The Chinese room argument is and always has been stupid.
Is one of your neurons intelligent? How about all of them together, combined with your sensory input and body and other machinery? Yes, the combination of all that is intelligent. (At least for some people anyway.)
The Chinese room argument centers on the fact that the component pieces of the machine have NO IDEA what they're doing and NO UNDERSTANDING of what is going on, so then the whole room can't be intelligent.
That is like saying that because my individual neurons are really dumb little machines that are merely executing biochemical programming without understanding, that my brain can't produce intelligence. I'd like to think I have a counterexample to that argument, but if you won't accept me as a counterexample, perhaps look into a mirror for one!
Also, there are people who have argued that *just the steam conversion to electricity* part of a nuclear plant (either fission or fusion) is going to push the cost up over any direct conversion technology (wind, solar, hydro, natural gas turbine). Even if the fission/fusion plant were to be free, the argument goes, the steam generator would, by itself, cost more than the same MW generating capacity of solar/wind/hydro/natural gas.
And richer populations have fewer kids. If you're not living in an economically depressed malarial hellhole, you can afford birth control and set up a good economy.
Believe it or not, public health and improving people's economic status decreases birth rates.
Personally, I'd rather see worldwide populations limited by birth control and the naturally reduced birthrate that seems to ensue from better economic conditions than populations limited by war, famine, and pestilence.
Is this a problem if they introduce MALE Asian Tiger Mosquitoes? Seems like you could completely wipe out anopheles mosquitoes. That said, this effect is probably temporary, because as soon as you cease releases, the anopheles will come back....
Making the mosquito population more fit iff they don't carry malaria seems like a permanent solution that would spread instead of degrading over time.
Maintaining antibiotic resistance is costly, and populations of bacteria which are not exposed to antibiotics will drop the capability after a while or be out-competed by competitors without the baggage.
So maybe a world-wide complete ban on use of some of the older antibiotics that are now mostly useless would help? Bacteria resistant to those old antibiotics might become rare due to lack of selection pressure.
Then, after 20 years of rest, maybe those antibiotics could be rotated back into use, because they've again become useful?
Phage therapy is essentially the use of viruses against bacteria. This seems like a wonderful idea and quite specific against specific bacteria.
For antibiotics we often want something broad-spectrum, because it takes time and a lab test to determine what germ is causing the problem. Precious time and uncertain results from the lab test.
So right off the bat phage therapy is less useful.
I wonder right also if the human host would mount an immune response to the phages used, effectively defending the very bacteria that the phages were intended to attack. It's a foreign antigen, after all, even a virus, why WOULDN'T your immune system attack it?
So might it be the case that phage therapy would only work once on a given person, for a particular phage?
So I'm not sure phage therapy really would be an effective replacement for the antibiotics we used to have. Helpful, certainly, but of limited use, maybe?
Sorry to say it, but "most industrialized countries" feed antibiotics to animals routinely.
There are only a FEW industrialized countries which ban this, notably in Europe, notably NOT in North America (though the Republic of California just enacted a ban.)
It's NOT just a third world practice! Routine feeding of antibiotics to animals makes them gain weight faster. Market win! Industrial farmers LOVE using antibiotics.
Your mistake was underestimating the force of greed-induced stupid.
Dead from antibiotics resistant bacterial infections. 3,000 people died in 9/11 in one particular year.
USA spent $2T on subsequent wars.
So it seems that $100T is "justified" in spending to combat antibiotic resistance, right? (Frankly, I'd be happy to see $20B increase.)
And it pretty much has to be Government supported investment, the market case just isn't there for a drug company to develop new antibiotics. How do you make your billions back from a drug which people just take for a little while, while they are sick?
Drug companies just want to develop drugs that make them lots of money, drugs that people will take every day or will take in huge quantities. So if a drug company DOES develop an antibiotic, they'll soon sell it for agricultural use to help animals gain weight--that's the only way they can ever make money.
