How do you know you are the same person you were 10 minutes ago? Or a year ago? Memory is the only evidence we have for the continuity of identity. A copy of your consciousness and memories is you. You and your copy only diverge when one of you has a unique (non-copied) experience.
This is similar to the Star Trek teleporter question: assuming a teleporter works by breaking you down and reassembleing you elsewhere, how do you know that the person on the far end is still you? What if the teleporter malfunctions and fails to destroy the copy on the near end? Which one is the real you?
Protip: either consciousness can be copied losslessly, or you should be very wary of teleporters.
From imdb: Tank: Here you go, buddy. Breakfast of Champions. Mouse: If you close your eyes, it almost feels like you're eating runny eggs. Apoc: Yeah, or a bowl of snot. Mouse: Do you know what it really reminds me of? Tasty Wheat. Did you ever eat Tasty Wheat? Switch: No, but technically, neither did you.
It apparently works by shutting off input to half of the brain, letting that half relax.
Both eyes are connected to both hemispheres of your brain. It's not that everything seen by your left eye is processed by the right half of your brain: everything seen on the left half of your visual field -- regardless of which eye -- is processed by the right side of your brain.
Closing one eye does not cut off input to half your brain. You'd have to close the left half of both eyes, which isn't going to work unless you have some crazy eyelids.
This has been discussed on Slashdot before, but it seems relevant here. If it proves impossible to stop self-replicating worms by patching holes, you can either have mandatory auto-updates provided by a "trusted" source (your friendly OS provider), or launch active defenses: white-hat worms whose payload is the patch itself. Or an anti-botnet which DOS'es infected hosts (similar to what BlueFrog tried to do for spam). Of course these cause problems and can be gamed (someone spoofs an attack as coming from you, bringing the anti-botnet to bear against you, etc.)
The basic problem is: manual patching is never going to keep up with automated discovery of vulnerable machines. You either need an automated fixing process (immune system), or you need to clamp down heavily on allowed interaction (boy-in-a-bubble style).
I can assure you that they take their legal responsibilities extremely seriously.
I don't doubt it. Their commitment to the law is laudable. However, there is precedent to suggest that law enforcement powers expand continually over time but never contract. As the law enumerates more and more things that the police are allowed to do, I'm sure they will follow those laws seriously as well.
What concerns me is:
Legislators will continue to expand the legal powers of the police until they can keep a record of everyone's movement at all times (to the extent technology allows). Even though the police are fastidious to never break the law, there is a chilling effect on liberty.
Someone corrupt could come to power and abuse the authority of law enforcement (e.g., J. Edgar Hoover). When giving the government power, we must consider not what the best man could do with it, but how the worst could misuse it.
Even if these issues were addressed, I do not want my government tracking my movements. It's none of their business.
That's true. However, I will feel at liberty to act as if their belief is incorrect (within the bounds of courtesy and respect). If they want me do otherwise, well, that requires proof.
I respect a person's right to believe as they see fit, but that doesn't mean I need to act like what they believe is actually true.
The color range may be good, but why the poor contrast ratio?
The technology sounds similar to Brightside's Extreme-Dynamic Range Display. Both are LCD monitors backlit by an array of LEDs, but Brightside claims a 200,000:1 contrast ratio because backlights can be turned off entirely for black pixels. The SpectraView clocks in with a 448: 1 contrast ratio... it seems like they should be able to do the same thing.
For one, science has nothing to do with God; God tells us why we do things, and science tells us how it happens.
I think science has quite a lot to say about why we do things, too. Human motivation doesn't come out of thin air; social psychology, physiology, and neuropsychology all influence us strongly. Hunger, fear, jealousy, desire, love, altruism -- these don't exist in a vacuum, they are programmed in the wetware.
There might be something called the soul that has decision-making authority, but there are physical explanations for the factors that inform our decisions. And even the decision-making bit doesn't require God, just some weighted randomness.
Your comment is the sanest thing I've read on this thread yet. Thank you.
Nationality doesn't define you; it doesn't make you you. Your past experiences and beliefs do that. Shared nationality usually means shared common experiences: language, education, religion, and values... this is your shared culture. It's the shared culture that's important, not the name of the country you are in.
