I heard that the Fields medalist Michael Freedman was trying to prove P!=NP, by reducing the problem to a corollary of Godel's result (the idea being to construct a mapping from NP-problems to "true statements", such that P-problems wind up in the subset of "provable statements").
The notion of using the biggest "negative" result in mathematics to solve one of the most elusive problems is truly inspiring.
I don't know if it'll work though, and I haven't heard much since a few years ago. I've long since given up on pure mathematics myself.
Look, I agree with the sentiment being expressed there. They are however, oversimplifying; contradicting themselves; and even outright lying. For example, look at this following excerpted sentence, which does not even make sense as it's written (!); and even when "decoded" is actually wrong. Remarkably enough, they even manage to use the term "interbreeding" which presupposes race-type distinctions in the first place!
"As a result of recent evolution and constant interbreeding between groups of humans, two individuals from different `races' are just as likely to be more similar to one another genetically than two individuals from the same `race.' This being so, race-as-biology has no predictive value."
Their claim over-all is that race has no predictive value and no scientific meaning at all.
The truth is, that race has relatively little predictive value except in the likelihood of certain congenital diseases (where it's extremely informative though not perfect!), and has scientific meaning as the result of a long process of human diversification.
This is truly a unique time in human history; the world is smaller than its ever been, and believe-it-or-not racism is on a global decline. This should be exciting for anyone, whether you're optimistic or terrified! But some people don't even want to see that this is happening, even in a positive light (as I do), simply out of fear of being associated with racism. That's just sad.
Of course the scientific ideas don't line up perfectly with the social ones. This is the case with almost any science, and I think that the science should inform the social discourse. Saying things like "race is fiction" is lying, and does the opposite; as sickle-cell shows, race is informative for real traits. Saying things like "almost no-one is of `pure' descent, and it's hard to even say what that means," on the other hand, is true and good.
One of my great joys on the internet is watching white supremacists try to wriggle out from under the cold hard fact that Asians and Ashkenazim beat the "master race" at their favorite measure: IQ. Oh, the excuses they come up with: "Yes but Jews are over-specialized, and only excel in verbal intelligence because it helps them lie." Saying race is a fiction is a cop-out; it's (too) easy to say, but I suspect hardly anyone actually believes it.
"I think it's pretty obvious that race means something aside from where you or your ancestors come from."
"Race is a fiction with no scientific basis."
Although now I gather you meant to write the opposite of what you wrote, in the first quote. In which case, I suppose that I should go get genetically screened for sickle cell anemia (even though I'm not black) and tay-sachs disease (even though I'm not an ashkenazi). After all, race doesn't mean anything...
in re: 1., yes you can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_DNA_test#Biogeographical_ancestry. Of course, whether race means something apart from where you or your ancestors happened to come from, that is still open (*). But make no mistake, there absolutely is a technical concept of "biogeographical ancestry" which is very analogous to what is called race, and incorporating it into a model can increase the power and accuracy of clinical trials and disease screens. I would call this scientific.
*: Of course, to see as much between-group genetic variation as there is, and straight-facedly claim a priori that race has no statistical effect on anything, is just a bit silly. It's just one of those things you have to entertain for society's benefit.
AD&D 2nd ed. is from 1989; Dark Dungeons came out in 1984 and has been "going strong" since then. I recall televangelists harping on about D&D well into the 90s.
The first edition DMG had an appendix for on-the-fly random dungeon generation, so you could play by yourself or, if you were truly lazy, generate a dungeon for your players. It was strongly discouraged; as you could imagine, the dungeons thus created didn't make a whole lot of sense, either physically or thematically.
My DM did use it a few times as a "random seed", which he then edited into something coherent; kind of like the cut-up method for D&D.
Yes, and allometric scaling too. I was not suggesting that birds and humans are directly comparable.
I was blown away simultaneously by two awesome facts; 1. that human-powered flight is achievable at all; 2. that it is just-barely achievable and attempting it is dangerous for even a top-notch athlete. These facts are simultaneously a signature of our human limitations and technological progress, and deserve imho to be mentioned.
"We have built our own test rig that measures power output of a pilot over a minute duration. We have plotted the results of numerous potential pilots against their weight. A successful candidate is one that falls above a power requirement curve (power vs. weight).... We have had people vomit after these one-minute tests. In similar tests in the United States they have had one person have a mild heart attack."
And that's for one minute of (theoretical) flight... incredible.
I think that the problem of having a "game" with anything like an objective parametric solution is that it'll be discovered within a day or two by some hardcore player with the right skill-set; and then propagated over the internet. And then, *poof* it's not a game anymore; it's homework with an answer key.
Of course you can challenge yourself to find it, but knowing full well that the answer is out there already? Not so appealing.
Thanks for your description. I've been to France, but I assumed I was just eating like a tourist; good to know it wasn't just me.
By exercise, I was in fact referring to walking. I lost 15 lbs. when I moved to a big city and had to walk more, even though I was bicycling before that. Yes, the image of a chain-smoking French bodybuilder is fairly ridiculous.
