Sure, no problem. Here's the injunction written by the judge, including all the finding of fact.
Says what I said, that the schools provided a limited open platform for speech, and the job of the government is not to discriminate among viewpoints that use that platform. You either allow all viewpoints to use your facilities, or none.
>>The issue is when someone tries to bring the force of government to bear to supress certain speech.
Yes, for example -- Broward County schools (who allows churches of various sects to operate at its sites, various ethnic-based organizations, etc., which constitutes a public forum), when they choose to disallow the boy scouts to operate at their sites solely because of their beliefs, this violates their right to free speech, freedom of association, and equal protection. The government was trying for supress certain speech.
Again, guess which side of the issue the ACLU was on?
But the whole debate over homosexuality is an easy target where the ACLU clearly shows a double standard. They worked to actively deny the right of a private organization to chose who it associates with (google ACLU vs Boy Scouts), one of the most basic freedoms of a free society.
When a group of fundies were arrested for protesting a gay rights even, one of the charges was hate speech -- simply for having signs that said the Bible says gay sex is wrong, etc. The ACLU declined to support their case.
>>The old saying... "I may not agree with what you are saying but I will defend (to the death) your right to say it." (attributed to Voltaire)
If only they actually meant it.
Unfortunately, there is a tendancy for speech that the ACLU disagrees to be labelled "hate speech" which means that they don't have to fight to the death to say it. Since, you know, it's hate speech.
It makes for interesting debates:
Gay Rights Activist: Gays deserve full rights. ACLU: I WILL FIGHT TO MY DEATH TO DEFEND THIS Christian Fundamentalist (not my favorite people, but useful as an example): The Bible says homosexualism is bad ACLU: OMG HAXX0R HATE SPEECH
And yeah, the ACLU always seems to talk with caps on. =)
But the point is, it's hard to hold a debate in a free and open society when people try just shouting down anyone they disagree with. Whats worse is that many people condone / encourage that practice.
Is anyone else both a member of the ACLU and the NRA? I think it's valuable to always see arguments on both sides of the fence.
I'm the only person in my household that can hear it, so it bugs me when we're all, say, walking out and I know the TV is still on but muted (behind a closed cabinet). Constantly astonishes them.
I'd have figured I'd have lost it by now, but it's still as noticeable as when I was young.
One would presumably have to use an open source microkernel, and build your program (with a GUI and printing system) on top of that. In fact, I bet it would be possible to write such a program in a hundred lines of code or less. No network access, only source of input a mouse, only source of output a monitor and tape printer. Then open it to the world and let the eyes of millions of geeks examine it. Don't release binaries, make states compile it themselves. That's as secure as it could ever be.
The real tragedy is that Diebold Voting exists at all. It's not hard to write a safe voting program at all. You could probably assign it to CSE12 students as a final project. Design:
1) Read in a text file containing the prompt ("John Kerry vs George Bush" or "Prop 17 Yes/No?") with possible answers ("John Kerry", "George Bush"). The state could randomize the text files to avoid the bias from whose name comes first.
Start main loop 2) (Optional) User types in ID number (of one sort or another) 3) Iterate across all options, Show Questions & Answers in simple GUI, store selected answers in array. 4) Show a screen confirming all answers ("Kerry vs Bush: Kerry", etc.) 5) Print ballot on physical paper containing the above. (Optional) Also encode data in bar code form for ease of reading results. (Very Optional) Also transmit data to voting HQ for fast reporting of results. 6) Clear array Loop
Person examines the printed slip, and if correct drops it in box. If not, just goes through the voting process again.
It would be impossible to tamper with because all points of possible hacking can be defeated by the simple fact you get a physical slip that is human readable by the voter. If your slip says "Scott O'Neil voted for Justin Timberlake for best Rap Performance" instead of "Josh Flint voted for Chyna for most attractive female of the year" then you immediately know that some haxx are going on. All the other forms of reporting (electronic and bar code) are just there to speed the process. It is trivially easy to verify if the paper results from a place match the data sent by modem, or if the barcodes have been hacked to not agree with the human readable format.
The entire concept of having an electronic voting process that does not have human confirmation is just broken. Running a closed source peice of software made by a shady company that may or may not be actually storing onto disk / transmitting over the network what you thought you punched in, is just incredibly wrong. Incredibly, amazingly wrong. And even after all the hacks people have found for it, so many states have switched to it, it's appalling.
Sigh... if I keep talking about it I'm going to run out of synonyms to express my confundity.
NC took exactly the right step here. If Diebold can't run because it's on Windows, so be it. Windows is incredibly dangerous to be used in voting boxes, anyway. My lord, man, what if an election official listened to Celene Dion on a voting box? Sony would take over the world!
>Compare that with the things like the 2000 presidential elections in the USA, > where the supreme court ruled that a vote recount was *not* legal - how can you > *ever* justify a decision like that? Vote recounts should always be possible.
