Ok, thats fine. I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere between living and non-living. But it seems to me that doing so based purely on its material properties is a bit arbitrary. Especially, when other materials can (or could) behave in similar ways.
If you require that a living organism needs to be made up of living cells to be alive, that's fine. But what, then, are your requrirements for something to be classified as a living cell?
Doesn't it seem a little circular to define a living organism as "made from the same stuff as other living organisms?"
So so you are saying that there is something special about the tissue that the creature is made out of that makes it alive? This sounds a lot like an "essence of life" argument. Can you be specific as to what natural stuff a living thing needs to be made out of in order for it to be alive? After all, we are made up of pretty common stuff.
but most importantly, even if i am proven wrong and we do make something like that, it should never be given the rights of a human as it is neither human nor animal nor living. that's my main point. we cannot equate an inanimate object with a living thing.
Now that's a really interesting statement. I'm going to ignore the more contentious point-- that a created being should never have the rights of a human, and address your broader argument-- that we cannot equate an inanimate object with a living thing.
Consider this thought problem: There is a small creature, the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Now C. elegans has been studied extensively by science-- its genome has been completely sequenced, all of its neurons have been catalogued (all 305 of them), and even the precise connectivity between its neurons has been recorded.
In the not too distant future it should be possible to completely model the nervous system of C. elegans in silico with a very high level of detail. It is conceivable, but this is certainly an open question, that the simple behavior of the creature would emerge from the simulation.
Now assuming that the simulated worm does exhibit the same simple responses as the actual one, how shall we classify this artificial creature? Is the simulation alive and if not, why not?
The mainstream journals are useful only in-so-far as they are widely available and widely read. The really big ones have had 100 years or more to gain momentum and get to where they are today! Journals like PLoS Biology have the potential to be FAR more widespread.
Much like Open Source software, it is only a matter of time.
The structure of the potassium channel: Molecular basis of K+ conduction and selectivity
Doyle DA, Cabral JM, Pfuetzner RA, Kuo AL, Gulbis JM, Cohen SL, Chait BT, MacKinnon R
SCIENCE 280 (5360): 69-77 APR 3 1998
Times Cited: 1588
In general an article cited more than 400 times is considered a classic. Especially note how recently the article was published.
There is not general solution to the global optimization problem.
There is not general solution to the global optimization problem.
There is not general solution to the global optimization problem.
2555673237 - Double Dutch Bus by Devin Vasquez has been removed from eBay for violating eBay policy. Since this listing was removed, you are not required to complete the transaction.
For a complete list of eBay's policies, please visit: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/item_allowed.html
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Ebay Inc.
A friend of mine once sold a dollar bill on eBay as an experiment. It was not a rare dollar or anything like that-- just an ordinary dollar out of his wallet.
Er, can you cite some facts to back that up? For example,
What percentage of the Founding Fathers were Christian?
What percentage of the population as a whole was Christian at the time of founding? in 1850? in 1900? today?
Are there ANY references to God in Constitution of the United States or Bill of Rights? (I'll answer this one for you: no. [1])
In what years were the words "In God We Trust" added to coins? to paper money? (I'll ansewr this one too: 1865 and 1964 respectively. [2])
So perhaps we have to redefine what you mean by "this nation was created by christians." If you mean that there were some Christians here, sure. Did they found the country? Well, maybe you can get back to me on that after you do some research...
(To lamely reply long after the original thread had waned...)
Even if the random numbers are pulled "out of your @$$" you can find out what distribution a they come from (let's ignore non-stationarity for a moment.) You may need to sample a long sequence of numbers from the random source but you can always build up a distribution.
Now, this distribution may be one of the well known ones (uniform, gaussian, binomial, etc.) or it may be completely exotic and you have to discribe it in a piecewise manner-- But you can always describe it! And once it is described you can make estimates as to the most likely output of the random number source.
non-stationarity is more tricky as the distribution from which the random numbers is coming from changes with time, but you can still handle this by modeling the process behind the non-stationarity.
