Because it means we don't get to see what happens in the end. I want to know how it all turns out! Do my kids make it? Do they have kids? Do we get off the planet? What inventions will people come up with? What will we come to understand that we don't now? Do we ever get rid of famine and war? Do we find some way to overcome racism, sexism, classism? Do we realize that these are natural parts of life? Do we defeat, give in to, or find way to embrace/extend/extinguish the human faults that are the cause of our misery?
The ultimate frustration, the personal insult, is that we all die in chapter 2. I want to know what happens after that!
If there is a God, and he's reading this, I'm willing to negotiate! All I'm asking for is death with CNN!
The only thing I can think of that makes life with death bearable is the argument that there is nothing new under the sun. E.g., there is no reason to stick around, the future will just be new people repeating old mistakes. But (a) I don't believe this, and (b) if this were true, it would make life unbearable anyways.
After that, can't say. Most likely world class famine at a minimum.
Let's be serious. The courts would reverse their decision if even a hint of worldwide famine [effecting them] showed itself.
If they didn't, people would ignore court orders and re-plant the seeds anyway. The cops aren't going to enforce laws while they're worried about where their next meal is coming from.
The atheist/etc. is like the AI saying I see the evidence, but I still can't "see" him directly so I cannot believe in him.
It's a question of epistemology and competing stories. If the AI ponders its existence, it will come up with one or more stories -- possible sets of events that could have led to its creation (creation myths). Given N creation myths, the question is, how can you tell which one is right? (Especially if there are an infinite number of possible explanations that fit the data.)
Let's say the AI is methodical and logical, and it wants to get to the bottom of this whole creation'thing. It's got a set of data (probably incomplete) and N possible explanations. What can it do?
A) Investigate: look for more data and use it to narrow the search field. discard or modify stories which don't fit newly-acquired data. B) Apply scientific method: for each story, make a hypothesis. test it. discard or modify stories which suggest incorrect hypotheses. give extra weight to stories which are accurate predictors. C) ???
Really, (A) and (B) are the same thing: attempt to decide between competing stories based on available evidence, or attempt to find more evidence to help decide.
You're saying that the story you believe is one which cannot be tested. How then do you know that that is the true one, and not some other story?
This is absolutely correct. It reflects very accurately the situation in which we find ourselves: athiests feel threatened by the religious, faithful feel threatened by the non-believers. Why are we threatened? On the whole all of the people involved are decent, respectable folk, who would enjoy chatting with you on the street.
Once the battle lines are drawn (athiest vs. religious, liberal vs. conservative), though, it gets ugly. People on feel they are being attacked, and get worried that their way of life is being threatened by people who don't think as they do.
The greatest fear is that someone who thinks the other way will get into power, then force their beliefs on everyone... [Clinton, Bush, control of the SCOTUS]
Or worse yet, what if they indoctrinate the next generation! Hence the anger against the perceived secular/liberal control of the education system. This is why home schooling is becoming so popular: "They won't teach my child their godless/heathen/hippie ways! I won't have my kid brought up like that!"
If people believed that the President, or public school teachers, or the Supreme Court, or the local pastor, were rational, respectful people, who would do right by the community, this wouldn't be a problem.
Re:Alternative solution
on
Freecache
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The problem is that you don't get any benefit from reduplication. Many pages share the same images; if each file is requested independently, the client can ignore files that are already in the cache. If you have to download a tarball of each page + images, you don't get any savings from images already in cache.
You'd have to come up with a scheme like:
send a request + list of files you have from that domain + timestamps [large!]
server sends diff tarball
client unzips to cache and displays
...or...
send request
server sends single response + list of related files + timestamps
client diffs with cache, sends back batch request for related files
Just because you don't know if something exists, you cannot assume it doesn't.
This rapidly leads to absurdism. I don't know (nor can I prove for a fact) that giant triangular space horses don't exist. However, I feel quite confident in my assumption that they don't.
So with God. I can start making up all sorts of stories about a supreme being or the creation of the world. Maybe it's a monkey with a giant club in one hand and a peach in the other. There's no better reason to believe any of those stories than any other, except that for some reason, a lot of people seem to buy into a couple of them. Why?
Television, like any other medium, only shows you what you want to see.
I wish! Usually it shows you what other people want you to see. For any conflict, I'd like to see both sides story, but I doubt that's going to happen.
So instead all of our javascripts have to check whether a document.layers object exists? Different browsers have different quirks, bugs, features, what have you. You've got a couple of options:
serve "to-spec" content that doesn't work right in any browser* (*note: end-users will blame you.)
serve plain vanilla content that doesn't offer functionality that you could have offered otherwise**. (**note: end-users will blame you. product management will ask why competitors' sites offer this functionality)
serve de facto standard (IE) compliant content. tell your 8% of NS/Opera/etc. users*** to stick it in a pipe and smoke it, or to use IE to view your website. (***note: users with other browsers will blame you; standards compliance advocates will blame you).
switch content based on browser type. serve compliant content when possible. serve plain vanilla content when not possible**** (****note: product management will ask why it's taking so long to implement)
I don't know, dynamic content switching looks like the best bet.
