Please keep facts out of here. This topic and space is for climate deniers who insist that the whole global warming thing is financially motivated. Don't you feel sorry for those poor starving petrochemical companies and their noble scientists?
Sometimes I think even one of our basic models of the universe, classical mechanics, just doesn't hold up that well. As far as I can see it works pretty well to the limits of the solar system, though it took general relativity to relegate Vulcan (the orbit-inside-Mercury one, not the one around Epsilon Eridan, or was that Epsilon Indi?) to the dustbin of history.
But when you start looking at interstellar scales, we come up with dark matter, dark energy, and other exotic stuff, just because the observations don't match classical mechanics. Just as TFA suggests abandoning locality and unitarity to better undersand quantum mechanics, perhaps we need to accept that classical mechanics is broken or at least inaccurate at cosmological scales.
My own pet hypothesis goes back to the many many-dimensional theories. They all seem to position us as kings of creation, and roll up all of the extra dimensions and make them too small for us to see. How about instead that we're not the kings of creation, and the comfortable 3 dimensions we live in are the ones rolling up, making us too small for higher-dimensional organisms to see. By that model, the continued expansions of the universe could be due to "drag", so that some parts of our universe aren't moving together as fast as the space is shrinking.
Probably hogwash, but it's worth considering that we may not only not be in a privileged position, we may be in a second-rate one as well.
Agreed, I was just using his term. Even though as you say, reflex actions don't get back to the brain before being processed, they still travel further in bigger organisms. I suspect nerve propagation rate is relatively constant, so of course bigger organisms will be able to sense and move more slowly. Roughly speaking, of course. As you say, we have phase response between our ears, and that's not slow, but the ears are relatively close.
I guess my other point was where thinking is involved, we don't (or didn't) need to think fast enough to double-guess our actions, and it was energetically unfavorable to do so.
Think about this for a moment from an evolutionary point of view. It make sense for the sampling rate of your brain to be geared to your body size - really to your ability to make your body move. In essence, if you could think/sample faster it usually wouldn't matter because you normally couldn't translate those faster thoughts into appropriate actions. Then add the fact that the brain is the densest user of energy in the body. To speed your thinking/sampling rate would likely mean burning more energy, and it usually wouldn't pay.
It's simple conservation and moving toward a balanced design.
(I say "usually" above when justifying slower thought because sometimes faster thinking might select a better course of action before starting to move. Also usually, once you've committed to moving, faster thinking might make you re-think your move when you're body is too slow to change course anyway. In that case, instead of "action A" (the original) or:action B" (the update) you might get some sort of hybrid "action C", which would be worse than either of the others.)
Actually no. He's quoting the "pediatrician's rule of thumb", approximately.
Final height as an adult can be guessed by doubling a boy's height at 2 years, or a girls height at 18 months. Worked pretty well for both of my kids. (one of each)
We only have 4 full floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, as well as a good-sized cabinet containing many old favorites from our kids' younger days, in anticipation of the next generation.
If I had a First Edition "Lord of the Rings" it would certainly be on the keeper list. As for computer manuals, I've come to believe that by the time it's into print, it's obsolete. I know that's not universally true, just frequently.
The first "real book" I ever read was "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." I'd never re-read it since childhood, so about a year back I bought a copy. Then after getting a Kobo I found that it's free on Project Gutenberg. So there's nothing special about this physical copy, but I haven't decided yet whether to save space by donating it.
KIds in their 20's, on their way out. We went through the toddler phase, with a vengence.
I've been going through my books with levels of triage: Is it available on Project Gutenberg? Is it available on Baen or Tor? (DRM-free) Is it really a "good book", one that I'll want to pick up again? Is it in some other way rare or part of a collection?
My wife is a reformed pack-rat. One of my primary clutter-forms is books. So for me getting a Kobo was a form of compromise - the clutter is now electronic, where it doesn't show around the house. I haven't gotten rid of my dead-tree stuff, and some of it I never will. But in the battle against creeping clutter, every bit helps.
One good point about the Kobo Glow - with the built-in light it's better for reading and less disruptive than external illumination for reading in bed or other dark places.
