To update my own post: I did some more reading, and it is apparently no longer practical to really "buy in" via mining.
In the early days of Bitcoin, it was easy for anyone to find new blocks using standard CPUs. As more and more people started mining, the difficulty of finding new blocks has greatly increased to the point where the average time for a CPU to find a single block can be many years. The only cost-effective method of mining is using a high-end graphics card with special software (see also Why a GPU mines faster than a CPU) and/or joining a mining pool. Since solo CPU mining is essentially useless, it was removed from the GUI of the Bitcoin software.
That makes it even more favourable for the early miners, but still not a ponzi scheme. A BTC bought by a new participant is irrevocable theirs and is gained (almost) immediatly and has nothing to do with return on a (feigned) investment.
Can people please stop saying this? It's getting old. No transfer of money or assets takes place between new and old investors. The early coins are simply easier to get. In fact, you could argue that the early investors are hurt by more people jumping on board. The low hanging fruit is gone, and a larger pool means the time required per coin grows faster with more people activly mining them. Of course, they realisitically benefit more in the long run by having a large active community around the currency. (I'm not denying that early investors had it much better, but that does NOT equal ponzi scheme.)
Also, it is designed to work down to any number of decimal places. The hard cap on the number of BTC that can exist is designed to prevent endless money printing, which is far more likely to cause deflation. Once the coin cap is reached, the value of one BTC in "real" currency GROWS, but the consumer uses less of their coin to purchase the same goods. E.g. evnetually with sufficent growth in user base it may cost 10 bit-cents for a big mac rather than $1, then that falls to 1 cent, then.1 then.01 and so on. (Obviously it doesn't have to go in factors of 10.) This is hardly deflation - but yes it's also good for the early adoptors.
I'm far from a BTC expert and have nothing to do with them. I have no idea whether or not the stated goals will work out, but willful ignorance repeated over and over is annoying. Hopefully calling it out will do more good than blowing a mod point.
So that is not an "it cannot be done", but a "we have no clue whether it can be done or not, but we know it cannot be done with anything we tried so far and we have tried some pretty impressive things". This means it may turn out to be impossible, it may turn out that one specific idea was missing or that we will never know either way (by incompleteness).
I just did some reading on the topic and reached more or less the same conclusion you expressed in the quote. (Pretty wiped out from work, so I totally forgot that you said that.) It seems that most of the effort has quite understandably been devoted to focused problems in a narrow domain, and the problem of moving forward is that such systems fall apart outside of their domain or when exposed to more general/human oriented data.
This quote on machine translation illustrates it fairly well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-complete)
To translate accurately, a machine must be able to understand the text. It must be able to follow the author's argument, so it must have some ability to reason. It must have extensive world knowledge so that it knows what is being discussed — it must at least be familiar with all the same commonsense facts that the average human translator knows. Some of this knowledge is in the form of facts that can be explicitly represented, but some knowledge is unconscious and closely tied to the human body: for example, the machine may need to understand how an ocean makes one feel to accurately translate a specific metaphor in the text. It must also model the authors' goals, intentions, and emotional states to accurately reproduce them in a new language. In short, the machine is required to have wide variety of human intellectual skills, including reason, commonsense knowledge and the intuitions that underlie motion and manipulation, perception, and social intelligence. Machine translation, therefore, is believed to be AI-complete: it may require strong AI to be done as well as humans can do it.
So in short, we need more general AIs (including functions that will let them understand and "feel" emotions) and to actually have them "live" in the context we wish them to understand. Having them "grow up" (not physically, necessarily) a live with a parent experiencing the human world would be a good start. I doubt Watson would have broken down in the same way had this been his learning phase, rather than just being fed raw data. (I also recall that when fed Urban Dictionary he totally lacked the context for when to use the various forms of slang. Having actually experienced "life" in some form appears to directly address that kind of problem.)
I would say this is the definition (or at least a major part of) your "something else". I don't see any particular reason why that can't be achieved with sufficent time and effort - it seems we are reaching the point where we can begin to attempt it, or at least first steps in such directions.
My working definition of intelligence is just an information system with the ability to self reference, i.e. some equivilent of the 'this' keyword*. I generally consider the self reference to be emergant behaviour from a mechanical/determinanistic process, which has the ability to potentially make the process non-determinaistic (or give illusions thereof, a major point I have yet to pin down.). I don't have a hard time believing that some time in the future we'll be able to produce self aware intelligent machines, although obviously a lot more work is required.
(*This is also my definition for reality/existance at the n-1 level - with the highest level n being pure awareness without sense of self. The "twist" referred to at the end of my last post being the introduction of self reference. Hopefully that also clarifies why I'm arguing that everything is MADE of consciousness without necessarily DEMONSTRATING it.)