It's an issue of individual rights. The state cannot pass any law it wants -- if it passes a law that violates an individual's basic rights (remember, the Bill of Rights is explicitly NOT an exhaustive list), the courts are well within their rights to overturn that law.
It's kind of unfortunate that God wasn't more accurately predictive. I'd be much more inclined to believe if, for instance, God had provided some information that wasn't known at the time, but was later proven or discovered to be true. Like, "the world is round." Why didn't he mention that to the people living 4000+ years ago? Maybe drop a hint or something? It might have helped them out a little. Why not provide a piece of true information that is unlikely to have been known or invented by an author at that time?
The reliance on faith (God won't provide proof because he relies on faith to bring people to him) is a sticking point. The same data can be just as validly analyzed as "non-existence".
Turns out, I can jump higher now than I could when I first bought my TabletPC -- but for entirely unrelated reasons. However, it has been an excellent organizational tool. OneNote lets you mark lines on various documents as TODO, then you can work off of your one auto-conglomerated TODO list. For that alone I appreciate it.
It's sold for Macs (I bought mine at an Apple Store), but I've only ever used it under Windows. Device Manager shows it as an HID-compliant USB device. I've never tried running it under Linux though. YMMV. If it works, lmk!
Given that your contacts are stored on your cellphone, who's to say they couldn't (or aren't currently) do this right now? I don't recall my cellphone contract saying anything specifically about them not collecting this data, so...
The process used to discover trend leaders among children is pretty simple:
1. Pick a random kid at a school. 2. Ask them who the coolest person is that they know. 3. Go to that kid and repeat the process. 4. When you find a kid who responds that they are the coolest person they know, you've found your trend leader.
Give them a toy/CD/etc. for free, and you've seeded your viral marketing campaign.
Way better -- get a Griffin PowerMate (about $50). It has a glowy blue led that is software controllable (256 brightness values). Run a script that constantly sets its brightness to the current CPU load level.
Plus, the PowerMate acts like a knobby thing. I call it a mousewheel for my Wacom tablet.
Welcome to the world of neuro-bio! Whoever built our brains didn't know jack about maintainability. They're a bloody mess! Unused functions left around from previous versions. Disabled features. Appalling code reuse. Oh sure, there are some beautiful optimizations, and the system architecture has a certain elegance -- but the implementation is crap.
If an omniscient power built us, I hope He/She wrote in a high-level language and then compiled with some heavy optimizations turned on (-oGOD?). If They were hand-rolling this shit, I'd like to have a word or two with Them.
Optimism about the continued accumulation of human knowledge is pretty well-founded. All you need is the scientific method and written language (or some semi-permanent way of passing information on to the next generation). Over time, the body of human knowledge will continue to grow.
The only pitfalls are destruction of information (collapse of civilization, burning of the Great Library of Alexandria, etc.), or knowledge saturation (more data exists than any one person can master in a lifetime of study).
The second danger is interesting, but is helped by the fact that (a) information stored on physical media decays, (b) it can be combatted by increased specialization (which appears to be the dominant trend). Also, the scientific method is valuable for weeding out invalid theories, thus reducing the overhead of useless information (phlogiston).
I think telepathy is a real goal. It's a natural outgrowth of the cell phone phenomenon. Just think a person's name to open a channel, then, if they pick up, you can communicate silently.
On the plus side, this means no more people talking annoyingly in airports, restaurants, etc. You can just zone out and hold a mental conversation, entirely within your head. Cell phones would be instantly accessible, never forgotten.
On the minus side, rings could be very distracting. You'd need to make it easy to turn off.
Trite but also important, you would need to come up with a system for controlling what gets sent and what can be "thought" without being communicated. Don't want the wrong thoughts slipping through! Self-censorship is an extremely important part of communication. Hopefully the system could distinguish between words which are sent to the pre-motor cortex and inhibited just prior to the speech act, and those which are simply "thought," planned to the point of fixing syntax, without ever being brought "to the tip of the tongue."
We know in general what most of the different parts of the brain are used for, through electrode stimulation and case studies of people with selective brain damage (surgery, accident, birth defect, epilepsy, etc.) We even know how a lot of the little bits work. We just don't have much of system-level understanding of it.
Of course, we're only actively using 10% of it or so at any given time -- or so fMRI tells us.
which is why it is in the realm of philosophy and not science.
