If we have no free will, then you also can't blame people for their actions.
But you don't need to blame people. A lack of "free will" doesn't mean that people don't affect each other's behavior. The classic example of affecting a person's behavior is to have a conversation with that person.
The key point is that a society can radically alter individual behavior by imposing a system of rewards and punishments. Society decides it doesn't like individuals killing each other so it implements a system of punishments for individuals that kill others. That dramatically decreases the number of individuals that kill others. It doesn't mean that the individual "deserved" to be punished - only that society desired to alter individual behavior with respect to killing.
What this means is that, because punishment for committing crimes is an effective means of altering individual behavior, there is no need to lock people up before they commit crimes (except when it is clear that the punishment is inadequate to alter a particular individual's behavior).
Free will is like the Cartesian solipsism brought on by cogito ergo sum, where you prove your own existence, but lose all the rest of existence at the same time.
It works out if you modify it just a bit:
I exist because I observe myself to exist.
True by definition. Of course, this is not true in the other direction: not everything that exists observes itself to exist (e.g. a rock).
Reducing it to "observation" also takes care of the bit about the rest of the world. You don't know if the rest of the world exists or not but you do know that you observe it to exist and that you observe certain patterns (e.g. the people you observe behave as if they observe the same things you do). Science, then, is not about "truth" in any absolute sense. Science is just identifying and organizing patterns in what you observe (and what you observe others to observe).
Early scientific advances such as Newtonian mechanics were closely correlated with astronomy. Astronomy established that the earth was a very small part of a much larger universe. As a results, creation mythologies that had once been a central part of most religions were de-emphasized and no longer taken literally by most people.
Now, the central feature of most religions is a notion of rewards and punishments - that people get what they "deserve" after they die. It is likely that advances in computer science (particularly AI) and biology (particularly neurobiology) will result in a major shift in attitudes toward the notion of free will. As a result, religions will come to de-emphasize the notion that people get what they "deserve" after they die.
The basic problem with free will is illustrated by the following. Imagine that a computer program is eventually written that can simulate the human brain with sufficient accuracy that its behavior is indistinguishable from the behavior of a human brain. By hypothesis, this computer program will have the same amount of "free will" that a human brain has. The problem is that the behavior of any computer program (that is, how the program responds to inputs) is totally determined by the underlying structure of the program. This view, that human behavior is is determined entirely by the physical structure of the human brain, is at odds with the notion that people "deserve" to be rewarded and punished for their behavior.
Note that discarding the notion that people "deserve" to be rewarded and punished does not mean that a system of rewards and punishments will not affect individual behavior. In particular, it does not mean that society does not benefit by implementing a system of rewards and punishments to modify individual behavior.
But unless we program them that way...Then they won't be able to.
You assume there will be a difference between "we" and "them". More likely, humanity will exist as a collective consciousness in something like a giant computer in space and the robots will be an extension of humanity's consciousness - for when humanity wants to do (physical) things.
There is a (very very very small) chance that someone will be messing around with a complex computer program and all of a sudden it will start exhibiting intelligence. It's much more likely, though, that artificial intelligence will result from a detailed understanding of intelligence in biological organisms. By the time that computers are developed that can think on their own, it will also be possible for people to augment their intelligence with computers and probably even to transfer their memories and thought patterns to computers and also to other people (forming, among other things, collective consciousness). Rights for robots, as such, will only be one of many issues society has to deal with when artificial intelligence is finally developed.
The bigger issue is the nature of "free will". If a robot kills someone as a result of its programming can it really be said that the robot "deserves" to be punished? Certainly punishment might be an effective means of controlling robots with such programming. But could it really be said that the robot "deserved" to be punished? After all, the robot would merely be acting under the control of whatever computer program controlled its consciousness.
It used to be that creation mythologies were a major part of most religions. Many of the early advances in science were advances in astronomy. When people realized that the earth was part of a much larger universe, it dramatically changed the role of creation mythologies in religion. In modern times, very few people take the creation mythologies literally.
With the creation mytholgies largely abandoned, the central feature of most religions is now a notion of supernatural "justice" - that after people die they somehow get what they "deserve" based on their actions while they were alive. As artificial intelligence research progresses, researchers will have to deal with the fact that computer programs are either deterministic or random. Deterministic and random processes are in contradiction with many notions of free will. People don't like to believe that their choices are either random or determined by certain basic laws governing the physical structures that mediate their consciousness. As humanity understands more about "free will", it is likely that this understanding will call into question the idea that people should get what they "deserve" based on their actions.
That's not to say that humanity will not collectively impose rewards and punishments on individual behavior. The rewards and punishments will, however, only be seen as a tool to influence behavior rather than what each individual "deserves" in some cosmic sense.
Science is the belief that nothing is true that cannot be proven to be true.
Science is about patterns in what people observe. One of the most fundamental patterns is that people observe each other to observe the same things. For example, under certain circumstances, I observe the sky to be blue and I also observe other people to observe the sky to be blue.
Science can not, however, establish whether the patterns in what people observe are true in an absolute sense. I don't know if what I observe is "real" or if I am trapped in an artificial reality. I don't even know if I'm really human. I might just be an AI computer program in an artificial reality that provides me with the observations I would have if I were human. Even the laws of physics that I observe could be merely a product of the artificial reality I am immersed in.
Faith has nothing to do with science. Science has nothing to do with faith.
By definition, faith is beliefs that are either not supported by factual observations or even beliefs that are inconsistent with factual observations. In general, religious beliefs are not inconsistent with single well established factual observations but they do tend to be inconsistent with overall patterns in factual observations.
Actually, the complaint is that politics is too separated from science. Politicians are ignoring real science and creating a falsified pseudoscience to replace it.
