We can lower the bar for what we call "AI", but frankly, the amazing work that can be done in certain problem domains through calculation really isn't what we mean by "intelligence". Categorizing something into "spam" or "not spam" is a simple binary task, one which I'll argue that humans can do *better*, even if they can't do it *faster*. Deciding if someone is being sarcastic or not, or any sort of learning, that's another thing entirely.
Find me something that passes the Turing Test, then we'll talk:)
...that human intelligence can be modeled as an algorithm. The vague promises of "AI" have failed to appear not because we're not working hard enough, but because this simply isn't a problem that can be satisfactorily solved.
The first true "AI" is going to be biologically engineered, not electronically.
The difference between creationism and evolution (macro or micro) is simple - one is falsifiable, the other is not.
Show me a rabbit fossil in the pre-cambrian, and you've falsified evolution.
Creationism, on the other hand, makes no falsifiable predictions - any observation can be explained by a supernatural "creator", even those which would support the idea of evolution.
Industries, since time immemorial, have had master, journeyman and apprentice roles, which involved a *bunch* of pair work on all kinds of stuff. To think that the concept of pair programming is so offensive as to be laughable shows a lack of imagination, really.
Would you want to fly in a plane that didn't have paired pilots?:)
There's always a wrong way to do everything, even pair programming:)
While there are going to be the anti-social archetypes that can't stand it, it's a valuable practice to learn, and a useful tool to have in your bag of tricks. In any case, it's better than your drive-by formal code review when it comes to actually helping improve code.
Having pairs requires people to work the same hours, sit in very close proximity to one another, get interrupted when someone else needs to use the bathroom, it works poorly with telecommuting, etc, etc. There's something uniquely human about needing some space to work and think, that pair programming does not allow.
All of those seem like textbook anti-social issues:)
Look, I know about the anti-social programming zone. I get it. I'm good at it myself. But to assert that pair-programming is bad because it is somehow "unnatural" seems somehow out of place when we're talking about probably the most unnatural practice in the history of human kind, working with technology that is as unnatural as one can possibly be:)
Now maybe pair programming is too hard for you. Maybe it will *always* be too hard for you. I get it. Not everyone can be a rock star, and not everyone can be a brain surgeon either. Maybe you've got enough chops to make up for it. But in terms of code review, a continuous code review, during programming, is going to be more useful and efficient than a drive-by "curly braces should be on the same line" formal code review.
Well, it takes, what, about 10,000 hours to become a master at something? Some of us started programming before hitting our teens, so 10,000 hours happened a long time ago, but figure someone fresh out of college? 5 years if they dedicate 40 hours a week to it, figure more realistic 20 years given that they'll only spend 10 hours a week doing it with any sort of focus juggling meetings and status reports.
...then continuous code reviews are great. Keep two sets of eyeballs on the code *as you write it*. Yes, the antisocial archetype hates pair programming, but it simply works, even if it is uncomfortable (as code reviews often are).
The real problem with formal code reviews is that all too often, the reviewers are so distant from the day-to-day issues in the code they can't to much more than give superficial suggestions ("I don't like how you named this variable", or "we need more comments here"). Arguably, to do a truly thorough code review, you'd have to spend *at least as much* time prepping for the code review as it took for the coder to put it together in the first place...quite probably several times more.
If they really wanted to make them more useful, though, code reviews should be conducted on running code, and any review item should be immediately fixed in the code, and the whole regression suite of tests run in front of all the reviewers.
Ah, maybe lowering the cost of the car for the initial buyer by $12,500, but essentially raising taxes for the rest of the population in order to provide that yuppie benefit:) As to how much revenue is required to make up for that $12,500 (overhead for tax collection, administration, etc, etc), I wouldn't be surprised if that $12k actually ended up costing us taxpayers upwards of $50k (a SWAG, of course).
Of course California and the Feds have been bleeding red ink for years - I suppose it's just common self-interest to take advantage of these kinds of breaks if you have the means...