Cognitive science is alive and thriving! Of course, it involves a lot of philosophy, since the job of a cognitive scientist (ha, ha) is to ask this very question. Or if not to ask it, then to do something (strong AI, brain research) that makes a bold statement one way or the other, in the hopes that by succeeding they will answer the question.
Slashdot Mirror
Why, exactly, is death a problem?
Because it means we don't get to see what happens in the end. I want to know how it all turns out! Do my kids make it? Do they have kids? Do we get off the planet? What inventions will people come up with? What will we come to understand that we don't now? Do we ever get rid of famine and war? Do we find some way to overcome racism, sexism, classism? Do we realize that these are natural parts of life? Do we defeat, give in to, or find way to embrace/extend/extinguish the human faults that are the cause of our misery?
The ultimate frustration, the personal insult, is that we all die in chapter 2. I want to know what happens after that!
If there is a God, and he's reading this, I'm willing to negotiate! All I'm asking for is death with CNN!
The only thing I can think of that makes life with death bearable is the argument that there is nothing new under the sun. E.g., there is no reason to stick around, the future will just be new people repeating old mistakes. But (a) I don't believe this, and (b) if this were true, it would make life unbearable anyways.
So... I'm open to suggestions.
After that, can't say. Most likely world class famine at a minimum.
Let's be serious. The courts would reverse their decision if even a hint of worldwide famine [effecting them] showed itself.
If they didn't, people would ignore court orders and re-plant the seeds anyway. The cops aren't going to enforce laws while they're worried about where their next meal is coming from.
The atheist/etc. is like the AI saying I see the evidence, but I still can't "see" him directly so I cannot believe in him.
It's a question of epistemology and competing stories. If the AI ponders its existence, it will come up with one or more stories -- possible sets of events that could have led to its creation (creation myths). Given N creation myths, the question is, how can you tell which one is right? (Especially if there are an infinite number of possible explanations that fit the data.)
Let's say the AI is methodical and logical, and it wants to get to the bottom of this whole creation'thing. It's got a set of data (probably incomplete) and N possible explanations. What can it do?
A) Investigate: look for more data and use it to narrow the search field. discard or modify stories which don't fit newly-acquired data.
B) Apply scientific method: for each story, make a hypothesis. test it. discard or modify stories which suggest incorrect hypotheses. give extra weight to stories which are accurate predictors.
C) ???
Really, (A) and (B) are the same thing: attempt to decide between competing stories based on available evidence, or attempt to find more evidence to help decide.
You're saying that the story you believe is one which cannot be tested. How then do you know that that is the true one, and not some other story?
It's a fight for mindshare.
This is absolutely correct. It reflects very accurately the situation in which we find ourselves: athiests feel threatened by the religious, faithful feel threatened by the non-believers. Why are we threatened? On the whole all of the people involved are decent, respectable folk, who would enjoy chatting with you on the street.
Once the battle lines are drawn (athiest vs. religious, liberal vs. conservative), though, it gets ugly. People on feel they are being attacked, and get worried that their way of life is being threatened by people who don't think as they do.
The greatest fear is that someone who thinks the other way will get into power, then force their beliefs on everyone... [Clinton, Bush, control of the SCOTUS]
Or worse yet, what if they indoctrinate the next generation! Hence the anger against the perceived secular/liberal control of the education system. This is why home schooling is becoming so popular: "They won't teach my child their godless/heathen/hippie ways! I won't have my kid brought up like that!"
If people believed that the President, or public school teachers, or the Supreme Court, or the local pastor, were rational, respectful people, who would do right by the community, this wouldn't be a problem.
You'd have to come up with a scheme like:
If you're not willing to administer the punishment yourself, then don't bother crying foul.
Did might start making right again recently? I must not have gotten the memo.
Just because you don't know if something exists, you cannot assume it doesn't.
This rapidly leads to absurdism. I don't know (nor can I prove for a fact) that giant triangular space horses don't exist. However, I feel quite confident in my assumption that they don't.
So with God. I can start making up all sorts of stories about a supreme being or the creation of the world. Maybe it's a monkey with a giant club in one hand and a peach in the other. There's no better reason to believe any of those stories than any other, except that for some reason, a lot of people seem to buy into a couple of them. Why?
Society of Janus is a San Francisco based BDSM education/support group...
No no no, it's BDRM: bondage/dominance/rights-masochism.
Only buy this if you enjoy watching your rights suffer!
Television, like any other medium, only shows you what you want to see.
I wish! Usually it shows you what other people want you to see. For any conflict, I'd like to see both sides story, but I doubt that's going to happen.
I don't know, dynamic content switching looks like the best bet.
...so that right was left up to the states.
And to the people.
The simple fact is that it is a state issue.
