If you don't even know you are being advertised to, you won't have much of a psychological defence.
So true. Now please excuse me while I pour myself a glass of Coca-Cola(R) and then go back to using Adobe(R) Photoshop(TM) running on Microsoft(R) Windows(TM) 7 on my Dell(R) OptiPlex(TM) workstation.
Do you have a better explanation for the wide variation of human behaviour? Tangential? I don't think so. As you pointed out, we are governed by the same physical processes that govern the rest of the universe.
I meant tangential to the question of whether or not free will exists. Obviously it's not tangential to the outcome as manifested in observable behaviour. In both cases (including or ignoring quantum physics) this outcome is determined by physics - the only difference is a probabilistic element if you include quantum physics.
Or is it this randomness which you call "free will"?
I think you need to question your basic assumptions a bit closer. No offence meant.
No offence taken.
AFAIK animals only claim (and defend) the territory they need to survive, either alone or in a group. They don't (again AFAIK) have the tendency to claim ever bigger territories and use social constructs to defend them.
If what you said was true, then animals would not expand into new territories that would force them to evolve; which is obviously false.
I assume you mean the behaviour of species as a whole, otherwise I'm not sure I follow your logic. I was talking about individual specimen.
BTW, humans are just animals - evolved ones, perhaps, but still just animals. There is little that differentiates us from the rest of the life on this planet other than our technology.
Of course, I should have been clearer. I meant non-human animals.
One could also argue that in the end, your actions (including thoughts) are determined by the laws of physics, and therefore, free will must be an illusion.
Quantum physics allows for indeterminate solutions;-)
Of course it does. I included quantum physics, as to the best of our (collective! see?) knowledge, it adequately describes (some aspects of) reality. The fact that the same initial conditions need not always lead to the same outcome is, IMHO, tangential to the question of free will.
On a more realistic note, if there was no such thing as free will, then science would never have developed anything. No thinking "outside the box" allowed;-)
But whose free will is it? That of a bunch of atoms mashed together in the right way to come alive? How are their interactions not subject to the laws of physics (with all their quantum indeterminism)?
(philosophy has never been one of my strong subjects, because I think most of it is an illusion produced by people exercising free will...)
I'm not much of a philosopher either, so I guess my questions in this regard have been answered in dozens of different ways, contradicting each other and themselves, and I just don't know it. While I find philosophy interesting and fun to think about, it also often lacks direct consequences for everyday life. And I don't know anywhere near enough about it to ask any meaningful (as in new, unanswered) questions.
I know that I know nothing.;-)
The concept of "property" is extremely common amongst living things, particularly higher organisms. Most species above the level of bacteria have territorial behaviours that are comparable to human behaviour.
But is territory really comparable to property? AFAIK animals only claim (and defend) the territory they need to survive, either alone or in a group. They don't (again AFAIK) have the tendency to claim ever bigger territories and use social constructs to defend them.
It is more right for an individual to own property and to suffer the consequences of it's use/misuse than it is for that property to be collectively owned and for everyone to suffer those consequences collectively.
But it is right for an individual to own (and therefore control) property, yet everyone to suffer the consequences collectively?
There is no such thing as free will in the first place.
Bullshit. The fact that I could read your comment and reply, or not, in any manner I see fit negates your statement. I can choose to have wine or a beer or nothing with my supper tonight, or I could choose to go out and spend my money elsewhere. Etc. It's the asshats who want to predetermine or legislate your free will that are the problem.
One could also argue that in the end, your actions (including thoughts) are determined by the laws of physics, and therefore, free will must be an illusion.
If property rights cause more harm than good they should be abandoned.
I have the right to keep property that I've bought and paid for, as long as I don't abuse that right to harm other citizens. This comment is too general. (Case in point would be the tools that I use to fix other people's problems. Quite a few of those tools, including the knowledge in my head, could also be used to harm other people; but that is not the use I put them to. ) I suspect you were probably thinking of things like gene patenting or intellectual property - but you should clarify that.
In the society we live in - yes, you do have that right. But ours is not the only possible society. The concept of property only emerged when humans began to settle down, so it can't be something inseperably linked to human nature. It must be allowed to assess, in a philosophical sense, whether this concept is still useful in serving society as a whole (as opposed to only serving a relatively small number of people).
It becomes perfectly reasonable to empty your arsenal into their military, infrastructure, and since in cultural war every enemy human is an enemy, their population centers. Your willingness to do that must exist to be a deterrent, and if that fails, you serve your co-culturalists elsewhere by your sacrifice.
What the fuck? Every human is a human is a human. The mere thought that bombing (much less nuking) population centers can be in any way, shape or form legitimate is pure madness.
Please take a step back and think about why someone would want to go to war with you, thereby creating your necessity to defend yourself. Rational people don't do that "for the lulz".
I do what I can: I vote for candidates who are not from the demonstrably corrupt main parties, or who have a proven track record of doing good (despite their party allegiance).
Really? Voting is all you can do?
Are you running for office? Are you a political activist? Are you trying to convince others of the need to unite and get organized in the struggle for justice? Are you actively working in any way to achieve your goals?
