The request would have to be pretty specific, not a catch all for any future application you install.
For a purchase such as a phone you would have to make the user accept the request before they made the purchase, or you'd have to make the phone work still work when the user said no.
Ok, I give up. Guns are good and it's just a coincidence that the USA has the slackest rules and the biggest number of deaths.
It's worth the deaths of hundreds of people every year, many of them children, who die due to accidental gun shots, not to mention the many murders carried out using guns, 'cos you want the right to own a Magnum.
Freedom works in many ways you know. The right to carry a gun, removes other people's right to live in a gun free society. Somehow everyone manages to get by quite happily everywhere else in the Western World without having gun shops on their high streets.
Well carrying the kind of knife you could usr to stab people with is also illegal in most countries, but the main difference is that the sole purpose of knives is not to kill people. Maybe you don't cut up meat, you just shoot it into pieces.
We have a minimum 5 year sentence for carrying a gun. That is what stops people from doing it. Sadly gun use is on the increase in the UK, possibly because it has been seen as less extraordinary due to the amount of US TV shows and films we get to watch. It's still pretty rare though.
What the hell do you want a gun for anyway? Apart from to protect yourself from other guns?
The international statistics on 'violent crime' are almost meaningless as they rely on different methodologies for gathering the data. Two guys in a bar having a bit of a fight is marked as 'violent crime' in the UK unlike most places. This happens a lot in the UK but rarely leads to anything serious. Your claim that crime in the UK is far worse than in the USA is dubious, the USA has a prison population 6 times higher than the UK's.
The stats on murder are far more accurate and guess what the USA is way way ahead of the UK.
Give me one good reason for allowing people hand guns. Note I'm saying hand guns not all guns, although I can't see any justification for any guns myself.
And this bullshit about other countries having more guns and less murder is just propaganda from the gun nuts in your country. No other civilised country allows people to walk around with hand guns.
You ever thought about banning hand guns and imprisoning anyone who carries one like the rest of the civilised world does? You know the rest of the civilised world where the number of people being shot is much much lower.
Strange how you manage to ignore your supposedly infallible constitutiuon when it talks about slavery but somehow a vague section about armed militias means you want teachers in schools to be armed. Think for yoursleves and make the laws you need instead of slavishly following the 'Founding Fathers' and glorifying a gun culture to the rest of the world through your media.
I like America but when it comes to guns there seems to be some sort of mental block stopping you from looking at it in a disinterested way that would lead you to the same conclusions every other bloody country has reached.
You ask me whether the process I have in mind that might explain Free Will is either stochastic or deterministic, but It wouldn't be Free Will if it was either of those.
I'm not proposing a stochastic process, I'm proposing a way in which an unknown process, outside of the current Laws of Physics could in theory interact with the world without violating those Laws.
The example I gave was just that an example. I suggested that by influencing events that we currently think of as essentially random, a new process which is somehow under our conscious control, indeed is in fact our consciousness, could affect the world without violating any of our current Laws. I'm not suggesting that those random events in anyway constitue our Free Will.
I'm not sure you quite understand where I am coming from. If we have Free Will then it cannot be explained by our current understanding of Physics. We have to be able to make a choice that is not predetermined or random. I believe we have Free Will, that is I believe our choices are neither predetermined or random.
You then insist that if my idea of Free Will is not systematic, which it isn't, that it must be non-scientific and non-understandable. I do not agree here at all. We could most certainly investigate the mechanism of how this Free Will interacts with the world in a scientific way. Perhaps nailing it right down to a point where we have to insert a 'choice is made here' marker in our understanding. Obviously at some point however a choice has to be made that can only be understood by the person making it otherwise it would not be free will. That person would however understand it. Indeed you could argue that the understanding represented that person.
I do think that most of what makes up our everyday experience is simple reaction to our sensorary input. I'm aware that we are mostly unaware of what happens in order for us to see and feel and that we are probably mistaken about a lot of what we actually think we think. When I truly stop and decide a point though, such as 'Do I have Free Will', I simply do not believe that my cogitation is not my own.