As far as smoking goes, I've heard that one of the causes of cancer is the use of (radioactive) phosphorus in fertilizer, which is unregulated in the US. In the EU, the story goes, regulations are stricter and the tobacco is thus safer. This may be hogwash and even at best it would only ameliorate the effect, but it's an interesting idea.
As far as heart disease: I'll go with rossz's explanation; doctors there just use the unqualified phrase "natural causes" which biases the sample.
The "French paradox" isn't one. The French are healthier because 1) they exercise; and 2) they only eat their famous meals on occasion. Generally, they eat "peasant food"; potatoes, bread, stews, &c. But of course that would be too difficult; no, it must be the wine. Drink, drink, drink! It's good for you!
Here's a hint: the French drink wine because they enjoy it. When I drink beer, it's because I enjoy it. I probably won't enjoy this genetically-engineered "good for you" beer as much, so the whole idea is a non-starter. I could always just eat a pomegranate, and then drink a good beer. And for those who don't like pomegranates, we can just synthesize this "resveratol" and put it in multivitamins right?
Of course using this system will distract the driver from using the cues provided by the natural environment (which are many)... thus it will have to not only provide a benefit, but provide enough benefit to overcome what is lost.
Let alone what happens if someone's GPS is malfunctioning or even that a lot of people aren't going to have this system installed...
In principle, the government can nationalize the trademark and after that, enforce against "unauthorized use" by the bikers. It would (should) eventually fail if challenged, because it's after all an end-run around the real problem. I also don't think it would work in the first place.
Also, in principle you're not supposed to be able to get a tasteless or obscene trademark, just like copyright didn't used to apply to banned books. This ought to include gang insignia afaic. But then again, there were a bunch of alcoholic drinks named after Katrina which got trademarked, so I guess the trademark people are asleep just like the patent people.
So you're saying he wasn't good enough for Playboy, huh?
Just kidding. Interesting article. I have a big gap in my sf canon, as I've not read much Asimov. Only some short stories which were generally excellent, and Murder at the ABA of all things.
Slashdot Mirror
No. The deity may know them, but it could not describe them to you or, arguably, another deity.
Yeah, quantum mechanical fluctuations in the microtubules.
No one really takes this seriously, not to mention that we do have computers which are affected by quantum mechanics.
I heard that the Fields medalist Michael Freedman was trying to prove P!=NP, by reducing the problem to a corollary of Godel's result (the idea being to construct a mapping from NP-problems to "true statements", such that P-problems wind up in the subset of "provable statements").
The notion of using the biggest "negative" result in mathematics to solve one of the most elusive problems is truly inspiring.
I don't know if it'll work though, and I haven't heard much since a few years ago. I've long since given up on pure mathematics myself.
Why is this tagged "godelstheorem"? It's not like incompleteness magically applies only to electronic computers, as opposed to meatbags...
Look, I agree with the sentiment being expressed there. They are however, oversimplifying; contradicting themselves; and even outright lying. For example, look at this following excerpted sentence, which does not even make sense as it's written (!); and even when "decoded" is actually wrong. Remarkably enough, they even manage to use the term "interbreeding" which presupposes race-type distinctions in the first place!
"As a result of recent evolution and constant interbreeding between groups of humans, two individuals from different `races' are just as likely to be more similar to one another genetically than two individuals from the same `race.' This being so, race-as-biology has no predictive value."
Their claim over-all is that race has no predictive value and no scientific meaning at all.
The truth is, that race has relatively little predictive value except in the likelihood of certain congenital diseases (where it's extremely informative though not perfect!), and has scientific meaning as the result of a long process of human diversification.
This is truly a unique time in human history; the world is smaller than its ever been, and believe-it-or-not racism is on a global decline. This should be exciting for anyone, whether you're optimistic or terrified! But some people don't even want to see that this is happening, even in a positive light (as I do), simply out of fear of being associated with racism. That's just sad.
Of course the scientific ideas don't line up perfectly with the social ones. This is the case with almost any science, and I think that the science should inform the social discourse. Saying things like "race is fiction" is lying, and does the opposite; as sickle-cell shows, race is informative for real traits. Saying things like "almost no-one is of `pure' descent, and it's hard to even say what that means," on the other hand, is true and good.
One of my great joys on the internet is watching white supremacists try to wriggle out from under the cold hard fact that Asians and Ashkenazim beat the "master race" at their favorite measure: IQ. Oh, the excuses they come up with: "Yes but Jews are over-specialized, and only excel in verbal intelligence because it helps them lie." Saying race is a fiction is a cop-out; it's (too) easy to say, but I suspect hardly anyone actually believes it.
In your two previous posts...
"I think it's pretty obvious that race means something aside from where you or your ancestors come from."
"Race is a fiction with no scientific basis."
Although now I gather you meant to write the opposite of what you wrote, in the first quote. In which case, I suppose that I should go get genetically screened for sickle cell anemia (even though I'm not black) and tay-sachs disease (even though I'm not an ashkenazi). After all, race doesn't mean anything...
