No, these were my exact words: "Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory?
Already answered: I don't.
Why would you make a distinction?" And now I have to ask why questioning your perception is irrelevant but questioning your memory isn't.
Already answered: see text beginning, "Memory is required to reason, while perception is only required to observe..."
I did a "define:faith" in google
Google doesn't come close to providing a good primary definition - people who were once faithful to something (e.g. their god) are often no longer faithful. Assuming you don't have an OED copy or subscription, you can at least check online for the primary Collins definition:
"strong or unshakeable belief in something, esp without proof or evidence"
So, like I said, you have a strong belief in your memory without proof or evidence. You have faith in your memory.
You are extending the definition of "faith" to cover each of the contradictory hypotheses that I assumed.
In order to contemplate various hypotheses, you have to have faith in your memory. Otherwise you could not be sure that you have been contemplating anything.
Then, when you continue doing science, you are holding onto that faith in your memory.
Assuming that something is true in order to advance an argument requires "faith" in that something?
It is impossible to assume anything without using your memory. Even an argument about memory requires you to use your memory. Perhaps you are so slow that you cannot grasp that, in which case I apologise and am probably wasting your time.
"I'm assuming that all my memories are wrong. Given that...
The alternative is not that your memory is always wrong but that it is unreliable. Geeks and their false binaries!
To think derive any arithmetic result, I must assume the axioms.
To be able to assume anything, you must first assume that memory is reliable. But that itself is an assumption. "Memory is reliable" is as vacuous to logic as "logic is logical".
Do you spend your whole life asking you this question (every time you access one of your memories), having the discussion in your mind, and concluding that you have faith?
You don't have to think about your faith all the time. You just carry on with your life while having faith.
I didn't say [usefulness] is a measure of truth.
So why did you raise it? What are we discussing, if not truth? I might as well say that I prefer the option of unreliability because I prefer the letter U to the letter R. Explain your context or expect your audience to try to fill in your gaps.
Well, construct any scenario, in any time scale, in which there is an observable difference. If there is no scenario in which there is a difference, then the question is irrelevant.
That's as good as three hundred years ago saying, "Construct any scenario in which man can fly. If you can think about no such scenario, then asking questions about human flight is irrelevant." A scenario could involve a memory probe which identifies the brain processing certain events on a minute timescale but rejecting them before they reach short term memory because they identify certain contradictions. We may be continually filtering out a huge chunk of somehow observable reality, subconsciously making simplifying assumptions to maintain consistency.
[I observe] the figment of my imagination that claims to be a memory.
How are you observing it without assuming that it is there?
Thus perceiving it as sufficiently accurate.
Are you sure? It was a split second between results and conclusion. Are you su
Countries from America to India have their fair share of excellent software engineers. Britain has a fair few excellent computer scientists.
But England has fuck all in the way of good software engineers.
We do pissant, easily outsourceable work - which is routinely outsourced.
British software engineers tend to be very uninterested in their discipline, i.e. engineering. They're either geeks who enjoy hacking or low level business types who just want a good job. And the ones who did well at university (who hasn't?) tend to be cunts about it, thinking this entitles them to respect even when they've not coded for shit in the real world.
And I say this as an British ex-software engineer who found that British engineers - but not foreigners coming to work in Britain - were often quite disappointing to work with. I don't often tip my hat to the American way, but US software engineering ethos is far nicer.
Oh, please, don't be condescending. That's ridiculous. Either respond honestly, or don't do it at all.
OK, I see a light-hearted introduction isn't your thing. That's sad. Never met an entirely serious man who has anything worthwhile to say, but let's see what else is on the plate...
I believe you. 28 Slashdot posts so far today. It doesn't seem that you are even trying to concentrate.
Gee, sorry for chilling, uh, mom. They were almost all inane and must have taken a few seconds each. I did make about 5 minutes' effort on your post, though I can see it was probably wasted.
That was not my question. I asked why do you place higher certainty on your perception than your memory, not which one is more useful.