As for the point about when Strong AI will come about, you say that you are 'constantly amazed by the progress being made with weak AI '. To be honest, I'm constantly amazed that anyone is at all impressed with the progress made in any form of AI as I cannot see any. Watson is no more or less impressive than a chess computer to my mind. What breakthrough or advancement is there in the design of Watson? What leads you to expect that more complication will lead anywhere? I'm sure you can simulate a brain, I don't believe we have some divine spark making us special, I just think we'll need new ideas and tools on order to do it. If we're a Turing machine you don't need to simulate the brain, you just have to wrtie the right algorithm and press Go. You could run your algorithm using pen and paper and it would be just as intelligent if a little 'slow'.
Your rejection of Free Will seems to me to be based on the fact that you simply can't think of how we couldn't be computers, rather than being based on any firm evidence. You're throwing away almost everything about life, ethics, morals, meaning simply because you can't see how they could be true. I personally find the idea that everyone is doing exactly what they have to do and has no choice about it even more depressing than the idea that their is some God watching over me all the time judging me for some unfathomable reason in order to decide which of his amusement parks I move to when I expire. I guess you'd say that I have no choice about feeling this way though.
I'm going to sidestep your point about meaning because I think it falls into a related but separate area from the initial discussion.
To reiterate my main argument, I believe that I have Free Will and that therefore I am not a Turing machine. Since all computers are Turing machines, regardless of parallel computing and so on, the Strong AI project of big computer plus clever software, is never going to emulate any real intelligence.
You deny that there is any Free Will in the universe, or at least redefine it to be simply a non-emulatable complex system. I can understand this argument but it simply doesn't feel true to me. I believe this is where we differ.
I think that most people who adopt your stance, do so because they cannot see how there could be such a thing as Free Will. The old concept of Dualism where mind stuff interacts somehow with real physical stuff seems implausible. How could this non physical mind stuff, even if it did exist, possibly have an effect on real physical stuff without violating the known laws of physics such as conservation of energy etc.
I do not believe you have to be a dualist however in order to envisage how Free Will might operate without breaking any laws. Particle decay for example is, as far as the current thinking goes, simply a series of random events that taken as a whole follow strict statistical rules. Changing the timing of the decay would certainly change the universe without violating any known laws.
It seems to me that it is conceivable as a thought experiment, and I say now I do not actually believe that this is what happens, but if the idea is even slightly plausible it opens up the likelihood that other more relaistic schemes might be in place, that when we exercide Free Will, which is basically making a choice, we might be entertaining two different scenarios in our head that are both possible but depend on some aspect of Physics that we currently treat as random.
Our consciousness for example might be in some way a non collapsed quantom state that reaches a decision and then acts by causing the decay of a particle. Again this seems very unlikely to me but it is not totally infeasible.
My understanding of Penrose's argument is that he believes something along these lines. The Platonic world would possibly act as the firing range for testing out the scenarios allowing us to choose the most beautiful options from those on offer, our consciousness then manipulates the Universe in some way that we currently accept as being random in order to apply the choice.
I can't offer any real evidence that I am right or you are wrong, but then the reverse applies too. I think that not believeing in Free Will is a more fundamentalist attitude that answers less and cuts off avenues of exploration. I think it is a non answer to our very real questions about how and why we feel. It also seems unscientific to me as it is essentially a non explanation. I can see how you might feel the very opposite however, that my idea is merely a pipe dream with no basis in evidence, that it overcomplicates the world and that it seems implausible.
It might be worth discussing how we can actually answer the argument. When discussing climate change I'm always aware of the fact that presumably in 20 years or so one side will have been proven right or wrong (assuming that we don't actually cut emissions drastically before anything much happens, ehich seems likely). How long would you have to give Strong AI it's chance for before you might acknowledge that it was a dead end? Surely a combination of Moore's Law and advances in neuroscience should have led somewhere in 20 years time?
and therefore not understandable by science, so it must be spiritual or something along those lines
I know when someone says 'trust me' that it invariably means they are a snake oil salesman ( or an omega 3 fish Birds Eye oil salesman) but trust me I'm no spiritualist.
You however say that you do not believe in Free Will. I think that that is a truly fundamentalist stance and I would say that if Ocham was still alive, your idea that everything was set in stone would not pass his test, simply because his test would therefore be pointless.
Free will is a useful conception for everyday life, even if it is not absolutely true.