Science, at it's core, is about recognizing and organizing patterns in factual observations. Government, at it's core, should be about a lowest common denominator - things that the vast majority of people can agree on. This lowest common denominator is factual observations.
There is considerable debate over the existence of a God entity but there is very little debate over the existence of gravity. Gravity can be observed. Governments should take the existence of gravity into account when making their decisions. Governments should not take the existence of a God entity into account when making their decisions (unless/until the existence of a God entity can be established as a matter of factual observation).
If a pattern of factual observations is indicating the global warming is occurring then governments should take this into account. Governments should always take factual observations into account regardless of whether the decision is military decision or a financial decision or any other decision.
The basic message to the government is this: "Don't ignore factual observations when making decisions."
As reported yesterday, there was an ad in the FT listing 4,000 musicians who supported retrospective term extension. If you read the list, you'll see that at least some of these artists are apparently dead (e.g. Lonnie Donegan, died 4th November 2002; Freddie Garrity, died 20th May 2006). I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire.
You could say that, but the statement would be meaningless (however true it might be).
Here's a more well defined experiment. Remove the richest 2% of the world's population and see what effect it has on the world's total economic output. The big question would be what to do with the assets of the richest 2%. They could, for example, be taxed away by the governments or distributed among the remaining population.
I have a strong suspicion that the total economic output would not fall by half as would be implied if the richest 2% were doing half the work. To put it another way, the assets of the richest 2% may be contributing substantially to the total economic output but not the richest 2% themselves.
Removing the hotels that Paris Hilton owns from the economy would have a significant impact. Removing Paris Hilton herself would not. The same could be said for Bill Gates and the fraction of the Microsoft corporation that he owns.
Is having your assets contribute to an economy the same as contributing to an economy yourself. My answer is no - particularly in the case of inherited assets. While assets themselves are usually economically productive, the decisions made by the owners of the assets may actually be detrimental to the economy. To put it another way, would it dramatically change the total economic output if the stock owned by Bill Gates was distributed equally among the world's population?
One thing that is true is that having a corrupt dictatorship micromanage an economy is very detrimental to an economy. If Bush were to become a dictator and if Bush were to take control of Bill Gates share of Microsoft and aggressively micromanage Microsoft for his own personal gain, then that would probably adversely affect the economy.
People shouldn't be taxed on money that's sitting around and not doing anything, or on the principal value of property.
I'm ambivalent on whether to tax money (incidentally, governments "tax" money using inflation) and other producible property but land is a different story entirely.
The problem with land is that it's just there - it's not produced or consumed. If I own land and charge you do use it then I am having you transfer some of your wealth to me even though I'm haven't produced the land (and you haven't consumed the land). Capitalism is supposed to be about creating an incentive to produce things. With land, there is a flow of wealth to people who own land from people who don't own land even in the absence of any production. This creates an unstable system. Without government redistribution, eventually one person ends up owning all the land and everyone else transfers their wealth to that person.
A further complication is that, when a person is born, all the land has already been divided up among the existing population. If everyone who ever lived was born at the same time and received an equal amount of land then that might be fair but, as it is, some people get land through the indirect generosity of their parents and some people don't. This may be fair to the parents but it is not at all fair to the children.
Now, there is something to be said for using a market system for deciding who gets to use the land and who doesn't. That way, the people that value the land the most get to use the land. There still needs to be additional intervention, however, to prevent rich people from using the land to get rich (without producing) and then acquiring more land.
Conceptually, the system I favor is one in which all the land is owned by everyone collectively and individuals pay rent to everyone collectively in order to have exclusive use of certain parcels of land. The land would be allocated by some kind of market system.
In practice, that is essentially what most countries have - except that instead of paying "rent", exclusive land users pay "property tax". Now, I think property tax rates should be quite a bit higher to discourage hoarding of the land. Basically, anyone who is accumulating a lot of land should pay heavy property taxes. That would not only help with wealth inequality but it would also insure that all available land was utilized (not just sitting around unused as an investment).
There should also be more parks and public spaces. As it is, people are very disconnected from their communities. They spend their free times cowering indoors watching TV only venturing out occasionally to tell the kids to get off their lawn. Sometimes it seems that people have yards more because they enjoy denying other people the ability to use the land and less for using it themselves. It's like a kid in kindergarten hoarding a toy.
Incidentally, the land allocation model currently in place is more of a "first kid to get the toy gets it for as long as he wants" model rather than a "each kid gets equal time with the toy" model.
I agree that transferring someone aspect of human consciousness off the planet has an aesthetic appeal. It would just feel wrong if, after all these years of striving, the human race just totally ceased to exist.
On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that the human race, in it's present form, will survive more than another few hundred years.
One possibility is that the human race will design a new species and raise this new species as it's children allowing itself to die off. This new species will look and act superficially human but it will be sufficiently different genetically that interbreeding with present day humans would be impossible. The main impetus for designing this new species will be to improve on and correct defects of existing humans. This species will be noticeably smarter and stronger and healthier.
Another possibility is that people won't bother with creating a new species at all and will instead transfer their consciousness to something like a computer. Everyone's consciousness will be sufficiently connected that the result will essentially be one collective consciousness.
A final possibility is that humanity will prove beyond any doubt that there is no purpose to its existence and simply allow itself to cease to exist.
Either way, enjoy it while you can - because you are likely to be one of the last generations of the human race in it's present form.
That's not exactly a fundamental science discovery but if it's true it's actually pretty neat.
Oxygen condenses at -183.0 C and nitrogen condenses at -195.8 C so if these things became widely available you could make your own liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen.
Unfortunately, liquid hydrogen is down at -252.8 C so you wouldn't be able to condense the hydrogen gas you got from electrolysis of water to make your own liquid hydrogen and oxygen rocket engine.
Can you explain how heat (infrared photons, right?) is different in this regard than visible light (as in a photovoltaic cell)?