It's an issue of individual rights. The state cannot pass any law it wants -- if it passes a law that violates an individual's basic rights (remember, the Bill of Rights is explicitly NOT an exhaustive list), the courts are well within their rights to overturn that law.
It's kind of unfortunate that God wasn't more accurately predictive. I'd be much more inclined to believe if, for instance, God had provided some information that wasn't known at the time, but was later proven or discovered to be true. Like, "the world is round." Why didn't he mention that to the people living 4000+ years ago? Maybe drop a hint or something? It might have helped them out a little. Why not provide a piece of true information that is unlikely to have been known or invented by an author at that time?
The reliance on faith (God won't provide proof because he relies on faith to bring people to him) is a sticking point. The same data can be just as validly analyzed as "non-existence".
I'm writing "ha, ha" on my tablet input area.
No really, I am.
Turns out, I can jump higher now than I could when I first bought my TabletPC -- but for entirely unrelated reasons. However, it has been an excellent organizational tool. OneNote lets you mark lines on various documents as TODO, then you can work off of your one auto-conglomerated TODO list. For that alone I appreciate it.
Called going walkabout, isn't it?
It's sold for Macs (I bought mine at an Apple Store), but I've only ever used it under Windows. Device Manager shows it as an HID-compliant USB device. I've never tried running it under Linux though. YMMV. If it works, lmk!
Given that your contacts are stored on your cellphone, who's to say they couldn't (or aren't currently) do this right now? I don't recall my cellphone contract saying anything specifically about them not collecting this data, so...
The process used to discover trend leaders among children is pretty simple:
1. Pick a random kid at a school.
2. Ask them who the coolest person is that they know.
3. Go to that kid and repeat the process.
4. When you find a kid who responds that they are the coolest person they know, you've found your trend leader.
Give them a toy/CD/etc. for free, and you've seeded your viral marketing campaign.
Way better -- get a Griffin PowerMate (about $50). It has a glowy blue led that is software controllable (256 brightness values). Run a script that constantly sets its brightness to the current CPU load level.
Plus, the PowerMate acts like a knobby thing. I call it a mousewheel for my Wacom tablet.
Welcome to the world of neuro-bio! Whoever built our brains didn't know jack about maintainability. They're a bloody mess! Unused functions left around from previous versions. Disabled features. Appalling code reuse. Oh sure, there are some beautiful optimizations, and the system architecture has a certain elegance -- but the implementation is crap.
If an omniscient power built us, I hope He/She wrote in a high-level language and then compiled with some heavy optimizations turned on (-oGOD?). If They were hand-rolling this shit, I'd like to have a word or two with Them.
Optimism about the continued accumulation of human knowledge is pretty well-founded. All you need is the scientific method and written language (or some semi-permanent way of passing information on to the next generation). Over time, the body of human knowledge will continue to grow.
The only pitfalls are destruction of information (collapse of civilization, burning of the Great Library of Alexandria, etc.), or knowledge saturation (more data exists than any one person can master in a lifetime of study).
The second danger is interesting, but is helped by the fact that (a) information stored on physical media decays, (b) it can be combatted by increased specialization (which appears to be the dominant trend). Also, the scientific method is valuable for weeding out invalid theories, thus reducing the overhead of useless information (phlogiston).
Ergo, historians are justified.
I think telepathy is a real goal. It's a natural outgrowth of the cell phone phenomenon. Just think a person's name to open a channel, then, if they pick up, you can communicate silently.
On the plus side, this means no more people talking annoyingly in airports, restaurants, etc. You can just zone out and hold a mental conversation, entirely within your head. Cell phones would be instantly accessible, never forgotten.
On the minus side, rings could be very distracting. You'd need to make it easy to turn off.
Trite but also important, you would need to come up with a system for controlling what gets sent and what can be "thought" without being communicated. Don't want the wrong thoughts slipping through! Self-censorship is an extremely important part of communication. Hopefully the system could distinguish between words which are sent to the pre-motor cortex and inhibited just prior to the speech act, and those which are simply "thought," planned to the point of fixing syntax, without ever being brought "to the tip of the tongue."
We know in general what most of the different parts of the brain are used for, through electrode stimulation and case studies of people with selective brain damage (surgery, accident, birth defect, epilepsy, etc.) We even know how a lot of the little bits work. We just don't have much of system-level understanding of it.
Of course, we're only actively using 10% of it or so at any given time -- or so fMRI tells us.
which is why it is in the realm of philosophy and not science.
Cognitive science is alive and thriving! Of course, it involves a lot of philosophy, since the job of a cognitive scientist (ha, ha) is to ask this very question. Or if not to ask it, then to do something (strong AI, brain research) that makes a bold statement one way or the other, in the hopes that by succeeding they will answer the question.
That was informative and well written until the "f*ck the hippies" bit. Start serious, end serious, otherwise you cheapen your position.