If you believe that, why are you bothering to argue? If you have no free will you have no point. You must surely agree with me on that. No free will means this argument is pointless.What do you mean by 'absolutely'. Either you have Free Will or you don't. I'm betting you live your life as if you have. Whilst that doesn't prove you do have free will it surely makes you either pointless or a hypocrite.
I'm a little drunk now after the royal wedding, I'd love to continue this discussion though, I have a throw away address at richpegemail-at-gmail.com but if you have the inclination (who knows if you do or don't - it's in the stars according to you) replying here is easier.
I've had a similar argument to this, although you've put the case better, with a friend before and I still do not believe that he believe's he has no free will. It seems to me that believing in determinism is an act of faith pretty much up there with the 70 virgins waiting to greet you with the grapes.
I'd love to continue this argument more slowly and more soberly though. Possibly a bit like chess, if you're not a nut, you can compete if you slow things down, I think you'll run me over if I don't take more time.
I'm a theoretical republican by the way who would love to get rid of the royal family but hates the idea of almost anyone else being our head of state. We might get a Donald Trump equivalent for fucks sake. I shall now go to bed and sleep off the wine:)
I'm perfectly willing to admit that if we do not have free will then the brain is a Turing machine.
I happen to believe in free will though, in fact I think it takes an amazing self deception to pretend that you don't believe in free will, although as I stated before, if indeed there is no free will then we are both simply arguing because we have no choice in the matter.
There is no room in the laws of Physics as formulated at the moment for free will. I think therefore there is something missing, that that missing part probably explains consciousness and intelligence, and that therefore until we incorporate it into out attempts at Artificial Intelligence, those attempts will fail. I'm not some religious nut by the way, and I do believe we will eventually create true AI I just think we're not going to do it by simply ramping up our current hardware and designing better software.
Do you believe in Free Will? If so how do you explain it, if not why not? I've just read the Moral Landscape by Sam Harris and there is a section in there where he states the case against free will as well as I've seen anywhere. I still found it the least convincing part of the book though. I cannot understand how anyone can believe that everything is predestined inclusing their own thoughts. That said I cannot understand how anyone can believe in any of the religions and yet they clearly do.
1. Any system that is not a Turing machine or emulatable on a Turing machine will be capable of hypercomputation?
That's a ridiculous statement therefore your argument is nonsense.
Certainly a system capable of hypercomputation would not be emulatable on a Turing machine (by definition if I understand the idea - I've only skimmed your link) but it doesn't mean that any system that is not a Turing machine is going to be capable of hypercomputation.
The argument is pretty simple. Every computer is a Turing machine. All Turing machines are essentially alike. Building faster computers is not going to bring about Strong AI.
If you think your brain is a Turing machine fine, I don't think mine is.
Strong AI needs something we haven't discovered yet, that something will probably explain our sense of consciousness too. It is probably some aspect of Physics that we don't understand yet. Penrose speculates about this for which he has been ridiculed but his basic argument that we are not Turing machines is sound and doesn't rely on his speculations.
It ultimately comes down to whether or not you think that the Government has the right to read all of your communications or not.
If you believe copyright law is a good enough justification for that then you are 'anti-pirate' if you don't you are 'pro-pirate'.
Tell me how you'll enforce copyright once everyone switches to out of country VPNs without effectively snooping on absolutely everything that anyone does and I'll reconsider my 'pro-pirate stupidity'.
Re:This is not the logic you are looking for
on
Is Sugar Toxic?
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This study shows there is no health risk from passive smoking
It was initially financed by health authorities but they disowned it when they saw the provisional results. It then required Tobacco money to pay for the final publication, a fact which is then used to discredit it.
Re:This is not the logic you are looking for
on
Is Sugar Toxic?
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· Score: 1
Passive smoking is a myth. This is the largest study undertaken
Smokers generally live to retirement and then die about 5 years before non smokers. That is a huge saving in pensions and other benefits far outweighing the cost of cancer treatment. Non smokers generally die too you know, quite often of cancer in fact.
In Britain where the health system is paid for by government, as is the state pension etc, once you include tobacco taxes smokers are actually a big boon to the overall economy precisely because they die young but not till they've stopped working.
I appreciate that in America where you don't bother providing cover for poor people it may well be different. Still at least you don't have those 'Death Panels' that we apparently have over here.