So if I were a terrorist network, I would take a few new recruits, preferably of the "innocent-seeming" sort and dedicate them to fouling the system. I would have them keep their innocence, send them to no training camps, rather send them out onto social media and have them be as social and friendly as possible. I'd have them make as many connections as possible and get well entrenched in the system.
Next I'd make sure they make online associations with known terrorists - enough online associations so it can't be missed by any sort of metadata search. At the same time I'd keep the rest of their outward appearance innocent, and keep them in close touch with all of their friends.
Assuming I had a dozen or so of these people working for me, I'd also have them cross-link some of their contacts, so that most of their truly innocent friends had multiple friends inside my organization - cross-linking.
Consider the NSA 3-degrees-of-separation exploitable. Snarl the system. Cause innocent people to be annoyed the NSA / watch list / no-fly list.
What you say may be the norm, but it is worth mentioning that market disruption has happened, and it has happened reasonably recently. It's just not that common, and probably shouldn't be.
Market disruption is (probably correctly) frequently squashed by reality - I'd rather not see it squashed by law, as well.
Sounds like this may trigger legislation. When legislation is written, big corporations frequently have at least a virtual seat at the table, "helping" to get it written.
The true fear hear is that any sort of reform to solve the problems of patent trolls will tend to favor those big corporations in ordinary matters. The problem is the new person or company with something new and disruptive to the existing market. Though it's a little painful, in the longer run it's for the better when the market gets disrupted this way, because new opportunities emerge in the process. If the "reforms" give big corporations more power to "manage" the disruption, preserving their own markets and business models, we all lose. (The disruption will happen anyway, outside the US.)
You're making a joke, but you've come the closest to the real issue of any comments I've seen here. There are certainly basic infrastructural issues as the rest of the world comes online with technological capabilities, I don't deny that. But I don't believe that's what's really going on in the US now.
We've put economic rapists at the top of the US economy.
For the most part, if they were to be evaluated at their jobs the way we are evaluated at outs, the should be fired. For the most part, they're one-trick ponies - cut costs, and they're generally only doing so in the most brutish ways, nothing subtle, clever, or truly transformative. The only imaginative thing about the job that they're doing is that they imagine the compensation they're receiving for it.
(I said "For the most part" because there are notable exceptions, like Elon Musk and the late Steve Jobs. (though there were other problems with Jobs...))
This -sounds- like a Libertarian call, and that the market can protect against all ills, if only the government would keep their hands off.
1 - Powerful people and institutions have power, always have, always will. They exercise that power the way they want to, provided that they can get away with it.
2 - Companies only "believe in" the free market as long as it benefits them. Once they become industry incumbents, they will do everything they can get away with to protect their markets - stifle competition, kill innovation, kill air supplies, loyalty contracts, etc. If there ever were a country where the government kept its hands off the market, and that market successfully warded off a attacks like this, and kept doing so for the long run, I've never heard of it.
Power wants power, power eventually becomes corrupt, and that has been the way of human history. Then came interesting stuff like the Magna Charta, the US Constitution, and the like.
You've never slung poop or caught vomit, have you?
The basics involved with raising children to a lot to put things in perspective. The US is far from a Stasi state. It may be far from perfect, and at times (and this may be one of them) it may be headed in the wrong direction. But to call it a Stasi state is to fail to realize just how bad the Stasi state really was.
I tend to be somewhat subversive, particularly where it pertains to computing and information management, nor is my identity purposefully hidden. But I'm not afraid of jackbooted thugs breaking down my door and taking me (and/or my computing equipment) away.
If I were to list my 1984-ish fears, it would have more to do with jackbooted thugs from the MafiAA breaking down my door or shooting lawyers at me, not because of illegal copying, which I don't, but because of a guilt-by-association with free software. It would have more to do with bureaucratic bungling accidentally getting me on the no-fly list with no clear way to fix the problem. It would have more to do with my ISP putting annoying TOS on my internet connection. Personally I feel more oppression from commercial entities than from the government.
By the way, if you think the Free Market will solve commercial oppression, you're naive. If you think that government regulation is the only thing that impairs the function of the Free Market, you're naivete' is itself stunning.
The thing being missed in the current privacy fuss is that right now everyone is only worrying about the US government. That leaves out two other classes of players...