That's an interesting question. I have some ideas but I have to admit that I'm not sure.
If the energy distribution of the photons has a higher average than the kinetic energy distribution of the material the photons interact with, then this would be a temperature gradient of sorts. Infra-red photons from black-body radiation would be likely to have the same energy distribution as the material they were interacting with (assuming the emitting material is at the same temperature as the absorbing material). On the other hand, visible light has an energy distribution that is higher than the kinetic energy distribution of a material at room temperature.
In the case of radio waves (or electromagnetic induction generally), it seems that radio wave photons would all be "aligned". In that case, knowing the alignment would allow the energy conversion / extraction. That is, the second law doesn't limit conversion between "ordered" (non-heat-like) forms of energy.
Converting heat directly to electricity would mean the second law of thermodynamics was not universally valid which would be a major discovery (right up there with relativity and quantum physics). Converting a temperature gradient (or temperature difference) into electricity (even with a solid state device) is nothing new unless you can exceed the efficiency limits of the second law. Equivalently, converting electricity into a temperature gradient is nothing new unless you can exceed the efficiency limits of the second law.
Nothing in the article suggests that they are exceeding the efficiency limits of the second law so they don't have a truly major scientific discovery.
Incidentally, if they could exceed the efficiency limits of the second law (in either direction: converting a temperature gradient to electricity or converting electricity to a temperature gradient), then that would be equivalent to converting heat directly to electricity.
As implied by my use of the phrase "one of", it is likely that Bush had many motivations. The official justification, motivated by an attempt to skirt the intent of international law to prevent countries from staring wars, was some technicalities in international law. Given human nature, I suspect that the assassination attempt on Bush Sr. was a much more powerful motivator for Bush Jr. than technicalties of international law.
...Bush based Saddam's violation of 1441 on Intelligence...
It wasn't Bush's decision to make. Resolution 1441 was a U.N. resolution and it was the U.N. that should have made the decision whether Saddam's (relatively minor) lack of compliance (he wasn't "fully" cooperating with the weapons inspectors) justified an all out invasion. For the record, at the time of invasion it was not the judgement of the U.N. that invasion was justified.
Saddam, was trying to maintain the facade...
He wasn't trying very hard. I clearly remember a U.N. meeting where Colin Powell had some rather inconsistent assertions that Iraq still had WMD's and the Iraqi representitive clearly said that Iraq did not have any WMD's.
Bush and Saddam are not alike as you claim.
The similarities I claim are certain violations of individual rights (for example, torture and secret detention with a framework of laws to protect the detainees) and killing of large numbers innocent people in pursuit of questionable policies. Saddam and Bush may be very different in other respects but they are similar in these respects.
That was my original point: that Bush strongly condemns Saddam Hussein for things he does himself - things that should be unacceptable for any leader.
...at the core, [Bush] does want peace and freedom for humanity in general.
Everyone wants peace and freedom, they just want it on their own terms. Bush and Saddam both want/wanted a peace and "freedom" that they had substantial control over. It's the whole, "You are free to do whatever you want as long as it's what you should be doing".
I agree that Bush will probably go down in history as less brutal and oppressive in a primative dictator sense. It's hard to say who will be remembered as having caused the most harm (particularly, relative to the power they had to do accomplish good things).
An assassination attempt against a United States President should be considered a personal attack on all Americans.
Should assassination attempts against Saddam Hussein be considered personal attacks on all Iraqis? Is it OK to attempt to assassinate the leader of your own country but not the leader of someone else's country? If that's the case then the USA should do away with the crime of treason. Also, what is the USA is doing killing Saddam Hussein who was the leader of someone else's country?
Morever, we're not a member of the International Criminal Court, and rightfully so. It's simply an attempt to take away sovereignty from nations in an attempt to realize some peoples ambitions of a globalized government entity with authority over other nations.
That's why the call it international law. When a country makes up it's own laws those are national laws. The whole point of international law is to place limits on what a country can justify using the notion of national sovereignty.
Riight, most people don't understand American law or tax law, so let's just ignore that as well.
The point is that it is important to be in complaince with overall intent of the law in addition to the letter of the law. With respect to international law regarding war, war is only OK when it is clearly self defense (the other country has launched an invasion against you) or when it has the approval of the United Nations (the US invasion of Iraq clearly did not have the approval of the United Nations at the time of invasion except in a convoluted technical sense involving old U.N. resolutions and the meaning of "full" cooperation).
...the left in this country, who continually side with [insert current enemy of the u.s. here]
I don't know about "the left" but the side I'm on is individual rights - particularly human rights. Rather than having two standards, one for Bush and one for Saddam Hussein, there should be one standard that prohibits torture and other violations of individual rights in all cases.
Proof [of torture by the USA]?
The proof is in the totality of circumstances, for example: individual accounts of torture, the Bush administrations insistence that confessions obtained under torture can be used in military tribunals, Dick Cheney's comment that there's nothing wrong with dunking someone's head under water (waterboarding is much much worse than dunking someone's head but it seems likely that waterboarding is what he meant).
Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death for retaliating after an assination attempt. It's interesting that one of Bush's motivations for going to war with Iraq was retaliation for an assassination attempt against Bush's father. Over the course of his reign, Saddam Hussein probably killed more innocent Iraqis in retaliation for assassination attempts than Bush but Bush is catching up fast.
Even if Bush's decision to invade Iraq was not personal retaliation, it's interesting the extent to which the Bush administration games the international law system. One minute they claim that international law is completely irrelevant and negotiate bilateral agreements to avoid coming under the juristiction of the International Criminial Court. The next minute they use some obscure technical arguments in international law to justify their behavior - whether it's killing Saddam Hussein or invading Iraq in the first place (convoluted arguments about Saddam Hussein's non-compliance with ceasefire agreements).