Nation-states are not obsolete. Geography and nationality are still dominant factors in determining shared culture. However, globalization and cultural exportation mean that there are many more shared experiences. We probably watch the same tv shows, read the same books, and listen to the same music. If you're talking to a techie from another country, you've probably played the same videogames.
I would be much more at home talking to a German techie than a poor flood victim from New Orleans. I will donate money and time to the flood victim, because I want to help out my countrymen, but I'd be much more likely to sit and have a beer with the techie.
They have a right not to have their tax money spent on things they consider sinful and immoral.
I'm glad to hear it! Please let me know when I can opt not to have my tax money go toward the war in Iraq.
What's that you say? I can't opt out of the payment because I can't opt out of the benefits? How is that different from universal education? Or is there a way to opt out of a strong economy and an educated workforce that I'm unaware of?
By the way, I hate you for how good your photos look.:) I had a hard time getting anything but blurs in the dim light. (My Canon PowerShot S400 has no aperture control.)
Aren't biologists looking for a better theory than evolution to replace it one day, or have they accepted it as a religion and begun treating it like a faith?
Not all theories are infinitely reducible. Sometimes science "gets it right." By diligent application of the scientific method, the correct theory may be found. For instance, I doubt many scientists are out there still trying to figure out why the sky is blue, or why fire is hot. The existing theories are sufficient.
Similarly, I don't think there are a lot of scientists out there looking for the next big thing to replace evolution. Instead, they're trying to work out the details (the mapping between genotypes and phenotypes, etc.) They're attacking sub-problems.
It may be that examining the details will expose a problem that torpedos the whole theory, but it's specious to assume that just because something is a theory, it must be wrong. If that were the yardstick for measuring beliefs, faith wouldn't stand a chance.
We do not live on a playground. Freedom of speech is not something that exists only in the sandbox. When we say something really mean, the state is not a watchful parent who should step in and pull us aside for a stern talking to.
That's the attitude a lot of people seem to take. "Oh, they were playing for real, so the FBI had to make them stop."
Liberty is either respected or it is not. The realpolitik guys will say "only when it's expedient". The libertarians will say, "all the time regardless". The Democrats and Republicans will say, "as long as you play nice", and that's the government we've got.
The government has to follow the rules all the time. They can't break them just because we're playing "for keeps"*.
*though of course actually they can, and do, and people expect them to. so they'll keep doing it.
The pattern for enums in Java prior to 1.5 uses a singleton class to achieve the same effect.
class EDirection {
public static final RIGHT = new EDirection();
public static final LEFT = new EDirection();
public static final UP = new EDirection();
public static final DOWN = new EDirection();
private EDirection() {}// private constructor }
The private constructor ensures that only these 4 instances of this class will ever be instantiated.
I am bad for using the term "Marriage". I mean commitment to a partner for life.
Wow, that's really not a slip-up you want to make if you're arguing against gay marriage. As soon as you equate "marriage" with "life partner", you've proven their point.
I don't think Searle's response holds water. The number of people executing the instructions is meaningless. If one person memorizes the rulebook, all that that means is that the hardware has been centralized. If the person is still dumbly executing commands, they're just playing the part of the CPU, or the neurotransmitters.
If you were to read the person a story in Chinese, then later ask them questions in Chinese about it, they would be able to answer -- in Chinese. That's the nature of the Turing test. But they wouldn't be able to answer in English, precisely because the hardware "doesn't understand the significance of the symbols [it is] manipulating." But something does. The thing that speaks in Chinese. That is the system as a whole, the gestalt.
In his scenario, Searle claims that neither the people moving the Chienese tokens, nor the book of instructions telling them what to do "understands" what is being said. That is obviously true, but it misses the point. That's like saying that the neurons in your head don't understand what you are saying, and so neither do you.
The workers in the Chinese Room argument are just hardware. They're akin to neurons in the brain, or chips in a computer. They're blindly executing instructions (software) from a book and recording results on blank pages (working memory). No AI proponent is arguing that the chips in the computer "understand" anything. Chips just dumbly execute instructions. What's interesting is the combination of software and persistent memory, and the apparent conciousness that can arise therefrom.