The press has grossly missreprented what happened in Florida. My roommate actually believed that the Supreme Court ruled that Bush won over Gore, believe it or not.
No, they did not rule against "a" vote recount. They ruled against a "third" vote recount. They'd already done two, and both had found Bush to be the winner. Gore was hoping that with the extremely thin margin (a hundred or so votes in the STATE) that the error inherent in a hand recount would tip him over the top if he just did it enough. He was pushing for a do-over on the election too using the same principle.
I rather doubt that even in Germany that the state will allow people to keep rerolling election counts until it comes out in their favor. (One must presume Gore would not be interested in doing another recount once one of them had come out in his favor.)
> This stupid meme pisses me off to no end. I'm here in Japan and frankly the > Japanese speak far better English than we (generally) do Japanese, and we're > students learning Japanese. Yes, a lot of Japanese speak poor or no English, but > very, very few Americans speak another language; further speak a non-Romance or > Germanic language with any real skill.
Here's my group of friends (mainly white guys, plus a Korean and a Chinese) and the languages they speak: -Korean (fluent), French (pretty good), Spanish (a little), Chinese (a touch) -Russian (two years in college) -Mandarin (one year in college), French (a little) -Spanish (pretty good) -Spanish (pretty good), Cantonese (native), Mandarin (pretty good), Japanese (a little) -Korean (native), Spanish (a little) -Russian (native)
And there's more, I can't recall what they speak off the top of my head. Basically each person has some random language that they speak, many of which are not from the obligatory 2-4 years of Spanish in high school. But yeah, it's amusing watching a white guy cuss so much in Korean that the Korean starts turning red with embarassment, so of course all the other white guys picked up on em.
I agree with the observation that you can't know your own language until you learn another. I took Mandarin after graduation mainly to try to expand my mind. Plus, it's like a gigantic practical joke. =) Saying something in Mandarin to random Chinese people always makes my day. =)
From the community college classes I took, only maybe 1/3rd of the class were actually students that were there to earn credits or even cared about their grade. Everyone else was a working professional, learning Mandarin on their own time, either for fun, for work, or because they were dating a Chinese woman.
I think the main resistance to foreign languages in America is due to the fact that being forced to learn a foreign language is a grueling, painful experience. But if you WANT to learn a language (and most of the people were just like that), it's amazing how fast you can learn, and how fun the process is. So, in conclusion, I think it's not as bad as you say it is. I think there's a growing desire in America to pick up a second language, even out of college.
> Chinese is not Chinese. I worked at a company that employed several Chinese > engineers. While they could all read the same newspaper, they couldn't all talk > to each other. Those from the south (Hong Kong and surrounding area) couldn't > understand those from the north.
All people in China are taught Mandarin these days, even in the south (where a student will grow up learning both Cantonese and Mandarin now).
Many Cantonese speakers will pick up Mandarin. My fiancee moved from Hong Kong around 6th grade (pre-changeover so no Mandarin in school), and learned Mandarin in AMERICA, simply from talking with other Mandarin speakers. Pretty amazing, but it only took her a year or so, and she can converse fluently in Mandarin.
Hence a Mandarin translator is about all you need, insofar as the new generation of Chinese go, especially if you are dealing with mainland China. A Cantonese one would be nice, but you'll get much better coverage with Mandarin.
>>I appreciate the effort you put into your journal entry, but you missed some really important points. The summary of Intelligent Design that you have is not accurate for your exposition - it should say, "Bias continues to exist in the random mutation component of Evolution."
Intelligent design claims that evolution is, essentially, impossible (==highly improbable), without someone rigging the game. If regular and interesting (i.e. ball rolling uphill) speciation events can happen without anything biasing the random number generator, then this key premise of ID is demonstrably wrong.
Or to put it another way, ID is mutually incompatible with complex life arising through random events and selection pressures alone.
>>Also, expecting to find out in 30 years if mutation has bias is kind of like expecting to find out in the next hand if the dealer is cheating. Speciation takes a long, long time to observe on a statistical basis. Remember, you're talking about the statistical nature of speciation. You would need to observe hundreds, or thousands of events of speciation to gain understanding.
In the thought experiment, we presume global observations. Right now, speciation events could happen, but just get classified as an already existing but unknown species.
But yeah, thats the interesting thing. Given 300,000 species that we care about, depending on what number you use for the expected time between speciation events you get: -Short (10,000 years between events): You expect to observe 30 per year -Long (1,000,000 between events): You expect one per 3 years
And sure, you might have to observe for a while, but the numbers will eventually come in conclusively. The time frame isn't really a barrier.
>>From a Creationsist perspective , Intelligent Design is convenient, because they can say that the Intelligent Design happened at any point that they define - and they will always define that point somewhere before DNA records exist. In other words, from a Creationist perspective, Intelligent Design will never be falsifiable.
Sollipsisms happen. The world didn't exist until right now. But I think most people reject sollipsism and will accept the results of the statistical test.