1 - I know that the US government is far from perfect, but compared to some other governments out there they're downright benign. That's not to excuse their behavior in any way, that's just to point out that there are bigger threats to be aware of.
2 - Don't forget corporations, particularly multinational corporations. At some theoretical level, the US government has the best interests of US citizens as its motivation. (I'll agree that it may be "theoretical" and one may have to say "SOME US citizens', but there is still that element there.) Corporations have their own profit and revenue as their primary motivation, the good of their customers is secondary, important as a continuing source of profit and revenue. As for non-customers, their importance is as a future source of profit and revenue. Nothing there about peoples' best interests if they don't align with the companies'.
While the boogeyman of the US government is certainly present, one should not forget that they are probably not the worst boogeyman, there are probably much worse out there. In other words, it's worse than you think.
As I said, I think it would annoy both sides. Adding "equally" on that may have been overstepping, but I'm not so sure.
I'm not gay, though some around me are. But you know what, it's none of my business. They're entitled to the same life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as me, and as long as they don't get in my way I won't get in theirs.
I've developed a recent bit of snark... Over the years several (conventional heterosexual) couples my wife and I have known have split up, and that bit of snark is, "Well if not for gay marriage, those two would still be together." It's absolute nonsense, of course. IMHO divorce devalues marriage a heck of a lot more than gay marriage.
By the way, my wife and I are happily married over 30 years, so we can speak with experience, if not some authority.
1 - The State is out of the marriage business, and into the business of Civil Unions. Those pieces of State-respected status and benefits are conferred upon Civil Unions. 2 - Existing Marriages are grandfathered into Civil Union status. 3 - Secular / State-run ceremonies confer a Civil Union. 4 - Marriage becomes an institution of the Church, but at the same time as a "duly qualified" agent of the Church grants a Marriage, a Civil Union is granted as well.
Mostly transparent, probably annoys people on both sides equally.
As for "love", I think what we're looking for is a stable long-term situation. I suspect long-term stability is not possible without some definition of "love" being present. (Respect is certainly part of that mix, a component of that definition of "love".)
I find it interesting that there is generally such discomfort with Heisenberg's Uncertainty. I'll grant that its application to quantum cryptography is practical, but for the most part I think this discomfort is rooted in people not liking that something isn't just unknown, but unknowable.
Doesn't bother me a bit - once you accept that idea that quantum mechanics actually does describe reality.
Or another way of looking at it - if you consider all of reality to be a giant simulation, "Aitch-Bar" (Credit for spelling to college prof, name forgotten. (Phillip Bevington?)) becomes simply the error criteria used by the simulator to define a "step".
Coming at that from the other side, I've been running Linux somewhere between 15 and 20 years, certainly far enough back that there was nothing like a newby distro when I began. I have a small server cluster in my home, 2 subnets, etc. I've debugged some ugly problems at home and at work, where I'm one of the local experts. (as opposed to real experts, which I'll admit that I'm not.) Given the level of deprecation generally heaped on Certifications here and other sites in the culture, I've wondered how hard it would be to go get a Certification cold. Does a decent background in theory and text file / command line configuration form a good basis, or are the Certifications all about driving dialog panels?
I heard recently that someone I know just got "Network+ Certified", whatever that means, and found that it improved his job hunt. Last I knew it hadn't resulted in a job, but at least he's getting more live interviews. That news prompted me to wonder how hard these things really were. That's not to denigrate him, just wondering if some practical basis plus a silly certification might make a good showing.
I like what you've said, but let's phrase this in a simpler, more basic way.
Once upon a time, I thought that the stock market was supposed to be a mechanism for investing in companies - a way for them to generate money to fund their real-world growth. I suspect that some of that is still happening, but from what I can see the stock market has largely turned into something else.
To me, these days the stock market looks more like a sanctioned gambling parlor. Even IPOs, which one would think of as the ultimate in funding growth of a new company, are at least partially viewed as a way for the founders to cash in. (or out)
Slashdot Mirror
Please keep facts out of here. This topic and space is for climate deniers who insist that the whole global warming thing is financially motivated. Don't you feel sorry for those poor starving petrochemical companies and their noble scientists?
I wonder how much information the NSA has on Little Bobby Tables... Can they really sanitize their inputs, when it's all dirty?
