I'm not sure how "conservatives" ever became associated with Christian values.
They're associated with the term, not with the values.
On that topic, FWIW, apparently a lot of churches / religious leaders are taking umbrage at Glenn Beck's rant against religion's traditional support for social justice.
Considering that, 60,000 years ago, humans simply did not live in large groups, I have a hard time believing that writing would have been invented. Writing, initially, required pretty much a dedicated group of scribes (or possibly, in China, some sort of priestly class). Writing seems to have evolved in every place it was developed as a response to the needs of a large urbanized society.
I'm skeptical too. I think writing AWKI was always invented as a bookkeeping system for state or temple taxes, or re-invented to imitate nearby prestigious societies that already wrote.
The notion of a solitary Einstein inventing writing for his own use is just absurd.
We remember the past but we don't remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can't turn an omelet into an egg.
But if time is non-monotonic, wouldn't we un-remember, un-break things, during the backturns?
How would anyone know if time isn't always forward?
It's not the hard core nutjobs that need to be convinced, an impossible task. It's the moderate but disinterested observer who has been befudled by clever marketing.
Also, whenever someone announces that they've discovered that global warming is a big hoax it gets covered in the media and talked about for weeks. But when someone points out that that "discovery" is itself a hoax, the masses never hear about it.
Let's say we can cool the earth one degree by spending a trillion dollars. Is it worth the investment? What do we really get out of it? How many other problems could have been fixed with that money?
OTOH, how much is it going to cost to move all the world's coastal cities to higher ground?
By contrast, there are respected scientists in every other field attempting to disprove established theories, and should their work pan out, they would publish without fear of immediate rejection by their peers.
Assuming their publications applied sound logic to sound evidence. Otherwise they'd be scorned just like other pseudoscientists are.
Well the thought of the building blocks for life to have just "formed" on earth is too far fetched.
Why is it so hard to imagine organic molecules forming on Earth, if they for on asteroids (or wherever the meteorite came from), and, for that matter, in deep space?
I agree with your suggestion that we're probably not alone, though.
The biggest problem with the usual arguments for dualism is that they are vacuous. You identify some phenomenon whose actual cause is unknown, claim that no material cause could cause it, and offer that claim as proof that there must be a soul.
The problem is, "a soul" doesn't explain it either. It doesn't explain *anything* -- give it a try sometime. You can replace "soul" with "boojum" or "fubarker" and the argument makes just as much sense as before (i.e., none). Or you could replace "soul" with "something" and be back where the scientists are: "something" causes it, but no one knows what.
The book Irreducible Mind collects a lot of the best mind-blowing research from the last 150 years into stuff that just does not fit the materialist paradigm.
Would you like to summarize the best argument? The list offered in the review at your link is the same old tripe that doesn't actually justify the claim.
We used to argue about this with the creationists all the time at talk.origins. The dualists always got hammered... there are just too many blatantly obvious linkages between "mind" and brain to handwave away.
But feel free to summarize the best argument the book makes. And brace yourself for a hammering...
All computing systems todays are Turing Machines. Even neural networks. (actually less than Turing Machines, because Turing Machines have infinite memory)
Only our mathematically imagined TMs have infinite memory. Real ones, or computer simulations, don't.
But the same is true for artificial neural networks. The familiar computer simulations are sub-Turing because they are modelled on sub-Turing von Neumann machines, which lack infinite memory. But the same isn't true of our mathematically imagined ANNs: there is a proof that you could emulate a UTM with an ANN using rational numbers for weights, and a proof that you could get trans-Turing capability with an ANN using real numbers for weights (vs. the usual fp approximations).
But neither those nor "real" TMs can actually exist, unless the universe proves to be infinite.
But back to your original point:
I am pretty much sure that the current computational models. I.e. Turing Machine are not enough to explain the human mind.
Human minds also lack infinite storage.
And beyond that, you're speculating. No one has "explained" the human mind, but that hardly proves that it can't be done with a computational model.
Thought experiment:
Suppose you took a working brain, and started swapping out the neurons, one at a time, with manufactured replacements. Is there some point at which that brain quits working?
Do individual neurons have properties that can't be imitated or simulated?
The robot, which is equipped with sensors on each foot, teaches itself to walk
FWIW, people have been doing this kind of thing in simulation for a long time.
Also FWIW, in science fiction movies I have trouble with my suspension of disbelief when armies use the kind of "walkers" you usually see. But one with six or more legs could probably work better than track-laying vehicles in extremely rough terrain.
Probably still not so hot in soft terrain, though.
