This is a very good observation. Wish I had mod points. I've seen the same thing with Tech companies in general: if you're not growing q/q then you're "dying" in the eyes of the investment analysts. So even though your company may be stable and have good market share, and has managed to stay afloat, if you're not growing then they're taking their money elsewhere.
I'm part of an award-winning writer's group, and several of the members swear by this book. They follow it meticulously--and it isn't even the first to do this. The Warrior's Journey describes how Disney and Pixar created all their big masterpieces, and then takes that technique and applies it to novel writing. And then there's the Nora Roberts/James Patterson formulaic ghost-writers, plus the Harlequin series, any of Dan Brown's books; heck 90% of the entire fiction market follows a formula similar to Save The Cat. Formulaic writing is nothing new. Authors and screenwriters follow this like it's a religion--they cling to to the formula because they fervently believe it's the best chance they have of getting their work published. Fortunately, there are two mitigating factors that I've found: 1) a good idea is a good idea and even a plot-writing formula won't ruin it; and 2) good writing is good writing.
I'm retarded. Please explain to me what the workaround is that the Patriot Act allowed. And also, please explain to me why the majority of the American people, liberal and conservative, both approved of the bill, and continue to approve of it. Also, please explain to me why an armed march on Washington will immediately result in better conditions and not drive our country into a chaotic free-fall and civil war--or are we the divine exception to the rule?
is that the social scientists, counselors, psychologists, and all the other people who specialized in the humanities are the ones who have to pick up the pieces after the scientists and engineers fall victim to depression, or discover that life isn't fair and cannot be reasoned with. No amount of logic or reason in the world will help with a major clinical depression, or grief after a loved one dies (or decides that he/she is sick of you and doesn't love you anymore). It enrages me that the same people who insist that logic and reason are supreme, are the same ones who tell a person suffering from clinical depression to "snap out" of it, or simply reason their way out. Science, logic, and reason are no antidote to the vast storms of emotional pain that come with death, divorce, and the random accidents of life. Such things require people who can embrace doubt, ambiguity, and flat-out paradoxical paradigms of emotion and half-truths. I just wish engineers and scientists and materialists of all sorts would give a little more credence and acceptance to those who choose to go into the humanities. Because sooner or later, a situation will arise where logic, reason, and rationality won't be of any help at all. And that's where the humanities step in.
There's plenty of data both pro and con about sending a probe to explore and the timeline necessary. Has anyone ever thought about seeing if perhaps another race has sent a probe at us? And if so, how would we spot it?
Anonymous, you will NEVER solve the problems you are indirectly referring to. Poverty, war, crime, environmental pollution: those are inevitable byproducts of existence itself. Not to mention that you fail to take into account the greatest random factor of them all: human stupidity. Stopping our march to space and spending money to solve problems here at home is the most futile fallacial notion ever; because you will waste more money trying to correct for human stupidity and the inevitable results of existential chaos than you ever would in building capability to get into deep space. Those problems will never be solved--but putting permanent encampments of humans on the Moon and beyond CAN.
Do it to me. I'll make my invisible big brother wish he or she could sell everything and go Amish inside of a month. Do you know how many LEGAL actions are possible within the privacy of my own home? That I can do in the full knowledge that you'll HAVE to watch them? This goes both ways you know, what you see you can't unsee and at some point I can guarantee you I'll make you take everything out just so you never have to see any of it again.
Replying to undo my accidental mod because you made a damn good point here. Too many people are in the cult of "Perfection upon initial demand" and do not take into account that iterations are often needed to achieve a maximally optimal solution.
They're referring to the battles between the Ummah at Medina and the pagans at Mecca. And in those cases, Muhammed wasn't the actual general. There were others who directed the campaigns.
Yeaaaaaah... I have. And my point still stands. Emperor-worship is emperor-worship, only instead of the Pope you have Jesus Christ the Super-White Son of God And Lord Supreme Of All (a la Revelation--which, btw, wasn't written by the Apostle John, it was written by St. John of Patmos). Have you taken a look at the way Evangelical philosophy is swaying modern religious dogma these days?
Dude, your entire response proves my point: I'm NOT a mathematician, I don't know these things, and I'm still trying to comprehend them. That's why I'm asking the question. Please don't get pedantic on me--my ignorance is genuine and not due to stupidity.
