If you will believe me I am as uncomfortable with that as you seem to be. But I've been sitting on it for a while and have only found confirmations for it. If that is indeed true ("true") then the sooner we accept it the less we'll fall for bad science. "That" being the idea that our objective knowledge is acquired, held, and maintained as a statistical process, not as our ever closer understanding of the mind of God which was a line of reasoning that started with Newton.
Far greater minds have claimed things to that end -- this is a quote from Philip K Dick: "In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law — in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy." I believe it is custom of our brain matter that also determines how we know what we know.
That said I also like to believe that what makes us different from a simple biological (or mechanical) deep learning network is how we decide to pursue one thing or another, before it is knowledge.
Precisely because the scientists care is why I trust those scientists whose reputation will be hurt if they are proven wrong. The problem with climate scientists as I see it is that it is difficult to prove them right or wrong in their lifetime.
I have no doubt that perhaps the vast majority of them are honest people doing their best and it is a difficult field, but they need to understand that an average Joe like myself needs to see several reasonably accurate predictions from their model come to pass, in a reasonable time frame, in order to make major changes in his life based on their model. To my best knowledge that hasn't happened yet. Most other scientific theories with far reaching consequences have been put to such test, and where they haven't, we have often paid the price.
Actually yes, we just can't bear to admit that. What we call "objective truth" is merely a reflection of how many credible people believe in that claim being true. And it's even worse than that: it's how many people who *we believe* are credible do *we believe* they believe a claim is true. If it sounds like turtles all the way down it is: just try to trace the claim of "97% scientists agree" to its roots in reality and you'll see it's based on a long chain of implicit trust based on implicit credibility. (Who did they poll? What was the poll? Did scientist accurately report their convictions? Who reported the news? etc. etc.)
That doesn't mean our scientific knowledge is not useful -- on the contrary, whether it is useful is the (only) criteria to go by. But it means it is acquired statistically, as if humanity were one giant neural network. If you need a confirmation, here's a quote (supposedly) from Max Planck who (we believe) had enough experience to see the pattern: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Anytime we think there is a mechanistic explanation for events in a complex system -- such as the Earth and its biosphere is -- we're probably wrong. As for me, I'd rather trust a trader's ability to observe patterns than the climate researcher's because the shirt on back of the former literally depends on that ability. In the case of the climate researcher his prediction may or may not eventually match reality but whatever happens a century from now will affect neither his paycheck nor his reputation. In other words he has no skin in the game.
It's OK. Someone had to do it. Now that we know what it does to us we can slowly get off of it, like we did with smoking/transfat etc.
That said, occasionally I find some facebook posts from a very small number of people in my feed *very* useful. I've actually unfollowed everyone in my friends list (350+) except for that small group of about 10. As much as I loathe facebook, I would actually prefer the setup I have now over no facebook at all.
You'd have to be really, really motivated. A watch, a walkman/iPod, fitness trackers to a degree... anything else? Plus most of those were not that inconvenient.
A truly dangerous threat is only that which can spread exponentially, for example a biological virus (or perhaps a malformed GM organism). AI is not that.
Unless of course it is programmed to self reproduce in the physical world, e.g. through a combination of living cells with custom DNA and nano assemblers. (That would be Michael Crichton's "Prey".)
The difference is in the statistical processes, so to speak. You hear that song a few times a day and you think it's cool and you play air guitar and what not but mostly you do your kid stuff. With this, the kid is seeing many bot-created hypnotizing repetitive actions over and over. The total "nerve system load", if such thing existed, is way heavier with these videos -- far more structured and laser focused on the kids' brains/minds.
He knew that was going to happen (he'd be just too dumb not to, which is a possibility, but less likely I hope), hence respect.
No harm is done, in fact it may have put Twitter under closer scrutiny so they'll make doubly sure a deleted account can be recovered. At most I think he'd need to get mandatory therapy so he learns to control his emotions.
I'd prefer if they let the guy just walk away. He made a fool of himself and achieved nothing, which is punishment enough. And he risked his own skin career-wise for what he believed in (or couldn't control himself about), which is something to respect.
They do (more or less) but I wonder what would you do with them? I.e. what is the use for a single frame of a non-existing person, or the ability to generate single frames of many non-existing people?