Searle's argument must either be considered void, or one is compelled to admit that humans don't "understand" anything either. As such, it's hogwash.
Why is it that only conservatives use made-up insults (e.g. 'DemocRATS') to describe their opponents, even when they're pretending to attack themselves? Maybe I should read more DU and less FR.
It's almost as if the political climate on this forum supports the recognition of someone's feats only if they're considered an underdog?
You just have to find the underdog in the story and point them out, and the respect will flow. Humanize it a little.
It's not the USA that gets props, it's NASA (who's constantly fighting with the Guvm'nt for more funding). Or it's not NASA, it's the overworked and underpaid engineers who found a way to cobble something together out of shoestring and boot leather, push it past management, and are finally having their day in the sun.
We don't celebrate the people on whom sun shines every day. They don't need our recognition.
Yes, it certainly is financially risky. Long-term R&D always is, unless you're talking about an evolutionary improvement to an existing product.
Its going to stay financially risky until some successful experiments are done, either in a private lab or a publicly-funded one. So bring on the public funding! Once they find something that looks promising, and it looks like a profit could be made from it, private industry will snap it up.
Funerals are not held for the dead, they are for the living. The dead don't care. Either they are incapable of caring, or they've gone to a place where it doesn't matter anymore. The ceremony exists to bring us some comfort and closure.
It's all about ceremony. Nature doesn't care what happens to that flesh. The dead person doesn't care. What happens to the flesh is immaterial to everything outside of our minds.
However, being human, ceremonies and beliefs are very powerful. Funerals are important. Belief in the soul is important. It's a deep and abiding part of our who we are. Just don't go thinking there's anything extrinsically true about any of those beliefs.
Once the light in the eyes goes out, it's just carbon. What made them who they are is gone. We should love and cherish our memories, and honor them for the sake of the love we bore them. But we're really just doing it for ourselves and for each other. Other cultures may have other ways of doing the same thing (e.g. cannibalistic cultures who believe that eating the flesh of dead relatives continues their spirit in you). And that's okay, that's just their way of dealing with the same feelings of grief and loss.
That's the humanistic attitude. Nature doesn't care about us. The world will continue to exist without us. But while we're alive, we think and feel as humans do, and we must respect that!
The Internet disassociates information from geography. It overcomes the boundaries of physical and temporal locality. It's everything that makes books and telephones powerful, all rolled into one!
The internet provides us with the means to assemble any group of people at any time, regardless of where they live. There is an opportunity for every real-world group, institution, business, college -- every division and subdivision of mankind, along every boundary imaginable -- to meet and discuss and disseminate information. Easily. Cheaply.
This is not trivial. This is freedom of speech and association unlimited by physical location. It is the printing press and the telegraph and the radio. It is a force multiplier for human language; it is the next step in the evolution of the human ability to communicate. That's what good it is.
All morality is nothing more than personal opinion (since there is nothing outside of man (or God) which says 'ought' instead of 'is'.
I think you're giving natural selection (both genetic and memetic) short shrift here.
1. We are not perfectly rational creatures, we have built-in (genetic) biases and social (taught) biases towards certain types of behavior. 2. 'Selfless' behavior in a population strengthens and helps to propagate that population. 3. A stronger population will eventually push out a weaker one (your point 4 above). 4. Over time, a population/society which values selfless behavior will push out one which believes "might makes right".
Conclusion: might does make right, but if all of the individuals in a population start to believe that, they will be pushed out of the way by a population that believes in morality. Morality keeps coming up, and people keep believing in it, because on the whole it is beneficial (in the sense of natural selection) to do so.
Similarly, you have to wonder about religion. It expresses strongly in every human population, even when it's forced out via might (Communist athiesm). Does everyone believe in it because it's true, or because it's beneficial for people to believe it's true...?
So there's the rub. Even if morality is a figment of our imagination, people will keep believing it. The only thing that makes the moralist's stance more appealing to the Deist's is that a moralist doesn't claim anything about the external world (e.g. "It's right to be good, because God said so"), only about how they should treat one another (e.g. "It's right to be good").