Nobody is forcing you to do any of that. But don't say you're doing what you can if you said no to all the above questions.
On second thought, you did mention this. I guess I shouldn't be posting at 5 AM.
Still, while I agree that the tangible evil is indeed coercion by use of force and not money itself, I think that it's ultimately the extremely uneven distribution of wealth which forces people, organisations and institutions to apply violence to protect their wealth from those which have none.
Heed your own advice. Think bigger. Coercion by threat of deadly force isn't exclusive to those who are commonly called "extremists". Would you apply that label to the police? To the military?
Just because it's sanctioned by the powers that be doesn't mean it's substantially different.
Sure, but if all you want is a single boolean, a single byte is still the smallest unit you get. Of course, you're free to use the remaining bits for something else.
And, alas, the way the memory-conscious C programmer would store that single boolean is a char. Of course, if you wanted to have a beowulf cluster of massive holes, you'd use bit fields or manual bit arithmetic.
Is there really anything special about HTML5 regarding popups? Modern browsers block automatically opened popups, but it is still possible to open a popup in response to user action. I guess that is what they do here.
Of course not. But the people who post on AppDB aren't your typical end users. From a non-technical perspective, either it works or it doesn't. Hacks and workarounds are the domain of geeks, most people don't bother with them.
Obviously the goal is to make as many applications as possible work without any problems one might have to work around. And as far as I can see, the list of apps which work out of the box is already pretty long and growing.
Configure? There is nothing to configure. Yes, I know winecfg, but I've never needed it. Just install it and double-click an EXE like you would on Windows.
Hell, it even integrates itself as binfmt_misc or whatever it's called: I can call Windows programs from the command line as./foo.exe.
Why is I when I read "content freedom", I have a feeling you mean your ability to copy movies from torrent and avoid having to pay anyone for the huge investment and hard work they put into making movies.
The pirates don't care. Blu-Ray rips have been available for a long time now. This is news for people who want to play the discs they bought on hardware/software that wasn't blessed by the MAFIAA.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't even know you are being advertised to, you won't have much of a psychological defence.
So true. Now please excuse me while I pour myself a glass of Coca-Cola(R) and then go back to using Adobe(R) Photoshop(TM) running on Microsoft(R) Windows(TM) 7 on my Dell(R) OptiPlex(TM) workstation.
Do you have a better explanation for the wide variation of human behaviour? Tangential? I don't think so. As you pointed out, we are governed by the same physical processes that govern the rest of the universe.
I meant tangential to the question of whether or not free will exists. Obviously it's not tangential to the outcome as manifested in observable behaviour. In both cases (including or ignoring quantum physics) this outcome is determined by physics - the only difference is a probabilistic element if you include quantum physics.
Or is it this randomness which you call "free will"?
I think you need to question your basic assumptions a bit closer. No offence meant.
No offence taken.
AFAIK animals only claim (and defend) the territory they need to survive, either alone or in a group. They don't (again AFAIK) have the tendency to claim ever bigger territories and use social constructs to defend them.
If what you said was true, then animals would not expand into new territories that would force them to evolve; which is obviously false.
I assume you mean the behaviour of species as a whole, otherwise I'm not sure I follow your logic. I was talking about individual specimen.
BTW, humans are just animals - evolved ones, perhaps, but still just animals. There is little that differentiates us from the rest of the life on this planet other than our technology.
Of course, I should have been clearer. I meant non-human animals.
One could also argue that in the end, your actions (including thoughts) are determined by the laws of physics, and therefore, free will must be an illusion.
Quantum physics allows for indeterminate solutions ;-)
Of course it does. I included quantum physics, as to the best of our (collective! see?) knowledge, it adequately describes (some aspects of) reality. The fact that the same initial conditions need not always lead to the same outcome is, IMHO, tangential to the question of free will.
On a more realistic note, if there was no such thing as free will, then science would never have developed anything. No thinking "outside the box" allowed ;-)
But whose free will is it? That of a bunch of atoms mashed together in the right way to come alive? How are their interactions not subject to the laws of physics (with all their quantum indeterminism)?
(philosophy has never been one of my strong subjects, because I think most of it is an illusion produced by people exercising free will...)
I'm not much of a philosopher either, so I guess my questions in this regard have been answered in dozens of different ways, contradicting each other and themselves, and I just don't know it. While I find philosophy interesting and fun to think about, it also often lacks direct consequences for everyday life. And I don't know anywhere near enough about it to ask any meaningful (as in new, unanswered) questions.
I know that I know nothing. ;-)
The concept of "property" is extremely common amongst living things, particularly higher organisms. Most species above the level of bacteria have territorial behaviours that are comparable to human behaviour.
But is territory really comparable to property? AFAIK animals only claim (and defend) the territory they need to survive, either alone or in a group. They don't (again AFAIK) have the tendency to claim ever bigger territories and use social constructs to defend them.
It is more right for an individual to own property and to suffer the consequences of it's use/misuse than it is for that property to be collectively owned and for everyone to suffer those consequences collectively.