You have that backwords. With any distribution OTHER than a uniform distribution (eg gaussian) you have much more of prior information you can leverage. For example, with the just first two moments of a gaussian distribution you can describe it completely. You still can't predict the next number to come out, but you CAN use this prior information to make a good of the next number that will come up. With a uniform distribution you will NEVER be able to guess the next number better than chance since no number will ever be more likely to come up with than any other number.
(PS. by "limited domain" did you perhaps mean uniform bounded between, say, zero and one? That information could certainly be exploited, but in general we can't make that assumption...)
Slashdot Mirror
Not true: Nazi hypothermia tables
Hail Caesar!
/joeyo
If you require that a living organism needs to be made up of living cells to be alive, that's fine. But what, then, are your requrirements for something to be classified as a living cell?
Doesn't it seem a little circular to define a living organism as "made from the same stuff as other living organisms?"
So so you are saying that there is something special about the tissue that the creature is made out of that makes it alive? This sounds a lot like an "essence of life" argument. Can you be specific as to what natural stuff a living thing needs to be made out of in order for it to be alive? After all, we are made up of pretty common stuff.
Consider this thought problem: There is a small creature, the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans . Now C. elegans has been studied extensively by science-- its genome has been completely sequenced, all of its neurons have been catalogued (all 305 of them), and even the precise connectivity between its neurons has been recorded.
In the not too distant future it should be possible to completely model the nervous system of C. elegans in silico with a very high level of detail. It is conceivable, but this is certainly an open question, that the simple behavior of the creature would emerge from the simulation.
Now assuming that the simulated worm does exhibit the same simple responses as the actual one, how shall we classify this artificial creature? Is the simulation alive and if not, why not?
With that said, I'm certainly not a fan of dongles, USB or otherwise.
The mainstream journals are useful only in-so-far as they are widely available and widely read. The really big ones have had 100 years or more to gain momentum and get to where they are today! Journals like PLoS Biology have the potential to be FAR more widespread.
Much like Open Source software, it is only a matter of time.
/joeyo
Agreed-- There is no general solution for the global optimization problem! You just have to keep evolving.
Impressive!
Times Cited: 1588
In general an article cited more than 400 times is considered a classic. Especially note how recently the article was published.
/joeyo
There is not general solution to the global optimization problem.
There is not general solution to the global optimization problem.
/joeyo
/joeyo
/joeyo
It sold for $1.30 or so.
/joeyo
This is what VPN's are for.
/joeyo
- What percentage of the Founding Fathers were Christian?
- What percentage of the population as a whole was Christian at the time of founding? in 1850? in 1900? today?
- Are there ANY references to God in Constitution of the United States or Bill of Rights? (I'll answer this one for you: no. [1])
- In what years were the words "In God We Trust" added to coins? to paper money? (I'll ansewr this one too: 1865 and 1964 respectively. [2])
So perhaps we have to redefine what you mean by "this nation was created by christians." If you mean that there were some Christians here, sure. Did they found the country? Well, maybe you can get back to me on that after you do some research.../joeyo
1) http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/charters_of_f reedom/constitution/constitution.html
e ncy/in-god-we-trust.html
2) http://www.ustreas.gov/education/fact-sheets/curr
/joeyo
Even if the random numbers are pulled "out of your @$$" you can find out what distribution a they come from (let's ignore non-stationarity for a moment.) You may need to sample a long sequence of numbers from the random source but you can always build up a distribution.
Now, this distribution may be one of the well known ones (uniform, gaussian, binomial, etc.) or it may be completely exotic and you have to discribe it in a piecewise manner-- But you can always describe it! And once it is described you can make estimates as to the most likely output of the random number source.
non-stationarity is more tricky as the distribution from which the random numbers is coming from changes with time, but you can still handle this by modeling the process behind the non-stationarity.
/joeyo
/joeyo
/joeyo
/joeyo
(PS. by "limited domain" did you perhaps mean uniform bounded between, say, zero and one? That information could certainly be exploited, but in general we can't make that assumption...)
/joeyo