>>Your attempt to mediate and define the argument will be met with resistance from both sides.
And with people reading anything you write, that doesn't completely blast ID, as saying "ZOMG CREATIONISM ROXXORS". But... what can you do?
>>Your argument about the rate of speciation also ignores the possibility that a designer could match exactly the rate of speciation predicted - but merely be causing different species to arise than would otherwise have happened.
My argument about the rate is solely there to contradict the notion that evolution can never be tested in real life, because "millions of years go by between events". Considering 300,000 interesting species, events should be happening on a reasonably regular basis. Or, to put it another way -- with ~300 million people in America, one in a million events happen to Americans 300 times per day. (It's one of those things that keeps news stations in business.)
And, for the most part, the way I've phrased ID, irreducable complexity only serves as a motivation for conducting the experiments, it has nothing to do with my proposed verification at all. Boiled down, it simply says someone toyed with the mutations, which can be analyzed as I proposed.
I wrote a predictor too. It's a neural net, actually.
int music_predictor(int artist_type,float rhythm, int genre, int tempo, int male_or_female, int quality, int singing_quality, int band_quality, int number_of_band_members) {
if (artist_type == BIG_NAME_POP_ARTIST_WITH_STUDIO_BACKING)
return true;
else
return false; }
Ok, so it's a one-axon neural net. But it gets 99%+ accuracy.
As I said in my journal, in the thought experiment we examine the populations of every interesting species on earth. We even catch the mutations which result in immediate non-viability of offspring.
Only considering single-pair mutations for now, it should be possible to construct a mathematical model of where and how often mutations occur with a reasonable degree of confidence. You pick a base pair at 'random' and mutate it, with the main question being the distribution of the random function. Given the thought experiment takes place in the future, it should be able to exactly construct a function given parameters such as the number of free radicals, radiation, carcinogens, etc., present.
A reasonable criticism is that models are inexact. This is why it is a thought experiment. It's not inconceivable in the future we could have a model that exactly calculates the random function for mutations.
>> If you are using mutations as the basis for your theory, then what constitutes bias?
If the distribution of actual mutations doesn't match the expected distribution. Various statistical measures reveal this easily.
>>Why rely on student t-test. Why not more powerful methods (and there are several) that look for spatial variance?
There's a wide variety of statistical methods extant. I only mentioned t-tests in the intro. I didn't say that t-tests would be used for the calculation, only that people should read up on them since most people never went beyond calculating a batting average in stats, and so don't understand what stats can do. T-tests are, IMO, the easiest to understand.
>> A correct one? Studying supernatural causes for natural phenomenon is correct?
You're conflagrating two different issues. Scientific experiments can operate on a black box, regardless of whatever is inside of that box. People used to consider lightning to be the bolts of Zeus, the wrath of God, or whatever. But scientific (i.e. falsifiable) experiments could be conducted on them regardless. Likewise, scientific experiments can be conducted to see if, say, ESP exists. Hold three cards up, see if they can guess which one is the ace, or whatever. Assuming nobody cheats (the same disclaimer I gave before, which you seemed to ignore), the model is valid and statistical analysis can reveal if a certain person has ESP, in a falsifiable manner. Now read the above again. Note that nowhere above did I claim that ESP exists. *Claiming that the experiment is falsifiable does not mean that it is going to prove the hypothesis.* In fact, my money is on such an experiment conclusively showing that ESP doesn't exist in its subjects.
You're confusing my claim that the testing model is a correct one with saying that supernatural events exist.
A better statement would be, why waste time testing supernatural events? Why not waste all the money on science on frivolous things? I think in this case, the answer is solely political. If we had as many people pushing for ESP research in America as support ID, we'd probably be doing studies on it too. In the case of ID, this is where Behe and others come in, who have raised issues such as irreducable complexity and stirred up a 'controversity'. When it becomes possible to test it, stats will convincingly show whether or not ID is true, and then we'll either have a paradigm shift, or ID will go the way of other discarded theories.
>>A search space already defined by a programmer." Wow. Um, consider the size of the search space, and the effectiveness of Genetic algorithms (especially compared to other carefully designed methods - even against a human attempting the same task).
I wrote a neural net to filter spam before Phil Graham did his Baysean Spam Filter thing. I understand the problem of searching a large space. Genetic Algorithms are interesting, and are an alternative to neural nets, simulated annealing, etc. But they have another to do with proving or disproving Evolution, which is why I said they are a bad example. Unless you want to show that genetic drift works, or something uncontroversial like that.
Instead of responding to people in bits and pieces, I've written a journal entry which summarizes my take on ID.
>> Just like your post about the Columbia prayer study. I noticed you didn't post anything about that turd.
Were you born stupid? I stated in my original post that the credentials of the people behind it were questionable. I'm aware of the issues with it, so your "amazing revelation" just revealed that you can't read. You utterly, utterly, can't read.