I'm not sure if I understand your statement. Say I consider the possibility of a temperature increase if we eliminated the "heat engine" (whatever that is...internal combustion?). How does that show that I'm convinced that AGW *is* real?
If CO2 and other greenhouse gases are not the primary driver of global climate systems, then why would you think their emission (by anyone) would have a discernible effect?
Maybe I'm starting with the wrong question - maybe we both agree that humans create CO2, and that CO2 has a microscopic effect on the global average temperature of the planet that is overwhelmed by natural drivers at every time scale.
So, let me ask instead for two things:
1) Your hypothesis *statement* (please, be specific, simply saying "Humans are warming the planet with CO2" is not nearly specific enough - magnitudes here matter.)
2) Your proposed falsification of your *statement* - i.e., what observations of global average temperature and CO2 levels, past or future, that would falsify your hypothesis.
I'll assert to you that if all possible combinations of CO2 concentration and global average temperature "confirm" your hypothesis, you've clearly got a non-falsifiable hypothesis.
You're confusing "necessary" with "sufficient". It is *necessary* to the AGW hypothesis that CO2 be a greenhouse gas with certain properties. That is not *sufficient* to show that anthropogenic CO2 is the primary driver of global average temperature rise.
What you're really asserting here is that simply by knowing the greenhouse properties of a single gas, with no other information whatsoever, you can predict that human CO2 emissions will raise global average temperature. Are you really ready to make that kind of baseless assertion?
Therefore to falsify AGW: Simply demonstrate that carbon dioxide and methane do not have the greenhouse gas properties described above*.
You're making a host of assumptions that you gloss over completely - simply asserting that the physical properties of a gas, as measured in a laboratory, means that that gas *must* be the primary driver of the entire global climate is just that - an assertion.
More pointedly, it is quite possible for CO2 and methane to have a certain absorption spectrum, and for that property to be unable to make any large contribution to natural climate changes we observe throughout the history of the planet.
Here's what you sound like you're saying ->
1) you make a microscopic assertion about a property of something: i.e., clouds can block sunlight, and we can measure exactly how much sunlight this blocks.
2) you then make the gigantic leap to assuming that simply *having* this property at the microscopic level makes your theory true:, i.e., it is obvious that clouds, created by jet airplanes, cause all climate change.
Your hypothesis fails the falsifiability test - how can you tell the difference between natural changes in the earth's climate, and "non-natural" ones? What *observation* would falsify your hypothesis? Assume massive deforestation, overfishing and CO2 emissions - how would you "note" that impact? Rising temperatures? Falling temperatures?
Put another way, would you assert that if humans still numbered in the low hundred thousands, had no technology or industry, that somehow there would be no change in the earth's climate?
Let's try again - what *observation* could you possibly observe that would lead you to believe that human emitted CO2 does not cause global average temperature to increase?
Not sure if that follows - simply killing an inventor does not stop something from being invented by someone else.
The problem with your experiment is that even if you made a perfect copy of the earth and all of its inhabitants, you'd be sorely pressed to stop them from diverging from each other in results (heck, even assuming you were able to build an entire additional solar system of identical stature for the earth copy to sit in). A chaotic system, with even the slightest change, can have wildly different results.
I would argue that even if you took "earth 2", eliminated the "heat engine", and saw a heat decrease, you could not be sure that you did not have other confounding variables.
Well, unfortunately, this same ad hom goes both ways. Deciding whether or not a scientific hypothesis is true based on the ethical practices of people seems like a poor way to do science though.
If you were going to look past the whole playground teasing, and head to the scientific method in its purest form, how would you state your falsifiable hypothesis of AGW?
How about you state your falsifiable hypothesis of AGW, so we can tell when it has been falsified?
I think the problem is that most proponents of AGW can't even state their position as a falsifiable hypothesis, and without that, we're essentially left with arguing religion.
Mod parent up. Arguing funding sources (on either side) is simply ad hom by another name. Let's play "scientific method", state a falsifiable hypothesis, and act like grown ups instead.