Broadly speaking, the reason Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death was for dealing harshly with people who opposed him and his policies. It is interesting that Bush has also dealt harshly with people who opposed him and his policies. Bush has even used many of the same methods as Saddam Hussein - broad retaliation that has resulted in the deaths of thousands and thousands of innocent people, torture and degrading treatment (including sexually degrading treatment), and indefinite detentions and broad surveillence techniques to identify "enemies".
Obviously the situations that Saddam and Bush find themselves in are very different. It seems likely history will judge Saddam to have been a much more brutal and oppressive leader than Bush. What is striking though is how harshly the Bush administration condemns Saddam Hussein for using methof like toture when they use those methods themselves.
I've come to think that it's rather stupid that we think of "intelligence" and "awareness" as mystical disembodied things.
If we don't, then we have to apply the laws of physics. This means that we have to take the view that everything that happens is governed by the laws of physics and random chance. Unless we can alter the laws of physics or control random chance (impossible by definition), then we have to take a long hard look at this thing we call "free will".
To put it another way, imagine that our understanding of how the mind works gets so advanced that we can simulate it exactly with a computer program. We know that computer programs exhibit two types of behavior: either they always give the same result for the same input or we put in a random number generator and then we get different behaviors (at random) for the same input. Either way, the computer program won't really have free will.
Getting philosophical, what do you do when you realize beyond a doubt that you don't have free will (not that you really have a choice - but you're going to do it anyway)? Do you keep on keeping on or do you just give up? Speculating wildly, maybe that's why we haven't been contacted by other intelligent life in the universe - by the time they get advanced enough to cross the vast inter-stellar distances, they realize there's no point.
True globalization demands open borders. Fire the border guards. Tear down the fences.
It's not just globalization that demands open borders. It's the basic principles of freedom and equality. Somehow it's horribly wrong to tell someone where the can live on the basis of their race (just look at all the politicians jumping on the MLK bandwagon against segregation these days), but then it's totally fine to tell someone where they can live of the basis of who their parents were or where they were born? As far as I'm concerned it's all horribly wrong.
Granted, it might smooth the transition of the borders were opened gradually. The goal we should all be striving for, though, is totally open borders.
...who thinks it's a good idea to reward people for what they should be doing anyway.
I suppose it's partially about efficiency. It takes less resources to punish the few people who commit crimes than it would take to reward everyone one else who doesn't. We also see the other side of this with something like the Nobel prize. It's more efficient to provide a substantial reward to the few people who make major scientific contributions than it is to provide a substantial punishment to everyone else who doesn't.
This idea, that the decision of whether to reward of punish depends on the relative frequency of desired and undesired behavior, runs into an interesting question when it comes to work. Are people rewarded for working (with a salary) or are they punished for not working (you don't work, you don't eat - or at least you don't get to own a fancy car)?
Plus, it will freak out the natives. Excellent idea.
Right. And, if there was some demonstration outside the Chinese embassy in Washington DC and the Chinese started blasting US citizens in the vicinity of the Chinese embassy with high intensity microwaves, then the Washington DC "natives" would think that was totally OK.
While I'm not necessarily opposed to non-lethal weapons, what I don't like about the microwave weapon is that it seems more like an offensive weapon. I mean, if you just want to protect an embassy from a crowd of people throwing stones then why not just build a really high wall?
It seems more likely that this will be used to disperse crowds that are exercising their right to assemble in a way that is embarrassing the government.
The article was light on details but it's not possible for a human kayaker to generate enough power to get the hull up "on plane". For purely human powered kayaks (not surfing waves) the fastest hulls are displacement hulls that minimize the wetted surface area of the hull cross section. That is, fast kayaks are very long and the hull cross section is a semi-circle (very hard to turn and very unstable).
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink...
The most you can hope for in a situation like this is that some people will notice and say "Hmm, this is something that some people seem to care about so maybe I'll learn more about it."
No matter what you do, you aren't going to reach the people who have already decided that they have all the answers and are so threatened by alternative viewpoints that they resort to labeling.
Basically, if they're calling you a commie, a reasoned argument isn't going to reach them either.
On the subject of tunnels, it's not necessary for the tunnel to involve quantum effects. A simple mechanical tunnel that opened for brief intervals would achieve the same effect: only those atoms with enough speed to traverse the tunnel would be allowed through (effectively only allowing passage to high energy atoms).
However, this mechanical tunnel has the same problem as the quantum tunnel - that the sorting is reversible (high energy atoms/electrons can go in both directions). For the mechanical tunnel, one could imagine putting doors at the ends of the tunnel that would open sequentially which would only allow the high energy atoms to travel in one direction. The problem is that (as explained by the Fluctuation Theorem) eventually the sequence of door openings would reverse and the high energy atoms would be removed from the chamber.
From the point of view of thought experiments, trying to sort atoms by energy gets complicated but simply building a one-way door at the atomic level (allowing atoms to only pass through in one direction) would be sufficient to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics (eg. the one-way door would cause pressure to build up that could be used to run a motor).
It is trivially easy to build a one-way door on a human scale - for fire safety, doors are required to always let people out but when these doors are locked they don't let people in. The counter-intuitive conclusion of the Fluctuation Theorem, however, is that any atomic level door that can go through a series of steps to let an atom ass in one direction will also go through the reverse steps and allow an atom to pass in the other direction.
Broadly speaking, the Fluctuation Theorem makes it unlikely that you can get more energy out of the sorting than you will have to expend to accomplish the sorting. To put it another way, any sorting process that is not driven by an external energy input will be just as likely to run in reverse. In the classic Maxwell's demon example, a sorting process that can put hot molecules in a specific place will be just as likely to run in reverse and remove hot molecules from that place.