Sometimes I think even one of our basic models of the universe, classical mechanics, just doesn't hold up that well. As far as I can see it works pretty well to the limits of the solar system, though it took general relativity to relegate Vulcan (the orbit-inside-Mercury one, not the one around Epsilon Eridan, or was that Epsilon Indi?) to the dustbin of history.
But when you start looking at interstellar scales, we come up with dark matter, dark energy, and other exotic stuff, just because the observations don't match classical mechanics. Just as TFA suggests abandoning locality and unitarity to better undersand quantum mechanics, perhaps we need to accept that classical mechanics is broken or at least inaccurate at cosmological scales.
My own pet hypothesis goes back to the many many-dimensional theories. They all seem to position us as kings of creation, and roll up all of the extra dimensions and make them too small for us to see. How about instead that we're not the kings of creation, and the comfortable 3 dimensions we live in are the ones rolling up, making us too small for higher-dimensional organisms to see. By that model, the continued expansions of the universe could be due to "drag", so that some parts of our universe aren't moving together as fast as the space is shrinking.
Probably hogwash, but it's worth considering that we may not only not be in a privileged position, we may be in a second-rate one as well.
Agreed, I was just using his term. Even though as you say, reflex actions don't get back to the brain before being processed, they still travel further in bigger organisms. I suspect nerve propagation rate is relatively constant, so of course bigger organisms will be able to sense and move more slowly. Roughly speaking, of course. As you say, we have phase response between our ears, and that's not slow, but the ears are relatively close.
I guess my other point was where thinking is involved, we don't (or didn't) need to think fast enough to double-guess our actions, and it was energetically unfavorable to do so.
Think about this for a moment from an evolutionary point of view. It make sense for the sampling rate of your brain to be geared to your body size - really to your ability to make your body move. In essence, if you could think/sample faster it usually wouldn't matter because you normally couldn't translate those faster thoughts into appropriate actions. Then add the fact that the brain is the densest user of energy in the body. To speed your thinking/sampling rate would likely mean burning more energy, and it usually wouldn't pay.
It's simple conservation and moving toward a balanced design.
(I say "usually" above when justifying slower thought because sometimes faster thinking might select a better course of action before starting to move. Also usually, once you've committed to moving, faster thinking might make you re-think your move when you're body is too slow to change course anyway. In that case, instead of "action A" (the original) or :action B" (the update) you might get some sort of hybrid "action C", which would be worse than either of the others.)
Actually no. He's quoting the "pediatrician's rule of thumb", approximately.
Final height as an adult can be guessed by doubling a boy's height at 2 years, or a girls height at 18 months. Worked pretty well for both of my kids. (one of each)
Now there's Soylent...
http://arstechnica.com/search/?query=soylent
The same timely delivery issues could be said of defense contractors and weapons systems.
Right now I'm sitting just across the river from one, about 1/4 mile away, in the northeast US.
We only have 4 full floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, as well as a good-sized cabinet containing many old favorites from our kids' younger days, in anticipation of the next generation.
If I had a First Edition "Lord of the Rings" it would certainly be on the keeper list. As for computer manuals, I've come to believe that by the time it's into print, it's obsolete. I know that's not universally true, just frequently.
The first "real book" I ever read was "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." I'd never re-read it since childhood, so about a year back I bought a copy. Then after getting a Kobo I found that it's free on Project Gutenberg. So there's nothing special about this physical copy, but I haven't decided yet whether to save space by donating it.
KIds in their 20's, on their way out. We went through the toddler phase, with a vengence.
I've been going through my books with levels of triage:
Is it available on Project Gutenberg?
Is it available on Baen or Tor? (DRM-free)
Is it really a "good book", one that I'll want to pick up again?
Is it in some other way rare or part of a collection?
My wife is a reformed pack-rat. One of my primary clutter-forms is books. So for me getting a Kobo was a form of compromise - the clutter is now electronic, where it doesn't show around the house. I haven't gotten rid of my dead-tree stuff, and some of it I never will. But in the battle against creeping clutter, every bit helps.
One good point about the Kobo Glow - with the built-in light it's better for reading and less disruptive than external illumination for reading in bed or other dark places.