At the risk of being even more pendantic, I'll assert that the seasonal temperatures are primarily moderated by ocean currents (with exceptions during, say, 1816 when sun-blocking aerosols over-rode "Summer").
While the tone of the article is a bit alarmist and probably more up your alley than mine, there's some great information there about the history of ocean modeling and some of the major complications involved:
"Perhaps in earlier geological eras when the poles had been warmer, salty ocean waters had plunged in the tropics and come up near the poles. This reversal of the present circulation, he speculated, could have helped maintain the uniform global warmth seen in the distant past."
"New data hinted that much of the heat energy moving vertically from layer to layer in the oceans was not transported by some kind of average convection, as the models had assumed, but was moved by tides.Tidal mixing of coastal waters might be as important as saltiness and winds in driving the Meridional Overturning Circulation, which depended as much on the "pull" of water returning to the surface as on the "push" of water sinking in the North Atlantic."
My bet is that they have misunderstood the data they're seeing, in order to match it to their preconceived notions about CO2 - in particular, an observation of past "tipping points" without a clear source of anthropogenic CO2 makes their conclusions tenuous. If anything their historical analysis shows that climate has *often* dramatically switched from various stable states, and that humanity and the effects of humanity was not necessary for that. Now granted, it may seem plausible to *assume* that humanity has a significant impact, unfortunately they haven't built a falsifiable hypothesis here - for example, what kinds of historical data would have changed their mind about the effect of CO2? I think *any* data they gathered would have been interpreted in light of their preconceived notions.
Anyway, always good to chat with you, Lazyej, hope you have a great week ahead!
Again, giving you another chance to actually go on the record as either agreeing or disagreeing:
Here's my position again, as to what I believe:
The *definition* of a season (regardless of its actual measured temperature value at a specific latitude) is the earth's tilt wrt its orbit (in this, I'm willing to posit the tautological definition you insist upon). The actual measured temperatures of specific seasons at specific latitudes has more to do with ocean currents (which have changed dramatically over 4 billion years) than the tilt of the earth (which hasn't changed dramatically over 4 billion years.
Do you have any problem with the content of that belief statement? A simple yes, or no will do, but if there is something *specific* you disagree with, I'd welcome that as well.
I did state my position, it simply doesn't begin with "I believe that the seasons are cause[d] by...". For example, if I asked you to finish the sentence "I stopped beating my wife because...", would you be afraid to complete that sentence?:)
Again, the fallacy with the leading statement you propose is that you are not being clear enough - as we discovered in earlier back and forth, your assertion is that "seasons" are simply arbitrary definitions of the tilt of the earth wrt to its orbit - whether or not there are any seasonal differences in temperature at any given latitude at any given time seems to matter nothing at all to you. Accepting that, I've been more specific with my assertions, to help you understand them more clearly. The actual *temperatures* experienced at specific latitudes during specific seasons is something different, and I intend to be clear, rather than opaque by allowing for an ambiguous definition.
Here's my position again, as to what I believe:
The *definition* of a season (regardless of its actual measured temperature value at a specific latitude) is the earth's tilt wrt its orbit (in this, I'm willing to posit the tautological definition you insist upon). The actual measured temperatures of specific seasons at specific latitudes has more to do with ocean currents (which have changed dramatically over 4 billion years) than the tilt of the earth (which hasn't changed dramatically over 4 billion years.
Do you have any problem with the content of that belief statement? A simple yes, or no will do, but if there is something *specific* you disagree with, I'd welcome that as well.
Slashdot Mirror
We can lower the bar for what we call "AI", but frankly, the amazing work that can be done in certain problem domains through calculation really isn't what we mean by "intelligence". Categorizing something into "spam" or "not spam" is a simple binary task, one which I'll argue that humans can do *better*, even if they can't do it *faster*. Deciding if someone is being sarcastic or not, or any sort of learning, that's another thing entirely.
