No, no...I was confused at his post too (wow this guy reads too much SF!) but then I realized that his first statement is not about the existence of advanced civilisations, but rather suggests that an advanced civilisation will have more of the tools and ability to solve these problems. He is suggesting that WE need to focus on such efforts as nanotechnology and such, because once we're one of those `high tech civilisations', doing physics will be easier. To an extent I think he's got a point; we can certainly do much better physics now than Gallileo (if only because of apparati), and nanotechnology may indeed allow us to build larger (or smaller) and more stable structures, which may be necessary to directly detect some of the more elusive universal secrets.
Oh noes! So, what if someone with some REAL terrorist intentions got ahold of one of these radios, and actually did his research, and got on the ATC frequency and navigated a plane into something important like
I don't see why your qualification of LA leads to your conclusion that how it is, is how it must be. Have you ever heard of Tokyo? Even more so than LA, it is cities within cities, back to back, for hundreds of kilometers. And THEY seem to do just fine (though, granted, it takes more than "two light rail systems and a couple of buses"). Your point regarding deliveries, services, etc. is taken (and it is indeed true that this is the case in Tokyo as well--deliveries are done by people in personal vehicles, be they mopeds or trucks), but the primary mode of moving people is public transportation. It requires scores of rail lines criss-crossing, constantly running, on accurate schedules, and bus systems fanning and overlaid on top of those, but it works. And they don't seem to have a problem with it. As many have realized, it is primarily a mentality problem.
Did the writer mean 'shores up'? I mean, I guess they're easy to get confused...they both (in at least one sense) have to do with water...though they sort of mean opposite things...
Dredge up...wow what a great phrase. Does it mean like, 'reminds us of' or 'recalls'?
I'm sorry, I somewhat agree with this statement just because WoW etc. is so easy...you can solo, anyone can do a job, etc.. However, in a game like FFXI, teamwork and doing your job, and reacting in situations are more difficult. Your whole team will die and lose a LOT of time and possibly money if you screw up (not just time lost in the instance or fighting the HNM but also lost b/c of experience loss from dying...).
And it 'is' different. You can say 'I killed a million rats to get here'. The guy who says 'I flipped a million burgers to get here' will probably be ridiculed. An unfortunate characteristic of our society/world. People like similar things. I.e. comfortable things.
There is quite a difference. Money cannot buy authenticity. Authenticity in the game is built by spending the time in the game, having, as people above have mentioned, experiences in the game. To have worked through things like that 'builds character', as Calvin's father might say. Someone who buys a character, or buys stuff, got it 'the cheap way'--he is not authentic. Think about a person who has a lot of money and goes out to become a 'real cowboy'--He buys the horses, the land, the hat, expensive spurs, all the saddling and bridling, etc.--all a a premium because they're 'authentic'. Then he puts them all on and goes to try to hang out with 'real' cowboys. "Look at me," he says, "I'm a real cowboy--all my things are authentic cowboy." Of course, then the real cowboys laugh and tell him to keep thinking that, and to keep paying them to be his friend. Or they just beat the horse-shit out of him.
JR already does this...when there's a delay b/c of someone jumping in front of a train or whatever, there's stationmasters passing out little slips of paper with the date/time and their stamp on it.
The great thing about the PDP books is that they make almost NO assumption as to what the reader's background is. There's no code, a bunch of pictures, and something in there for everyone. Each chapter is written with a specific goal in mind, and by leaders in the field--there are chapters on the mathematics of the networks, the dynamical properties of them (i.e. how they can be thought of as boltzmann's machines), as well as lots of ideas for applications and specific studies of how real experiments worked. In addition, of course, there is the chapters which actually introduce the different types of networks--and there are equations (and appendices of equations--in case one likes them even more) which can be ignored if one wishes.
Overall, in addition to an interesting read in general, by offering the opportunity to just pick-and-choose what one's interested in after reading the initial bit, these books are extremely dynamic and I recommend them strongly. Not to mention you can buy the full set in hardback used (off of amazon or whatever) for ten dollars (what a deal!).
Parallel Distributed Processing (both books) by Rumelhart, McClelland, and the PDP research group, 1986. "THE" classic neural network resource--and still somewhat relevant.