Free market economics pretty much dictate that antibiotics will be misused if developed at all, that is why we have to have PUBLIC investment in new antibiotics.
Antibiotics are not fed to animals solely as a precaution. Animals that are fed antibiotics gain more weight, faster. This works on people too. Feed people antibiotics and they gain weight.
California, in the USA, recently banned such agricultural use of antibiotics and so have some countries in Europe.
It really is as someone said, greed/lust for profits/need to compete with others using antibiotics is the real reason why resistance is showing up.
I have a lot of sympathy for what you're saying. The electrical grid badly needs to be made robust to EMP/solar flares, because even if no one detonates a nuke in orbit, eventually there will be a solar flare that will be powerful enough to have the same effect. Or some sort of cascading failure. Smaller modular grids are inherently more robust, on that you cannot be disputed.
You are also right that nuclear has much less of a carbon footprint than burning coal or any other fossil fuel. What I'm not confident of is that nuclear power of any sort can be competitive, economically, with alternatives.
Don't get me wrong, I like nuclear power in principle, but when it comes down to money, people have argued, pretty convincingly, that the fact that you have to generate heat and then convert it to power incurs so much capital expense that direct electrical generation will always be cheaper.
Direct electrical generation means that the fuel directly spins a turbine or generates electricity, examples of direct conversion: hydropower solar natural gas fired turbines (the burning gas turns the turbine directly)
All flavors of nuclear power (except possibly aneutronic fusion) heat water which is converted to steam which turns turbines which generates electricity.
Here's the link that goes into the argument more thoroughly:
Zero direct fatalities? Think zombie apocalypse!
on
Satellite Wars (ft.com)
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Indirect fatalities are fatalities.
Consider what would happen if the whole electrical network in the US went down. That is the likely effect of an orbital EMP. All electric power would stop and stay stopped. Gas pumps wouldn't work. Refrigeration would fail. Shipments of food would not arrive and mass starvation would ensue. People would be wandering around starving searching for ANY food at all.
If you don't think nuclear retaliation isn't the right response for inflicting THAT upon the USA, what is the point of having a nuclear deterrent?
When are all these idiots going to realize that if WE the people don't have strong encryption, then TERRORISTS and CRIMINALS will be able to get at OUR vital information to get US?
Security vulnerabilities put the general population at FAR MORE risk of harm than it puts terrorists at risk of being captured!
Even a "government only" back door is just one leak or discovery away from being everyone's security vulnerability.
If you're right, then the web advertising business has screwed itself royally and irrevocably, until Joe User gets a new computer.
Seems like their only hope of coming back is to: 1) Stop being offensive 2) Deal with the fact that the market's shrunk for the next few years at least
and if they ever want me to disable my ad blocker: 3) Sanitize ads and pay for cleanup if they deliver malware.
Because the sad fact is that I was willing to put up with annoying, but I am NOT willing to put up with security risk. The same day that it registered with me that I could protect my computer's security by blocking ads, that's the day I put in an ad blocker.
How about running for Congress? It'd be nice to have someone reasonable for a change, and someone who is interested in the actual success of the country instead of affirming their beliefs in their absolute truths.
I tend to lean liberal, but political philosophy doesn't trump facts--if a conservative proves to me that deregulating something is advantageous, well, let's give it a try, then!
In New Mexico, the Rail Runner connects Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and some other smaller cities.
After 9 years, ridership doesn't pay for operating costs, not even 1/10th of the operating costs, let alone pay for the cost of the capital invested. Add the cost of capital and fares pay only 1/20th of the cost.
California had better think not once, not twice, but ten times about the economic case for their bullet train--if it is as much of a flop as New Mexico's Rail Runner, it'll blow a huge hole in the state's budget.
has figures showing that they forecast the cost of fusion power to be between 68 to 80 "mill/kWh", (apparently mills are thousandth's of a 1999 dollar) which is more expensive than any alternative they examined. Wind power they forecast to cost between 20 to 40 "mill/kWh".