All successful platforms were *driven* by the killer app. The killer app existed before the platform was ready -- PC, networking, gaming consoles, smartphones, anything. The only thing VR delivers is a novel physical sensation, at a huge inconvenience, and sensations diminish with repetition.
That said, I wish I were wrong on VR. If there's a successful platform for which the killer app came after, I'd like to know. No I don't think porn qualifies.
Maybe they are not that smart. How do they know the ads were effective? For all we know they poured $100K into a campaign that didn't change a single vote.
I have seen some very useful or pleasant things on my FB feed, and it's consistently from only a handful of people. So I have unfollowed nearly everyone in my friend list except those handful of people and it's working OK for me.
But I agree. Instead of the feed I'd rather see thumbnails of the people I follow, ordered in some combination of how frequently they post, how often I read them, and some randomness, with ability for me to move those profile up and down the list. Then I'd hover over their profile and see what they posted, and maybe click on something. That would be ideal. Maybe someone can make a firefox/chrome extension...?
Yes I forgot about that, you're right, it's the power thing, since they wanted the Kinect to not require a separate power supply when used with an Xbox. I can't blame MS for that. The Asus Xtion didn't need a power supply but its IR was slightly weaker than Kinect's. And Kinect 2 may need more power for its time-of-flight lasers than a typical USB could supply.
The developers I mean (including MS) -- they relied on skeleton tracking, which misses all too often, as the primary control, instead of relying on depth points first and using skeleton tracking data only as a backup. The outline of the player almost never misses, so if you see your outline inside the game you can reliably trigger all sorts of virtual triggers around you. I made a couple of PC games that did that and you could play them for hours (classic arcades, for a very niche market, recently they were accepted for ID@Xbox, I might go ahead and publish them anyway). To my knowledge only two non-dance games used that scheme, one is Fruit Ninja and the other was a Kung Fu game which was well done but it was sort of a 2D scroller and the player faced away from the screen which looked odd.
The other thing that slowed down the adoption on the PC a lot IMO was that you needed an adapter. MS probably though Kinect was going to be so awesome they wanted to control the entrance to the gates. In retrospect that was a bad move.
Meaning the tail of the income distribution becomes thinner and thinner. That's assuming what the article claims is true.
What's the problem with the income tail becoming too thin? The premise is that this is one nation and everyone is expected if the need arises to spill their blood for the country equally. Somehow when too many are struggling too much a different sentiment arises.
That said I believe the nation will self correct, and that we are on the path to doing so.
Since all if that was more or less known before the wlection, how come the DNC, Clinton and slmost all the media were so confident she was going to win? The only answer that make sense to me was *they* didn't think it was relevant, and more importantly, they didn't know their voters.
That last part is the most justified way of politicians losing an election.
It is very unfair of Russians to interfere with other countries' elections but what part of it is Trump campaign acting illegally?
Trump aside, do we really belive click bait ads made non-Trump supporters change their mind and vote Trump?
Have we abandoned reasoning? In my view the fair thing is to say Russians rooted for Trump because Trump was open he would treat them better than Clinton, and Trump campaign was happy that the Dem campaign was hacked, even if Dems said there was nothing worthwhile in those emails, but that's about it. Immoral or unpatriotic in a strict sense, or not, depending on your view, but none of it outcome-changing.
Unfortunately I don't think a killer app will appear. New technology platforms that take off are driven by a killer app. Those that don't are driven by the idea that a killer app will come.
As for the explanation, totally agree. Imagine it's 2003, no smartphones, and PCs are somehow capable of doing current VR at the current price point. I can't imagine the adoption being any different.
Keep in mind he wrote that about the time his chemical castration procedure was completed. That was an act by the government of robbing a person of libido and the source of joy in life. And he surely thought of it as terribly unjust since in his mind he had done no harm to anyone. It had to be hard to be excited about travel or America in such a state, or life in general since as you know he killed himself a year later.
Slashdot Mirror
If you will believe me I am as uncomfortable with that as you seem to be. But I've been sitting on it for a while and have only found confirmations for it. If that is indeed true ("true") then the sooner we accept it the less we'll fall for bad science. "That" being the idea that our objective knowledge is acquired, held, and maintained as a statistical process, not as our ever closer understanding of the mind of God which was a line of reasoning that started with Newton.