Well, given your point, there's 2 options, depending on which way things falls:
1) People will have to abandon a lot of traditional views regarding what causes qualitative experience (and in the mean time figure out exactly what does--lest how will we draw the line of what we can and can't do?). One would have to be able to attribute qualitative experiences to the agent/simulation before I would agree that fiddling with it might be unethical. And I have a feeling that a lot of people would have trouble doing that, and even more trouble convincing other people.
or 2) We could work with it as we wish, under the belief that it for some reason lacks such experiences, and so even if it is physically (forgive my loose use of the word) functionally similar to humans or whatever, it is somehow lacking in the experiential department.
Please note that I'm not talking about 'soul' or whatever and in fact do not even want to get into that discussion--I'm just pointing out that our understanding of what causes things to have qualitative experiences is so limited that one may as well say that we don't know anything.
Nononono...it's getting the thing simulated in the computer that's useful.
You see, by the current methods, we have to use very very expensive brain-scanning methods with very bad spatial/temporal resolution to see what's going on in a working/living brain doing certain tasks (we can't see what's going on at the level of neurons/synapses--the most important part!)--with a computer simulation of the working thing, even if we don't understand it, we can at least slow it down and toy around with things/try things out/change things and then run it again, and make some progress towards understanding why it does what it does.
Of course, this is under the assumption that they actually can do it. I would love to see it happen, but since (as I've just mentioned) by current methods we still can't see synapses working (though we can see their structure after the thing is dead) I have serious doubts regarding how successful such an endeavor will be...even if you mimic the structure there is the (central) problem of synaptic weights, etc. left over...so how do they plan to do that? Try every possible one? 2 ^ 100million different possibilities? Good luck!:P
We need to figure out simpler/more simplistic simulations before we go and do stuff like that. Only after we have some vague idea about HOW the brain does what it does that amazes us (analogy, qualitative experience, etc.) we can start imagining how that might be implemented, and THEN figuring out how to implement it...
I dunno, it seems to me that a lot of the time the 'people in charge' are not necessarily the smartest of the bunch:P
If they were, oh what a different world it might be!
No, it's the 'dummy farmers' who we usually find in power--especially after the first generation...orz
any guesses as to why this is the case?:P
It DID say in the article that he studied fusion (too)...
I think we're onto something. Quick, hook up the nanotubes to the fusion-generator--why hasn't anyone thought of this before?!?!
(on a side note, potatoes do not go well when sauteed with catsup and honey, even if each are excellent in isolation)
The "Bing" moment you're talking about is kind of like the second step away. Right now we're still trying to figure out the first step: how the whole thing functionally works (i.e. how brains can do so many darn interesting things), disregarding the problem of 'experiential phenomena' (i.e. qualitative experiences, of 'qualia' or whatever), which add a whole wealth of metaphysical problems to the equation (I'm not talking about just religion, I'm talking about discussing the whole, highest-level ontology of the world/universe/whatever). Which, for the moment is all we can do with regards to the qualitative experience problem.
No, we're still down in our 'science' frame of mind, where something that functionally works is still enough of a problem that we shouldn't worry about the metaphysical problems yet...
I would like to draw your attention to a few points:
1) "19 billion LEGO elements are produced every year."
And then, a few lines later...
2) "40 billion LEGO bricks stacked on top of one another would connect the earth with the moon."
WHY HASN'T ANYONE NOTICED THIS YET!!! WE COULD GET TO THE MOON IN TWO YEARS AND FOR A LOT CHEAPER!!! HELLOOOO!?!?! NASA?!?! DUH!?!?!?!
Isn't this rather old stuff? I've read studies in which, when a certain part of the brain is damaged (a la the famous Phillius Gage), the patient's personality changes such that they seem unable to learn from their own mistakes or act in a way such that it will minimize undesirable consequences (or maximize desirable ones), even if they understand that such actions WILL lead to said (un)desirable consequences. I suppose the fact that in some people it's genetically based is the hot thing?...