Slashdot Mirror
How do you know you are the same person you were 10 minutes ago? Or a year ago? Memory is the only evidence we have for the continuity of identity. A copy of your consciousness and memories is you. You and your copy only diverge when one of you has a unique (non-copied) experience.
This is similar to the Star Trek teleporter question: assuming a teleporter works by breaking you down and reassembleing you elsewhere, how do you know that the person on the far end is still you? What if the teleporter malfunctions and fails to destroy the copy on the near end? Which one is the real you?
Protip: either consciousness can be copied losslessly, or you should be very wary of teleporters.
Mmmmm, protozoan.
From imdb:
Tank: Here you go, buddy. Breakfast of Champions.
Mouse: If you close your eyes, it almost feels like you're eating runny eggs.
Apoc: Yeah, or a bowl of snot.
Mouse: Do you know what it really reminds me of? Tasty Wheat. Did you ever eat Tasty Wheat?
Switch: No, but technically, neither did you.
It apparently works by shutting off input to half of the brain, letting that half relax.
Both eyes are connected to both hemispheres of your brain. It's not that everything seen by your left eye is processed by the right half of your brain: everything seen on the left half of your visual field -- regardless of which eye -- is processed by the right side of your brain.
Closing one eye does not cut off input to half your brain. You'd have to close the left half of both eyes, which isn't going to work unless you have some crazy eyelids.
This has been discussed on Slashdot before, but it seems relevant here. If it proves impossible to stop self-replicating worms by patching holes, you can either have mandatory auto-updates provided by a "trusted" source (your friendly OS provider), or launch active defenses: white-hat worms whose payload is the patch itself. Or an anti-botnet which DOS'es infected hosts (similar to what BlueFrog tried to do for spam). Of course these cause problems and can be gamed (someone spoofs an attack as coming from you, bringing the anti-botnet to bear against you, etc.)
The basic problem is: manual patching is never going to keep up with automated discovery of vulnerable machines. You either need an automated fixing process (immune system), or you need to clamp down heavily on allowed interaction (boy-in-a-bubble style).
I don't doubt it. Their commitment to the law is laudable. However, there is precedent to suggest that law enforcement powers expand continually over time but never contract. As the law enumerates more and more things that the police are allowed to do, I'm sure they will follow those laws seriously as well.
What concerns me is:
Even if these issues were addressed, I do not want my government tracking my movements. It's none of their business.
That's true. However, I will feel at liberty to act as if their belief is incorrect (within the bounds of courtesy and respect). If they want me do otherwise, well, that requires proof.
I respect a person's right to believe as they see fit, but that doesn't mean I need to act like what they believe is actually true.
The color range may be good, but why the poor contrast ratio?
The technology sounds similar to Brightside's Extreme-Dynamic Range Display. Both are LCD monitors backlit by an array of LEDs, but Brightside claims a 200,000:1 contrast ratio because backlights can be turned off entirely for black pixels. The SpectraView clocks in with a 448: 1 contrast ratio... it seems like they should be able to do the same thing.
For one, science has nothing to do with God; God tells us why we do things, and science tells us how it happens.
I think science has quite a lot to say about why we do things, too. Human motivation doesn't come out of thin air; social psychology, physiology, and neuropsychology all influence us strongly. Hunger, fear, jealousy, desire, love, altruism -- these don't exist in a vacuum, they are programmed in the wetware.
There might be something called the soul that has decision-making authority, but there are physical explanations for the factors that inform our decisions. And even the decision-making bit doesn't require God, just some weighted randomness.
Your comment is the sanest thing I've read on this thread yet. Thank you.
Nationality doesn't define you; it doesn't make you you. Your past experiences and beliefs do that. Shared nationality usually means shared common experiences: language, education, religion, and values... this is your shared culture. It's the shared culture that's important, not the name of the country you are in.
Nation-states are not obsolete. Geography and nationality are still dominant factors in determining shared culture. However, globalization and cultural exportation mean that there are many more shared experiences. We probably watch the same tv shows, read the same books, and listen to the same music. If you're talking to a techie from another country, you've probably played the same videogames.