If the people at DOE who wrote that report are good forecasters, then fusion is DOA. Alternatives will be less expensive.
Yes, you can make "technology advancement" arguments that the DOE forecasters are wrong, but the cost of wind and solar generators are dropping all the time, too, and storage options might get radically cheaper as well. I think investment in solar + wind + storage actually dwarfs investments in fusion, so the market seems intent on fulfilling DOE's prophesy.
Fusion may really only come into its own when we go live in the asteroid belt or the outer solar system.
Could the sale of the power from a ITER-like or W7X-like power plant pay better than 10% more than the interest on the capital used to build it added to the operating cost? (Assume the market is priced according to the cost of generating electricity from ALTERNATIVES to coal.)
If not, I can't see fusion competing with energy alternatives..... No one would ever invest the money to build commercial fusion plants if you couldn't make sufficient profit on the invested capital.....
How do I inform Verizon and Motorola that I won't buy an android phone from them EVER AGAIN until they start supporting their products with security patches?
My phone STILL hasn't been patched from the first stagefright vulnerability. I've disabled functionality on the phone in order to protect it.
I'm downright upset about the lack of security fixes from Motorola/Verizon.
Seriously, how do I let those two corporations know in an effective way that they'll NEVER get another phone purchase from me until they've changed their do-nothing security practices? Not one penny!
Energy stored is C * V * V / 2. Telling us C without V is sort of like measuring the capacity of a gas tank by giving you the length, but leaving out the depth and width.
They report capacitances in the 1000 millifarads for a "centimeter scale" device.
If the maximum voltage is 1V, then we have an unimpressive energy storage of 0.5 J in their "centimeter scale" device.
AAA batteries can store about 5000 J, by contrast. To match that, these would need to be charged to 100V.
Without the V number this article is disappointingly uninformative.
Medical marijuana has a lot of promise as pain management.
Acetaminophen (paracetamol) doesn't work all that well and can kill your liver if you have a relatively mild overdose.
Ibuprofin and NSAIDs don't work all that well for severe pain and also can have nasty side effects like stomach ulceration.
Opiates do work well, even for severe pain, but they have lots of very nasty side effects, lose effectiveness, and become addictive. These are really horrible drugs.
Humanity is crying out for better painkillers, and marijuana, yes, medical marijuana, has promise there. Or do you not consider management of severe chronic pain a valid medical reason?
And there are not a "tiny number" of people with chronic pain. I'd argue ALL the other drugs are as bad or worse than marijuana for that application.
People keep saying "why don't you send in your money, then?"
What's wrong with wanting to live under the same rules as everyone else? Obviously, this person could make a martyr of himself and pay a greater share than rightfully belongs to him of what needs to be done to maintain a civilized society, but is that fair?
How well do you think a Government by contribution would work? D'you think it could actually provide for a common defence? No?
OK, so what's the big deal with requiring everyone to contribute to that? OK, now what else is worthy of a required contribution? That is what we decide as a society. He's arguing that we need to be taxed more for better roads and healthier, educated kids. If we, as a society, decide that we want to pursue these goals, why is it *fair* that only those who care about those things be made to pay for them, instead of everyone who benefits, either directly or indirectly?
Slashdot Mirror
The Chinese room argument is and always has been stupid.
Is one of your neurons intelligent? How about all of them together, combined with your sensory input and body and other machinery? Yes, the combination of all that is intelligent. (At least for some people anyway.)
The Chinese room argument centers on the fact that the component pieces of the machine have NO IDEA what they're doing and NO UNDERSTANDING of what is going on, so then the whole room can't be intelligent.
That is like saying that because my individual neurons are really dumb little machines that are merely executing biochemical programming without understanding, that my brain can't produce intelligence. I'd like to think I have a counterexample to that argument, but if you won't accept me as a counterexample, perhaps look into a mirror for one!
--PM
I think the main reason that nuclear power, whether fusion or fission, is never going to be a major source of power is just pure economics.
