How is it brilliant to be aware of the abilities and privileges that come with your job? Strikes me more as "not incompetent." It must be goddamn terrifying to be as stupid as this former US official, living in a world where pretty much anything anyone does appears as if it happened by pure magic.
Yes, it is true that epistemologists and philosophers of science very badly want testimony to count as a justification of a belief (in the technical sense), but that was not my point. The beauty of science is that ultimately, testimony does not HAVE to be the justification of a scientific claim: we have reason and empirical tests to fulfil that function. In epistemically less rigorous contexts, like our everyday lives, testimony is perfectly fine. I am willing to accept that there is water in a bottle I buy from a store simply because it's labelled as being water. What's special about science is that we can crank up the epistemic rigour all the way and (in principle) find out for ourselves whether a claim that is being made is true or false. There are plenty of domains where this is not the case. Religion (which you mentioned) is one, and so are certain social situations (unless you're willing to involve, say, Jerry Springer). In practice we often do end up relying on testimony, but, again, the beauty of science is that I (you (we, as a species)) don't have to.
The beauty of science is that you don't have to believe in it, in the sense of 'to believe' meaning 'to accept on someone else's authority.' I point this out because I have a feeling I would be ranked extremely highly on this 'belief in science' scale while I consider myself to not believe in science at all; the authority of science derives from empirical testing and reason, not belief.
Good thing it's not a list of either of those things then. Maybe include them on the next "what do I tell myself to make me feel better about watching the decline and fall of the American empire?" list
"'those of us who were part of passing this legislation certainly would not have expected it to be used in a case of this kind.'" demonstrating that pretending to be retarded is preferable to accepting responsibility for your actions when you're an MP
No, the news here is that the US actually applied that leverage, not that it has it. And to spell it out for you, this is news because of the contradiction between the gross violation of civil liberties on the one hand and the Defenders Of Liberty narrative the US spins around itself on the other. Additionally, there are many safe places to store information: libraries, books, journals, universities, etc.. There are even safe places to store information you do not want others to access, if you think about it for a couple of seconds. That said,/. is a rather poor place to store your idiocy. Anyone could come by and read it. Anyone!
There are two parts to the problem of preserving knowledge: 1) making sure the representations we decide to use are as permanent as possible, and 2) making sure the method to decode those representations survives. The first is the relatively easy one. Carving Scarlett Johansson's face into the moon with a laser will preserve her beauty for the ages no matter what happens on earth: it would survive a nuclear holocaust, plagues, global warming, the zombie outbreak, another Bush presidency, the replacement of Europe with Westeros, and the world of Harry Potter literally becoming real. However, once the sun runs out of fuel and expands, she's toast. To survive even that, we could convert her DNA into a string of ones and zeroes and broadcast it in every direction and hope it will be eventually intercepted by Alien life "somewhere else". And then we run into problem 2. How do the Aliens figure out how to interpret Scarlett Johansson's binaries? How do they convert her back? A string of 1s and 0s of that size is massively underdetermined: many different interpretations are possible, based on the initial assumptions you make. The Aliens might make the assumption that sets of 1s and 0s should be interpreted as chemical elements (or coordinates, or light waves, or whatever), but those elements could then be arranged (sequentially!) in a vast number of vastly different ways. Not necessarily being familiar with DNA (they might not be DNA based lifeforms) they might end up making 120 pounds of goop, if they even get that close. In short, the only way to get Scarlett Johansson back from the Scarlett Johansson broadcast is to have the right decoding mechanisms in place. We're not going to be able to send along a comprehensible description of the decoding mechanism, because that would necessarily itself have to be decoded by the Aliens, leading to an infinite regress. The way we've solved this problem on earth is through culture. We're all educated by the people already here to be able to decode the information they give us (i.e., we acquire language) through interaction with our environments. Remove the people, and the decoding mechanisms disappear as well -- you can't learn to read from scratch (and for anyone who thinks he can, have a gander at linear A on wikipedia). Therefore, the only way to preserve knowledge through the ages is through a continuous chain of education down the generations. Nothing else will work. This is the only way to spread information to aliens (by direct instruction in the presence of a shared environment), and this is the only way to preserve what we have now for future generations. So, to answer the question, in order to permanently preserve knowledge for the future we need to ensure the permanent survival of culture. The only way to do this is to be fruitful and multiply, leave the solar system, and spread across the universe.