So if I were a terrorist network, I would take a few new recruits, preferably of the "innocent-seeming" sort and dedicate them to fouling the system. I would have them keep their innocence, send them to no training camps, rather send them out onto social media and have them be as social and friendly as possible. I'd have them make as many connections as possible and get well entrenched in the system.
Next I'd make sure they make online associations with known terrorists - enough online associations so it can't be missed by any sort of metadata search. At the same time I'd keep the rest of their outward appearance innocent, and keep them in close touch with all of their friends.
Assuming I had a dozen or so of these people working for me, I'd also have them cross-link some of their contacts, so that most of their truly innocent friends had multiple friends inside my organization - cross-linking.
Consider the NSA 3-degrees-of-separation exploitable. Snarl the system. Cause innocent people to be annoyed the NSA / watch list / no-fly list.
What you say may be the norm, but it is worth mentioning that market disruption has happened, and it has happened reasonably recently. It's just not that common, and probably shouldn't be.
Market disruption is (probably correctly) frequently squashed by reality - I'd rather not see it squashed by law, as well.
Sounds like this may trigger legislation. When legislation is written, big corporations frequently have at least a virtual seat at the table, "helping" to get it written.
The true fear hear is that any sort of reform to solve the problems of patent trolls will tend to favor those big corporations in ordinary matters. The problem is the new person or company with something new and disruptive to the existing market. Though it's a little painful, in the longer run it's for the better when the market gets disrupted this way, because new opportunities emerge in the process. If the "reforms" give big corporations more power to "manage" the disruption, preserving their own markets and business models, we all lose. (The disruption will happen anyway, outside the US.)
You're making a joke, but you've come the closest to the real issue of any comments I've seen here. There are certainly basic infrastructural issues as the rest of the world comes online with technological capabilities, I don't deny that. But I don't believe that's what's really going on in the US now.
We've put economic rapists at the top of the US economy.
For the most part, if they were to be evaluated at their jobs the way we are evaluated at outs, the should be fired. For the most part, they're one-trick ponies - cut costs, and they're generally only doing so in the most brutish ways, nothing subtle, clever, or truly transformative. The only imaginative thing about the job that they're doing is that they imagine the compensation they're receiving for it.
(I said "For the most part" because there are notable exceptions, like Elon Musk and the late Steve Jobs. (though there were other problems with Jobs...))
I'll call naive again, possibly.
This -sounds- like a Libertarian call, and that the market can protect against all ills, if only the government would keep their hands off.
1 - Powerful people and institutions have power, always have, always will. They exercise that power the way they want to, provided that they can get away with it.
2 - Companies only "believe in" the free market as long as it benefits them. Once they become industry incumbents, they will do everything they can get away with to protect their markets - stifle competition, kill innovation, kill air supplies, loyalty contracts, etc. If there ever were a country where the government kept its hands off the market, and that market successfully warded off a attacks like this, and kept doing so for the long run, I've never heard of it.
Power wants power, power eventually becomes corrupt, and that has been the way of human history. Then came interesting stuff like the Magna Charta, the US Constitution, and the like.
You've never slung poop or caught vomit, have you?
The basics involved with raising children to a lot to put things in perspective. The US is far from a Stasi state. It may be far from perfect, and at times (and this may be one of them) it may be headed in the wrong direction. But to call it a Stasi state is to fail to realize just how bad the Stasi state really was.
I tend to be somewhat subversive, particularly where it pertains to computing and information management, nor is my identity purposefully hidden. But I'm not afraid of jackbooted thugs breaking down my door and taking me (and/or my computing equipment) away.
If I were to list my 1984-ish fears, it would have more to do with jackbooted thugs from the MafiAA breaking down my door or shooting lawyers at me, not because of illegal copying, which I don't, but because of a guilt-by-association with free software. It would have more to do with bureaucratic bungling accidentally getting me on the no-fly list with no clear way to fix the problem. It would have more to do with my ISP putting annoying TOS on my internet connection. Personally I feel more oppression from commercial entities than from the government.
By the way, if you think the Free Market will solve commercial oppression, you're naive. If you think that government regulation is the only thing that impairs the function of the Free Market, you're naivete' is itself stunning.
The thing being missed in the current privacy fuss is that right now everyone is only worrying about the US government. That leaves out two other classes of players...