Slashdot Mirror
No, no...I was confused at his post too (wow this guy reads too much SF!) but then I realized that his first statement is not about the existence of advanced civilisations, but rather suggests that an advanced civilisation will have more of the tools and ability to solve these problems. He is suggesting that WE need to focus on such efforts as nanotechnology and such, because once we're one of those `high tech civilisations', doing physics will be easier. To an extent I think he's got a point; we can certainly do much better physics now than Gallileo (if only because of apparati), and nanotechnology may indeed allow us to build larger (or smaller) and more stable structures, which may be necessary to directly detect some of the more elusive universal secrets.
There's also the view that that entire framework for statistical analysis is fatally flawed. An argument to that effect (available publicly from his course website):
http://www.indiana.edu/~kruschke/articles/KruschkeBayesianDataAnalysisDraft.pdf
Hope the uni servers don't get slashdotted >.>;
Oh noes! So, what if someone with some REAL terrorist intentions got ahold of one of these radios, and actually did his research, and got on the ATC frequency and navigated a plane into something important like
I don't see why your qualification of LA leads to your conclusion that how it is, is how it must be. Have you ever heard of Tokyo? Even more so than LA, it is cities within cities, back to back, for hundreds of kilometers. And THEY seem to do just fine (though, granted, it takes more than "two light rail systems and a couple of buses"). Your point regarding deliveries, services, etc. is taken (and it is indeed true that this is the case in Tokyo as well--deliveries are done by people in personal vehicles, be they mopeds or trucks), but the primary mode of moving people is public transportation. It requires scores of rail lines criss-crossing, constantly running, on accurate schedules, and bus systems fanning and overlaid on top of those, but it works. And they don't seem to have a problem with it. As many have realized, it is primarily a mentality problem.
Did the writer mean 'shores up'? I mean, I guess they're easy to get confused...they both (in at least one sense) have to do with water...though they sort of mean opposite things...
Dredge up...wow what a great phrase. Does it mean like, 'reminds us of' or 'recalls'?
I DEMAND A REFUND!
I'm sorry, I somewhat agree with this statement just because WoW etc. is so easy...you can solo, anyone can do a job, etc.. However, in a game like FFXI, teamwork and doing your job, and reacting in situations are more difficult. Your whole team will die and lose a LOT of time and possibly money if you screw up (not just time lost in the instance or fighting the HNM but also lost b/c of experience loss from dying...).
And it 'is' different. You can say 'I killed a million rats to get here'. The guy who says 'I flipped a million burgers to get here' will probably be ridiculed. An unfortunate characteristic of our society/world. People like similar things. I.e. comfortable things.
There is quite a difference. Money cannot buy authenticity. Authenticity in the game is built by spending the time in the game, having, as people above have mentioned, experiences in the game. To have worked through things like that 'builds character', as Calvin's father might say. Someone who buys a character, or buys stuff, got it 'the cheap way'--he is not authentic. Think about a person who has a lot of money and goes out to become a 'real cowboy'--He buys the horses, the land, the hat, expensive spurs, all the saddling and bridling, etc.--all a a premium because they're 'authentic'. Then he puts them all on and goes to try to hang out with 'real' cowboys. "Look at me," he says, "I'm a real cowboy--all my things are authentic cowboy." Of course, then the real cowboys laugh and tell him to keep thinking that, and to keep paying them to be his friend. Or they just beat the horse-shit out of him.
Money cannot buy authenticity.
JR already does this...when there's a delay b/c of someone jumping in front of a train or whatever, there's stationmasters passing out little slips of paper with the date/time and their stamp on it.
The great thing about the PDP books is that they make almost NO assumption as to what the reader's background is. There's no code, a bunch of pictures, and something in there for everyone. Each chapter is written with a specific goal in mind, and by leaders in the field--there are chapters on the mathematics of the networks, the dynamical properties of them (i.e. how they can be thought of as boltzmann's machines), as well as lots of ideas for applications and specific studies of how real experiments worked. In addition, of course, there is the chapters which actually introduce the different types of networks--and there are equations (and appendices of equations--in case one likes them even more) which can be ignored if one wishes. Overall, in addition to an interesting read in general, by offering the opportunity to just pick-and-choose what one's interested in after reading the initial bit, these books are extremely dynamic and I recommend them strongly. Not to mention you can buy the full set in hardback used (off of amazon or whatever) for ten dollars (what a deal!).