As I am not a mathematician, I can safely assure you I was indeed ignoring relativity and curved space:o) Even though right now I'm traveling along a curved path in spacetime around an immense gravity well, the result of which is slowly propelling me through time faster than I would be if I were seated at the center of the Earth.
You're responding to someone who is definitely NOT a mathematician here. What I was trying to convey was that prior to that revelation, I had no concept of unary, base 0, base 1, base 2, etc. All I knew was that Mathematics worked because of arabic numbers . THAT'S IT. That's all I knew--just stop for a moment to grasp the depth of this ignorance. I didn't know why it worked, and I had no context in which to even imagine being able to ask "why" it worked. It just did--and that was the limit of my experience. Then I learned about the concept of base-X computing and how mathematics itself can vary depending on the base used. This is why I'm using the base analogy to think about QC; it's because I'm wondering if there are applications that are so far outside our ken that I can't even conceive of, that QC would be perfect for.
The irony of this is that the Prophet Muhammed fought explicitly against this kind of behavior in his wars against the Arab pagans. Before Muhammed, Arab culture was drowning in "Jahiliyah", which is best understood as extremist machismo. Arab chieftains would think nothing of acting violently and completely out of context/overreact to any insult, real or perceived. They would commit acts similar to what occurred in London: beheading a fellow tribe member for looking at them wrong, proclaiming a blood feud over a trifle--all in the name of being a leader and being a "man's man". Women had only the rights and privileges that men allowed them--which in those times varied wildly. If a woman was part of a bedouin tribe, she was merely property and forced to be part of a polygamous society (and as far as the whole 9 year old girl thing--that was exceptionally common amongst most cultures in that time period, and it was the de-facto standard in Arab tribal life); if she lived in Mecca or one of the few Arab cities, she had a chance at wealth and education. What Muhammed did (leaving Allah out of this) was introduce a counter-culture where women and men were on separate, yet equal footing, and deprogrammed the extreme masculinity. The wars between Mecca and Medina were all about this, and eventually Muhammed won out. Except that after his death, the Arab culture slowly subsumed and altered Islam, because culture always subsumes religion (and not the other way around; modern Christianity is nothing more than Emperor-worship a la Rome).
And now I'm going to violate the One True Scotsman rule, and say that what happened in London was a complete barbarity, and Muslims should be ashamed because they have allowed the worst aspects of Arab culture to redefine the words of the Prophet--it's as the critics of Islam say on here now: Islam as it is now, needs to either be destroyed or thoroughly reformed because it no longer reflects the will of Allah and the Prophet.
Now that I've RTFA and through the commentary threads, as a dumb ignorant layperson I get why Scott Aaronsen is right to call out D-Wave. I also get the counter-argument that there needs to be some sort of hype in order to sustain interest in QC. And, the damn thing's got to work eventually. What I'm wondering though is this: Are we (as a society) making an error in trying to use QC to solve problems that are particular to classical computing?
The reason I ask is that a while back on/. I was educated about the nature of Base-10 computing. Prior to this, I'd spent my entire life thinking that Base-10 WAS mathematics, and I'd had no reason to assume or even imagine that there could be any other type of mathematics than Base-10. Base-10 was the pinnacle of mathematics to me. Then I find out that Base-10 is probably the most efficient to date for our society, but that it is not the only way to count; and that Pi is only Pi because of Base-10. Which led me to look at mathematics in a whole new light. Similar with Quantum mechanics--the more I understand about Quantum Mechanics, the more I realize that I have to set aside everything I know about Newtonian physics, because trying to understand quantum physics from a newtonian perspective will always result in failure--while there is a bridge between the two, if I don't take that "bridge" into account then I'm metaphorically trying to judge apples based on my prior experience in dog shows.
Given this, is it fair to hold QC to the same standards as Classical Computing, or should we be looking at entirely new applications of computing? And, is there anyone out there who's staring into the vast unknown and saying "What happens if we do THIS with a QC?"
But if we don't ask "what if", how is there any advancement? Yes, we'd most likely be wrong--it's only through error do we find the truth. What I fail to understand is how science advances without speculation?
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This is excellent trolling, please mod up.
This is a very good observation. Wish I had mod points. I've seen the same thing with Tech companies in general: if you're not growing q/q then you're "dying" in the eyes of the investment analysts. So even though your company may be stable and have good market share, and has managed to stay afloat, if you're not growing then they're taking their money elsewhere.
Spray yourself with WD-40 and do a dozen Hail Stahlmans.