No. You questioned the difference. I don't place so much certainty on my perception. It's quite irrelevant anyway.
An assumption is just that, an assumption.
And there are categories of assumption, as illustrated.
"Faith" is an unquestionable belief, an assumption isn't.
What rot. Faith of all sorts is tested and rejected all the time. I think you're trying to build a strawman to fit what I assume are preconceptions about religion.
If I assume that my senses and memory are worth anything, I arrive to a set of conclusions. If I assume the contrary, I arrive to another set of conclusions.
Even to argue like this requires a faith ("assumption" about some aspect of reality without evidence) in your memory.
It just happens that one of those sets of conclusions is empty.
It's not empty. It just means that you perhaps can't define life and reason and science in the way you may want.
and now I'm considering the other assumption, which I haven't finished exploring.
Recalling that you must assume that your memory is reliable in order to be able to rationally consider whether it is reliable. What's more, I'm betting you're going to spend the majority of your life assuming it despite a total lack of evidence - i.e. faith.
Usefulness is not a measure of truth.
When did I say it was?
"decision... on the basis of which one is more useful."
Why so arbitrary?
Feel free to construct an scenario in which the competing answers to your question lead to observably different results.
I don't see why one has to be in the position of constructing an experiment in order to usefully ask a question. It's a stupid argument which could have been used (and, indeed, has been used) to defeat all sorts of hypotheses which later experimentation has revealed to be true. For one thing, the question as posed is too vague to create an experiment.
We know far too little about how memory works to try to figure out whether there might be an experiment to suggest that humans e.g. repeatedly forget certain inconsistencies. We may not be able to prove that memory is reliable, but we might be able to show that it is in some fundamental way unreliable such that we have so far all been missing some crucial aspect of reality.
Let me simplify this for you. I "observe" (for some definition of "observe") my memory (whatever that is),
Not good enough. How do you observe it? What is it exactly that you're observing?
and perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate.
How do you perceive that without relying on your memory? If you mean that right this moment you see no inconsistencies, that could just be because you've forgotten them.
Even if my memory is not accurate and my perception of it is just an illusion, I still perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate.
Only by assuming that your memory is accurate can you perceive i
I am touched that you are so keen to want me to respond;-). I'm out of productive concentration today, so here goes...
Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory?
Memory is required to reason, while perception is only required to observe. We can do mathematics in our mind's eye (per Plato) but only because we possess memory. In particular, without memory we could identify neither contradiction nor perform philosophical induction. Memory is something more fundamental than any perception we have of the external world.
Why would you use a loaded word like "faith", instead of, let's say, "assumption"?
Faith is a type of assumption. Consider: 1) An applied assumption about an imagined world - an axiom; 2) An applied assumption about the real world based on observation but lacking theory - a working hypothesis; 3) An applied assumption about the real world lacking any evidence - faith.
I'm making a cold, calculated decision between the two assumptions, on the basis of which one is more useful.
Usefulness is not a measure of truth.
To prove that the question is not pointless, you need to show that the answers lead to [observably] different results.
OK, you're proposing a definition for what makes a question "not pointless". Various responses:
1) Given enough time, whatever humans do, I don't think the universe will be observably different. Any two alternatives only make a fleeting difference, just as a constantly tricked mind may be repeatedly remembering an inconsistency then forgetting that it has ever identified that consistency. Your little "observably" is implicitly considered below, though it may be that we're just not yet sufficiently advanced to devise an experiment to identify inconsistencies;
2) A question doesn't have to admit an answer to be worth asking. I expect that sort of whining from engineers, but as a mathematician, you should know better - hopefully you are right now thinking of a list of "prove xyz" requests which cannot be answered except with "I cannot do that, and here is why...". You could argue that the request is then badly formed, but sometimes you only know that after thinking about the question, and it's more stimulating and less limiting to phrase the matter in terms of a possibly unanswerable question than it is to simply say "oh btw here is an unattainable goal";
3) I want to know my own nature. It makes a difference to me. If I can be somehow taken out of my body and be shown that my mind is being occasionally tricked, I want to know this. Perhaps there's a way I can identify fight the trickery, if only I train my mind - and this brings me on to...