I didn't even say if such studies would prove the existence of prayer or not, simply that the model is a correct one (though if they cheated that's a different issue), and are falsifiable and hence scientific.
>>It is a central element in ID. You have to explain that element or the 'theory' is just more bullshit. >>At least you recognize a strawman. Now rise to the challenge and post a experiment.
So you admit you were using a strawman? Wonderful. I honestly don't know why I bother replying to idiots like you.
I've written a long post on ID in my./ journal. Read it.
>>You appear to be forgetting duplications, rearrangements and deletions, but I'll leave that for a moment and merely point out that what you describe is not 'A collection of random processes', is it? It's 'A FILTERED collection of random processes'. There's a difference.
Don't associate me with people that claim evolution is fully random. I have repeatedly said it is a random process with selection pressures. There's nothing controversial about that. It remains that there is a baseline rate of mutation in nature, which can be quantified.
>> I'm not. You are claiming that you can see the hallmarks of design; stop trying to shift the burden of proof. I'm not sure what your vegas comment is meant to mean, apart from an effort to distract.
I AM NOT CLAIMING ANYTHING, NOR CLAIMING ID IS TRUE. For fsck's sake. I'm stating how it can be a scientific theory instead of mystical hand waving or appeals to ignorance. And scientific in that it can be falsified, not that it is true. And for being perhaps the first person to invent this I get modded down as overrated/troll. Stop being so dogmatic, people, and follow along.:p
>>Then what is it? Seriously, what, exactly IS your argument?
Here you go.
Join me in a thought experiment. There is somewhere between 2 million and 100 million species on the planet, most of which are insects, with perhaps 300,000 interesting species that we care about and wish to observe. Let's assume the British model of security has been adopted and we have cameras blanketing the world and crack teams of scientists standing by to repeatedly sample the DNA of every creature and embryo on the planet.
Then all that needs to be done is: 1) Quantify random mutations rates BEFORE SELECTION PRESSURES 2) Observe the rates of random mutations in each population BEFORE SELECTION PRESSURES 2) See if a bias is influencing the random mutations BEFORE SELECTION PRESSURES
Then when new species emerge in nature (an event that occurs in our population of interesting species with an expected value of between one every 3 years to 30 per year, based on what speciation rates you assume) one can say with varying degrees of confidence if it was the result of a designer or not. It's simply a stats problem.
Boiled down, the entire debate between evolution and ID is exactly this: Evolution believes there is no bias in the "random number generator", ID believes there is bias in the randomness. When stated this way, ID can be confirmed or denied simply by testing for bias.
>>Actually, it's 'Why does everything look exactly as if it evolved if it was designed? Why the special pleading?'
Which demonstrates your fundamental lack of knowledge on the subject. You are still confusing ID with Creationism. Everything, according to ID, looks like it was evolved because ID says that God/Aliens/Whoever was influencing the evolution process. Not that God plopped down raccoons and battleships fully formed from outer space.
Given the above experiment, it will be able to state whether ID is true or false, which means that the above ID theory is 'scientific'. Note the math working with an utter lack of knowledge of anything having to do with the nature of the creator. Math is wonderful in that it can demonstrate bias in a pair of dice or a slot machine without needing any knowledge of the nature of the person who rigged the game.
>>I understand Voodoo Science quite well. Voodoo Science has at least on attribute that you have exhibited already: failure to respond properly to your critics. I specifically asked for an experiment that would test for irreducible complexity or define what constitutes elements of intelligent design.
And I understand pissy dogmatic arguments. It's amusing that 4 days after the article gets posted people come on and rate my posts troll five times. Yes, that's not friends of posters on here or anything.
I never stated any support for irreducible complexity.
It's called a strawman argument when you state that someone believes something they don't, and then attack them for it.
>>define what constitutes elements of intelligent design
Quantify normal mutation processes and rates. Look for bias in the randomness of mutations.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, no problem. Here's the injunction written by the judge, including all the finding of fact.
7 76.pdf
Says what I said, that the schools provided a limited open platform for speech, and the job of the government is not to discriminate among viewpoints that use that platform. You either allow all viewpoints to use your facilities, or none.
http://www.netside.net/usdcfls/publications/00cv7
>>The issue is when someone tries to bring the force of government to bear to supress certain speech.
Yes, for example -- Broward County schools (who allows churches of various sects to operate at its sites, various ethnic-based organizations, etc., which constitutes a public forum), when they choose to disallow the boy scouts to operate at their sites solely because of their beliefs, this violates their right to free speech, freedom of association, and equal protection. The government was trying for supress certain speech.
Again, guess which side of the issue the ACLU was on?
Here is the ACLU's official policy on hate speech:8 08pub19941231.html
http://www.aclu.org//studentsrights/expression/12
But the whole debate over homosexuality is an easy target where the ACLU clearly shows a double standard. They worked to actively deny the right of a private organization to chose who it associates with (google ACLU vs Boy Scouts), one of the most basic freedoms of a free society.