I read this as, "Spay yourself with WD-40 and do a dozen Hail Stahlmans" and fell out of my chair laughing.
I'm part of an award-winning writer's group, and several of the members swear by this book. They follow it meticulously--and it isn't even the first to do this. The Warrior's Journey describes how Disney and Pixar created all their big masterpieces, and then takes that technique and applies it to novel writing. And then there's the Nora Roberts/James Patterson formulaic ghost-writers, plus the Harlequin series, any of Dan Brown's books; heck 90% of the entire fiction market follows a formula similar to Save The Cat. Formulaic writing is nothing new. Authors and screenwriters follow this like it's a religion--they cling to to the formula because they fervently believe it's the best chance they have of getting their work published. Fortunately, there are two mitigating factors that I've found: 1) a good idea is a good idea and even a plot-writing formula won't ruin it; and 2) good writing is good writing.
I'm retarded. Please explain to me what the workaround is that the Patriot Act allowed. And also, please explain to me why the majority of the American people, liberal and conservative, both approved of the bill, and continue to approve of it. Also, please explain to me why an armed march on Washington will immediately result in better conditions and not drive our country into a chaotic free-fall and civil war--or are we the divine exception to the rule?
is that the social scientists, counselors, psychologists, and all the other people who specialized in the humanities are the ones who have to pick up the pieces after the scientists and engineers fall victim to depression, or discover that life isn't fair and cannot be reasoned with. No amount of logic or reason in the world will help with a major clinical depression, or grief after a loved one dies (or decides that he/she is sick of you and doesn't love you anymore). It enrages me that the same people who insist that logic and reason are supreme, are the same ones who tell a person suffering from clinical depression to "snap out" of it, or simply reason their way out. Science, logic, and reason are no antidote to the vast storms of emotional pain that come with death, divorce, and the random accidents of life. Such things require people who can embrace doubt, ambiguity, and flat-out paradoxical paradigms of emotion and half-truths. I just wish engineers and scientists and materialists of all sorts would give a little more credence and acceptance to those who choose to go into the humanities. Because sooner or later, a situation will arise where logic, reason, and rationality won't be of any help at all. And that's where the humanities step in.
problem is, most people need a religion, and so they make Science a religion instead of adopting it as a thought process.
He may be flaming, but he's got a very good point about the mechanics of international trade.
There's plenty of data both pro and con about sending a probe to explore and the timeline necessary. Has anyone ever thought about seeing if perhaps another race has sent a probe at us? And if so, how would we spot it?
Anonymous, you will NEVER solve the problems you are indirectly referring to. Poverty, war, crime, environmental pollution: those are inevitable byproducts of existence itself. Not to mention that you fail to take into account the greatest random factor of them all: human stupidity. Stopping our march to space and spending money to solve problems here at home is the most futile fallacial notion ever; because you will waste more money trying to correct for human stupidity and the inevitable results of existential chaos than you ever would in building capability to get into deep space. Those problems will never be solved--but putting permanent encampments of humans on the Moon and beyond CAN.
Our sun is nothing more than a very, VERY large radioactive compost pile?
Do it to me. I'll make my invisible big brother wish he or she could sell everything and go Amish inside of a month. Do you know how many LEGAL actions are possible within the privacy of my own home? That I can do in the full knowledge that you'll HAVE to watch them? This goes both ways you know, what you see you can't unsee and at some point I can guarantee you I'll make you take everything out just so you never have to see any of it again.
Replying to undo my accidental mod because you made a damn good point here. Too many people are in the cult of "Perfection upon initial demand" and do not take into account that iterations are often needed to achieve a maximally optimal solution.
They're referring to the battles between the Ummah at Medina and the pagans at Mecca. And in those cases, Muhammed wasn't the actual general. There were others who directed the campaigns.
Yeaaaaaah... I have. And my point still stands. Emperor-worship is emperor-worship, only instead of the Pope you have Jesus Christ the Super-White Son of God And Lord Supreme Of All (a la Revelation--which, btw, wasn't written by the Apostle John, it was written by St. John of Patmos). Have you taken a look at the way Evangelical philosophy is swaying modern religious dogma these days?
Dude, your entire response proves my point: I'm NOT a mathematician, I don't know these things, and I'm still trying to comprehend them. That's why I'm asking the question. Please don't get pedantic on me--my ignorance is genuine and not due to stupidity.