a) The fact that, indeed, our mind does often create false memories - this is good motivation;
b) To someone in the latter stages of dementia, there may be little difference between reality and nonsense created by the mind. To the sufferer, the effect may be unobservable - he is in exactly the position you describe as "pointless" to consider. But to the external observer, the effect is not only obvious but usually thoroughly distressing. Is it inconceivable to take one more step back - to consider a position extrinsic to the normal mind as normal minds can find one wrt/ Alzheimer's patient? And maybe there are physical processes which could allow us to admit the existence of such a position.
I barely involve myself in Wikipedia and I've never deleted a thing from it. It would be akin to burning a bunch of schoolkids' rough class notes: not very warming.
But I remark on it because it's so popular and guaranteed to elicit unwarranted passion from some dork.
Also, you may be frothing internally. The NHS can help with that.
So far all we've established is that I don't like bad writing. Maybe I make it better. Maybe I just sit back and mock it. Maybe I was Willy on Wheels. When you conjecture, you might as well conjecture big.
Wikipedia groans under the weight of [people who you think make it lighter]
Now that was just funny all by its lonesome.
Who else would have even made the connection to Wikipedia?
When discussing the art of communication in the context of summarising existing information, it seems relevant to mention the biggest effort in summarising existing information that the world has ever seen.
I agree entirely, but would offer "profit", derived from profectus. This is the past participle of of proficere - lit. to make forward, i.e. to progress.
If only, when businessmen and their armchair evangelists cried out, "The only purpose of business should be to make profit!" they actually meant, "The only purpose of business should be to make progress!"
The intelligentsia are increasingly detached from the needs of the people. Those who follow them are even less relevant. It would be as productive for us to talk about either.
8.... Too much babble. How about "An incubator will develop proofs of concept or working models for licensing";
Pot, meet kettle. How about, "An incubator helps gets shit started." Oh, but then we wouldn't need the sentence at all, because that IS what Incubator means!
This is a wonderful illustration of the hamster wheel turning in a yankee brain when pushed gently. You are either more expressive than I give Americans credit for, or an observant Englishman.
It's "innovation" that really gets my goat - "drive" is just yellow icing on the turd. But your suggestion would produce the most degenerate adjectival phrase. A phrase is more than a sequence of words, except in the dictionaries which try to claim otherwise.
Obviously to Mimic Life, you ignorant twit.
That's the meaning. I might as well have asked you, "What's the purpose of a cat?" and received the response, "To have four legs and a tail," you armpit-smelling bureaucrat.
Fortunously us US citizens utilize our amazing organic information processing units and thus can forgive a few errors
It's true - Americans forgive the minor errors and give their full support to all the major ones.
Inspired by life. Are you Daft?
I refer the sewer-dwelling evangelist to my previous answer.
You might want to ask your doctor about a subscription to porn and blood pressure meds.
Slashdot Mirror
No, these were my exact words: "Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory?
Already answered: I don't.
Why would you make a distinction?" And now I have to ask why questioning your perception is irrelevant but questioning your memory isn't.
Already answered: see text beginning, "Memory is required to reason, while perception is only required to observe..."
I did a "define:faith" in google
Google doesn't come close to providing a good primary definition - people who were once faithful to something (e.g. their god) are often no longer faithful. Assuming you don't have an OED copy or subscription, you can at least check online for the primary Collins definition:
"strong or unshakeable belief in something, esp without proof or evidence"
So, like I said, you have a strong belief in your memory without proof or evidence. You have faith in your memory.
You are extending the definition of "faith" to cover each of the contradictory hypotheses that I assumed.
In order to contemplate various hypotheses, you have to have faith in your memory. Otherwise you could not be sure that you have been contemplating anything.
Then, when you continue doing science, you are holding onto that faith in your memory.
Assuming that something is true in order to advance an argument requires "faith" in that something?
