreciation and social status than they should be.
Both these occupations I've just mentioned -and a bunch of others, to be sure- are fundamental for a society to get going, but somehow we have managed to hold in greater steem Procter and Gamble Brand Managers and (until recently, at least) Wall Street brokers.
Doctors prevent people from dying; teachers teach people how to read. Some praise of their jobs is simply a small step towards setting the record straight.
Wait, we are still in "Intrepid Ibex"; then a J, a K, an L and then yeah: might well be the Mighty Mammoth.
Finite but small? Finite but big, fine. Infinite but small, fine. Finite and small, fine. Finite but small, no sir.
So, democracy is fascism too, right? What with putting the interest of the community -as expressed by its elected representatives- as prioritary to the interest of its individual members, and stuff.
Your answer implies that: It is true that depriving someone of something makes them a victim even if it doesn't leave them struggling to survive, only if we accept premise "sharing is immoral" as true. I can't see the relation between consequent and antecedent there.
That's what I thought when reading about not-too-small, changing magnetic fields beneath your hand. Does anybody know if this would be a real issue?