Find me something that passes the Turing Test, then we'll talk :)
...that human intelligence can be modeled as an algorithm. The vague promises of "AI" have failed to appear not because we're not working hard enough, but because this simply isn't a problem that can be satisfactorily solved.
The first true "AI" is going to be biologically engineered, not electronically.
...creationism is not.
The difference between creationism and evolution (macro or micro) is simple - one is falsifiable, the other is not.
Show me a rabbit fossil in the pre-cambrian, and you've falsified evolution.
Creationism, on the other hand, makes no falsifiable predictions - any observation can be explained by a supernatural "creator", even those which would support the idea of evolution.
Industries, since time immemorial, have had master, journeyman and apprentice roles, which involved a *bunch* of pair work on all kinds of stuff. To think that the concept of pair programming is so offensive as to be laughable shows a lack of imagination, really.
Would you want to fly in a plane that didn't have paired pilots? :)
There's always a wrong way to do everything, even pair programming :)
While there are going to be the anti-social archetypes that can't stand it, it's a valuable practice to learn, and a useful tool to have in your bag of tricks. In any case, it's better than your drive-by formal code review when it comes to actually helping improve code.
And a code review of 5 people on one persons code puts 6 people on an inherently one-person task. I'll go for the cheaper alternative, thank you :)
Well, suppose you only ate, slept or pooped once every quarter at the same time you had your formal code review :)
I'd much rather do it every day, what about you? :) Perhaps not technically "continuous", but you get the point :)
All of those seem like textbook anti-social issues :)
Look, I know about the anti-social programming zone. I get it. I'm good at it myself. But to assert that pair-programming is bad because it is somehow "unnatural" seems somehow out of place when we're talking about probably the most unnatural practice in the history of human kind, working with technology that is as unnatural as one can possibly be :)
Now maybe pair programming is too hard for you. Maybe it will *always* be too hard for you. I get it. Not everyone can be a rock star, and not everyone can be a brain surgeon either. Maybe you've got enough chops to make up for it. But in terms of code review, a continuous code review, during programming, is going to be more useful and efficient than a drive-by "curly braces should be on the same line" formal code review.
Well, it takes, what, about 10,000 hours to become a master at something? Some of us started programming before hitting our teens, so 10,000 hours happened a long time ago, but figure someone fresh out of college? 5 years if they dedicate 40 hours a week to it, figure more realistic 20 years given that they'll only spend 10 hours a week doing it with any sort of focus juggling meetings and status reports.
...then continuous code reviews are great. Keep two sets of eyeballs on the code *as you write it*. Yes, the antisocial archetype hates pair programming, but it simply works, even if it is uncomfortable (as code reviews often are).
The real problem with formal code reviews is that all too often, the reviewers are so distant from the day-to-day issues in the code they can't to much more than give superficial suggestions ("I don't like how you named this variable", or "we need more comments here"). Arguably, to do a truly thorough code review, you'd have to spend *at least as much* time prepping for the code review as it took for the coder to put it together in the first place...quite probably several times more.
If they really wanted to make them more useful, though, code reviews should be conducted on running code, and any review item should be immediately fixed in the code, and the whole regression suite of tests run in front of all the reviewers.
Ah, maybe lowering the cost of the car for the initial buyer by $12,500, but essentially raising taxes for the rest of the population in order to provide that yuppie benefit :) As to how much revenue is required to make up for that $12,500 (overhead for tax collection, administration, etc, etc), I wouldn't be surprised if that $12k actually ended up costing us taxpayers upwards of $50k (a SWAG, of course).
Of course California and the Feds have been bleeding red ink for years - I suppose it's just common self-interest to take advantage of these kinds of breaks if you have the means...
I'm not sure if I understand your statement. Say I consider the possibility of a temperature increase if we eliminated the "heat engine" (whatever that is...internal combustion?). How does that show that I'm convinced that AGW *is* real?
If CO2 and other greenhouse gases are not the primary driver of global climate systems, then why would you think their emission (by anyone) would have a discernible effect?
