According to this survey, 42% of Groupon SMBs would not repeat. That's quite a lot, and it's from this and cases like this story that I suspect that the Groupon-like business model will not last too long, once the fad has died.
I never said it means that you are trustworthy. I just said that it might help in being perceived trustworthy. You're actually driving home my point - he probably tipped so much because it helps maintain the illusion of trustworthiness, even though he might not have been in reality. But the illusion is all that counts... Until you get busted, of course.
The theory is nothing new, but it's cool to see it
on
Robots 'Evolve' Altruism
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Altruism (noun): The principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others - dictionary.reference.com
According to the strict definition, I don't think any theory of evolution could ever explain true altruism, because for altruism in it's pure definition, there simply is no reason. If it has a personal reason, then it is, by definition, not altruism.
Now that's out of the way, there are a number of ways that the less-strict form of altruism (let's call it 'altruistic behavior' rather) would be able to evolve. Firstly, as mentioned in TFA (yes, I skimmed it.. there were only 2 comments at the time) - it makes sense to exhibit altruistic behavior if it improves the odds of your immediate relatives to survive, thereby carrying on part your genes. The more genes your share, the closer the relative, and the more likely you are to care 'selflessly' for them.
But in humans, carrying over genes is not the only reason. There is also the matter of respect, and trustworthiness. In order to convince your allies that you are trustworthy and 'good', you would exhibit selfless acts, with no expectation of return from the person concerned, but definite returns from those you know. By always tipping waiters more than required (selfless by any means), your partner sees your selflessness and gains trust in you. Business partners sees this and are more likely to trust you in business ventures. This all improves your chances of reproduction and survival.
all this is made possible by our fantastic ability to remember and build mental models of specific individuals and relationships, keep tabs on how others acted in the past, and spread the word of any 'egotistic' act to other members of society by means of language. Anyone who is/not/ altruistic (at least as far as others perceives it), is therefore placing himself in distrust, and a disadvantage for carrying over his genes.
So no, it's not much of a surprise that altruistic behavior evolves in robots with a built-in desire to spread their own genes. But it still is pretty damn cool.
robots can do all sorts of tasks and even understand natural language as a programming language
Not on their own - we'll have to endow the neurons with prior knowledge about how human language works. (The circuits for human language is ingrained into the brain at birth by our DNA; it is only by using the assumptions about language that we are born with that we are able to learn it within 2-3 years. A clump of neurons without these assumptions would find it extremely difficult to learn human language, if not impossible.)
But, if we know enough about language to give robots the necessary prior knowledge, language is completely feasible. We might even be able to achieve similar results with an evolutionary algorithm, that mimics the way language evolved in humans - though that might also be difficult without prior knowledge.
Titan, has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans.
It's more than just a bit strange to claim in the title that Titan may have an ocean, and then state in the first line the planet is of particular interest because it has lakes and oceans. Please, editors, it's a (possible) subsurface ocean.
The only reason I can see why your post is modded +4 Interesting, is that it's interesting to see that even intellectuals can still be amazingly racist.
What some traders do in the Western world is comparably underhanded and profit-driven, the only difference is that they fear prosecution more than small Chinese traders who sell their products to the Western world (and basically have very little chance of being caught).
That the Chinese are either inherently or culturally liars, cheats and thieves (more so than a Western person in a similar situation) is as of yet a very much unproven conjecture.
Has it occurred to you that maybe there are not so many thruthfull stories about china written in simplified chinese?
It has, but unless Bing's algorithms differ in very, very major ways from Google's, this would never happen. And since we know (or at least suspect) Bing copies Google results, the only remaining option is censorship.
I see the results mentioned in the article you link to are still as skewed as in January 2010. They do link to the Dalai Lama Wikipedia article in the third result though - I don't see what's wrong with that. But the difference between image results for Tiananmen square in English and simplified Chinese is just ludicrous.