You're confusing religion with the concept of a monotheistic God. He said Science can explain Religion, which in a way it can. You can say plenty about Religion using logic. Every Religion I've read about for instance is incompatible with all of the others so logic allows me to say that at most one can be right.
Even if you confuse religion with a single montheistic God as you seem to do, you can still use logic to say things so when you state 'you can't say anything about a god by using logic' you are wrong.
Your main argument is that God could be outside of the universe and utterly unknowable. This is true but it is equally true that if you expanded the 'universe' to include that God it would be valid to reuse that argument to suggest that there was a second God who sat outside the first one etc. This is simply the rebuttal to the First Cause argument or more simply put 'Who created God'. Since introducing the idea of God hasn't in any way simplified our explanation of the universe or added anything to our knowledge it is logical to question why we should seriously consider it.
If I met God, I'd ask him who he believed in and why?
I disagree. He provided a beautiful argument invoking Godel's incompleteness theorem as to why our current approach could never explain consciousness. He probably made a mistake in having a completely speculative attempt at guessing where we might want to look (carbon nanotubes in the brain) to move forward, and this was seized on rather than the main argument. Have you actually read much of Penrose's work? You can't read it and come to the conclusion the guy is a quack, he's one of the few bona fide geniuses we have writing for us mortals.
How exactly has Penrose humiliated himself?
He just says we're missing something in our attempts to explain consciousness and the missing bit is likely to be something involving the unsatisfactoty bit of physics that people gloss over 'Collapse of the wave function'
Slashdot Mirror
The request would have to be pretty specific, not a catch all for any future application you install.
For a purchase such as a phone you would have to make the user accept the request before they made the purchase, or you'd have to make the phone work still work when the user said no.
Not crap. Good.
Ok, I give up. Guns are good and it's just a coincidence that the USA has the slackest rules and the biggest number of deaths.
It's worth the deaths of hundreds of people every year, many of them children, who die due to accidental gun shots, not to mention the many murders carried out using guns, 'cos you want the right to own a Magnum.
Freedom works in many ways you know. The right to carry a gun, removes other people's right to live in a gun free society. Somehow everyone manages to get by quite happily everywhere else in the Western World without having gun shops on their high streets.
Should you be free to build bombs then? You might be entering a bomb making competition, or trying to blow up a bear in the woods.
Well carrying the kind of knife you could usr to stab people with is also illegal in most countries, but the main difference is that the sole purpose of knives is not to kill people. Maybe you don't cut up meat, you just shoot it into pieces.
We have a minimum 5 year sentence for carrying a gun. That is what stops people from doing it. Sadly gun use is on the increase in the UK, possibly because it has been seen as less extraordinary due to the amount of US TV shows and films we get to watch. It's still pretty rare though.
What the hell do you want a gun for anyway? Apart from to protect yourself from other guns?
The international statistics on 'violent crime' are almost meaningless as they rely on different methodologies for gathering the data. Two guys in a bar having a bit of a fight is marked as 'violent crime' in the UK unlike most places. This happens a lot in the UK but rarely leads to anything serious. Your claim that crime in the UK is far worse than in the USA is dubious, the USA has a prison population 6 times higher than the UK's.
The stats on murder are far more accurate and guess what the USA is way way ahead of the UK.
Give me one good reason for allowing people hand guns. Note I'm saying hand guns not all guns, although I can't see any justification for any guns myself.
And this bullshit about other countries having more guns and less murder is just propaganda from the gun nuts in your country. No other civilised country allows people to walk around with hand guns.
What could possibly go wrong?
You ever thought about banning hand guns and imprisoning anyone who carries one like the rest of the civilised world does? You know the rest of the civilised world where the number of people being shot is much much lower.
Strange how you manage to ignore your supposedly infallible constitutiuon when it talks about slavery but somehow a vague section about armed militias means you want teachers in schools to be armed. Think for yoursleves and make the laws you need instead of slavishly following the 'Founding Fathers' and glorifying a gun culture to the rest of the world through your media.
I like America but when it comes to guns there seems to be some sort of mental block stopping you from looking at it in a disinterested way that would lead you to the same conclusions every other bloody country has reached.