I would be much more at home talking to a German techie than a poor flood victim from New Orleans. I will donate money and time to the flood victim, because I want to help out my countrymen, but I'd be much more likely to sit and have a beer with the techie.
They have a right not to have their tax money spent on things they consider sinful and immoral.
I'm glad to hear it! Please let me know when I can opt not to have my tax money go toward the war in Iraq.
What's that you say? I can't opt out of the payment because I can't opt out of the benefits? How is that different from universal education? Or is there a way to opt out of a strong economy and an educated workforce that I'm unaware of?
Shine on you crazy diamond!
By the way, I hate you for how good your photos look. :) I had a hard time getting anything but blurs in the dim light. (My Canon PowerShot S400 has no aperture control.)
http://www.photozeit.com/PAX2005/
Aren't biologists looking for a better theory than evolution to replace it one day, or have they accepted it as a religion and begun treating it like a faith?
Not all theories are infinitely reducible. Sometimes science "gets it right." By diligent application of the scientific method, the correct theory may be found. For instance, I doubt many scientists are out there still trying to figure out why the sky is blue, or why fire is hot. The existing theories are sufficient.
Similarly, I don't think there are a lot of scientists out there looking for the next big thing to replace evolution. Instead, they're trying to work out the details (the mapping between genotypes and phenotypes, etc.) They're attacking sub-problems.
It may be that examining the details will expose a problem that torpedos the whole theory, but it's specious to assume that just because something is a theory, it must be wrong. If that were the yardstick for measuring beliefs, faith wouldn't stand a chance.
We do not live on a playground. Freedom of speech is not something that exists only in the sandbox. When we say something really mean, the state is not a watchful parent who should step in and pull us aside for a stern talking to.
That's the attitude a lot of people seem to take. "Oh, they were playing for real, so the FBI had to make them stop."
Liberty is either respected or it is not. The realpolitik guys will say "only when it's expedient". The libertarians will say, "all the time regardless". The Democrats and Republicans will say, "as long as you play nice", and that's the government we've got.
The government has to follow the rules all the time. They can't break them just because we're playing "for keeps"*.
*though of course actually they can, and do, and people expect them to. so they'll keep doing it.
The private constructor ensures that only these 4 instances of this class will ever be instantiated.
HA HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHAH!
hahahahahahahahaha
haha
ha
HAHAHAHA
-- oh my eyes, I'm tearing up --
thank you for this.
I am bad for using the term "Marriage". I mean commitment to a partner for life.
Wow, that's really not a slip-up you want to make if you're arguing against gay marriage. As soon as you equate "marriage" with "life partner", you've proven their point.
I don't think Searle's response holds water. The number of people executing the instructions is meaningless. If one person memorizes the rulebook, all that that means is that the hardware has been centralized. If the person is still dumbly executing commands, they're just playing the part of the CPU, or the neurotransmitters.
If you were to read the person a story in Chinese, then later ask them questions in Chinese about it, they would be able to answer -- in Chinese. That's the nature of the Turing test. But they wouldn't be able to answer in English, precisely because the hardware "doesn't understand the significance of the symbols [it is] manipulating." But something does. The thing that speaks in Chinese. That is the system as a whole, the gestalt.
Don't get me started on the economy of Bolivia...
Searle's Chinese Room argument is hogwash.
In his scenario, Searle claims that neither the people moving the Chienese tokens, nor the book of instructions telling them what to do "understands" what is being said. That is obviously true, but it misses the point. That's like saying that the neurons in your head don't understand what you are saying, and so neither do you.
The workers in the Chinese Room argument are just hardware. They're akin to neurons in the brain, or chips in a computer. They're blindly executing instructions (software) from a book and recording results on blank pages (working memory). No AI proponent is arguing that the chips in the computer "understand" anything. Chips just dumbly execute instructions. What's interesting is the combination of software and persistent memory, and the apparent conciousness that can arise therefrom.
Searle's argument must either be considered void, or one is compelled to admit that humans don't "understand" anything either. As such, it's hogwash.
THEY ARE BANNED BY EVIL RETHUGLICANS!