Far greater minds have claimed things to that end -- this is a quote from Philip K Dick: "In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law — in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy." I believe it is custom of our brain matter that also determines how we know what we know.
That said I also like to believe that what makes us different from a simple biological (or mechanical) deep learning network is how we decide to pursue one thing or another, before it is knowledge.
Precisely because the scientists care is why I trust those scientists whose reputation will be hurt if they are proven wrong. The problem with climate scientists as I see it is that it is difficult to prove them right or wrong in their lifetime.
I have no doubt that perhaps the vast majority of them are honest people doing their best and it is a difficult field, but they need to understand that an average Joe like myself needs to see several reasonably accurate predictions from their model come to pass, in a reasonable time frame, in order to make major changes in his life based on their model. To my best knowledge that hasn't happened yet. Most other scientific theories with far reaching consequences have been put to such test, and where they haven't, we have often paid the price.
Actually yes, we just can't bear to admit that. What we call "objective truth" is merely a reflection of how many credible people believe in that claim being true. And it's even worse than that: it's how many people who *we believe* are credible do *we believe* they believe a claim is true. If it sounds like turtles all the way down it is: just try to trace the claim of "97% scientists agree" to its roots in reality and you'll see it's based on a long chain of implicit trust based on implicit credibility. (Who did they poll? What was the poll? Did scientist accurately report their convictions? Who reported the news? etc. etc.)
That doesn't mean our scientific knowledge is not useful -- on the contrary, whether it is useful is the (only) criteria to go by. But it means it is acquired statistically, as if humanity were one giant neural network. If you need a confirmation, here's a quote (supposedly) from Max Planck who (we believe) had enough experience to see the pattern: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Anytime we think there is a mechanistic explanation for events in a complex system -- such as the Earth and its biosphere is -- we're probably wrong. As for me, I'd rather trust a trader's ability to observe patterns than the climate researcher's because the shirt on back of the former literally depends on that ability. In the case of the climate researcher his prediction may or may not eventually match reality but whatever happens a century from now will affect neither his paycheck nor his reputation. In other words he has no skin in the game.
It's OK. Someone had to do it. Now that we know what it does to us we can slowly get off of it, like we did with smoking/transfat etc.
That said, occasionally I find some facebook posts from a very small number of people in my feed *very* useful. I've actually unfollowed everyone in my friends list (350+) except for that small group of about 10. As much as I loathe facebook, I would actually prefer the setup I have now over no facebook at all.
You'd have to be really, really motivated. A watch, a walkman/iPod, fitness trackers to a degree... anything else? Plus most of those were not that inconvenient.
I'll admit I don't know much about early Middle Ages but I'll agree, for culture to flourish it is also necessary to have prosperity.
A truly dangerous threat is only that which can spread exponentially, for example a biological virus (or perhaps a malformed GM organism). AI is not that.
Unless of course it is programmed to self reproduce in the physical world, e.g. through a combination of living cells with custom DNA and nano assemblers. (That would be Michael Crichton's "Prey".)
You might find that in those eras where you say religion took all place in the mind of people culture actually flourished.
The difference is in the statistical processes, so to speak. You hear that song a few times a day and you think it's cool and you play air guitar and what not but mostly you do your kid stuff. With this, the kid is seeing many bot-created hypnotizing repetitive actions over and over. The total "nerve system load", if such thing existed, is way heavier with these videos -- far more structured and laser focused on the kids' brains/minds.
He knew that was going to happen (he'd be just too dumb not to, which is a possibility, but less likely I hope), hence respect.
No harm is done, in fact it may have put Twitter under closer scrutiny so they'll make doubly sure a deleted account can be recovered. At most I think he'd need to get mandatory therapy so he learns to control his emotions.
I'd prefer if they let the guy just walk away. He made a fool of himself and achieved nothing, which is punishment enough. And he risked his own skin career-wise for what he believed in (or couldn't control himself about), which is something to respect.
They do (more or less) but I wonder what would you do with them? I.e. what is the use for a single frame of a non-existing person, or the ability to generate single frames of many non-existing people?