When a group of fundies were arrested for protesting a gay rights even, one of the charges was hate speech -- simply for having signs that said the Bible says gay sex is wrong, etc. The ACLU declined to support their case.
(Amusing video of the "hateful" actions that got them put on trial for a maximum 45 year sentence: http://www.afa.net/clp/videos/philly11.wmv)
MUCH more timid than the gay activists, especially including the ones I see here in San Francisco.
Any way you slice it, they're not following the I'll Die to Defend it line.
>>The old saying... "I may not agree with what you are saying but I will defend (to the death) your right to say it." (attributed to Voltaire)
If only they actually meant it.
Unfortunately, there is a tendancy for speech that the ACLU disagrees to be labelled "hate speech" which means that they don't have to fight to the death to say it. Since, you know, it's hate speech.
It makes for interesting debates:
Gay Rights Activist: Gays deserve full rights.
ACLU: I WILL FIGHT TO MY DEATH TO DEFEND THIS
Christian Fundamentalist (not my favorite people, but useful as an example): The Bible says homosexualism is bad
ACLU: OMG HAXX0R HATE SPEECH
And yeah, the ACLU always seems to talk with caps on. =)
But the point is, it's hard to hold a debate in a free and open society when people try just shouting down anyone they disagree with. Whats worse is that many people condone / encourage that practice.
Is anyone else both a member of the ACLU and the NRA? I think it's valuable to always see arguments on both sides of the fence.
Yeah, they're called MUDs. Players create rich, detailed zones.
The problem with MMORPGs is 3D art is the barrier to most development. All the other elements besides art players are more than capable of doing.
I'm the only person in my household that can hear it, so it bugs me when we're all, say, walking out and I know the TV is still on but muted (behind a closed cabinet). Constantly astonishes them.
I'd have figured I'd have lost it by now, but it's still as noticeable as when I was young.
>>long rant blah, don't do what you accuse others of doing when you defend SCOTUS.
The QUESTION before the supreme court was if a 3rd recount should be done.
The RULING was to defer to the Sec of State as per the law.
>>I truly believe it is impossible to know with certainty who won that election,
They didn't destroy the votes or anything. Some newspapers tallied the votes after the election and found without doubt that Bush won.
Not like you'd hear that from the media (Bush stole the election!)
One would presumably have to use an open source microkernel, and build your program (with a GUI and printing system) on top of that. In fact, I bet it would be possible to write such a program in a hundred lines of code or less. No network access, only source of input a mouse, only source of output a monitor and tape printer. Then open it to the world and let the eyes of millions of geeks examine it. Don't release binaries, make states compile it themselves. That's as secure as it could ever be.
The real tragedy is that Diebold Voting exists at all. It's not hard to write a safe voting program at all. You could probably assign it to CSE12 students as a final project. Design:
1) Read in a text file containing the prompt ("John Kerry vs George Bush" or "Prop 17 Yes/No?") with possible answers ("John Kerry", "George Bush"). The state could randomize the text files to avoid the bias from whose name comes first.
Start main loop
2) (Optional) User types in ID number (of one sort or another)
3) Iterate across all options, Show Questions & Answers in simple GUI, store selected answers in array.
4) Show a screen confirming all answers ("Kerry vs Bush: Kerry", etc.)
5) Print ballot on physical paper containing the above. (Optional) Also encode data in bar code form for ease of reading results. (Very Optional) Also transmit data to voting HQ for fast reporting of results.
6) Clear array
Loop
Person examines the printed slip, and if correct drops it in box. If not, just goes through the voting process again.
It would be impossible to tamper with because all points of possible hacking can be defeated by the simple fact you get a physical slip that is human readable by the voter. If your slip says "Scott O'Neil voted for Justin Timberlake for best Rap Performance" instead of "Josh Flint voted for Chyna for most attractive female of the year" then you immediately know that some haxx are going on. All the other forms of reporting (electronic and bar code) are just there to speed the process. It is trivially easy to verify if the paper results from a place match the data sent by modem, or if the barcodes have been hacked to not agree with the human readable format.
The entire concept of having an electronic voting process that does not have human confirmation is just broken. Running a closed source peice of software made by a shady company that may or may not be actually storing onto disk / transmitting over the network what you thought you punched in, is just incredibly wrong. Incredibly, amazingly wrong. And even after all the hacks people have found for it, so many states have switched to it, it's appalling.
Sigh... if I keep talking about it I'm going to run out of synonyms to express my confundity.
NC took exactly the right step here. If Diebold can't run because it's on Windows, so be it. Windows is incredibly dangerous to be used in voting boxes, anyway. My lord, man, what if an election official listened to Celene Dion on a voting box? Sony would take over the world!
>Compare that with the things like the 2000 presidential elections in the USA,
> where the supreme court ruled that a vote recount was *not* legal - how can you
> *ever* justify a decision like that? Vote recounts should always be possible.