I'd be interested to know why your friend thinks it can't be done. What is wrong with the types of machines we are building now that they can't be considered intelligent with an arbitrary number of orders of magnitude worth of improvements? We certainly seem to be making good progress breaking down barriers, although I don't follow AI especially closely. (As a programmer I'd like to think I focus on the patterns aspect of things much more than just hacking together code. I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about how many mystical seeming concepts can be best explained to ordinary people in terms of programming concepts and design patterns, so I find what you said a little surprising. Although in my more cynical moments I despair of most people ever taking the necessary brain cycles to bother trying.)
Although I didn't address it, your explanation for your conclusions about presence of intelligence makes good sense. I reach different conclusions only because I'm working from an additional (spiritual) body of knowledge which many people don't have the benefit of any "evidence" for.
Of course this does not preclude "lesser attachments", but I would expect if they were common, some animals with human-like intelligence would occasionally emerge even in non-primates. So far, parts of human intelligence are observable in primates, some birds, and some other animals. But never the full range. Whether that is a biological limitation or a limitation of the "other component" is unclear of course.
Just because I apparently can't help myself: I would say the parts you mentioned are observed in birds and other animals ARE the other exmaples you're looking for. There's nothing to say there has to be multiple equally advanced examples of the same thing present at the same time, or that more examples won't evolve given enough time.
The rational discussion is much appreciated. Likewise, this is the longest I've managed to go on these sorts of topics in a while, without it breaking down in some way or another.
Yes, they could be. It just seems very unlikely to me as the planning intelligence and tool user part is missing. Note that this is a subjective judgment by me and may of course be wrong.
Well you are welcome to your opinion, but you are holding into a very strict definition of consciousness. I agree that planning and tool use are key components of consciousness as demonstrated by humans and primates. But IMO you need an argument as to why abstract non-physical consciousness must always demonstrate these attributes.
It seems like you are using the word consciousness in place of intelligence. We can agree that only humans/primates/etc demonstrate intelligence, but I can't comprehend any definition of the world that excludes lower animals and insects from being considered conscious. They clearly have senses with which they observe the world and make actions based on input, even if a lot of the decision making is hard wired and lacking intelligence. They usually have brain activity which can be measured.
Actually, I just realised you are probably using consciousness in the sense of "awareness of self" e.g. the mirror test. I disagree with the mirror test for various reasons, the most significant of which is covered at the end of this post.
It is also possible that consciousness can exist in a non-effective state where it is a mere observer. Most humans have made that observation when their body does something they do not actively participate in and that is more of a simple reflex. For example, I jumped away from a car that was about to run me over on a zebra-crossing, pure body action, my mind took several seconds to fact up with what was happening and I was annoyed during the jumping, because I noticed the loss of control immediately. As I was immediately annoyed, I do not buy the theory that consciousness always a second or so behind. I rather think it has some communication delay in causing actions, but the sensory input is immediate. That would incidentally fit an attachment via quantum-effects very well, as influencing statistical probabilities always takes time.
I have experienced a range of similar things, but there is a much simpler explanation. We know the brain is made up of different parts/layers with different ages, complexities and processing speeds. A complex abstract thought chain takes a lot longer to process than the fight or flight reaction.
When I had a car accident, the first thing I was aware of was, "ALERT, YOU'RE SCREWED" before I even knew there was another car. Then the details began to flow in over time: first awareness of basic sense inputs, then their meanings, then advanced calculations such as where I was going to be hit and where my car was going to end up after the hit. All this means is that my lizard brain can shoot me full of adrenelin faster than sense input can be processed, that the raw sense input is faster to process than actually extracting meaning from it, and getting this meaning is faster than performing calculations and making estimates based up data. No quantum interface required. (As previously mentioned I'm not against the idea, but don't believe it applies here. I would generally say that any quantum interfact would be where/how humans exercise their choice over the world, not lose it via automatic reactions.)
You'll be skeptical about this but anyway: both the observer and the observed are the same consciousness twisted upon itself in such a way that the illusion of seperateness comes into being. It is in fact this "twist" that is the creation of duality out of the absolute. This observation is made as one of the final steps in the immediate moments before enlightenment. I had a reference for that but I can't find it right now.
I am implying that the physical side and the non-physical side must both contribute a significant part of the hybrid construct, otherwise it falls apart.
Definitely both parts play significant roles in humans and animals, but you're assuming that abstract, non physical consciousness can only manifest as physical consciousness. There is nothing to say it can't manifest as e.g. insects, plans, inanimate objects. I'm not saying that these exhibit consciousness according to the definition you provided, simply that they are (could be) a different type of projection of consciousness into our physical world.
I was thinking something a little more extreme than that:) For example, if a scientist was able to have direct perception of subatomic particles and their interactions, it would be a lot easier to figure things out then design a real world experiment to prove the findings. Of course, developing such a perception is by no means easy. I have never heard anyone credible claim that specifically percieving particles can be done, but I suspect it can on the basis that it is possible to develop other "extra sensory" perceptions.
Of course, then the challange is to be both a qualified particle physicist and exceptionally skilled meditator at the same time...