All successful platforms were *driven* by the killer app. The killer app existed before the platform was ready -- PC, networking, gaming consoles, smartphones, anything. The only thing VR delivers is a novel physical sensation, at a huge inconvenience, and sensations diminish with repetition.
That said, I wish I were wrong on VR. If there's a successful platform for which the killer app came after, I'd like to know. No I don't think porn qualifies.
Maybe they are not that smart. How do they know the ads were effective? For all we know they poured $100K into a campaign that didn't change a single vote.
I have seen some very useful or pleasant things on my FB feed, and it's consistently from only a handful of people. So I have unfollowed nearly everyone in my friend list except those handful of people and it's working OK for me.
But I agree. Instead of the feed I'd rather see thumbnails of the people I follow, ordered in some combination of how frequently they post, how often I read them, and some randomness, with ability for me to move those profile up and down the list. Then I'd hover over their profile and see what they posted, and maybe click on something. That would be ideal. Maybe someone can make a firefox/chrome extension...?
Yes I forgot about that, you're right, it's the power thing, since they wanted the Kinect to not require a separate power supply when used with an Xbox. I can't blame MS for that. The Asus Xtion didn't need a power supply but its IR was slightly weaker than Kinect's. And Kinect 2 may need more power for its time-of-flight lasers than a typical USB could supply.
The developers I mean (including MS) -- they relied on skeleton tracking, which misses all too often, as the primary control, instead of relying on depth points first and using skeleton tracking data only as a backup. The outline of the player almost never misses, so if you see your outline inside the game you can reliably trigger all sorts of virtual triggers around you. I made a couple of PC games that did that and you could play them for hours (classic arcades, for a very niche market, recently they were accepted for ID@Xbox, I might go ahead and publish them anyway). To my knowledge only two non-dance games used that scheme, one is Fruit Ninja and the other was a Kung Fu game which was well done but it was sort of a 2D scroller and the player faced away from the screen which looked odd.
The other thing that slowed down the adoption on the PC a lot IMO was that you needed an adapter. MS probably though Kinect was going to be so awesome they wanted to control the entrance to the gates. In retrospect that was a bad move.
Meaning the tail of the income distribution becomes thinner and thinner. That's assuming what the article claims is true.
What's the problem with the income tail becoming too thin? The premise is that this is one nation and everyone is expected if the need arises to spill their blood for the country equally. Somehow when too many are struggling too much a different sentiment arises.
That said I believe the nation will self correct, and that we are on the path to doing so.
Same here. No other site I know of is as interesting, informative, insightful, and mostly pleasant to hang around as /. Happy birthday!
Since all if that was more or less known before the wlection, how come the DNC, Clinton and slmost all the media were so confident she was going to win? The only answer that make sense to me was *they* didn't think it was relevant, and more importantly, they didn't know their voters.
That last part is the most justified way of politicians losing an election.
It is very unfair of Russians to interfere with other countries' elections but what part of it is Trump campaign acting illegally?
Trump aside, do we really belive click bait ads made non-Trump supporters change their mind and vote Trump?
Have we abandoned reasoning? In my view the fair thing is to say Russians rooted for Trump because Trump was open he would treat them better than Clinton, and Trump campaign was happy that the Dem campaign was hacked, even if Dems said there was nothing worthwhile in those emails, but that's about it. Immoral or unpatriotic in a strict sense, or not, depending on your view, but none of it outcome-changing.
Unfortunately I don't think a killer app will appear. New technology platforms that take off are driven by a killer app. Those that don't are driven by the idea that a killer app will come.
As for the explanation, totally agree. Imagine it's 2003, no smartphones, and PCs are somehow capable of doing current VR at the current price point. I can't imagine the adoption being any different.
Instead of paying to license newest crappy tunes they'll just buy the software once and autogenerate a bunch of different songs to play every day.
Keep in mind he wrote that about the time his chemical castration procedure was completed. That was an act by the government of robbing a person of libido and the source of joy in life. And he surely thought of it as terribly unjust since in his mind he had done no harm to anyone. It had to be hard to be excited about travel or America in such a state, or life in general since as you know he killed himself a year later.