On another note - could someone tell me when I missed the fact that Google are now forcing you onto their Hong-Kong website when you try to visit google.cn from outside China?
Thinking about how I use a browser (Chrome) tells me that removing the URL bar is not at all such a bad idea.
99% of the time when I want to go to a new page, I press Ctrl+t to open a new tab, and then the URL bar is already focused so I just start typing. I assume this will remain the same.
The other 1%, when I do happen to want to load a page in the same tab, I just press Ctrl+k to focus the URL bar.
I realize this makes me more of a power user than the average user, so it should definitely be optional, but it would increase my screen real estate without sacrificing productivity.
As for phishing... that would most certainly be a concern. Imagine receiving a friend request from (what is assumed to be) Facebook via email, unsuspectingly clicking the link to go to that page, filling in my details, etc. etc. Only people like us would be looking at the URL in a situation like that in the first place, and now even we will be clueless, unless we go out of our way to verify the current URL.
I have never used as much profanity in my entire life combined as I have when debugging web applications in IE. ("Not implemented on line 0" error anyone?)
Since 61% of people aren't web developers, and only work with computers, not program them, I guess it is at least reasonably plausible that this statistic is accurate.
Knowing java, you could probably learn C# to a reasonable level in a few weeks.
Knowing English, you could probably only learn Chinese to a reasonable level in a few years (ask me, I've been trying). And that's if you stay in China or Taiwan.
TFA states that it's the first carnivorous mammal discovered in 24 years (presumably world-wide), not only the first in 24 years in Madagascar like in the summary. Which one is it?
The one thing the Chinese really didn't want was unfiltered search results, and Google is still providing that, just in a somewhat indirect manner.
Well, I'm in the said country now - and clicking on the link to google.com.hk simply redirects you to a page that cannot be displayed. So, if by 'indirect' you mean 'not at all', then yes, I agree.
I live in South Africa, and I know for a fact that at most 20% of the population have semi-regular access to the Internet, as can be seen from this handy graph on Google http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=it_net_user&idim=country:ZAF&dl=en&hl=en&q=internet+users+in+south+africa (it estimates 4.187 million internet users, where we have a population of between 40 and 50 million). This is a country where the absolute maximum internet speed is 4Mbps (on average most users have 384kbps), and it is literally cheaper to go buy a dvd in the shop than it is to download the 4GB illegally. This is just to bring the internet situation into perspective.
I know that you do not need an internet connection to have porn, it could be a video, dvd or even just copied from someone else, but this is just an indication of the kind access we have here. A recent study found that as many as 50% of high school boys in SA have watched at least one porn movie. I don't know, but the only shocking thing about that is that so many people have had access to it (we only have 4 public TV channels, and only one of them shows porn after 12 on Saturday nights).
This is just some background information. A ban on porn would be just another ill-directed attempt to improve the morals of a society where politicians (the role models of the people) routinely threaten other races with death, partake in tender fraud and tax evasion, are charged with rape and watch porn during congress.
On second thought, maybe it will at least help the politicians concentrate on what's really going on in the country.
Slashdot Mirror
If I could, I would give you +1 Interesting!
The extra money lying around in their bank accounts, while not spent by the customer, could earn them millions in interest.
According to this survey, 42% of Groupon SMBs would not repeat. That's quite a lot, and it's from this and cases like this story that I suspect that the Groupon-like business model will not last too long, once the fad has died.
I never said it means that you are trustworthy. I just said that it might help in being perceived trustworthy. You're actually driving home my point - he probably tipped so much because it helps maintain the illusion of trustworthiness, even though he might not have been in reality. But the illusion is all that counts... Until you get busted, of course.
Altruism (noun): The principle or practice of unselfish concern for or devotion to the welfare of others - dictionary.reference.com
According to the strict definition, I don't think any theory of evolution could ever explain true altruism, because for altruism in it's pure definition, there simply is no reason. If it has a personal reason, then it is, by definition, not altruism.