Did Google make billions out of these ads? Surely there isn't that much money in just this area?
What kind of ads were they out of interest? We don't really get many drug adverts in England.
You ask me whether the process I have in mind that might explain Free Will is either stochastic or deterministic, but It wouldn't be Free Will if it was either of those.
I'm not proposing a stochastic process, I'm proposing a way in which an unknown process, outside of the current Laws of Physics could in theory interact with the world without violating those Laws.
The example I gave was just that an example. I suggested that by influencing events that we currently think of as essentially random, a new process which is somehow under our conscious control, indeed is in fact our consciousness, could affect the world without violating any of our current Laws. I'm not suggesting that those random events in anyway constitue our Free Will.
I'm not sure you quite understand where I am coming from. If we have Free Will then it cannot be explained by our current understanding of Physics. We have to be able to make a choice that is not predetermined or random. I believe we have Free Will, that is I believe our choices are neither predetermined or random.
You then insist that if my idea of Free Will is not systematic, which it isn't, that it must be non-scientific and non-understandable. I do not agree here at all. We could most certainly investigate the mechanism of how this Free Will interacts with the world in a scientific way. Perhaps nailing it right down to a point where we have to insert a 'choice is made here' marker in our understanding. Obviously at some point however a choice has to be made that can only be understood by the person making it otherwise it would not be free will. That person would however understand it. Indeed you could argue that the understanding represented that person.
I do think that most of what makes up our everyday experience is simple reaction to our sensorary input. I'm aware that we are mostly unaware of what happens in order for us to see and feel and that we are probably mistaken about a lot of what we actually think we think. When I truly stop and decide a point though, such as 'Do I have Free Will', I simply do not believe that my cogitation is not my own.
As for the point about when Strong AI will come about, you say that you are 'constantly amazed by the progress being made with weak AI '. To be honest, I'm constantly amazed that anyone is at all impressed with the progress made in any form of AI as I cannot see any. Watson is no more or less impressive than a chess computer to my mind. What breakthrough or advancement is there in the design of Watson? What leads you to expect that more complication will lead anywhere? I'm sure you can simulate a brain, I don't believe we have some divine spark making us special, I just think we'll need new ideas and tools on order to do it. If we're a Turing machine you don't need to simulate the brain, you just have to wrtie the right algorithm and press Go. You could run your algorithm using pen and paper and it would be just as intelligent if a little 'slow'.
Your rejection of Free Will seems to me to be based on the fact that you simply can't think of how we couldn't be computers, rather than being based on any firm evidence. You're throwing away almost everything about life, ethics, morals, meaning simply because you can't see how they could be true. I personally find the idea that everyone is doing exactly what they have to do and has no choice about it even more depressing than the idea that their is some God watching over me all the time judging me for some unfathomable reason in order to decide which of his amusement parks I move to when I expire. I guess you'd say that I have no choice about feeling this way though.
I'm going to sidestep your point about meaning because I think it falls into a related but separate area from the initial discussion.
To reiterate my main argument, I believe that I have Free Will and that therefore I am not a Turing machine. Since all computers are Turing machines, regardless of parallel computing and so on, the Strong AI project of big computer plus clever software, is never going to emulate any real intelligence.
You deny that there is any Free Will in the universe, or at least redefine it to be simply a non-emulatable complex system. I can understand this argument but it simply doesn't feel true to me. I believe this is where we differ.
I think that most people who adopt your stance, do so because they cannot see how there could be such a thing as Free Will. The old concept of Dualism where mind stuff interacts somehow with real physical stuff seems implausible. How could this non physical mind stuff, even if it did exist, possibly have an effect on real physical stuff without violating the known laws of physics such as conservation of energy etc.
I do not believe you have to be a dualist however in order to envisage how Free Will might operate without breaking any laws. Particle decay for example is, as far as the current thinking goes, simply a series of random events that taken as a whole follow strict statistical rules. Changing the timing of the decay would certainly change the universe without violating any known laws.
It seems to me that it is conceivable as a thought experiment, and I say now I do not actually believe that this is what happens, but if the idea is even slightly plausible it opens up the likelihood that other more relaistic schemes might be in place, that when we exercide Free Will, which is basically making a choice, we might be entertaining two different scenarios in our head that are both possible but depend on some aspect of Physics that we currently treat as random.