We end up with these jokers because we let ourselves be governed by people who want to accumulate power rather than people who want to accumulate knowledge. The solution is simple: everyone who wants to be in politics shouldn't be allowed to be.
A woman at an academic institution in the US is getting spied on. This is an important distinction sadly ignored by the attention grabbing headline; not everything every person does in a country should count as a direct proxy for that country. If it did, the act of spying would be a logical contradiction.
Real narcissists leak their own nude photos so they're on the internet forever, being copied from soulless machine to soulless machine over and over, haunting server farms of the deep future long after everyone's forgotten who the pictures are actually of. This is what it means to be immortal.
That is true, and scientists, philosophers, and the educated lay person know this, but for most of the population appeals to authority are major determinants of their beliefs. The whole point of this study is to harness this simple psychological fact to push through the FUD spread by people like the republicans mentioned in the summary. That's why it's published in an open access journal, and that's why everything has been made as transparent as possible. Of course, actual marketing and the involvement of the relevant Justin Bieber for every demographic would be more effective still, but this is a good start.
Researchers "don't fully understand how it works," which means they don't know what the causal mechanism is that provides this benefit, which means you don't either, which means it may have nothing to do with electrolytes (despite the proximity of the word 'electrolyte' to the word 'electricity' in the dictionary).
Also, 'to electrocute' means 'to execute with electricity.' While I'm sure there are zombies with mathematical abilities superior to those of some undergrads, I imagine the study's authors went for a different experimental set-up. The ethics committee hearings would be epic.
I'm sorry, can you rephrase your reply to incorporate a comparison in terms of number of football fields? I'm unsure how to determine the relative benefit this extension would provide me with otherwise.
Oh wait, no it's not, which anything actually nerdy, like google glass, will instantly demonstrate. Let the irrelevant battle over terminology ("Oh but this is not nerdy, it's DORKY") begin!
Slashdot Mirror
Why would you believe anything someone says who you have JUST taught how to lie without the possibility of being detected?
I hope to Cthulhu this means we'll discover shoggoths next.
So we can free up those people to do things we can't make robots do yet.
How is it brilliant to be aware of the abilities and privileges that come with your job? Strikes me more as "not incompetent." It must be goddamn terrifying to be as stupid as this former US official, living in a world where pretty much anything anyone does appears as if it happened by pure magic.
Yes, it is true that epistemologists and philosophers of science very badly want testimony to count as a justification of a belief (in the technical sense), but that was not my point. The beauty of science is that ultimately, testimony does not HAVE to be the justification of a scientific claim: we have reason and empirical tests to fulfil that function. In epistemically less rigorous contexts, like our everyday lives, testimony is perfectly fine. I am willing to accept that there is water in a bottle I buy from a store simply because it's labelled as being water. What's special about science is that we can crank up the epistemic rigour all the way and (in principle) find out for ourselves whether a claim that is being made is true or false. There are plenty of domains where this is not the case. Religion (which you mentioned) is one, and so are certain social situations (unless you're willing to involve, say, Jerry Springer). In practice we often do end up relying on testimony, but, again, the beauty of science is that I (you (we, as a species)) don't have to.
The beauty of science is that you don't have to believe in it, in the sense of 'to believe' meaning 'to accept on someone else's authority.' I point this out because I have a feeling I would be ranked extremely highly on this 'belief in science' scale while I consider myself to not believe in science at all; the authority of science derives from empirical testing and reason, not belief.
Good thing it's not a list of either of those things then. Maybe include them on the next "what do I tell myself to make me feel better about watching the decline and fall of the American empire?" list
A satellite directly beaming solar power down from space? We've created... the moon.
"'those of us who were part of passing this legislation certainly would not have expected it to be used in a case of this kind.'" demonstrating that pretending to be retarded is preferable to accepting responsibility for your actions when you're an MP
It's called "imagination."
it sounds kind of hand wave-y to me.
No, the news here is that the US actually applied that leverage, not that it has it. And to spell it out for you, this is news because of the contradiction between the gross violation of civil liberties on the one hand and the Defenders Of Liberty narrative the US spins around itself on the other. Additionally, there are many safe places to store information: libraries, books, journals, universities, etc.. There are even safe places to store information you do not want others to access, if you think about it for a couple of seconds. That said, /. is a rather poor place to store your idiocy. Anyone could come by and read it. Anyone!
Work prospects are equally dire in the humanities. Better advise your children to not go to college at all and become skilled craftspeople instead.