Now that's out of the way, there are a number of ways that the less-strict form of altruism (let's call it 'altruistic behavior' rather) would be able to evolve. Firstly, as mentioned in TFA (yes, I skimmed it.. there were only 2 comments at the time) - it makes sense to exhibit altruistic behavior if it improves the odds of your immediate relatives to survive, thereby carrying on part your genes. The more genes your share, the closer the relative, and the more likely you are to care 'selflessly' for them.
But in humans, carrying over genes is not the only reason. There is also the matter of respect, and trustworthiness. In order to convince your allies that you are trustworthy and 'good', you would exhibit selfless acts, with no expectation of return from the person concerned, but definite returns from those you know. By always tipping waiters more than required (selfless by any means), your partner sees your selflessness and gains trust in you. Business partners sees this and are more likely to trust you in business ventures. This all improves your chances of reproduction and survival.
all this is made possible by our fantastic ability to remember and build mental models of specific individuals and relationships, keep tabs on how others acted in the past, and spread the word of any 'egotistic' act to other members of society by means of language. Anyone who is /not/ altruistic (at least as far as others perceives it), is therefore placing himself in distrust, and a disadvantage for carrying over his genes.
So no, it's not much of a surprise that altruistic behavior evolves in robots with a built-in desire to spread their own genes. But it still is pretty damn cool.
Do people not understand sarcasm anymore?
Here in South Africa we've always had capped Internet.
robots can do all sorts of tasks and even understand natural language as a programming language
Not on their own - we'll have to endow the neurons with prior knowledge about how human language works. (The circuits for human language is ingrained into the brain at birth by our DNA; it is only by using the assumptions about language that we are born with that we are able to learn it within 2-3 years. A clump of neurons without these assumptions would find it extremely difficult to learn human language, if not impossible.)
But, if we know enough about language to give robots the necessary prior knowledge, language is completely feasible. We might even be able to achieve similar results with an evolutionary algorithm, that mimics the way language evolved in humans - though that might also be difficult without prior knowledge.
You still have video stores that stock VHR? Where do you live? I live in rural South Africa, and I haven't seen a VHR /anywhere/ in the last 5 years.
Titan, has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans.
It's more than just a bit strange to claim in the title that Titan may have an ocean, and then state in the first line the planet is of particular interest because it has lakes and oceans. Please, editors, it's a (possible) subsurface ocean.
Now if only we had a computerized brain to analyze the computerized brain map...
It reminds me of the quote attributed to Emerson M. Pugh,
"If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't."
There, fixed that for you.
In your defense, I think everyone read that word with a sarcastic tone of voice anyway. $500/GB is /lower/ ? Surely you must be joking.
The only reason I can see why your post is modded +4 Interesting, is that it's interesting to see that even intellectuals can still be amazingly racist.
What some traders do in the Western world is comparably underhanded and profit-driven, the only difference is that they fear prosecution more than small Chinese traders who sell their products to the Western world (and basically have very little chance of being caught).
That the Chinese are either inherently or culturally liars, cheats and thieves (more so than a Western person in a similar situation) is as of yet a very much unproven conjecture.
alpnteglse-se erte
vlsemtse-ctse-wse-frtse
nwldxlrcmspnewldstsmexl
dvlmt6tunsencbexl
(munsarstenmunarse)
klse-lrste-trse-trse-mksen-mrse
(saegnsesenmbse)
nmnrcbrnsepte2ptewsrcbreee?? (unsure about this)
86mlse74sprkse29kenobole173rtrse
35gleclgsejunitxedkqsepseshle
651mtcsehtlsencntxtrsnmre
99.84.s2unep2sencrseaoktsensrsenbse
njreqnsepvtsewldncbe(jxqrl)
ntosenrsein2ntrlercnamsentsrcrene
lspnsengspesemkserbsencbeavxlr
hmcrenmbencbe 1/2munddlse
d-w-m-ymil
If we were all autists, society would fall apart. High-functioning autism is great for specialized tasks
And if ever an autistic person happens to specialize in procreation, it really would be tickets for society.