Our consciousness for example might be in some way a non collapsed quantom state that reaches a decision and then acts by causing the decay of a particle. Again this seems very unlikely to me but it is not totally infeasible. My understanding of Penrose's argument is that he believes something along these lines. The Platonic world would possibly act as the firing range for testing out the scenarios allowing us to choose the most beautiful options from those on offer, our consciousness then manipulates the Universe in some way that we currently accept as being random in order to apply the choice.
I can't offer any real evidence that I am right or you are wrong, but then the reverse applies too. I think that not believeing in Free Will is a more fundamentalist attitude that answers less and cuts off avenues of exploration. I think it is a non answer to our very real questions about how and why we feel. It also seems unscientific to me as it is essentially a non explanation. I can see how you might feel the very opposite however, that my idea is merely a pipe dream with no basis in evidence, that it overcomplicates the world and that it seems implausible.
It might be worth discussing how we can actually answer the argument. When discussing climate change I'm always aware of the fact that presumably in 20 years or so one side will have been proven right or wrong (assuming that we don't actually cut emissions drastically before anything much happens, ehich seems likely). How long would you have to give Strong AI it's chance for before you might acknowledge that it was a dead end? Surely a combination of Moore's Law and advances in neuroscience should have led somewhere in 20 years time?
and therefore not understandable by science, so it must be spiritual or something along those lines
:)
:)
I know when someone says 'trust me' that it invariably means they are a snake oil salesman ( or an omega 3 fish Birds Eye oil salesman) but trust me I'm no spiritualist.
You however say that you do not believe in Free Will. I think that that is a truly fundamentalist stance and I would say that if Ocham was still alive, your idea that everything was set in stone would not pass his test, simply because his test would therefore be pointless.
Free will is a useful conception for everyday life, even if it is not absolutely true.
If you believe that, why are you bothering to argue? If you have no free will you have no point. You must surely agree with me on that. No free will means this argument is pointless.What do you mean by 'absolutely'. Either you have Free Will or you don't. I'm betting you live your life as if you have. Whilst that doesn't prove you do have free will it surely makes you either pointless or a hypocrite.
I'm a little drunk now after the royal wedding, I'd love to continue this discussion though, I have a throw away address at richpegemail-at-gmail.com but if you have the inclination (who knows if you do or don't - it's in the stars according to you) replying here is easier.
I've had a similar argument to this, although you've put the case better, with a friend before and I still do not believe that he believe's he has no free will. It seems to me that believing in determinism is an act of faith pretty much up there with the 70 virgins waiting to greet you with the grapes.
I'd love to continue this argument more slowly and more soberly though. Possibly a bit like chess, if you're not a nut, you can compete if you slow things down, I think you'll run me over if I don't take more time.
I'm a theoretical republican by the way who would love to get rid of the royal family but hates the idea of almost anyone else being our head of state. We might get a Donald Trump equivalent for fucks sake. I shall now go to bed and sleep off the wine
God save the Queen
I'm perfectly willing to admit that if we do not have free will then the brain is a Turing machine.
I happen to believe in free will though, in fact I think it takes an amazing self deception to pretend that you don't believe in free will, although as I stated before, if indeed there is no free will then we are both simply arguing because we have no choice in the matter.
There is no room in the laws of Physics as formulated at the moment for free will. I think therefore there is something missing, that that missing part probably explains consciousness and intelligence, and that therefore until we incorporate it into out attempts at Artificial Intelligence, those attempts will fail. I'm not some religious nut by the way, and I do believe we will eventually create true AI I just think we're not going to do it by simply ramping up our current hardware and designing better software.
Do you believe in Free Will? If so how do you explain it, if not why not? I've just read the Moral Landscape by Sam Harris and there is a section in there where he states the case against free will as well as I've seen anywhere. I still found it the least convincing part of the book though. I cannot understand how anyone can believe that everything is predestined inclusing their own thoughts. That said I cannot understand how anyone can believe in any of the religions and yet they clearly do.
Guess I believe in Free Will and you don't.
If you're right then I have no choice but to be wrong anyway.
If I'm right, you are just plain wrong with no excuses.