Why is it that only conservatives use made-up insults (e.g. 'DemocRATS') to describe their opponents, even when they're pretending to attack themselves? Maybe I should read more DU and less FR.
It's almost as if the political climate on this forum supports the recognition of someone's feats only if they're considered an underdog?
You just have to find the underdog in the story and point them out, and the respect will flow. Humanize it a little.
It's not the USA that gets props, it's NASA (who's constantly fighting with the Guvm'nt for more funding). Or it's not NASA, it's the overworked and underpaid engineers who found a way to cobble something together out of shoestring and boot leather, push it past management, and are finally having their day in the sun.
We don't celebrate the people on whom sun shines every day. They don't need our recognition.
Also, they mostly live in California.
Yes, it certainly is financially risky. Long-term R&D always is, unless you're talking about an evolutionary improvement to an existing product.
Its going to stay financially risky until some successful experiments are done, either in a private lab or a publicly-funded one. So bring on the public funding! Once they find something that looks promising, and it looks like a profit could be made from it, private industry will snap it up.
I mean, c'mon, it's only dead human flesh.
Funerals are not held for the dead, they are for the living. The dead don't care. Either they are incapable of caring, or they've gone to a place where it doesn't matter anymore. The ceremony exists to bring us some comfort and closure.
It's all about ceremony. Nature doesn't care what happens to that flesh. The dead person doesn't care. What happens to the flesh is immaterial to everything outside of our minds.
However, being human, ceremonies and beliefs are very powerful. Funerals are important. Belief in the soul is important. It's a deep and abiding part of our who we are. Just don't go thinking there's anything extrinsically true about any of those beliefs.
Once the light in the eyes goes out, it's just carbon. What made them who they are is gone. We should love and cherish our memories, and honor them for the sake of the love we bore them. But we're really just doing it for ourselves and for each other. Other cultures may have other ways of doing the same thing (e.g. cannibalistic cultures who believe that eating the flesh of dead relatives continues their spirit in you). And that's okay, that's just their way of dealing with the same feelings of grief and loss.
That's the humanistic attitude. Nature doesn't care about us. The world will continue to exist without us. But while we're alive, we think and feel as humans do, and we must respect that!
I participate in open and honest debate about our democracy, and the rights & liberties afforded therein.
Also, I vote.
However, I also salute your service, since you probably do both of those as well! So thank you.
What good is it?
The Internet disassociates information from geography. It overcomes the boundaries of physical and temporal locality. It's everything that makes books and telephones powerful, all rolled into one!
The internet provides us with the means to assemble any group of people at any time, regardless of where they live. There is an opportunity for every real-world group, institution, business, college -- every division and subdivision of mankind, along every boundary imaginable -- to meet and discuss and disseminate information. Easily. Cheaply.
This is not trivial. This is freedom of speech and association unlimited by physical location. It is the printing press and the telegraph and the radio. It is a force multiplier for human language; it is the next step in the evolution of the human ability to communicate. That's what good it is.
All morality is nothing more than personal opinion (since there is nothing outside of man (or God) which says 'ought' instead of 'is'.
I think you're giving natural selection (both genetic and memetic) short shrift here.
1. We are not perfectly rational creatures, we have built-in (genetic) biases and social (taught) biases towards certain types of behavior.
2. 'Selfless' behavior in a population strengthens and helps to propagate that population.
3. A stronger population will eventually push out a weaker one (your point 4 above).
4. Over time, a population/society which values selfless behavior will push out one which believes "might makes right".
Conclusion: might does make right, but if all of the individuals in a population start to believe that, they will be pushed out of the way by a population that believes in morality. Morality keeps coming up, and people keep believing in it, because on the whole it is beneficial (in the sense of natural selection) to do so.
Similarly, you have to wonder about religion. It expresses strongly in every human population, even when it's forced out via might (Communist athiesm). Does everyone believe in it because it's true, or because it's beneficial for people to believe it's true...?
So there's the rub. Even if morality is a figment of our imagination, people will keep believing it. The only thing that makes the moralist's stance more appealing to the Deist's is that a moralist doesn't claim anything about the external world (e.g. "It's right to be good, because God said so"), only about how they should treat one another (e.g. "It's right to be good").