But it is right for an individual to own (and therefore control) property, yet everyone to suffer the consequences collectively?
There is no such thing as free will in the first place.
Bullshit. The fact that I could read your comment and reply, or not, in any manner I see fit negates your statement. I can choose to have wine or a beer or nothing with my supper tonight, or I could choose to go out and spend my money elsewhere. Etc. It's the asshats who want to predetermine or legislate your free will that are the problem.
One could also argue that in the end, your actions (including thoughts) are determined by the laws of physics, and therefore, free will must be an illusion.
If property rights cause more harm than good they should be abandoned.
I have the right to keep property that I've bought and paid for, as long as I don't abuse that right to harm other citizens. This comment is too general. (Case in point would be the tools that I use to fix other people's problems. Quite a few of those tools, including the knowledge in my head, could also be used to harm other people; but that is not the use I put them to. ) I suspect you were probably thinking of things like gene patenting or intellectual property - but you should clarify that.
In the society we live in - yes, you do have that right. But ours is not the only possible society. The concept of property only emerged when humans began to settle down, so it can't be something inseperably linked to human nature. It must be allowed to assess, in a philosophical sense, whether this concept is still useful in serving society as a whole (as opposed to only serving a relatively small number of people).
It becomes perfectly reasonable to empty your arsenal into their military, infrastructure, and since in cultural war every enemy human is an enemy, their population centers. Your willingness to do that must exist to be a deterrent, and if that fails, you serve your co-culturalists elsewhere by your sacrifice.
What the fuck? Every human is a human is a human. The mere thought that bombing (much less nuking) population centers can be in any way, shape or form legitimate is pure madness.
Please take a step back and think about why someone would want to go to war with you, thereby creating your necessity to defend yourself. Rational people don't do that "for the lulz".
I do what I can: I vote for candidates who are not from the demonstrably corrupt main parties, or who have a proven track record of doing good (despite their party allegiance).
Really? Voting is all you can do?
Are you running for office? Are you a political activist? Are you trying to convince others of the need to unite and get organized in the struggle for justice? Are you actively working in any way to achieve your goals?
Nobody is forcing you to do any of that. But don't say you're doing what you can if you said no to all the above questions.
What are you, a twelve year old sociopath?
He's a bot, look at his nickname. He's the bullshit daemon!
On second thought, you did mention this. I guess I shouldn't be posting at 5 AM.
Still, while I agree that the tangible evil is indeed coercion by use of force and not money itself, I think that it's ultimately the extremely uneven distribution of wealth which forces people, organisations and institutions to apply violence to protect their wealth from those which have none.
Heed your own advice. Think bigger. Coercion by threat of deadly force isn't exclusive to those who are commonly called "extremists". Would you apply that label to the police? To the military?
Just because it's sanctioned by the powers that be doesn't mean it's substantially different.
Forget Wikipedia. Ban the Internet.
Or turn it into TV.
CC.
In this case, I'd prefer BCC.
Informative? Informative?
Actual link
I tried to read the paper, but it tried to charge me first. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way round?
Sure, but if all you want is a single boolean, a single byte is still the smallest unit you get. Of course, you're free to use the remaining bits for something else.
And, alas, the way the memory-conscious C programmer would store that single boolean is a char. Of course, if you wanted to have a beowulf cluster of massive holes, you'd use bit fields or manual bit arithmetic.
Shouldn't that be a char? After all, an int can still be 2^31-1, so depending on the units used, it would still be a pretty huge hole.
So the largest number of infections have been in Iran. It is designed to disrupt industrial processes, which are also used by the military.
Obviously it was created by the CIA in an effort to spoil the Iranian nuclear program!
Is there really anything special about HTML5 regarding popups? Modern browsers block automatically opened popups, but it is still possible to open a popup in response to user action. I guess that is what they do here.
But you won't see much with only two photons around.
Of course not. But the people who post on AppDB aren't your typical end users. From a non-technical perspective, either it works or it doesn't. Hacks and workarounds are the domain of geeks, most people don't bother with them.
Obviously the goal is to make as many applications as possible work without any problems one might have to work around. And as far as I can see, the list of apps which work out of the box is already pretty long and growing.
Configure? There is nothing to configure. Yes, I know winecfg, but I've never needed it. Just install it and double-click an EXE like you would on Windows.
Hell, it even integrates itself as binfmt_misc or whatever it's called: I can call Windows programs from the command line as ./foo.exe.
Why is I when I read "content freedom", I have a feeling you mean your ability to copy movies from torrent and avoid having to pay anyone for the huge investment and hard work they put into making movies.
You mean like everybody who wanted to has been doing for how long now?
The pirates don't care. Blu-Ray rips have been available for a long time now. This is news for people who want to play the discs they bought on hardware/software that wasn't blessed by the MAFIAA.
So please mods, don't put redundant to the people who say "Get a lawyer"
Get a lawyer.
I guess somebody told them that it all depends on where you define your inertial reference point.
Of course, the movements of other celestial bodies get pretty complicated then. But it's not like it couldn't at least be numerically solved...