The US Department of Energy forecast fission and fusion plants costing more than alternatives, including solar/wind.
Citation: http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/...
Also, there are people who have argued that *just the steam conversion to electricity* part of a nuclear plant (either fission or fusion) is going to push the cost up over any direct conversion technology (wind, solar, hydro, natural gas turbine). Even if the fission/fusion plant were to be free, the argument goes, the steam generator would, by itself, cost more than the same MW generating capacity of solar/wind/hydro/natural gas.
Citation:
https://matter2energy.wordpres...
And richer populations have fewer kids. If you're not living in an economically depressed malarial hellhole, you can afford birth control and set up a good economy.
Believe it or not, public health and improving people's economic status decreases birth rates.
Personally, I'd rather see worldwide populations limited by birth control and the naturally reduced birthrate that seems to ensue from better economic conditions than populations limited by war, famine, and pestilence.
--PeterM
Malaria kills approx. 672k people/year worldwide (WHO: http://www.who.int/gho/malaria...).
Malaria cases per year, also very high in human cost, are much higher in number: 207M. AIDS has about 2x the death rate per year.
Maybe try this out on an island population of anopheles mosquitoes?
--PeterM
Is this a problem if they introduce MALE Asian Tiger Mosquitoes? Seems like you could completely wipe out anopheles mosquitoes. That said, this effect is probably temporary, because as soon as you cease releases, the anopheles will come back....
Making the mosquito population more fit iff they don't carry malaria seems like a permanent solution that would spread instead of degrading over time.
--PM
Maintaining antibiotic resistance is costly, and populations of bacteria which are not exposed to antibiotics will drop the capability after a while or be out-competed by competitors without the baggage.
So maybe a world-wide complete ban on use of some of the older antibiotics that are now mostly useless would help? Bacteria resistant to those old antibiotics might become rare due to lack of selection pressure.
Then, after 20 years of rest, maybe those antibiotics could be rotated back into use, because they've again become useful?
--PeterM
Phage therapy is essentially the use of viruses against bacteria. This seems like a wonderful idea and quite specific against specific bacteria.
For antibiotics we often want something broad-spectrum, because it takes time and a lab test to determine what germ is causing the problem. Precious time and uncertain results from the lab test.
So right off the bat phage therapy is less useful.
I wonder right also if the human host would mount an immune response to the phages used, effectively defending the very bacteria that the phages were intended to attack. It's a foreign antigen, after all, even a virus, why WOULDN'T your immune system attack it?
So might it be the case that phage therapy would only work once on a given person, for a particular phage?
So I'm not sure phage therapy really would be an effective replacement for the antibiotics we used to have. Helpful, certainly, but of limited use, maybe?
--PeterM
Sorry to say it, but "most industrialized countries" feed antibiotics to animals routinely.
There are only a FEW industrialized countries which ban this, notably in Europe, notably NOT in North America (though the Republic of California just enacted a ban.)
It's NOT just a third world practice! Routine feeding of antibiotics to animals makes them gain weight faster. Market win! Industrial farmers LOVE using antibiotics.
Your mistake was underestimating the force of greed-induced stupid.
--PM
Dead from antibiotics resistant bacterial infections. 3,000 people died in 9/11 in one particular year.
USA spent $2T on subsequent wars.
So it seems that $100T is "justified" in spending to combat antibiotic resistance, right? (Frankly, I'd be happy to see $20B increase.)
And it pretty much has to be Government supported investment, the market case just isn't there for a drug company to develop new antibiotics. How do you make your billions back from a drug which people just take for a little while, while they are sick?
Drug companies just want to develop drugs that make them lots of money, drugs that people will take every day or will take in huge quantities. So if a drug company DOES develop an antibiotic, they'll soon sell it for agricultural use to help animals gain weight--that's the only way they can ever make money.
Free market economics pretty much dictate that antibiotics will be misused if developed at all, that is why we have to have PUBLIC investment in new antibiotics.