How do you justify :
1. Any system that is not a Turing machine or emulatable on a Turing machine will be capable of hypercomputation?
That's a ridiculous statement therefore your argument is nonsense.
Certainly a system capable of hypercomputation would not be emulatable on a Turing machine (by definition if I understand the idea - I've only skimmed your link) but it doesn't mean that any system that is not a Turing machine is going to be capable of hypercomputation.
The argument is pretty simple. Every computer is a Turing machine. All Turing machines are essentially alike. Building faster computers is not going to bring about Strong AI.
If you think your brain is a Turing machine fine, I don't think mine is.
Strong AI needs something we haven't discovered yet, that something will probably explain our sense of consciousness too. It is probably some aspect of Physics that we don't understand yet. Penrose speculates about this for which he has been ridiculed but his basic argument that we are not Turing machines is sound and doesn't rely on his speculations.
23 years since Penrose pointed out that the Strong AI proponents were wearing no clothes and still we're getting articles about their latest catwalk
It ultimately comes down to whether or not you think that the Government has the right to read all of your communications or not.
If you believe copyright law is a good enough justification for that then you are 'anti-pirate' if you don't you are 'pro-pirate'.
Tell me how you'll enforce copyright once everyone switches to out of country VPNs without effectively snooping on absolutely everything that anyone does and I'll reconsider my 'pro-pirate stupidity'.
This study shows there is no health risk from passive smoking
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC155687/?tool=pmcentrez
It was initially financed by health authorities but they disowned it when they saw the provisional results. It then required Tobacco money to pay for the final publication, a fact which is then used to discredit it.
Passive smoking is a myth. This is the largest study undertaken
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC155687/?tool=pmcentrez
initially sponsored by health authorities which ditched it when they saw the results. the final funding was done by the tobacco industry.
Conclusion - no signifiant health risk due to passive smoking.
Smokers generally live to retirement and then die about 5 years before non smokers. That is a huge saving in pensions and other benefits far outweighing the cost of cancer treatment. Non smokers generally die too you know, quite often of cancer in fact.
In Britain where the health system is paid for by government, as is the state pension etc, once you include tobacco taxes smokers are actually a big boon to the overall economy precisely because they die young but not till they've stopped working.
I appreciate that in America where you don't bother providing cover for poor people it may well be different. Still at least you don't have those 'Death Panels' that we apparently have over here.
Smokers die younger which saves far more money in the long term
You're confusing religion with the concept of a monotheistic God. He said Science can explain Religion, which in a way it can. You can say plenty about Religion using logic. Every Religion I've read about for instance is incompatible with all of the others so logic allows me to say that at most one can be right.
Even if you confuse religion with a single montheistic God as you seem to do, you can still use logic to say things so when you state 'you can't say anything about a god by using logic' you are wrong.
Your main argument is that God could be outside of the universe and utterly unknowable. This is true but it is equally true that if you expanded the 'universe' to include that God it would be valid to reuse that argument to suggest that there was a second God who sat outside the first one etc. This is simply the rebuttal to the First Cause argument or more simply put 'Who created God'. Since introducing the idea of God hasn't in any way simplified our explanation of the universe or added anything to our knowledge it is logical to question why we should seriously consider it.
If I met God, I'd ask him who he believed in and why?
The 'stupid' Drake equation takes into account the likely lifetime of a civilisation.
The best book I've read about the likelyhood of life being out there is The Eerie Silence witten by Paul Davies who is involved in the SETI project.
He actually thinks we may well be alone
Many of the snake-oil salesmen have moved on to fish-oil.
It seems to have worked, Birds Eye sell fish-oil added fish fingers.
I disagree. He provided a beautiful argument invoking Godel's incompleteness theorem as to why our current approach could never explain consciousness. He probably made a mistake in having a completely speculative attempt at guessing where we might want to look (carbon nanotubes in the brain) to move forward, and this was seized on rather than the main argument. Have you actually read much of Penrose's work? You can't read it and come to the conclusion the guy is a quack, he's one of the few bona fide geniuses we have writing for us mortals.
How exactly has Penrose humiliated himself? He just says we're missing something in our attempts to explain consciousness and the missing bit is likely to be something involving the unsatisfactoty bit of physics that people gloss over 'Collapse of the wave function'