There are two parts to the problem of preserving knowledge: 1) making sure the representations we decide to use are as permanent as possible, and 2) making sure the method to decode those representations survives. The first is the relatively easy one. Carving Scarlett Johansson's face into the moon with a laser will preserve her beauty for the ages no matter what happens on earth: it would survive a nuclear holocaust, plagues, global warming, the zombie outbreak, another Bush presidency, the replacement of Europe with Westeros, and the world of Harry Potter literally becoming real. However, once the sun runs out of fuel and expands, she's toast. To survive even that, we could convert her DNA into a string of ones and zeroes and broadcast it in every direction and hope it will be eventually intercepted by Alien life "somewhere else". And then we run into problem 2. How do the Aliens figure out how to interpret Scarlett Johansson's binaries? How do they convert her back? A string of 1s and 0s of that size is massively underdetermined: many different interpretations are possible, based on the initial assumptions you make. The Aliens might make the assumption that sets of 1s and 0s should be interpreted as chemical elements (or coordinates, or light waves, or whatever), but those elements could then be arranged (sequentially!) in a vast number of vastly different ways. Not necessarily being familiar with DNA (they might not be DNA based lifeforms) they might end up making 120 pounds of goop, if they even get that close. In short, the only way to get Scarlett Johansson back from the Scarlett Johansson broadcast is to have the right decoding mechanisms in place. We're not going to be able to send along a comprehensible description of the decoding mechanism, because that would necessarily itself have to be decoded by the Aliens, leading to an infinite regress. The way we've solved this problem on earth is through culture. We're all educated by the people already here to be able to decode the information they give us (i.e., we acquire language) through interaction with our environments. Remove the people, and the decoding mechanisms disappear as well -- you can't learn to read from scratch (and for anyone who thinks he can, have a gander at linear A on wikipedia). Therefore, the only way to preserve knowledge through the ages is through a continuous chain of education down the generations. Nothing else will work. This is the only way to spread information to aliens (by direct instruction in the presence of a shared environment), and this is the only way to preserve what we have now for future generations. So, to answer the question, in order to permanently preserve knowledge for the future we need to ensure the permanent survival of culture. The only way to do this is to be fruitful and multiply, leave the solar system, and spread across the universe.
They should rename Pluto to Hades, mixing up mythologies makes me feel like Papa Legba when Baldr was killed by Anansi.
We end up with these jokers because we let ourselves be governed by people who want to accumulate power rather than people who want to accumulate knowledge. The solution is simple: everyone who wants to be in politics shouldn't be allowed to be.
Subjugation masquerading as protection. It's always the same, even if your cultural identity is based around worshipping the constitution.
A woman at an academic institution in the US is getting spied on. This is an important distinction sadly ignored by the attention grabbing headline; not everything every person does in a country should count as a direct proxy for that country. If it did, the act of spying would be a logical contradiction.
Yes, Uwe Boll is a moron without skill famous for making shitty video game adaptations in order to exploit German tax law.
Smart people aren't doing what I want them to!!! Why aren't they making the world better the way I think it should be done?!
Real narcissists leak their own nude photos so they're on the internet forever, being copied from soulless machine to soulless machine over and over, haunting server farms of the deep future long after everyone's forgotten who the pictures are actually of. This is what it means to be immortal.
That is true, and scientists, philosophers, and the educated lay person know this, but for most of the population appeals to authority are major determinants of their beliefs. The whole point of this study is to harness this simple psychological fact to push through the FUD spread by people like the republicans mentioned in the summary. That's why it's published in an open access journal, and that's why everything has been made as transparent as possible. Of course, actual marketing and the involvement of the relevant Justin Bieber for every demographic would be more effective still, but this is a good start.
Researchers "don't fully understand how it works," which means they don't know what the causal mechanism is that provides this benefit, which means you don't either, which means it may have nothing to do with electrolytes (despite the proximity of the word 'electrolyte' to the word 'electricity' in the dictionary). Also, 'to electrocute' means 'to execute with electricity.' While I'm sure there are zombies with mathematical abilities superior to those of some undergrads, I imagine the study's authors went for a different experimental set-up. The ethics committee hearings would be epic.
I'm sorry, can you rephrase your reply to incorporate a comparison in terms of number of football fields? I'm unsure how to determine the relative benefit this extension would provide me with otherwise.
Oh wait, no it's not, which anything actually nerdy, like google glass, will instantly demonstrate. Let the irrelevant battle over terminology ("Oh but this is not nerdy, it's DORKY") begin!