Maybe I'm starting with the wrong question - maybe we both agree that humans create CO2, and that CO2 has a microscopic effect on the global average temperature of the planet that is overwhelmed by natural drivers at every time scale.
So, let me ask instead for two things:
1) Your hypothesis *statement* (please, be specific, simply saying "Humans are warming the planet with CO2" is not nearly specific enough - magnitudes here matter.)
2) Your proposed falsification of your *statement* - i.e., what observations of global average temperature and CO2 levels, past or future, that would falsify your hypothesis.
I'll assert to you that if all possible combinations of CO2 concentration and global average temperature "confirm" your hypothesis, you've clearly got a non-falsifiable hypothesis.
You're confusing "necessary" with "sufficient". It is *necessary* to the AGW hypothesis that CO2 be a greenhouse gas with certain properties. That is not *sufficient* to show that anthropogenic CO2 is the primary driver of global average temperature rise.
What you're really asserting here is that simply by knowing the greenhouse properties of a single gas, with no other information whatsoever, you can predict that human CO2 emissions will raise global average temperature. Are you really ready to make that kind of baseless assertion?
You're making a host of assumptions that you gloss over completely - simply asserting that the physical properties of a gas, as measured in a laboratory, means that that gas *must* be the primary driver of the entire global climate is just that - an assertion.
More pointedly, it is quite possible for CO2 and methane to have a certain absorption spectrum, and for that property to be unable to make any large contribution to natural climate changes we observe throughout the history of the planet.
Here's what you sound like you're saying ->
1) you make a microscopic assertion about a property of something: i.e., clouds can block sunlight, and we can measure exactly how much sunlight this blocks.
2) you then make the gigantic leap to assuming that simply *having* this property at the microscopic level makes your theory true:, i.e., it is obvious that clouds, created by jet airplanes, cause all climate change.
Do you understand what "falsifiable" means?
Your hypothesis fails the falsifiability test - how can you tell the difference between natural changes in the earth's climate, and "non-natural" ones? What *observation* would falsify your hypothesis? Assume massive deforestation, overfishing and CO2 emissions - how would you "note" that impact? Rising temperatures? Falling temperatures?
Put another way, would you assert that if humans still numbered in the low hundred thousands, had no technology or industry, that somehow there would be no change in the earth's climate?
Let's try again - what *observation* could you possibly observe that would lead you to believe that human emitted CO2 does not cause global average temperature to increase?
Not sure if that follows - simply killing an inventor does not stop something from being invented by someone else.
The problem with your experiment is that even if you made a perfect copy of the earth and all of its inhabitants, you'd be sorely pressed to stop them from diverging from each other in results (heck, even assuming you were able to build an entire additional solar system of identical stature for the earth copy to sit in). A chaotic system, with even the slightest change, can have wildly different results.
I would argue that even if you took "earth 2", eliminated the "heat engine", and saw a heat decrease, you could not be sure that you did not have other confounding variables.
Care to try again AC?
Well, unfortunately, this same ad hom goes both ways. Deciding whether or not a scientific hypothesis is true based on the ethical practices of people seems like a poor way to do science though.
If you were going to look past the whole playground teasing, and head to the scientific method in its purest form, how would you state your falsifiable hypothesis of AGW?
How about you state your falsifiable hypothesis of AGW, so we can tell when it has been falsified?
I think the problem is that most proponents of AGW can't even state their position as a falsifiable hypothesis, and without that, we're essentially left with arguing religion.
Well, would you like to judge people based on the amount of money they get from where, or would you like to think about this in a scientific way?
Frankly, it seems like in the battle between Big Oil and Big Government, the money is overwhelmingly on the warmist side:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/6/16/ideological-money-laundering.html
Mod parent up. Arguing funding sources (on either side) is simply ad hom by another name. Let's play "scientific method", state a falsifiable hypothesis, and act like grown ups instead.
Further analysis on tipping points:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/20/tipping-points-easy-come-easy-go/
Excellent! You've *almost* got it!