The press has grossly missreprented what happened in Florida. My roommate actually believed that the Supreme Court ruled that Bush won over Gore, believe it or not.
No, they did not rule against "a" vote recount. They ruled against a "third" vote recount. They'd already done two, and both had found Bush to be the winner. Gore was hoping that with the extremely thin margin (a hundred or so votes in the STATE) that the error inherent in a hand recount would tip him over the top if he just did it enough. He was pushing for a do-over on the election too using the same principle.
I rather doubt that even in Germany that the state will allow people to keep rerolling election counts until it comes out in their favor. (One must presume Gore would not be interested in doing another recount once one of them had come out in his favor.)
> This stupid meme pisses me off to no end. I'm here in Japan and frankly the
> Japanese speak far better English than we (generally) do Japanese, and we're
> students learning Japanese. Yes, a lot of Japanese speak poor or no English, but
> very, very few Americans speak another language; further speak a non-Romance or
> Germanic language with any real skill.
Here's my group of friends (mainly white guys, plus a Korean and a Chinese) and the languages they speak:
-Korean (fluent), French (pretty good), Spanish (a little), Chinese (a touch)
-Russian (two years in college)
-Mandarin (one year in college), French (a little)
-Spanish (pretty good)
-Spanish (pretty good), Cantonese (native), Mandarin (pretty good), Japanese (a little)
-Korean (native), Spanish (a little)
-Russian (native)
And there's more, I can't recall what they speak off the top of my head. Basically each person has some random language that they speak, many of which are not from the obligatory 2-4 years of Spanish in high school. But yeah, it's amusing watching a white guy cuss so much in Korean that the Korean starts turning red with embarassment, so of course all the other white guys picked up on em.
I agree with the observation that you can't know your own language until you learn another. I took Mandarin after graduation mainly to try to expand my mind. Plus, it's like a gigantic practical joke. =) Saying something in Mandarin to random Chinese people always makes my day. =)
From the community college classes I took, only maybe 1/3rd of the class were actually students that were there to earn credits or even cared about their grade. Everyone else was a working professional, learning Mandarin on their own time, either for fun, for work, or because they were dating a Chinese woman.
I think the main resistance to foreign languages in America is due to the fact that being forced to learn a foreign language is a grueling, painful experience. But if you WANT to learn a language (and most of the people were just like that), it's amazing how fast you can learn, and how fun the process is. So, in conclusion, I think it's not as bad as you say it is. I think there's a growing desire in America to pick up a second language, even out of college.
> Chinese is not Chinese. I worked at a company that employed several Chinese
> engineers. While they could all read the same newspaper, they couldn't all talk
> to each other. Those from the south (Hong Kong and surrounding area) couldn't
> understand those from the north.
All people in China are taught Mandarin these days, even in the south (where a student will grow up learning both Cantonese and Mandarin now).
Many Cantonese speakers will pick up Mandarin. My fiancee moved from Hong Kong around 6th grade (pre-changeover so no Mandarin in school), and learned Mandarin in AMERICA, simply from talking with other Mandarin speakers. Pretty amazing, but it only took her a year or so, and she can converse fluently in Mandarin.
Hence a Mandarin translator is about all you need, insofar as the new generation of Chinese go, especially if you are dealing with mainland China. A Cantonese one would be nice, but you'll get much better coverage with Mandarin.
>>I appreciate the effort you put into your journal entry, but you missed some really important points. The summary of Intelligent Design that you have is not accurate for your exposition - it should say, "Bias continues to exist in the random mutation component of Evolution."
Intelligent design claims that evolution is, essentially, impossible (==highly improbable), without someone rigging the game. If regular and interesting (i.e. ball rolling uphill) speciation events can happen without anything biasing the random number generator, then this key premise of ID is demonstrably wrong.
Or to put it another way, ID is mutually incompatible with complex life arising through random events and selection pressures alone.
>>Also, expecting to find out in 30 years if mutation has bias is kind of like expecting to find out in the next hand if the dealer is cheating. Speciation takes a long, long time to observe on a statistical basis. Remember, you're talking about the statistical nature of speciation. You would need to observe hundreds, or thousands of events of speciation to gain understanding.
In the thought experiment, we presume global observations. Right now, speciation events could happen, but just get classified as an already existing but unknown species.
But yeah, thats the interesting thing. Given 300,000 species that we care about, depending on what number you use for the expected time between speciation events you get:
-Short (10,000 years between events): You expect to observe 30 per year
-Long (1,000,000 between events): You expect one per 3 years
And sure, you might have to observe for a while, but the numbers will eventually come in conclusively. The time frame isn't really a barrier.
>>From a Creationsist perspective , Intelligent Design is convenient, because they can say that the Intelligent Design happened at any point that they define - and they will always define that point somewhere before DNA records exist. In other words, from a Creationist perspective, Intelligent Design will never be falsifiable.