It is interesting to note that the Fluctuation Theorem depends on microscopic reversability (time symmetry of interactions at the atomic level). On the scale that we humans experience things (the macroscopic level), our experience of time is closely correlated with increases in entropy: a person can look at a movie of a drop of ink dissolving in a glass of water and know whether or not the movie is being played in reverse. Essentially, time asymmetry at the macroscopic level (ie. the human scale) depends on time symmetry at the microscopic (atomic) level.
Getting into the realm of very wild and crazy speculation, for classical Newtonian mechanics (charged particles in non-relativistic electric fields), time symmetry holds even when the system experiences external forces (static electric fields). Once we add relativity, however, we get magnetism (magnetism is relativistic contraction of electric fields) and time symmetry does not hold for a system (of charged particles) experiencing an external (static) magnetic field.
To the extent that the Second Law of Thermodynamics still holds in external magnetic fields then it may be possible to prove a version of the Fluctuation Theorem that depends on an even weaker assumption than microscopic reversability. On the other hand, magnetic fields induce spontaneous currents (ordered atomic motion) in diamagnetic materials (superconductors, bismuth, water, etc.) and if it was ever possible to tap into these currents (or any aspect of the ordered atomic motion) then that would show that the Second Law doesn't hold under relativistic conditions (ie. external magnetic fields).
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But you don't need to blame people. A lack of "free will" doesn't mean that people don't affect each other's behavior. The classic example of affecting a person's behavior is to have a conversation with that person.
The key point is that a society can radically alter individual behavior by imposing a system of rewards and punishments. Society decides it doesn't like individuals killing each other so it implements a system of punishments for individuals that kill others. That dramatically decreases the number of individuals that kill others. It doesn't mean that the individual "deserved" to be punished - only that society desired to alter individual behavior with respect to killing.
What this means is that, because punishment for committing crimes is an effective means of altering individual behavior, there is no need to lock people up before they commit crimes (except when it is clear that the punishment is inadequate to alter a particular individual's behavior).
It works out if you modify it just a bit:
I exist because I observe myself to exist.
True by definition. Of course, this is not true in the other direction: not everything that exists observes itself to exist (e.g. a rock).
Reducing it to "observation" also takes care of the bit about the rest of the world. You don't know if the rest of the world exists or not but you do know that you observe it to exist and that you observe certain patterns (e.g. the people you observe behave as if they observe the same things you do). Science, then, is not about "truth" in any absolute sense. Science is just identifying and organizing patterns in what you observe (and what you observe others to observe).
Early scientific advances such as Newtonian mechanics were closely correlated with astronomy. Astronomy established that the earth was a very small part of a much larger universe. As a results, creation mythologies that had once been a central part of most religions were de-emphasized and no longer taken literally by most people.
Now, the central feature of most religions is a notion of rewards and punishments - that people get what they "deserve" after they die. It is likely that advances in computer science (particularly AI) and biology (particularly neurobiology) will result in a major shift in attitudes toward the notion of free will. As a result, religions will come to de-emphasize the notion that people get what they "deserve" after they die.
The basic problem with free will is illustrated by the following. Imagine that a computer program is eventually written that can simulate the human brain with sufficient accuracy that its behavior is indistinguishable from the behavior of a human brain. By hypothesis, this computer program will have the same amount of "free will" that a human brain has. The problem is that the behavior of any computer program (that is, how the program responds to inputs) is totally determined by the underlying structure of the program. This view, that human behavior is is determined entirely by the physical structure of the human brain, is at odds with the notion that people "deserve" to be rewarded and punished for their behavior.
Note that discarding the notion that people "deserve" to be rewarded and punished does not mean that a system of rewards and punishments will not affect individual behavior. In particular, it does not mean that society does not benefit by implementing a system of rewards and punishments to modify individual behavior.
You assume there will be a difference between "we" and "them". More likely, humanity will exist as a collective consciousness in something like a giant computer in space and the robots will be an extension of humanity's consciousness - for when humanity wants to do (physical) things.
There is a (very very very small) chance that someone will be messing around with a complex computer program and all of a sudden it will start exhibiting intelligence. It's much more likely, though, that artificial intelligence will result from a detailed understanding of intelligence in biological organisms. By the time that computers are developed that can think on their own, it will also be possible for people to augment their intelligence with computers and probably even to transfer their memories and thought patterns to computers and also to other people (forming, among other things, collective consciousness). Rights for robots, as such, will only be one of many issues society has to deal with when artificial intelligence is finally developed.
The bigger issue is the nature of "free will". If a robot kills someone as a result of its programming can it really be said that the robot "deserves" to be punished? Certainly punishment might be an effective means of controlling robots with such programming. But could it really be said that the robot "deserved" to be punished? After all, the robot would merely be acting under the control of whatever computer program controlled its consciousness.
It used to be that creation mythologies were a major part of most religions. Many of the early advances in science were advances in astronomy. When people realized that the earth was part of a much larger universe, it dramatically changed the role of creation mythologies in religion. In modern times, very few people take the creation mythologies literally.
With the creation mytholgies largely abandoned, the central feature of most religions is now a notion of supernatural "justice" - that after people die they somehow get what they "deserve" based on their actions while they were alive. As artificial intelligence research progresses, researchers will have to deal with the fact that computer programs are either deterministic or random. Deterministic and random processes are in contradiction with many notions of free will. People don't like to believe that their choices are either random or determined by certain basic laws governing the physical structures that mediate their consciousness. As humanity understands more about "free will", it is likely that this understanding will call into question the idea that people should get what they "deserve" based on their actions.
That's not to say that humanity will not collectively impose rewards and punishments on individual behavior. The rewards and punishments will, however, only be seen as a tool to influence behavior rather than what each individual "deserves" in some cosmic sense.
Science is about patterns in what people observe. One of the most fundamental patterns is that people observe each other to observe the same things. For example, under certain circumstances, I observe the sky to be blue and I also observe other people to observe the sky to be blue.