Has it occurred to you that maybe there are not so many thruthfull stories about china written in simplified chinese?
It has, but unless Bing's algorithms differ in very, very major ways from Google's, this would never happen. And since we know (or at least suspect) Bing copies Google results, the only remaining option is censorship.
I see the results mentioned in the article you link to are still as skewed as in January 2010. They do link to the Dalai Lama Wikipedia article in the third result though - I don't see what's wrong with that. But the difference between image results for Tiananmen square in English and simplified Chinese is just ludicrous. On another note - could someone tell me when I missed the fact that Google are now forcing you onto their Hong-Kong website when you try to visit google.cn from outside China?
Thinking about how I use a browser (Chrome) tells me that removing the URL bar is not at all such a bad idea. 99% of the time when I want to go to a new page, I press Ctrl+t to open a new tab, and then the URL bar is already focused so I just start typing. I assume this will remain the same. The other 1%, when I do happen to want to load a page in the same tab, I just press Ctrl+k to focus the URL bar. I realize this makes me more of a power user than the average user, so it should definitely be optional, but it would increase my screen real estate without sacrificing productivity. As for phishing... that would most certainly be a concern. Imagine receiving a friend request from (what is assumed to be) Facebook via email, unsuspectingly clicking the link to go to that page, filling in my details, etc. etc. Only people like us would be looking at the URL in a situation like that in the first place, and now even we will be clueless, unless we go out of our way to verify the current URL.
I have never used as much profanity in my entire life combined as I have when debugging web applications in IE. ("Not implemented on line 0" error anyone?) Since 61% of people aren't web developers, and only work with computers, not program them, I guess it is at least reasonably plausible that this statistic is accurate.
You should learn Chinese.
Knowing java, you could probably learn C# to a reasonable level in a few weeks. Knowing English, you could probably only learn Chinese to a reasonable level in a few years (ask me, I've been trying). And that's if you stay in China or Taiwan.
TFA states that it's the first carnivorous mammal discovered in 24 years (presumably world-wide), not only the first in 24 years in Madagascar like in the summary. Which one is it?
The one thing the Chinese really didn't want was unfiltered search results, and Google is still providing that, just in a somewhat indirect manner.
Well, I'm in the said country now - and clicking on the link to google.com.hk simply redirects you to a page that cannot be displayed. So, if by 'indirect' you mean 'not at all', then yes, I agree.
Oh @#!$, I just bought a Britney Spears teenage pregnancy collector's doll from the amazon landing page.
I live in South Africa, and I know for a fact that at most 20% of the population have semi-regular access to the Internet, as can be seen from this handy graph on Google http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=it_net_user&idim=country:ZAF&dl=en&hl=en&q=internet+users+in+south+africa (it estimates 4.187 million internet users, where we have a population of between 40 and 50 million). This is a country where the absolute maximum internet speed is 4Mbps (on average most users have 384kbps), and it is literally cheaper to go buy a dvd in the shop than it is to download the 4GB illegally. This is just to bring the internet situation into perspective. I know that you do not need an internet connection to have porn, it could be a video, dvd or even just copied from someone else, but this is just an indication of the kind access we have here. A recent study found that as many as 50% of high school boys in SA have watched at least one porn movie. I don't know, but the only shocking thing about that is that so many people have had access to it (we only have 4 public TV channels, and only one of them shows porn after 12 on Saturday nights). This is just some background information. A ban on porn would be just another ill-directed attempt to improve the morals of a society where politicians (the role models of the people) routinely threaten other races with death, partake in tender fraud and tax evasion, are charged with rape and watch porn during congress. On second thought, maybe it will at least help the politicians concentrate on what's really going on in the country.