It is impossible to assume anything without using your memory. Even an argument about memory requires you to use your memory. Perhaps you are so slow that you cannot grasp that, in which case I apologise and am probably wasting your time.
"I'm assuming that all my memories are wrong. Given that...
The alternative is not that your memory is always wrong but that it is unreliable. Geeks and their false binaries!
To think derive any arithmetic result, I must assume the axioms.
To be able to assume anything, you must first assume that memory is reliable. But that itself is an assumption. "Memory is reliable" is as vacuous to logic as "logic is logical".
Do you spend your whole life asking you this question (every time you access one of your memories), having the discussion in your mind, and concluding that you have faith?
You don't have to think about your faith all the time. You just carry on with your life while having faith.
I didn't say [usefulness] is a measure of truth.
So why did you raise it? What are we discussing, if not truth? I might as well say that I prefer the option of unreliability because I prefer the letter U to the letter R. Explain your context or expect your audience to try to fill in your gaps.
Well, construct any scenario, in any time scale, in which there is an observable difference. If there is no scenario in which there is a difference, then the question is irrelevant.
That's as good as three hundred years ago saying, "Construct any scenario in which man can fly. If you can think about no such scenario, then asking questions about human flight is irrelevant." A scenario could involve a memory probe which identifies the brain processing certain events on a minute timescale but rejecting them before they reach short term memory because they identify certain contradictions. We may be continually filtering out a huge chunk of somehow observable reality, subconsciously making simplifying assumptions to maintain consistency.
[I observe] the figment of my imagination that claims to be a memory.
How are you observing it without assuming that it is there?
Thus perceiving it as sufficiently accurate.
Are you sure? It was a split second between results and conclusion. Are you su
Countries from America to India have their fair share of excellent software engineers. Britain has a fair few excellent computer scientists.
But England has fuck all in the way of good software engineers.
We do pissant, easily outsourceable work - which is routinely outsourced.
British software engineers tend to be very uninterested in their discipline, i.e. engineering. They're either geeks who enjoy hacking or low level business types who just want a good job. And the ones who did well at university (who hasn't?) tend to be cunts about it, thinking this entitles them to respect even when they've not coded for shit in the real world.
And I say this as an British ex-software engineer who found that British engineers - but not foreigners coming to work in Britain - were often quite disappointing to work with. I don't often tip my hat to the American way, but US software engineering ethos is far nicer.
Oh, please, don't be condescending. That's ridiculous. Either respond honestly, or don't do it at all.
OK, I see a light-hearted introduction isn't your thing. That's sad. Never met an entirely serious man who has anything worthwhile to say, but let's see what else is on the plate...
I believe you. 28 Slashdot posts so far today. It doesn't seem that you are even trying to concentrate.
Gee, sorry for chilling, uh, mom. They were almost all inane and must have taken a few seconds each. I did make about 5 minutes' effort on your post, though I can see it was probably wasted.
That was not my question. I asked why do you place higher certainty on your perception than your memory, not which one is more useful.
No. You questioned the difference. I don't place so much certainty on my perception. It's quite irrelevant anyway.
An assumption is just that, an assumption.
And there are categories of assumption, as illustrated.
"Faith" is an unquestionable belief, an assumption isn't.
What rot. Faith of all sorts is tested and rejected all the time. I think you're trying to build a strawman to fit what I assume are preconceptions about religion.
If I assume that my senses and memory are worth anything, I arrive to a set of conclusions. If I assume the contrary, I arrive to another set of conclusions.
Even to argue like this requires a faith ("assumption" about some aspect of reality without evidence) in your memory.
It just happens that one of those sets of conclusions is empty.
It's not empty. It just means that you perhaps can't define life and reason and science in the way you may want.
and now I'm considering the other assumption, which I haven't finished exploring.
Recalling that you must assume that your memory is reliable in order to be able to rationally consider whether it is reliable. What's more, I'm betting you're going to spend the majority of your life assuming it despite a total lack of evidence - i.e. faith.
Usefulness is not a measure of truth.
When did I say it was?