Science can not, however, establish whether the patterns in what people observe are true in an absolute sense. I don't know if what I observe is "real" or if I am trapped in an artificial reality. I don't even know if I'm really human. I might just be an AI computer program in an artificial reality that provides me with the observations I would have if I were human. Even the laws of physics that I observe could be merely a product of the artificial reality I am immersed in.
By definition, faith is beliefs that are either not supported by factual observations or even beliefs that are inconsistent with factual observations. In general, religious beliefs are not inconsistent with single well established factual observations but they do tend to be inconsistent with overall patterns in factual observations.
Actually, the complaint is that politics is too separated from science. Politicians are ignoring real science and creating a falsified pseudoscience to replace it.
Science, at it's core, is about recognizing and organizing patterns in factual observations. Government, at it's core, should be about a lowest common denominator - things that the vast majority of people can agree on. This lowest common denominator is factual observations.
There is considerable debate over the existence of a God entity but there is very little debate over the existence of gravity. Gravity can be observed. Governments should take the existence of gravity into account when making their decisions. Governments should not take the existence of a God entity into account when making their decisions (unless/until the existence of a God entity can be established as a matter of factual observation).
If a pattern of factual observations is indicating the global warming is occurring then governments should take this into account. Governments should always take factual observations into account regardless of whether the decision is military decision or a financial decision or any other decision.
The basic message to the government is this: "Don't ignore factual observations when making decisions."
From Lawrence Lessig's blog:
Here's a more well defined experiment. Remove the richest 2% of the world's population and see what effect it has on the world's total economic output. The big question would be what to do with the assets of the richest 2%. They could, for example, be taxed away by the governments or distributed among the remaining population.
I have a strong suspicion that the total economic output would not fall by half as would be implied if the richest 2% were doing half the work. To put it another way, the assets of the richest 2% may be contributing substantially to the total economic output but not the richest 2% themselves.
Removing the hotels that Paris Hilton owns from the economy would have a significant impact. Removing Paris Hilton herself would not. The same could be said for Bill Gates and the fraction of the Microsoft corporation that he owns.
Is having your assets contribute to an economy the same as contributing to an economy yourself. My answer is no - particularly in the case of inherited assets. While assets themselves are usually economically productive, the decisions made by the owners of the assets may actually be detrimental to the economy. To put it another way, would it dramatically change the total economic output if the stock owned by Bill Gates was distributed equally among the world's population?
One thing that is true is that having a corrupt dictatorship micromanage an economy is very detrimental to an economy. If Bush were to become a dictator and if Bush were to take control of Bill Gates share of Microsoft and aggressively micromanage Microsoft for his own personal gain, then that would probably adversely affect the economy.
I'm ambivalent on whether to tax money (incidentally, governments "tax" money using inflation) and other producible property but land is a different story entirely.
The problem with land is that it's just there - it's not produced or consumed. If I own land and charge you do use it then I am having you transfer some of your wealth to me even though I'm haven't produced the land (and you haven't consumed the land). Capitalism is supposed to be about creating an incentive to produce things. With land, there is a flow of wealth to people who own land from people who don't own land even in the absence of any production. This creates an unstable system. Without government redistribution, eventually one person ends up owning all the land and everyone else transfers their wealth to that person.
A further complication is that, when a person is born, all the land has already been divided up among the existing population. If everyone who ever lived was born at the same time and received an equal amount of land then that might be fair but, as it is, some people get land through the indirect generosity of their parents and some people don't. This may be fair to the parents but it is not at all fair to the children.
Now, there is something to be said for using a market system for deciding who gets to use the land and who doesn't. That way, the people that value the land the most get to use the land. There still needs to be additional intervention, however, to prevent rich people from using the land to get rich (without producing) and then acquiring more land.
Conceptually, the system I favor is one in which all the land is owned by everyone collectively and individuals pay rent to everyone collectively in order to have exclusive use of certain parcels of land. The land would be allocated by some kind of market system.
In practice, that is essentially what most countries have - except that instead of paying "rent", exclusive land users pay "property tax". Now, I think property tax rates should be quite a bit higher to discourage hoarding of the land. Basically, anyone who is accumulating a lot of land should pay heavy property taxes. That would not only help with wealth inequality but it would also insure that all available land was utilized (not just sitting around unused as an investment).
There should also be more parks and public spaces. As it is, people are very disconnected from their communities. They spend their free times cowering indoors watching TV only venturing out occasionally to tell the kids to get off their lawn. Sometimes it seems that people have yards more because they enjoy denying other people the ability to use the land and less for using it themselves. It's like a kid in kindergarten hoarding a toy.
Incidentally, the land allocation model currently in place is more of a "first kid to get the toy gets it for as long as he wants" model rather than a "each kid gets equal time with the toy" model.
I agree that transferring someone aspect of human consciousness off the planet has an aesthetic appeal. It would just feel wrong if, after all these years of striving, the human race just totally ceased to exist.
On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that the human race, in it's present form, will survive more than another few hundred years.
One possibility is that the human race will design a new species and raise this new species as it's children allowing itself to die off. This new species will look and act superficially human but it will be sufficiently different genetically that interbreeding with present day humans would be impossible. The main impetus for designing this new species will be to improve on and correct defects of existing humans. This species will be noticeably smarter and stronger and healthier.
Another possibility is that people won't bother with creating a new species at all and will instead transfer their consciousness to something like a computer. Everyone's consciousness will be sufficiently connected that the result will essentially be one collective consciousness.
A final possibility is that humanity will prove beyond any doubt that there is no purpose to its existence and simply allow itself to cease to exist.
Either way, enjoy it while you can - because you are likely to be one of the last generations of the human race in it's present form.