This is hardly specific to Sun. Somewhere over the past 30 years the notion of a bonus has changed from being a reward for a job well done to being an entitlement - a basic part of the compensation package.
Or rather, that notion has changed among the executive class. Ordinary working stiffs weren't informed, which is why they are outraged at bonuses for failure.
The video embedded at the link above touches on another long-forgotten piece of history: a sketch of the photographers who captured arial views of assemblages of tens of thousands of soldiers returning from WW-I, carefully choreographed and arranged to form a Liberty Bell, a Stature of Liberty, a US flag... as forgotten as the origin of the WW-I term razzle-dazzle.
Fans of old photos should look up the classic survey of the San Francisco earthquake, which were taken by kite-borne cameras.
Oh, and Linux fans will want to check out S.S. War Penguin at the razzle-dazzle link.
I'd really love to see the response of all the people who wanted to pull the plug on Schiavo if Florida decided it would be OK to conduct executions by starvation.
a) Not the same thing.
b) If anyone had suggesting actually putting her to sleep, you creeps would have complained even louder.
She was a political football, pure and simple. The reason it blew up on the Republicans is that everyone, regardless of their political or religious beliefs, hopes to die with dignity.
Considering that Schiavo had no cerebral cortex, it's pretty much a given that she had no awareness.
Given that most of Schiavo's "supporters" think awareness is caused by souls rather than brains, I don't think facts about her condition are going to have much influence on their views.
This is not really surprising if you are aware what a real coma is. There is a lot of states between fully consciousness and complete unconsciousness. In movies, and in soaps you switch between those states in a surprise wake-up. In reality this is much more complex.
FWIW, there was a nice article for non-experts about this in Scientific American a couple of years ago.
That allowed them to confirm that they had, indeed, found a new 'phase' or polymorph of crystalline carbon as well as a type of diamond that had been predicted to exist decades ago, but had never been found in nature until now.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure how "conservatives" ever became associated with Christian values.
They're associated with the term, not with the values.
On that topic, FWIW, apparently a lot of churches / religious leaders are taking umbrage at Glenn Beck's rant against religion's traditional support for social justice.
Take that, O reality with your liberal bias!
You mean there's still a legislative body that isn't a wholly owned subsidiary of their corporations?
Considering that, 60,000 years ago, humans simply did not live in large groups, I have a hard time believing that writing would have been invented. Writing, initially, required pretty much a dedicated group of scribes (or possibly, in China, some sort of priestly class). Writing seems to have evolved in every place it was developed as a response to the needs of a large urbanized society.
I'm skeptical too. I think writing AWKI was always invented as a bookkeeping system for state or temple taxes, or re-invented to imitate nearby prestigious societies that already wrote.
The notion of a solitary Einstein inventing writing for his own use is just absurd.
It was set in the UK, IIRC.
We remember the past but we don't remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can't turn an omelet into an egg.
But if time is non-monotonic, wouldn't we un-remember, un-break things, during the backturns?
How would anyone know if time isn't always forward?
It's not the hard core nutjobs that need to be convinced, an impossible task. It's the moderate but disinterested observer who has been befudled by clever marketing.
Also, whenever someone announces that they've discovered that global warming is a big hoax it gets covered in the media and talked about for weeks. But when someone points out that that "discovery" is itself a hoax, the masses never hear about it.
Let's say we can cool the earth one degree by spending a trillion dollars. Is it worth the investment? What do we really get out of it? How many other problems could have been fixed with that money?
OTOH, how much is it going to cost to move all the world's coastal cities to higher ground?
If lomborg had any faith in the veracity of his "science" he would publish it in peer-reviewed journals.
You mean like the peer-reviewed journals that were systematically fixed by pro-AGW scientists in order to exclude dissenting researchers?
How many examples of that can you adduce? ...The global warming deniers act exactly like creationists do.
By contrast, there are respected scientists in every other field attempting to disprove established theories, and should their work pan out, they would publish without fear of immediate rejection by their peers.
Assuming their publications applied sound logic to sound evidence. Otherwise they'd be scorned just like other pseudoscientists are.
Yay, now I'm a troll too
First boast?
Well the thought of the building blocks for life to have just "formed" on earth is too far fetched.
Why is it so hard to imagine organic molecules forming on Earth, if they for on asteroids (or wherever the meteorite came from), and, for that matter, in deep space?
I agree with your suggestion that we're probably not alone, though.
The biggest problem with the usual arguments for dualism is that they are vacuous. You identify some phenomenon whose actual cause is unknown, claim that no material cause could cause it, and offer that claim as proof that there must be a soul.