"decision... on the basis of which one is more useful."
Why so arbitrary?
Feel free to construct an scenario in which the competing answers to your question lead to observably different results.
I don't see why one has to be in the position of constructing an experiment in order to usefully ask a question. It's a stupid argument which could have been used (and, indeed, has been used) to defeat all sorts of hypotheses which later experimentation has revealed to be true. For one thing, the question as posed is too vague to create an experiment.
We know far too little about how memory works to try to figure out whether there might be an experiment to suggest that humans e.g. repeatedly forget certain inconsistencies. We may not be able to prove that memory is reliable, but we might be able to show that it is in some fundamental way unreliable such that we have so far all been missing some crucial aspect of reality.
Let me simplify this for you. I "observe" (for some definition of "observe") my memory (whatever that is),
Not good enough. How do you observe it? What is it exactly that you're observing?
and perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate.
How do you perceive that without relying on your memory? If you mean that right this moment you see no inconsistencies, that could just be because you've forgotten them.
Even if my memory is not accurate and my perception of it is just an illusion, I still perceive it to be (sufficiently) accurate.
Only by assuming that your memory is accurate can you perceive i
n/t
And madness seems like madness to those who are insightful.
Or perhaps these self-appointed judges are mere dullards assuming themselves to have insight.
Exhibit A:
Anyway, are you honestly saying that it is better to post on /. while not high?
For you? Definitely.
Exhibit B:
[Your posts] could be even worse when you're not high.
You failed to maintain my interest. Ta ta.
back. hm, feel free to pound me with retorts to the above, i haven't read it through.
Well said.
I am touched that you are so keen to want me to respond ;-). I'm out of productive concentration today, so here goes...
Why do you place a higher certainty on your perception than on your memory?
Memory is required to reason, while perception is only required to observe. We can do mathematics in our mind's eye (per Plato) but only because we possess memory. In particular, without memory we could identify neither contradiction nor perform philosophical induction. Memory is something more fundamental than any perception we have of the external world.
Why would you use a loaded word like "faith", instead of, let's say, "assumption"?
Faith is a type of assumption. Consider:
1) An applied assumption about an imagined world - an axiom;
2) An applied assumption about the real world based on observation but lacking theory - a working hypothesis;
3) An applied assumption about the real world lacking any evidence - faith.
I'm making a cold, calculated decision between the two assumptions, on the basis of which one is more useful.
Usefulness is not a measure of truth.
To prove that the question is not pointless, you need to show that the answers lead to [observably] different results.
OK, you're proposing a definition for what makes a question "not pointless". Various responses:
1) Given enough time, whatever humans do, I don't think the universe will be observably different. Any two alternatives only make a fleeting difference, just as a constantly tricked mind may be repeatedly remembering an inconsistency then forgetting that it has ever identified that consistency. Your little "observably" is implicitly considered below, though it may be that we're just not yet sufficiently advanced to devise an experiment to identify inconsistencies;
2) A question doesn't have to admit an answer to be worth asking. I expect that sort of whining from engineers, but as a mathematician, you should know better - hopefully you are right now thinking of a list of "prove xyz" requests which cannot be answered except with "I cannot do that, and here is why...". You could argue that the request is then badly formed, but sometimes you only know that after thinking about the question, and it's more stimulating and less limiting to phrase the matter in terms of a possibly unanswerable question than it is to simply say "oh btw here is an unattainable goal";
3) I want to know my own nature. It makes a difference to me. If I can be somehow taken out of my body and be shown that my mind is being occasionally tricked, I want to know this. Perhaps there's a way I can identify fight the trickery, if only I train my mind - and this brings me on to...
a) The fact that, indeed, our mind does often create false memories - this is good motivation;
b) To someone in the latter stages of dementia, there may be little difference between reality and nonsense created by the mind. To the sufferer, the effect may be unobservable - he is in exactly the position you describe as "pointless" to consider. But to the external observer, the effect is not only obvious but usually thoroughly distressing. Is it inconceivable to take one more step back - to consider a position extrinsic to the normal mind as normal minds can find one wrt/ Alzheimer's patient? And maybe there are physical processes which could allow us to admit the existence of such a position.
i gtg...