-PeterM
Antibiotics are not fed to animals solely as a precaution. Animals that are fed antibiotics gain more weight, faster. This works on people too. Feed people antibiotics and they gain weight.
California, in the USA, recently banned such agricultural use of antibiotics and so have some countries in Europe.
It really is as someone said, greed/lust for profits/need to compete with others using antibiotics is the real reason why resistance is showing up.
-PM
Hello,
I have a lot of sympathy for what you're saying. The electrical grid badly needs to be made robust to EMP/solar flares, because even if no one detonates a nuke in orbit, eventually there will be a solar flare that will be powerful enough to have the same effect. Or some sort of cascading failure. Smaller modular grids are inherently more robust, on that you cannot be disputed.
You are also right that nuclear has much less of a carbon footprint than burning coal or any other fossil fuel. What I'm not confident of is that nuclear power of any sort can be competitive, economically, with alternatives.
Don't get me wrong, I like nuclear power in principle, but when it comes down to money, people have argued, pretty convincingly, that the fact that you have to generate heat and then convert it to power incurs so much capital expense that direct electrical generation will always be cheaper.
Direct electrical generation means that the fuel directly spins a turbine or generates electricity, examples of direct conversion:
hydropower
solar
natural gas fired turbines (the burning gas turns the turbine directly)
All flavors of nuclear power (except possibly aneutronic fusion) heat water which is converted to steam which turns turbines which generates electricity.
Here's the link that goes into the argument more thoroughly:
https://matter2energy.wordpres...
Indirect fatalities are fatalities.
Consider what would happen if the whole electrical network in the US went down. That is the likely effect of an orbital EMP. All electric power would stop and stay stopped. Gas pumps wouldn't work. Refrigeration would fail. Shipments of food would not arrive and mass starvation would ensue. People would be wandering around starving searching for ANY food at all.
If you don't think nuclear retaliation isn't the right response for inflicting THAT upon the USA, what is the point of having a nuclear deterrent?
--PM
When are all these idiots going to realize that if WE the people don't have strong encryption, then TERRORISTS and CRIMINALS will be able to get at OUR vital information to get US?
Security vulnerabilities put the general population at FAR MORE risk of harm than it puts terrorists at risk of being captured!
Even a "government only" back door is just one leak or discovery away from being everyone's security vulnerability.
--PeterM
If you're right, then the web advertising business has screwed itself royally and irrevocably, until Joe User gets a new computer.
Seems like their only hope of coming back is to:
1) Stop being offensive
2) Deal with the fact that the market's shrunk for the next few years at least
and if they ever want me to disable my ad blocker:
3) Sanitize ads and pay for cleanup if they deliver malware.
Because the sad fact is that I was willing to put up with annoying, but I am NOT willing to put up with security risk. The same day that it registered with me that I could protect my computer's security by blocking ads, that's the day I put in an ad blocker.
--PM
If no one in the US has a good job to earn money to buy things with, how is anyone in America going to "consume" anything?
No jobs, no money in consumers hands, no demand.
What "rest of the economy" is left after all the good jobs have gone overseas?
--PM
How about running for Congress? It'd be nice to have someone reasonable for a change, and someone who is interested in the actual success of the country instead of affirming their beliefs in their absolute truths.
I tend to lean liberal, but political philosophy doesn't trump facts--if a conservative proves to me that deregulating something is advantageous, well, let's give it a try, then!
--PM
In New Mexico, the Rail Runner connects Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and some other smaller cities.
After 9 years, ridership doesn't pay for operating costs, not even 1/10th of the operating costs, let alone pay for the cost of the capital invested. Add the cost of capital and fares pay only 1/20th of the cost.
California had better think not once, not twice, but ten times about the economic case for their bullet train--if it is as much of a flop as New Mexico's Rail Runner, it'll blow a huge hole in the state's budget.