That's not exactly a fundamental science discovery but if it's true it's actually pretty neat.
Oxygen condenses at -183.0 C and nitrogen condenses at -195.8 C so if these things became widely available you could make your own liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen.
Unfortunately, liquid hydrogen is down at -252.8 C so you wouldn't be able to condense the hydrogen gas you got from electrolysis of water to make your own liquid hydrogen and oxygen rocket engine.
That's an interesting question. I have some ideas but I have to admit that I'm not sure.
If the energy distribution of the photons has a higher average than the kinetic energy distribution of the material the photons interact with, then this would be a temperature gradient of sorts. Infra-red photons from black-body radiation would be likely to have the same energy distribution as the material they were interacting with (assuming the emitting material is at the same temperature as the absorbing material). On the other hand, visible light has an energy distribution that is higher than the kinetic energy distribution of a material at room temperature.
In the case of radio waves (or electromagnetic induction generally), it seems that radio wave photons would all be "aligned". In that case, knowing the alignment would allow the energy conversion / extraction. That is, the second law doesn't limit conversion between "ordered" (non-heat-like) forms of energy.
Converting heat directly to electricity would mean the second law of thermodynamics was not universally valid which would be a major discovery (right up there with relativity and quantum physics). Converting a temperature gradient (or temperature difference) into electricity (even with a solid state device) is nothing new unless you can exceed the efficiency limits of the second law. Equivalently, converting electricity into a temperature gradient is nothing new unless you can exceed the efficiency limits of the second law.
Nothing in the article suggests that they are exceeding the efficiency limits of the second law so they don't have a truly major scientific discovery.
Incidentally, if they could exceed the efficiency limits of the second law (in either direction: converting a temperature gradient to electricity or converting electricity to a temperature gradient), then that would be equivalent to converting heat directly to electricity.
As implied by my use of the phrase "one of", it is likely that Bush had many motivations. The official justification, motivated by an attempt to skirt the intent of international law to prevent countries from staring wars, was some technicalities in international law. Given human nature, I suspect that the assassination attempt on Bush Sr. was a much more powerful motivator for Bush Jr. than technicalties of international law.
It wasn't Bush's decision to make. Resolution 1441 was a U.N. resolution and it was the U.N. that should have made the decision whether Saddam's (relatively minor) lack of compliance (he wasn't "fully" cooperating with the weapons inspectors) justified an all out invasion. For the record, at the time of invasion it was not the judgement of the U.N. that invasion was justified.
He wasn't trying very hard. I clearly remember a U.N. meeting where Colin Powell had some rather inconsistent assertions that Iraq still had WMD's and the Iraqi representitive clearly said that Iraq did not have any WMD's.
The similarities I claim are certain violations of individual rights (for example, torture and secret detention with a framework of laws to protect the detainees) and killing of large numbers innocent people in pursuit of questionable policies. Saddam and Bush may be very different in other respects but they are similar in these respects.
That was my original point: that Bush strongly condemns Saddam Hussein for things he does himself - things that should be unacceptable for any leader.
Everyone wants peace and freedom, they just want it on their own terms. Bush and Saddam both want/wanted a peace and "freedom" that they had substantial control over. It's the whole, "You are free to do whatever you want as long as it's what you should be doing".
I agree that Bush will probably go down in history as less brutal and oppressive in a primative dictator sense. It's hard to say who will be remembered as having caused the most harm (particularly, relative to the power they had to do accomplish good things).
Should assassination attempts against Saddam Hussein be considered personal attacks on all Iraqis? Is it OK to attempt to assassinate the leader of your own country but not the leader of someone else's country? If that's the case then the USA should do away with the crime of treason. Also, what is the USA is doing killing Saddam Hussein who was the leader of someone else's country?
That's why the call it international law. When a country makes up it's own laws those are national laws. The whole point of international law is to place limits on what a country can justify using the notion of national sovereignty.
The point is that it is important to be in complaince with overall intent of the law in addition to the letter of the law. With respect to international law regarding war, war is only OK when it is clearly self defense (the other country has launched an invasion against you) or when it has the approval of the United Nations (the US invasion of Iraq clearly did not have the approval of the United Nations at the time of invasion except in a convoluted technical sense involving old U.N. resolutions and the meaning of "full" cooperation).
I don't know about "the left" but the side I'm on is individual rights - particularly human rights. Rather than having two standards, one for Bush and one for Saddam Hussein, there should be one standard that prohibits torture and other violations of individual rights in all cases.
The proof is in the totality of circumstances, for example: individual accounts of torture, the Bush administrations insistence that confessions obtained under torture can be used in military tribunals, Dick Cheney's comment that there's nothing wrong with dunking someone's head under water (waterboarding is much much worse than dunking someone's head but it seems likely that waterboarding is what he meant).
Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death for retaliating after an assination attempt. It's interesting that one of Bush's motivations for going to war with Iraq was retaliation for an assassination attempt against Bush's father. Over the course of his reign, Saddam Hussein probably killed more innocent Iraqis in retaliation for assassination attempts than Bush but Bush is catching up fast.
Even if Bush's decision to invade Iraq was not personal retaliation, it's interesting the extent to which the Bush administration games the international law system. One minute they claim that international law is completely irrelevant and negotiate bilateral agreements to avoid coming under the juristiction of the International Criminial Court. The next minute they use some obscure technical arguments in international law to justify their behavior - whether it's killing Saddam Hussein or invading Iraq in the first place (convoluted arguments about Saddam Hussein's non-compliance with ceasefire agreements).
Broadly speaking, the reason Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death was for dealing harshly with people who opposed him and his policies. It is interesting that Bush has also dealt harshly with people who opposed him and his policies. Bush has even used many of the same methods as Saddam Hussein - broad retaliation that has resulted in the deaths of thousands and thousands of innocent people, torture and degrading treatment (including sexually degrading treatment), and indefinite detentions and broad surveillence techniques to identify "enemies".
