Huh, yeah, that little editorial comment was pretty stupid. I mean, if there were a simulation, there wouldn't be any extra cost in simulating beings that "appeared" before us "out of the future", with fancy technology, foreknowledge, and all that stuff.
Well, it seems the slashdot crowd is way to shallow to make sense of a actual peer-reviewed philosophy paper!
What the hell? What do you mean by independent thought? I mean, even if the world works as we think it does, we can't think independently of atoms, or brains... but that doesn't worry anyone. So if we're simulated, we can't think independently of a computer. What's the problem?
Independent thinking comes to having the capacity to draw conclusions based on evidence available to you. I don't see how existing in a simulation would do anything to undermine that.
In any case, you should be more clear about how you understand "independent thought." On the common-sense reading of it, what you say sounds dumb.
Oh, finally somebody posted a comment that shows they were thinking! Thank you for paying attention in college!
Of course, the real problem with the Matrix comes to why there had to be a simulation "sideshow" for the humans in the first place. I mean, the Matrix program existed only for their amusement, and it seems like a lot of energy and computational power got used up to that end. Why go through all the bother? Why not lobotomize them and have them exist as heat-producting vegetables?
And don't say: their working brains were necessary to power the Matrix, because the only reason why they had the Matrix is to keep their working brains occupied. Anyway, the concept behind the whole scenario was pretty half-baked....
What a dumbass! Do you actually think philosophers have first come across these issues as a result of watching the Matrix? I'm sorry, but that's just ignorant. Look at the dates of some of the big articles about the subject. Many are pre-1999, in some cases, by centuries!
Uhh, maybe you should do some more philosophy learning. Your alleged objection to this work shows a profound misunderstanding of it. Nobody said that chicks in catsuits are going to start appearing.
If you read the Chalmers paper, you'd see that living in a simulation does not make the objects around us any less real than outside the simulation... although I'm not sure I'm convinced by that argument...
Repeating tautologies like A is A is only a good move if you're writing a script for a movie for idiots, like Matrix Reloaded.
Yeah, and I really believe you actually read the article. Really.
He was quite up-front about which quantities we can't gauge, and his conclusion was not that we live in a simulation, but that it is one only three interesting alternatives that we have any reason to have credence for.
I'm impressed that Slashdot linked to a pretty interesting paper. I just wish the readership and the moderators here were smart enough to not completely miss the point. Reading that paper made me happy; reading these remarks is depressing!
Re:Oh man, will there be no OS9 builds, ever?
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Mozilla 1.4 RC1
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· Score: 1
Well, that's sad to hear. I appreciate the straight answer, though!
Oh man, will there be no OS9 builds, ever?
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Mozilla 1.4 RC1
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· Score: 2, Interesting
My computer at work is running OS9.2 and I can't go in and upgrade it to OSX. (Not only would I have to pay for it, but our tech support wouldn't be able to work on it.)
By far the best browser on OS9 is Mozilla 1.21, but a lot of things were broken on 1.21, especially Mail. Would it really be that hard to merge in all the improvements that have been made since then and release 1.4 for OS9? I'm sure I'm not the only person in this position, forced to run OS9 on my office computer. In fact, I'm almost sure there are more people in this boat than there are HP-UX users... so what gives?
This thing is basically a fancy PVR, one of whose features is the ability to play PS2 games (which will be considered out-of-date for most of this thing's product cycle). I think Sony would be much wiser to give it a name that makes it sound like it's a media hub with bonuses, rather than a game console with bonuses.
I think you're right about the gameplaying stuff being a freebie. Sony and Toshiba are able to make the PS2 processor very cheap and in large quantities. Any fancy living room media box is going to need some decent processor, and using the Emotion Engine probably adds $15 or so to the cost, especially if they can get good yields at 90nm(!). For that, they have a lot of headroom for encoding and decoding video, and... oh yeah! I guess it could even play PS2 games!
What I find strange is the branding. I mean, it's strange that they're pitching this as a super Playstation rather than a game-enabled super-PVR.
Actually, I don't know too much about this stuff, and this is my first time hearing of VELA flash. I always assumed that GPC satellites were basically just radio beacons. Do they actually have optics? That would be pretty interesting... at least to me!
What? the non-Ultra 5200 is much slower than the ancient Radeon 8500 (and more expensive). There isn't a single DX9 game now which would be playably-fast on it, and they'll only get more intense in the future, so the DirectX9 compatibility is a red herring.
What? We don't define the speed of light. Definitions are up to us, and the speed of light is fortunately not. We define how long a second is, and we define what a meter is in terms of seconds and the speed of light. But we don't define the speed of light. That's just given by nature, and that's why it's so useful.
The same deal with Plack's constat. It's value is not up to us, but up to nature. "Defining" it would be like defining pi as 3.
We actually have a metric definition of mass that doesn't depend on anything in Paris. By convention, Avogadro's number of Carbon 12 atoms has a mass of 12 grams. This will remain true no matter what happens in Paris.
However, maybe I'm implicitly assuming that we have settled exactly what Avogadro's number is. But if we haven't, if we are still holding out for more and more accurate measurements of Avogadro's number, then yeah, we need to really nail down what a kilogram is. But that seems weird to me, because Avogadro's number has no units. It's just a count of atoms, playing the same grammatical role as the word "dozen".