Sollipsisms happen. The world didn't exist until right now. But I think most people reject sollipsism and will accept the results of the statistical test.
>>Your attempt to mediate and define the argument will be met with resistance from both sides.
And with people reading anything you write, that doesn't completely blast ID, as saying "ZOMG CREATIONISM ROXXORS". But... what can you do?
>>Your argument about the rate of speciation also ignores the possibility that a designer could match exactly the rate of speciation predicted - but merely be causing different species to arise than would otherwise have happened.
My argument about the rate is solely there to contradict the notion that evolution can never be tested in real life, because "millions of years go by between events". Considering 300,000 interesting species, events should be happening on a reasonably regular basis. Or, to put it another way -- with ~300 million people in America, one in a million events happen to Americans 300 times per day. (It's one of those things that keeps news stations in business.)
It's a #def
It would be a string if it had quotes around it.
Sure, cheers, man.
And, for the most part, the way I've phrased ID, irreducable complexity only serves as a motivation for conducting the experiments, it has nothing to do with my proposed verification at all. Boiled down, it simply says someone toyed with the mutations, which can be analyzed as I proposed.
Classic C coding
#define true 1
#define false 0
Because ScuttleMonkey likes to demonstrate his superiority by picking on poor little anti-gravity devices.
I wrote a predictor too. It's a neural net, actually.
int music_predictor(int artist_type,float rhythm, int genre, int tempo, int male_or_female, int quality, int singing_quality, int band_quality, int number_of_band_members) {
if (artist_type == BIG_NAME_POP_ARTIST_WITH_STUDIO_BACKING)
return true;
else
return false;
}
Ok, so it's a one-axon neural net. But it gets 99%+ accuracy.
>> Fine, then what population will you measure?
As I said in my journal, in the thought experiment we examine the populations of every interesting species on earth. We even catch the mutations which result in immediate non-viability of offspring.
Only considering single-pair mutations for now, it should be possible to construct a mathematical model of where and how often mutations occur with a reasonable degree of confidence. You pick a base pair at 'random' and mutate it, with the main question being the distribution of the random function. Given the thought experiment takes place in the future, it should be able to exactly construct a function given parameters such as the number of free radicals, radiation, carcinogens, etc., present.
A reasonable criticism is that models are inexact. This is why it is a thought experiment. It's not inconceivable in the future we could have a model that exactly calculates the random function for mutations.
>> If you are using mutations as the basis for your theory, then what constitutes bias?
If the distribution of actual mutations doesn't match the expected distribution. Various statistical measures reveal this easily.
>>Why rely on student t-test. Why not more powerful methods (and there are several) that look for spatial variance?
There's a wide variety of statistical methods extant. I only mentioned t-tests in the intro. I didn't say that t-tests would be used for the calculation, only that people should read up on them since most people never went beyond calculating a batting average in stats, and so don't understand what stats can do. T-tests are, IMO, the easiest to understand.
>> A correct one? Studying supernatural causes for natural phenomenon is correct?
You're conflagrating two different issues. Scientific experiments can operate on a black box, regardless of whatever is inside of that box. People used to consider lightning to be the bolts of Zeus, the wrath of God, or whatever. But scientific (i.e. falsifiable) experiments could be conducted on them regardless. Likewise, scientific experiments can be conducted to see if, say, ESP exists. Hold three cards up, see if they can guess which one is the ace, or whatever. Assuming nobody cheats (the same disclaimer I gave before, which you seemed to ignore), the model is valid and statistical analysis can reveal if a certain person has ESP, in a falsifiable manner. Now read the above again. Note that nowhere above did I claim that ESP exists. *Claiming that the experiment is falsifiable does not mean that it is going to prove the hypothesis.* In fact, my money is on such an experiment conclusively showing that ESP doesn't exist in its subjects.
You're confusing my claim that the testing model is a correct one with saying that supernatural events exist.
A better statement would be, why waste time testing supernatural events? Why not waste all the money on science on frivolous things? I think in this case, the answer is solely political. If we had as many people pushing for ESP research in America as support ID, we'd probably be doing studies on it too. In the case of ID, this is where Behe and others come in, who have raised issues such as irreducable complexity and stirred up a 'controversity'. When it becomes possible to test it, stats will convincingly show whether or not ID is true, and then we'll either have a paradigm shift, or ID will go the way of other discarded theories.
>>A search space already defined by a programmer." Wow. Um, consider the size of the search space, and the effectiveness of Genetic algorithms (especially compared to other carefully designed methods - even against a human attempting the same task).
I wrote a neural net to filter spam before Phil Graham did his Baysean Spam Filter thing. I understand the problem of searching a large space. Genetic Algorithms are interesting, and are an alternative to neural nets, simulated annealing, etc. But they have another to do with proving or disproving Evolution, which is why I said they are a bad example. Unless you want to show that genetic drift works, or something uncontroversial like that.