So you think race means something, and yet it is a "fiction with no scientific basis". Interesting; what exactly does it mean, then?
in re: 1., yes you can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_DNA_test#Biogeographical_ancestry. Of course, whether race means something apart from where you or your ancestors happened to come from, that is still open (*). But make no mistake, there absolutely is a technical concept of "biogeographical ancestry" which is very analogous to what is called race, and incorporating it into a model can increase the power and accuracy of clinical trials and disease screens. I would call this scientific.
*: Of course, to see as much between-group genetic variation as there is, and straight-facedly claim a priori that race has no statistical effect on anything, is just a bit silly. It's just one of those things you have to entertain for society's benefit.
AD&D 2nd ed. is from 1989; Dark Dungeons came out in 1984 and has been "going strong" since then. I recall televangelists harping on about D&D well into the 90s.
The first edition DMG had an appendix for on-the-fly random dungeon generation, so you could play by yourself or, if you were truly lazy, generate a dungeon for your players. It was strongly discouraged; as you could imagine, the dungeons thus created didn't make a whole lot of sense, either physically or thematically.
My DM did use it a few times as a "random seed", which he then edited into something coherent; kind of like the cut-up method for D&D.
Unfortunately it's now generally attributed to Rufus Wainwright. Better than nothing I suppose...
Not just defamatory; it would be Bible-libel.
And now we understand why those EULAs need to be as draconian as they are. :-/
I can't speak for menudo, but if eating pho is wrong, I don't want to be right!
(Also, you forget andouillette, the sausage not only wrapped in, but made completely from, intestine.)
Yes, and allometric scaling too. I was not suggesting that birds and humans are directly comparable.
I was blown away simultaneously by two awesome facts; 1. that human-powered flight is achievable at all; 2. that it is just-barely achievable and attempting it is dangerous for even a top-notch athlete. These facts are simultaneously a signature of our human limitations and technological progress, and deserve imho to be mentioned.
No kidding. See this reference about engineering human-powered flight: http://www.mech.ubc.ca/~hph/faq.htm#14
"We have built our own test rig that measures power output of a pilot over a minute duration. We have plotted the results of numerous potential pilots against their weight. A successful candidate is one that falls above a power requirement curve (power vs. weight). ... We have had people vomit after these one-minute tests. In similar tests in the United States they have had one person have a mild heart attack."
And that's for one minute of (theoretical) flight... incredible.
I think that the problem of having a "game" with anything like an objective parametric solution is that it'll be discovered within a day or two by some hardcore player with the right skill-set; and then propagated over the internet. And then, *poof* it's not a game anymore; it's homework with an answer key.
Of course you can challenge yourself to find it, but knowing full well that the answer is out there already? Not so appealing.
Is there still real grenadine being produced these days? Rose's for example is just artificially flavored corn syrup (blech).
I'd be very interested if there is.
Thanks for your description. I've been to France, but I assumed I was just eating like a tourist; good to know it wasn't just me.
By exercise, I was in fact referring to walking. I lost 15 lbs. when I moved to a big city and had to walk more, even though I was bicycling before that. Yes, the image of a chain-smoking French bodybuilder is fairly ridiculous.
As far as smoking goes, I've heard that one of the causes of cancer is the use of (radioactive) phosphorus in fertilizer, which is unregulated in the US. In the EU, the story goes, regulations are stricter and the tobacco is thus safer. This may be hogwash and even at best it would only ameliorate the effect, but it's an interesting idea.
As far as heart disease: I'll go with rossz's explanation; doctors there just use the unqualified phrase "natural causes" which biases the sample.
The "French paradox" isn't one. The French are healthier because 1) they exercise; and 2) they only eat their famous meals on occasion. Generally, they eat "peasant food"; potatoes, bread, stews, &c. But of course that would be too difficult; no, it must be the wine. Drink, drink, drink! It's good for you!
Here's a hint: the French drink wine because they enjoy it. When I drink beer, it's because I enjoy it. I probably won't enjoy this genetically-engineered "good for you" beer as much, so the whole idea is a non-starter. I could always just eat a pomegranate, and then drink a good beer. And for those who don't like pomegranates, we can just synthesize this "resveratol" and put it in multivitamins right?
Well, if any other encyclopedia had an entry on overstock.com, you might have a point here.
Of course using this system will distract the driver from using the cues provided by the natural environment (which are many)... thus it will have to not only provide a benefit, but provide enough benefit to overcome what is lost.
Let alone what happens if someone's GPS is malfunctioning or even that a lot of people aren't going to have this system installed...
In principle, the government can nationalize the trademark and after that, enforce against "unauthorized use" by the bikers. It would (should) eventually fail if challenged, because it's after all an end-run around the real problem. I also don't think it would work in the first place.
Also, in principle you're not supposed to be able to get a tasteless or obscene trademark, just like copyright didn't used to apply to banned books. This ought to include gang insignia afaic. But then again, there were a bunch of alcoholic drinks named after Katrina which got trademarked, so I guess the trademark people are asleep just like the patent people.
So you're saying he wasn't good enough for Playboy, huh?
Just kidding. Interesting article. I have a big gap in my sf canon, as I've not read much Asimov. Only some short stories which were generally excellent, and Murder at the ABA of all things.