Maybe they plan to sell licenses to decrypt certain signals which increase speed or accuracy. Since therir market would be the entire world, they might eventually make their money back.
My guess is that the most expensive thing about these satellites will be launching them, and the Russians tend to be reasonable about prices.
The US pretty much has a monopoly on space-based images. There are some commercial spy satellites in operation, but much of their resources consist is receiving US tax money to not sell certain pictures which prove our government is lying about something. For example, every picture of wartime Afghanistan and Iraq was purchased with US public funds and classified.
We need somebody besides the US keeping an eye on the world. I would think this even if I didn't think the US is abusing its advantage.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on... read the article. Or even the abstract, for that matter! This is just a stupid objection.
No wait--This is modern philosophy. This came from a peer-reviewed journal! And reading it is the most stimulation I've received all day.
I think it's a much bigger crime people get paid to write moronic movies like Matrix Reloaded, without having any idea about anything philosophical.
Worse still is that modern industrialized societies allow uneducated fools like you near a computer. We should do better!
Well, it seems the slashdot crowd is way to shallow to make sense of a actual peer-reviewed philosophy paper!
Independent thinking comes to having the capacity to draw conclusions based on evidence available to you. I don't see how existing in a simulation would do anything to undermine that.
In any case, you should be more clear about how you understand "independent thought." On the common-sense reading of it, what you say sounds dumb.
Of course, the real problem with the Matrix comes to why there had to be a simulation "sideshow" for the humans in the first place. I mean, the Matrix program existed only for their amusement, and it seems like a lot of energy and computational power got used up to that end. Why go through all the bother? Why not lobotomize them and have them exist as heat-producting vegetables?
And don't say: their working brains were necessary to power the Matrix, because the only reason why they had the Matrix is to keep their working brains occupied. Anyway, the concept behind the whole scenario was pretty half-baked....
What a dumbass! Do you actually think philosophers have first come across these issues as a result of watching the Matrix? I'm sorry, but that's just ignorant. Look at the dates of some of the big articles about the subject. Many are pre-1999, in some cases, by centuries!
The article was not about "what if's" but about what conclusions warrant rational credence. Read it again.
If you read the Chalmers paper, you'd see that living in a simulation does not make the objects around us any less real than outside the simulation... although I'm not sure I'm convinced by that argument...
Repeating tautologies like A is A is only a good move if you're writing a script for a movie for idiots, like Matrix Reloaded.
He was quite up-front about which quantities we can't gauge, and his conclusion was not that we live in a simulation, but that it is one only three interesting alternatives that we have any reason to have credence for.
Go read the fucking article! Your objections are dealt with.
I'm impressed that Slashdot linked to a pretty interesting paper. I just wish the readership and the moderators here were smart enough to not completely miss the point. Reading that paper made me happy; reading these remarks is depressing!
Well, that's sad to hear. I appreciate the straight answer, though!
By far the best browser on OS9 is Mozilla 1.21, but a lot of things were broken on 1.21, especially Mail. Would it really be that hard to merge in all the improvements that have been made since then and release 1.4 for OS9? I'm sure I'm not the only person in this position, forced to run OS9 on my office computer. In fact, I'm almost sure there are more people in this boat than there are HP-UX users... so what gives?
This thing is basically a fancy PVR, one of whose features is the ability to play PS2 games (which will be considered out-of-date for most of this thing's product cycle). I think Sony would be much wiser to give it a name that makes it sound like it's a media hub with bonuses, rather than a game console with bonuses.
What I find strange is the branding. I mean, it's strange that they're pitching this as a super Playstation rather than a game-enabled super-PVR.
I think this is to push Sony's content than to undermine the entertainment industry. Remember that Sony is a big chunk of the entertainment industry.
Actually, I don't know too much about this stuff, and this is my first time hearing of VELA flash. I always assumed that GPC satellites were basically just radio beacons. Do they actually have optics? That would be pretty interesting... at least to me!
Got it. Thanks. That's what I was afraid of!
What? the non-Ultra 5200 is much slower than the ancient Radeon 8500 (and more expensive). There isn't a single DX9 game now which would be playably-fast on it, and they'll only get more intense in the future, so the DirectX9 compatibility is a red herring.
The same deal with Plack's constat. It's value is not up to us, but up to nature. "Defining" it would be like defining pi as 3.
However, maybe I'm implicitly assuming that we have settled exactly what Avogadro's number is. But if we haven't, if we are still holding out for more and more accurate measurements of Avogadro's number, then yeah, we need to really nail down what a kilogram is. But that seems weird to me, because Avogadro's number has no units. It's just a count of atoms, playing the same grammatical role as the word "dozen".
Jaaaaah! Open source bier! Now if only I could get it free...
Nvidia recently announced they have shipped their 130th FX 5900 card.
My guess is that the most expensive thing about these satellites will be launching them, and the Russians tend to be reasonable about prices.
We need somebody besides the US keeping an eye on the world. I would think this even if I didn't think the US is abusing its advantage.