Instead of responding to people in bits and pieces, I've written a journal entry which summarizes my take on ID.
http://slashdot.org/~ShakaUVM/journal/121956
>>Not responding to the other points I made does not help your case.
I wrote a complete post on my views on it so I don't have to keep repeating myself.
http://slashdot.org/~ShakaUVM/journal/121956
>> Just like your post about the Columbia prayer study. I noticed you didn't post anything about that turd.
./ journal. Read it.
Were you born stupid? I stated in my original post that the credentials of the people behind it were questionable. I'm aware of the issues with it, so your "amazing revelation" just revealed that you can't read. You utterly, utterly, can't read.
I didn't even say if such studies would prove the existence of prayer or not, simply that the model is a correct one (though if they cheated that's a different issue), and are falsifiable and hence scientific.
>>It is a central element in ID. You have to explain that element or the 'theory' is just more bullshit.
>>At least you recognize a strawman. Now rise to the challenge and post a experiment.
So you admit you were using a strawman? Wonderful. I honestly don't know why I bother replying to idiots like you.
I've written a long post on ID in my
>>You appear to be forgetting duplications, rearrangements and deletions, but I'll leave that for a moment and merely point out that what you describe is not 'A collection of random processes', is it? It's 'A FILTERED collection of random processes'. There's a difference.
:p
Don't associate me with people that claim evolution is fully random. I have repeatedly said it is a random process with selection pressures. There's nothing controversial about that. It remains that there is a baseline rate of mutation in nature, which can be quantified.
>> I'm not. You are claiming that you can see the hallmarks of design; stop trying to shift the burden of proof. I'm not sure what your vegas comment is meant to mean, apart from an effort to distract.
I AM NOT CLAIMING ANYTHING, NOR CLAIMING ID IS TRUE. For fsck's sake. I'm stating how it can be a scientific theory instead of mystical hand waving or appeals to ignorance. And scientific in that it can be falsified, not that it is true. And for being perhaps the first person to invent this I get modded down as overrated/troll. Stop being so dogmatic, people, and follow along.
>>Then what is it? Seriously, what, exactly IS your argument?
Here you go.
Join me in a thought experiment. There is somewhere between 2 million and 100 million species on the planet, most of which are insects, with perhaps 300,000 interesting species that we care about and wish to observe. Let's assume the British model of security has been adopted and we have cameras blanketing the world and crack teams of scientists standing by to repeatedly sample the DNA of every creature and embryo on the planet.
Then all that needs to be done is:
1) Quantify random mutations rates BEFORE SELECTION PRESSURES
2) Observe the rates of random mutations in each population BEFORE SELECTION PRESSURES
2) See if a bias is influencing the random mutations BEFORE SELECTION PRESSURES
Then when new species emerge in nature (an event that occurs in our population of interesting species with an expected value of between one every 3 years to 30 per year, based on what speciation rates you assume) one can say with varying degrees of confidence if it was the result of a designer or not. It's simply a stats problem.
Boiled down, the entire debate between evolution and ID is exactly this: Evolution believes there is no bias in the "random number generator", ID believes there is bias in the randomness. When stated this way, ID can be confirmed or denied simply by testing for bias.
>>Actually, it's 'Why does everything look exactly as if it evolved if it was designed? Why the special pleading?'
Which demonstrates your fundamental lack of knowledge on the subject. You are still confusing ID with Creationism. Everything, according to ID, looks like it was evolved because ID says that God/Aliens/Whoever was influencing the evolution process. Not that God plopped down raccoons and battleships fully formed from outer space.
Given the above experiment, it will be able to state whether ID is true or false, which means that the above ID theory is 'scientific'. Note the math working with an utter lack of knowledge of anything having to do with the nature of the creator. Math is wonderful in that it can demonstrate bias in a pair of dice or a slot machine without needing any knowledge of the nature of the person who rigged the game.
>>I understand Voodoo Science quite well. Voodoo Science has at least on attribute that you have exhibited already: failure to respond properly to your critics. I specifically asked for an experiment that would test for irreducible complexity or define what constitutes elements of intelligent design.
And I understand pissy dogmatic arguments. It's amusing that 4 days after the article gets posted people come on and rate my posts troll five times. Yes, that's not friends of posters on here or anything.
I never stated any support for irreducible complexity.
It's called a strawman argument when you state that someone believes something they don't, and then attack them for it.
>>define what constitutes elements of intelligent design
Quantify normal mutation processes and rates. Look for bias in the randomness of mutations.
Any more questions?
>>Present some possible way that doesn't boil down to religion in which this can be applied to the subject.
Shrug.
Crick's idea of DNA blowing in from outer space.
Aliens writing a secret message in our genome that will be decyphered some day.
Then it's falsified. What's the problem?
t y-20011018-16.asp
A rather controversial paper came out saying the opposite:
http://www.obgyn.net/newsrx/womens_health-Fertili
If the research was conducted properly (and that's a big IF, considering the credentials of the guy backing it), then it is valid evidence.