One thing: Muhammed _wasn't_ a tribal warrior. He was an illiterate son of a city merchant who married well. He also had epilepsy.
Shit, I think I understood that. I better go buy myself some hiking shoes... I need to stare out into vast distances now...
As I am not a mathematician, I can safely assure you I was indeed ignoring relativity and curved space :o) Even though right now I'm traveling along a curved path in spacetime around an immense gravity well, the result of which is slowly propelling me through time faster than I would be if I were seated at the center of the Earth.
You're responding to someone who is definitely NOT a mathematician here. What I was trying to convey was that prior to that revelation, I had no concept of unary, base 0, base 1, base 2, etc. All I knew was that Mathematics worked because of arabic numbers . THAT'S IT. That's all I knew--just stop for a moment to grasp the depth of this ignorance. I didn't know why it worked, and I had no context in which to even imagine being able to ask "why" it worked. It just did--and that was the limit of my experience. Then I learned about the concept of base-X computing and how mathematics itself can vary depending on the base used. This is why I'm using the base analogy to think about QC; it's because I'm wondering if there are applications that are so far outside our ken that I can't even conceive of, that QC would be perfect for.
The irony of this is that the Prophet Muhammed fought explicitly against this kind of behavior in his wars against the Arab pagans. Before Muhammed, Arab culture was drowning in "Jahiliyah", which is best understood as extremist machismo. Arab chieftains would think nothing of acting violently and completely out of context/overreact to any insult, real or perceived. They would commit acts similar to what occurred in London: beheading a fellow tribe member for looking at them wrong, proclaiming a blood feud over a trifle--all in the name of being a leader and being a "man's man". Women had only the rights and privileges that men allowed them--which in those times varied wildly. If a woman was part of a bedouin tribe, she was merely property and forced to be part of a polygamous society (and as far as the whole 9 year old girl thing--that was exceptionally common amongst most cultures in that time period, and it was the de-facto standard in Arab tribal life); if she lived in Mecca or one of the few Arab cities, she had a chance at wealth and education. What Muhammed did (leaving Allah out of this) was introduce a counter-culture where women and men were on separate, yet equal footing, and deprogrammed the extreme masculinity. The wars between Mecca and Medina were all about this, and eventually Muhammed won out. Except that after his death, the Arab culture slowly subsumed and altered Islam, because culture always subsumes religion (and not the other way around; modern Christianity is nothing more than Emperor-worship a la Rome).
And now I'm going to violate the One True Scotsman rule, and say that what happened in London was a complete barbarity, and Muslims should be ashamed because they have allowed the worst aspects of Arab culture to redefine the words of the Prophet--it's as the critics of Islam say on here now: Islam as it is now, needs to either be destroyed or thoroughly reformed because it no longer reflects the will of Allah and the Prophet.
Now that I've RTFA and through the commentary threads, as a dumb ignorant layperson I get why Scott Aaronsen is right to call out D-Wave. I also get the counter-argument that there needs to be some sort of hype in order to sustain interest in QC. And, the damn thing's got to work eventually. What I'm wondering though is this: Are we (as a society) making an error in trying to use QC to solve problems that are particular to classical computing?
The reason I ask is that a while back on /. I was educated about the nature of Base-10 computing. Prior to this, I'd spent my entire life thinking that Base-10 WAS mathematics, and I'd had no reason to assume or even imagine that there could be any other type of mathematics than Base-10. Base-10 was the pinnacle of mathematics to me. Then I find out that Base-10 is probably the most efficient to date for our society, but that it is not the only way to count; and that Pi is only Pi because of Base-10. Which led me to look at mathematics in a whole new light. Similar with Quantum mechanics--the more I understand about Quantum Mechanics, the more I realize that I have to set aside everything I know about Newtonian physics, because trying to understand quantum physics from a newtonian perspective will always result in failure--while there is a bridge between the two, if I don't take that "bridge" into account then I'm metaphorically trying to judge apples based on my prior experience in dog shows.
Given this, is it fair to hold QC to the same standards as Classical Computing, or should we be looking at entirely new applications of computing? And, is there anyone out there who's staring into the vast unknown and saying "What happens if we do THIS with a QC?"
I have read the Constitution, and I still side with Amiga. Why do you think you're THAT important?
But if we don't ask "what if", how is there any advancement? Yes, we'd most likely be wrong--it's only through error do we find the truth. What I fail to understand is how science advances without speculation?
I... cannot argue with this. LOL!!!!