At the risk of being even more pendantic, I'll assert that the seasonal temperatures are primarily moderated by ocean currents (with exceptions during, say, 1816 when sun-blocking aerosols over-rode "Summer").
Here's an interesting link for you:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/oceans.htm
While the tone of the article is a bit alarmist and probably more up your alley than mine, there's some great information there about the history of ocean modeling and some of the major complications involved:
"Perhaps in earlier geological eras when the poles had been warmer, salty ocean waters had plunged in the tropics and come up near the poles. This reversal of the present circulation, he speculated, could have helped maintain the uniform global warmth seen in the distant past."
"New data hinted that much of the heat energy moving vertically from layer to layer in the oceans was not transported by some kind of average convection, as the models had assumed, but was moved by tides.Tidal mixing of coastal waters might be as important as saltiness and winds in driving the Meridional Overturning Circulation, which depended as much on the "pull" of water returning to the surface as on the "push" of water sinking in the North Atlantic."
My bet is that they have misunderstood the data they're seeing, in order to match it to their preconceived notions about CO2 - in particular, an observation of past "tipping points" without a clear source of anthropogenic CO2 makes their conclusions tenuous. If anything their historical analysis shows that climate has *often* dramatically switched from various stable states, and that humanity and the effects of humanity was not necessary for that. Now granted, it may seem plausible to *assume* that humanity has a significant impact, unfortunately they haven't built a falsifiable hypothesis here - for example, what kinds of historical data would have changed their mind about the effect of CO2? I think *any* data they gathered would have been interpreted in light of their preconceived notions.
Anyway, always good to chat with you, Lazyej, hope you have a great week ahead!
I'm sorry you're having such a difficult time understanding what "caused" means and what "defined" means. Let me help you:
"December is defined as the 12th month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar."
"December is caused by the 12th month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar."
One of these statements actually makes sense. Take a few moments, read them both, and see if you can figure out which one actually means something.
Now, let's try your seasons out:
"Summer in the northern hemisphere is defined as the three months the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun."
"Summer in the northern hemisphere is caused by the three months the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun."
Can you tell the difference between those two? Here's some help for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(rhetoric)
Again, giving you another chance to actually go on the record as either agreeing or disagreeing:
Here's my position again, as to what I believe:
The *definition* of a season (regardless of its actual measured temperature value at a specific latitude) is the earth's tilt wrt its orbit (in this, I'm willing to posit the tautological definition you insist upon). The actual measured temperatures of specific seasons at specific latitudes has more to do with ocean currents (which have changed dramatically over 4 billion years) than the tilt of the earth (which hasn't changed dramatically over 4 billion years.
Do you have any problem with the content of that belief statement? A simple yes, or no will do, but if there is something *specific* you disagree with, I'd welcome that as well.
I did state my position, it simply doesn't begin with "I believe that the seasons are cause[d] by...". For example, if I asked you to finish the sentence "I stopped beating my wife because...", would you be afraid to complete that sentence? :)
Again, the fallacy with the leading statement you propose is that you are not being clear enough - as we discovered in earlier back and forth, your assertion is that "seasons" are simply arbitrary definitions of the tilt of the earth wrt to its orbit - whether or not there are any seasonal differences in temperature at any given latitude at any given time seems to matter nothing at all to you. Accepting that, I've been more specific with my assertions, to help you understand them more clearly. The actual *temperatures* experienced at specific latitudes during specific seasons is something different, and I intend to be clear, rather than opaque by allowing for an ambiguous definition.
Here's my position again, as to what I believe:
The *definition* of a season (regardless of its actual measured temperature value at a specific latitude) is the earth's tilt wrt its orbit (in this, I'm willing to posit the tautological definition you insist upon). The actual measured temperatures of specific seasons at specific latitudes has more to do with ocean currents (which have changed dramatically over 4 billion years) than the tilt of the earth (which hasn't changed dramatically over 4 billion years.
Do you have any problem with the content of that belief statement? A simple yes, or no will do, but if there is something *specific* you disagree with, I'd welcome that as well.