Obviously the situations that Saddam and Bush find themselves in are very different. It seems likely history will judge Saddam to have been a much more brutal and oppressive leader than Bush. What is striking though is how harshly the Bush administration condemns Saddam Hussein for using methof like toture when they use those methods themselves.
If we don't, then we have to apply the laws of physics. This means that we have to take the view that everything that happens is governed by the laws of physics and random chance. Unless we can alter the laws of physics or control random chance (impossible by definition), then we have to take a long hard look at this thing we call "free will".
To put it another way, imagine that our understanding of how the mind works gets so advanced that we can simulate it exactly with a computer program. We know that computer programs exhibit two types of behavior: either they always give the same result for the same input or we put in a random number generator and then we get different behaviors (at random) for the same input. Either way, the computer program won't really have free will.
Getting philosophical, what do you do when you realize beyond a doubt that you don't have free will (not that you really have a choice - but you're going to do it anyway)? Do you keep on keeping on or do you just give up? Speculating wildly, maybe that's why we haven't been contacted by other intelligent life in the universe - by the time they get advanced enough to cross the vast inter-stellar distances, they realize there's no point.
It's not just globalization that demands open borders. It's the basic principles of freedom and equality. Somehow it's horribly wrong to tell someone where the can live on the basis of their race (just look at all the politicians jumping on the MLK bandwagon against segregation these days), but then it's totally fine to tell someone where they can live of the basis of who their parents were or where they were born? As far as I'm concerned it's all horribly wrong.
Granted, it might smooth the transition of the borders were opened gradually. The goal we should all be striving for, though, is totally open borders.
I suppose it's partially about efficiency. It takes less resources to punish the few people who commit crimes than it would take to reward everyone one else who doesn't. We also see the other side of this with something like the Nobel prize. It's more efficient to provide a substantial reward to the few people who make major scientific contributions than it is to provide a substantial punishment to everyone else who doesn't.
This idea, that the decision of whether to reward of punish depends on the relative frequency of desired and undesired behavior, runs into an interesting question when it comes to work. Are people rewarded for working (with a salary) or are they punished for not working (you don't work, you don't eat - or at least you don't get to own a fancy car)?
Right. And, if there was some demonstration outside the Chinese embassy in Washington DC and the Chinese started blasting US citizens in the vicinity of the Chinese embassy with high intensity microwaves, then the Washington DC "natives" would think that was totally OK.
While I'm not necessarily opposed to non-lethal weapons, what I don't like about the microwave weapon is that it seems more like an offensive weapon. I mean, if you just want to protect an embassy from a crowd of people throwing stones then why not just build a really high wall?
It seems more likely that this will be used to disperse crowds that are exercising their right to assemble in a way that is embarrassing the government.
The article was light on details but it's not possible for a human kayaker to generate enough power to get the hull up "on plane". For purely human powered kayaks (not surfing waves) the fastest hulls are displacement hulls that minimize the wetted surface area of the hull cross section. That is, fast kayaks are very long and the hull cross section is a semi-circle (very hard to turn and very unstable).
The most you can hope for in a situation like this is that some people will notice and say "Hmm, this is something that some people seem to care about so maybe I'll learn more about it."
No matter what you do, you aren't going to reach the people who have already decided that they have all the answers and are so threatened by alternative viewpoints that they resort to labeling.
Basically, if they're calling you a commie, a reasoned argument isn't going to reach them either.
However, this mechanical tunnel has the same problem as the quantum tunnel - that the sorting is reversible (high energy atoms/electrons can go in both directions). For the mechanical tunnel, one could imagine putting doors at the ends of the tunnel that would open sequentially which would only allow the high energy atoms to travel in one direction. The problem is that (as explained by the Fluctuation Theorem) eventually the sequence of door openings would reverse and the high energy atoms would be removed from the chamber.
From the point of view of thought experiments, trying to sort atoms by energy gets complicated but simply building a one-way door at the atomic level (allowing atoms to only pass through in one direction) would be sufficient to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics (eg. the one-way door would cause pressure to build up that could be used to run a motor).
It is trivially easy to build a one-way door on a human scale - for fire safety, doors are required to always let people out but when these doors are locked they don't let people in. The counter-intuitive conclusion of the Fluctuation Theorem, however, is that any atomic level door that can go through a series of steps to let an atom ass in one direction will also go through the reverse steps and allow an atom to pass in the other direction.
It is interesting to note that the Fluctuation Theorem depends on microscopic reversability (time symmetry of interactions at the atomic level). On the scale that we humans experience things (the macroscopic level), our experience of time is closely correlated with increases in entropy: a person can look at a movie of a drop of ink dissolving in a glass of water and know whether or not the movie is being played in reverse. Essentially, time asymmetry at the macroscopic level (ie. the human scale) depends on time symmetry at the microscopic (atomic) level.
Getting into the realm of very wild and crazy speculation, for classical Newtonian mechanics (charged particles in non-relativistic electric fields), time symmetry holds even when the system experiences external forces (static electric fields). Once we add relativity, however, we get magnetism (magnetism is relativistic contraction of electric fields) and time symmetry does not hold for a system (of charged particles) experiencing an external (static) magnetic field.
To the extent that the Second Law of Thermodynamics still holds in external magnetic fields then it may be possible to prove a version of the Fluctuation Theorem that depends on an even weaker assumption than microscopic reversability. On the other hand, magnetic fields induce spontaneous currents (ordered atomic motion) in diamagnetic materials (superconductors, bismuth, water, etc.) and if it was ever possible to tap into these currents (or any aspect of the ordered atomic motion) then that would show that the Second Law doesn't hold under relativistic conditions (ie. external magnetic fields).