The problem is, "a soul" doesn't explain it either. It doesn't explain *anything* -- give it a try sometime. You can replace "soul" with "boojum" or "fubarker" and the argument makes just as much sense as before (i.e., none). Or you could replace "soul" with "something" and be back where the scientists are: "something" causes it, but no one knows what.
The book Irreducible Mind collects a lot of the best mind-blowing research from the last 150 years into stuff that just does not fit the materialist paradigm.
Would you like to summarize the best argument? The list offered in the review at your link is the same old tripe that doesn't actually justify the claim.
We used to argue about this with the creationists all the time at talk.origins. The dualists always got hammered... there are just too many blatantly obvious linkages between "mind" and brain to handwave away.
But feel free to summarize the best argument the book makes. And brace yourself for a hammering...
All computing systems todays are Turing Machines. Even neural networks. (actually less than Turing Machines, because Turing Machines have infinite memory)
Only our mathematically imagined TMs have infinite memory. Real ones, or computer simulations, don't.
But the same is true for artificial neural networks. The familiar computer simulations are sub-Turing because they are modelled on sub-Turing von Neumann machines, which lack infinite memory. But the same isn't true of our mathematically imagined ANNs: there is a proof that you could emulate a UTM with an ANN using rational numbers for weights, and a proof that you could get trans-Turing capability with an ANN using real numbers for weights (vs. the usual fp approximations).
But neither those nor "real" TMs can actually exist, unless the universe proves to be infinite.
But back to your original point:
I am pretty much sure that the current computational models. I.e. Turing Machine are not enough to explain the human mind.
Human minds also lack infinite storage.
And beyond that, you're speculating. No one has "explained" the human mind, but that hardly proves that it can't be done with a computational model.
Thought experiment:
Suppose you took a working brain, and started swapping out the neurons, one at a time, with manufactured replacements. Is there some point at which that brain quits working?
Do individual neurons have properties that can't be imitated or simulated?
The robot, which is equipped with sensors on each foot, teaches itself to walk
FWIW, people have been doing this kind of thing in simulation for a long time.
Also FWIW, in science fiction movies I have trouble with my suspension of disbelief when armies use the kind of "walkers" you usually see. But one with six or more legs could probably work better than track-laying vehicles in extremely rough terrain.
Probably still not so hot in soft terrain, though.
This is hardly specific to Sun. Somewhere over the past 30 years the notion of a bonus has changed from being a reward for a job well done to being an entitlement - a basic part of the compensation package.
Or rather, that notion has changed among the executive class. Ordinary working stiffs weren't informed, which is why they are outraged at bonuses for failure.
The video embedded at the link above touches on another long-forgotten piece of history: a sketch of the photographers who captured arial views of assemblages of tens of thousands of soldiers returning from WW-I, carefully choreographed and arranged to form a Liberty Bell, a Stature of Liberty, a US flag... as forgotten as the origin of the WW-I term razzle-dazzle.
Fans of old photos should look up the classic survey of the San Francisco earthquake, which were taken by kite-borne cameras.
Oh, and Linux fans will want to check out S.S. War Penguin at the razzle-dazzle link.
the full spectrum of opinions on Lucas, including those like Prowse, who still refers to him as a 'master.'
So the retired Darth Vader refers to him as 'master'... can there be any further doubt that he's evil?
I'd really love to see the response of all the people who wanted to pull the plug on Schiavo if Florida decided it would be OK to conduct executions by starvation.
a) Not the same thing.
b) If anyone had suggesting actually putting her to sleep, you creeps would have complained even louder.
She was a political football, pure and simple. The reason it blew up on the Republicans is that everyone, regardless of their political or religious beliefs, hopes to die with dignity.
That settles the Greedo thing.
My GF has been pestering me to buy her a Symbian.
Considering that Schiavo had no cerebral cortex, it's pretty much a given that she had no awareness.
Given that most of Schiavo's "supporters" think awareness is caused by souls rather than brains, I don't think facts about her condition are going to have much influence on their views.
This is not really surprising if you are aware what a real coma is. There is a lot of states between fully consciousness and complete unconsciousness. In movies, and in soaps you switch between those states in a surprise wake-up. In reality this is much more complex.
FWIW, there was a nice article for non-experts about this in Scientific American a couple of years ago.
That allowed them to confirm that they had, indeed, found a new 'phase' or polymorph of crystalline carbon as well as a type of diamond that had been predicted to exist decades ago, but had never been found in nature until now.
"Polymorphs of crystalline carbon are forever."