Parallel Distributed Processing (both books) by Rumelhart, McClelland, and the PDP research group, 1986. "THE" classic neural network resource--and still somewhat relevant.
Well, given your point, there's 2 options, depending on which way things falls:
1) People will have to abandon a lot of traditional views regarding what causes qualitative experience (and in the mean time figure out exactly what does--lest how will we draw the line of what we can and can't do?). One would have to be able to attribute qualitative experiences to the agent/simulation before I would agree that fiddling with it might be unethical. And I have a feeling that a lot of people would have trouble doing that, and even more trouble convincing other people.
or 2) We could work with it as we wish, under the belief that it for some reason lacks such experiences, and so even if it is physically (forgive my loose use of the word) functionally similar to humans or whatever, it is somehow lacking in the experiential department.
Please note that I'm not talking about 'soul' or whatever and in fact do not even want to get into that discussion--I'm just pointing out that our understanding of what causes things to have qualitative experiences is so limited that one may as well say that we don't know anything.
Nononono...it's getting the thing simulated in the computer that's useful.
:P
You see, by the current methods, we have to use very very expensive brain-scanning methods with very bad spatial/temporal resolution to see what's going on in a working/living brain doing certain tasks (we can't see what's going on at the level of neurons/synapses--the most important part!)--with a computer simulation of the working thing, even if we don't understand it, we can at least slow it down and toy around with things/try things out/change things and then run it again, and make some progress towards understanding why it does what it does.
Of course, this is under the assumption that they actually can do it. I would love to see it happen, but since (as I've just mentioned) by current methods we still can't see synapses working (though we can see their structure after the thing is dead) I have serious doubts regarding how successful such an endeavor will be...even if you mimic the structure there is the (central) problem of synaptic weights, etc. left over...so how do they plan to do that? Try every possible one? 2 ^ 100million different possibilities? Good luck!
We need to figure out simpler/more simplistic simulations before we go and do stuff like that. Only after we have some vague idea about HOW the brain does what it does that amazes us (analogy, qualitative experience, etc.) we can start imagining how that might be implemented, and THEN figuring out how to implement it...
la~
Richard
I dunno, it seems to me that a lot of the time the 'people in charge' are not necessarily the smartest of the bunch :P :P
If they were, oh what a different world it might be!
No, it's the 'dummy farmers' who we usually find in power--especially after the first generation...orz
any guesses as to why this is the case?
It's a monty python quote... ;;
I'm sorry, but could you perhaps say that again in a higher register?
It DID say in the article that he studied fusion (too)... I think we're onto something. Quick, hook up the nanotubes to the fusion-generator--why hasn't anyone thought of this before?!?! (on a side note, potatoes do not go well when sauteed with catsup and honey, even if each are excellent in isolation)
The "Bing" moment you're talking about is kind of like the second step away. Right now we're still trying to figure out the first step: how the whole thing functionally works (i.e. how brains can do so many darn interesting things), disregarding the problem of 'experiential phenomena' (i.e. qualitative experiences, of 'qualia' or whatever), which add a whole wealth of metaphysical problems to the equation (I'm not talking about just religion, I'm talking about discussing the whole, highest-level ontology of the world/universe/whatever). Which, for the moment is all we can do with regards to the qualitative experience problem. No, we're still down in our 'science' frame of mind, where something that functionally works is still enough of a problem that we shouldn't worry about the metaphysical problems yet...
I would like to draw your attention to a few points: 1) "19 billion LEGO elements are produced every year." And then, a few lines later... 2) "40 billion LEGO bricks stacked on top of one another would connect the earth with the moon." WHY HASN'T ANYONE NOTICED THIS YET!!! WE COULD GET TO THE MOON IN TWO YEARS AND FOR A LOT CHEAPER!!! HELLOOOO!?!?! NASA?!?! DUH!?!?!?!
Isn't this rather old stuff? I've read studies in which, when a certain part of the brain is damaged (a la the famous Phillius Gage), the patient's personality changes such that they seem unable to learn from their own mistakes or act in a way such that it will minimize undesirable consequences (or maximize desirable ones), even if they understand that such actions WILL lead to said (un)desirable consequences. I suppose the fact that in some people it's genetically based is the hot thing?...