1 - I know that the US government is far from perfect, but compared to some other governments out there they're downright benign. That's not to excuse their behavior in any way, that's just to point out that there are bigger threats to be aware of.
2 - Don't forget corporations, particularly multinational corporations. At some theoretical level, the US government has the best interests of US citizens as its motivation. (I'll agree that it may be "theoretical" and one may have to say "SOME US citizens', but there is still that element there.) Corporations have their own profit and revenue as their primary motivation, the good of their customers is secondary, important as a continuing source of profit and revenue. As for non-customers, their importance is as a future source of profit and revenue. Nothing there about peoples' best interests if they don't align with the companies'.
While the boogeyman of the US government is certainly present, one should not forget that they are probably not the worst boogeyman, there are probably much worse out there. In other words, it's worse than you think.
On backdoors, don't forget this one:
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/15/strange-loops-dennis-ritchie-a/
The anti-homosexual side would be annoyed that gays got legal rights through civil unions. (They certainly were in Vermont, anyway.)
As I said, I think it would annoy both sides. Adding "equally" on that may have been overstepping, but I'm not so sure.
I'm not gay, though some around me are. But you know what, it's none of my business. They're entitled to the same life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness as me, and as long as they don't get in my way I won't get in theirs.
I've developed a recent bit of snark... Over the years several (conventional heterosexual) couples my wife and I have known have split up, and that bit of snark is, "Well if not for gay marriage, those two would still be together." It's absolute nonsense, of course. IMHO divorce devalues marriage a heck of a lot more than gay marriage.
By the way, my wife and I are happily married over 30 years, so we can speak with experience, if not some authority.
Simple workaround:
1 - The State is out of the marriage business, and into the business of Civil Unions. Those pieces of State-respected status and benefits are conferred upon Civil Unions.
2 - Existing Marriages are grandfathered into Civil Union status.
3 - Secular / State-run ceremonies confer a Civil Union.
4 - Marriage becomes an institution of the Church, but at the same time as a "duly qualified" agent of the Church grants a Marriage, a Civil Union is granted as well.
Mostly transparent, probably annoys people on both sides equally.
As for "love", I think what we're looking for is a stable long-term situation. I suspect long-term stability is not possible without some definition of "love" being present. (Respect is certainly part of that mix, a component of that definition of "love".)
I find it interesting that there is generally such discomfort with Heisenberg's Uncertainty. I'll grant that its application to quantum cryptography is practical, but for the most part I think this discomfort is rooted in people not liking that something isn't just unknown, but unknowable.
Doesn't bother me a bit - once you accept that idea that quantum mechanics actually does describe reality.
Or another way of looking at it - if you consider all of reality to be a giant simulation, "Aitch-Bar" (Credit for spelling to college prof, name forgotten. (Phillip Bevington?)) becomes simply the error criteria used by the simulator to define a "step".
Coming at that from the other side, I've been running Linux somewhere between 15 and 20 years, certainly far enough back that there was nothing like a newby distro when I began. I have a small server cluster in my home, 2 subnets, etc. I've debugged some ugly problems at home and at work, where I'm one of the local experts. (as opposed to real experts, which I'll admit that I'm not.) Given the level of deprecation generally heaped on Certifications here and other sites in the culture, I've wondered how hard it would be to go get a Certification cold. Does a decent background in theory and text file / command line configuration form a good basis, or are the Certifications all about driving dialog panels?
I heard recently that someone I know just got "Network+ Certified", whatever that means, and found that it improved his job hunt. Last I knew it hadn't resulted in a job, but at least he's getting more live interviews. That news prompted me to wonder how hard these things really were. That's not to denigrate him, just wondering if some practical basis plus a silly certification might make a good showing.
I like what you've said, but let's phrase this in a simpler, more basic way.
Once upon a time, I thought that the stock market was supposed to be a mechanism for investing in companies - a way for them to generate money to fund their real-world growth. I suspect that some of that is still happening, but from what I can see the stock market has largely turned into something else.
To me, these days the stock market looks more like a sanctioned gambling parlor. Even IPOs, which one would think of as the ultimate in funding growth of a new company, are at least partially viewed as a way for the founders to cash in. (or out)