--PM
Went and looked for answers to my own question:
This report from DOE
http://web.ornl.gov/~webworks/...
has figures showing that they forecast the cost of fusion power to be between 68 to 80 "mill/kWh", (apparently mills are thousandth's of a 1999 dollar) which is more expensive than any alternative they examined. Wind power they forecast to cost between 20 to 40 "mill/kWh".
If the people at DOE who wrote that report are good forecasters, then fusion is DOA. Alternatives will be less expensive.
Yes, you can make "technology advancement" arguments that the DOE forecasters are wrong, but the cost of wind and solar generators are dropping all the time, too, and storage options might get radically cheaper as well. I think investment in solar + wind + storage actually dwarfs investments in fusion, so the market seems intent on fulfilling DOE's prophesy.
Fusion may really only come into its own when we go live in the asteroid belt or the outer solar system.
--PeterM
Could the sale of the power from a ITER-like or W7X-like power plant pay better than 10% more than the interest on the capital used to build it added to the operating cost? (Assume the market is priced according to the cost of generating electricity from ALTERNATIVES to coal.)
If not, I can't see fusion competing with energy alternatives..... No one would ever invest the money to build commercial fusion plants if you couldn't make sufficient profit on the invested capital.....
--PeterM
I never bothered with an ad blocker until the risk of getting malware delivered to me instead of an ad was made clear to me.
I can put up with annoying: I can filter ads very well mentally. I just look around them automatically.
But having malware delivered to my browser to exploit some security hole I never heard of? Intolerable!
No ads for me until the ad networks take responsibility for preventing malware and for the cost of cleanup if they deliver malware.
--PeterM
How do I inform Verizon and Motorola that I won't buy an android phone from them EVER AGAIN until they start supporting their products with security patches?
My phone STILL hasn't been patched from the first stagefright vulnerability. I've disabled functionality on the phone in order to protect it.
I'm downright upset about the lack of security fixes from Motorola/Verizon.
Seriously, how do I let those two corporations know in an effective way that they'll NEVER get another phone purchase from me until they've changed their do-nothing security practices? Not one penny!
Energy stored is C * V * V / 2. Telling us C without V is sort of like measuring the capacity of a gas tank by giving you the length, but leaving out the depth and width.
They report capacitances in the 1000 millifarads for a "centimeter scale" device.
If the maximum voltage is 1V, then we have an unimpressive energy storage of 0.5 J in their "centimeter scale" device.
AAA batteries can store about 5000 J, by contrast. To match that, these would need to be charged to 100V.
Without the V number this article is disappointingly uninformative.
--PM
Medical marijuana has a lot of promise as pain management.
Acetaminophen (paracetamol) doesn't work all that well and can kill your liver if you have a relatively mild overdose.
Ibuprofin and NSAIDs don't work all that well for severe pain and also can have nasty side effects like stomach ulceration.
Opiates do work well, even for severe pain, but they have lots of very nasty side effects, lose effectiveness, and become addictive. These are really horrible drugs.
Humanity is crying out for better painkillers, and marijuana, yes, medical marijuana, has promise there. Or do you not consider management of severe chronic pain a valid medical reason?
And there are not a "tiny number" of people with chronic pain. I'd argue ALL the other drugs are as bad or worse than marijuana for that application.
--PM
"that the ethical use of lab-grown human brains is nothing like a no-brainer."
Really? That JOKE is unethical.
--PeterM
People keep saying "why don't you send in your money, then?"
What's wrong with wanting to live under the same rules as everyone else? Obviously, this person could make a martyr of himself and pay a greater share than rightfully belongs to him of what needs to be done to maintain a civilized society, but is that fair?
How well do you think a Government by contribution would work? D'you think it could actually provide for a common defence? No?
OK, so what's the big deal with requiring everyone to contribute to that? OK, now what else is worthy of a required contribution? That is what we decide as a society. He's arguing that we need to be taxed more for better roads and healthier, educated kids. If we, as a society, decide that we want to pursue these goals, why is it *fair* that only those who care about those things be made to pay for them, instead of everyone who benefits, either directly or indirectly?
--PM