I know the BSDs are a little behind but I could have sworn they'd solved the Giant Lock problem.
The post you have just made could have been made to Compuserve around the time said service was running on VAXclusters.
"be who you are" does not mean mass murder
OK, it means "be who you are except when DNS-and-BIND disapproves".
When you live in a virtual UN
You live among a bunch of upper-middle class humdrum bureaucrats waving around their Laissez-passers like they own the world?
for being true to your own culture
My spidey-stats-sense says that being true to your culture means staying in the USA.
Of course, what you're implying is that people should behave like their ancestors rather than learn and adapt. And that's just awful.
(Thanks for giving me a target for my morning grumpiness. You are proving unchallenging, however.)
I barely involve myself in Wikipedia and I've never deleted a thing from it. It would be akin to burning a bunch of schoolkids' rough class notes: not very warming.
But I remark on it because it's so popular and guaranteed to elicit unwarranted passion from some dork.
Also, you may be frothing internally. The NHS can help with that.
These days it's all about dumb terminals and VAXclusters.
So, you're a deleter, then.
So far all we've established is that I don't like bad writing. Maybe I make it better. Maybe I just sit back and mock it. Maybe I was Willy on Wheels. When you conjecture, you might as well conjecture big.
Wikipedia groans under the weight of [people who you think make it lighter]
Now that was just funny all by its lonesome.
Who else would have even made the connection to Wikipedia?
When discussing the art of communication in the context of summarising existing information, it seems relevant to mention the biggest effort in summarising existing information that the world has ever seen.
For you, I shall aim lower next time.
I agree entirely, but would offer "profit", derived from profectus. This is the past participle of of proficere - lit. to make forward, i.e. to progress .
If only, when businessmen and their armchair evangelists cried out, "The only purpose of business should be to make profit!" they actually meant, "The only purpose of business should be to make progress!"
I do appreciate the sentiment, though.
Assuming that today I am high, my posts are even better when I'm not high.
Your past two retorts have been boring. You have one more try if you can think up something more witty, otherwise I'm closing this tab.
Insight always seems like madness to the dull.
Anyway, are you honestly saying that it is better to post on /. while not high?
It's those damn civil service exams. They've turned from testing wit to confirming robotic obeisance to a particular worldview.
The intelligentsia are increasingly detached from the needs of the people. Those who follow them are even less relevant. It would be as productive for us to talk about either.
The universe is not connected to anyone in any meaningful way. I wouldn't want reality to feel in my debt.
8. ... Too much babble. How about "An incubator will develop proofs of concept or working models for licensing";
Pot, meet kettle. How about, "An incubator helps gets shit started." Oh, but then we wouldn't need the sentence at all, because that IS what Incubator means!
This is a wonderful illustration of the hamster wheel turning in a yankee brain when pushed gently. You are either more expressive than I give Americans credit for, or an observant Englishman.
Yeah, I know. Like I said, I got out on the wrong side of the bed.
I intend to use this thread this morning to distract myself and release my inner minor irritation.
Yes, a real response, bravo.
What if it's the drive you're innovating?
It's "innovation" that really gets my goat - "drive" is just yellow icing on the turd. But your suggestion would produce the most degenerate adjectival phrase. A phrase is more than a sequence of words, except in the dictionaries which try to claim otherwise.
Obviously to Mimic Life, you ignorant twit.
That's the meaning. I might as well have asked you, "What's the purpose of a cat?" and received the response, "To have four legs and a tail," you armpit-smelling bureaucrat.
Fortunously us US citizens utilize our amazing organic information processing units and thus can forgive a few errors
It's true - Americans forgive the minor errors and give their full support to all the major ones.
Inspired by life. Are you Daft?
I refer the sewer-dwelling evangelist to my previous answer.
You might want to ask your doctor about a subscription to porn and blood pressure meds.
Long live the NHS!