And yeah, a lot of what many people say are mostly the same thing in slightly different ways... which was half the problem I had when talking to others about such things..
Not just slightly different, but complete polar opposites. E.g. "we are all one" against "there is no self". This can be a hugely divisive issue, but really they are both just opposites of the same duality. A good way to find out how open minded supposedly "open minded" people are:)
Understood. Determining the difference between delusion and geniune insight (especially from the outside) is a MAJOR challange, one that greatly impedes the acceptance of alternative subjects.
The point that I forgot to make was this: the hard scientific mindset examines each tree one by one and comes up with a possible explanation, then rejects it because "it is not a forest!". I.e. supernatural phenomina can be explained away individually with plausable explanations, but this denies the possibility of any bigger picture. (There are many claims of such phenomina that are outright hoaxes or have well understood scientific causes - another major challange - but not all.)
There are many people out there with many crazy theories that seem to be contradictory. When the bigger picture is seen, it is revealed that they are actually mostly saying the same thing in different ways (with a health helping of poor understanding, poor explanations and being right on some parts/wrong on others, compounded by the immense difficulty of explaining this "big picture".
IMO science would progress a lot faster and further if more scientists had more knowledge (by which I mean experience) of spiritual concepts.
Only if you insist on rejecting any possibility that evidence can exist, because you're only accepting one form of evidence as valid.
I doubt whether reincarnation or other similar spiritual topics will ever be proven in the manner of hard science - i.e. in a way that you can write papers about and measure with machines. (Any machine that could make the necessary developments would probably only be possible after a large portion of the population took themselves outside of the box.) However it is very possible (but not easy) for any individual to prove it themselves, on the basis of their own senses and experience.
I argue that there are well documented, unchanging processes that have existed for thousands of years, that when followed lead the individual through a set of documented stages which culminate in the individual having all the direct proof they need, of reincarnation and more. In particular I am talking about meditation and Buddhism (religious trappings optional.)
There are several complications: it is not a short or easy process and cannot be completed on a whim, the end results can never be shared with anyone else in the manner of hard evidence, and that someone who has completed the process is now in the possession of considerable knowledge which disinclines them to make the effort to convince sceptics.
You can argue that the plural of anecdote is not data. But at some point once a statistically significant amoung of people stand up and say "I did X and Y happened" in enough seperate times and places (backed up by your own experience), you have a solid argument for believing the implications of Y and having people try X.
Karma does not involve judgement or punishment, any more than gravity "punishes" you when you jump off a cliff. It is a simple impersonal force that behaves according to well defined rules. Karma is the same - the principle states that the intention behind actions has an impact on higher spiritual/energetic dimensions/realities. These realities behave according to laws of cause and effect just the same as we know in physics (although obviously very different laws).
I'm not 100% sure on what you said about basic signal theory, but I'm pretty sure you're describing the basis of how actions end up having karmic impacts. If you accept that intention/thoughts behind an action exist and are mesureable (they are, even just scientifically in the brain) it is not inconcievable that this can have carry on effects to other, unknown, sets of rules/realities.
I think of it like harmonic resonance. If you have a tuning fork and set it vibrating then place it near another still fork, the 2nd one will begin to vibrate. That is basically how it works: like causes like. (Obviously the underlying physics behind how the "vibration" propergates is different.)
Are you trying to say that humans must reincarnate as something with roughly human intelligence due to the magnitue of their consciousness? I disagree with this, on the basis that in the higher realms, time and space are not relevent (and don't exist).Any measurement of magnitude does not apply. The measure of similarity is nature, which is basically the sum total of the nature (intentions) that has "previously" been demonstrated by that "individual". I definitely think there is a lot to learn about how this fits with quantum behaviour in the brain.
So my guess would be, that they estimated in 10 billion years (give or take some) a particular local area of space time will experience enough higgs bosons having decayed that the higgs field colapses. It would be the collapse of the higgs field that propergates and 'infects' the rest of space time. In the wake of the collapse, we would be left with a very different universe.
There are some major problems with this, in particular that particles aren't really a "thing" as such, they are just a label we give to ripples in a field that behave in certain ways and can act as a discrete object at times. (This is certainly the case for the virtual particles, I think it also applies to the rest although it is possible they may have their own existance independant of a field.) You could argue that we could still have these field ripples decay (since we know particles DO decay) and therefor have the higgs bosons drop out of existance enough to cause a problem - but as far as I know, they are being constantly emitted and absorbed in the processing of 'managing' the higgs field, and thus are constantly being (re)created and so should not be vulnerable to decaying.
Reading teaches you grammar far moreso than vice versa (so I guess I agree with you). I never learnt (m)any grammar rules BECAUSE of reading. I started with adult books at a young age and consequently didn't pay a shred of attention in english classes. I'm far from perfect but I'd like to think I can outdo your average Joe for the most part.
The Vertex 2s had an insane failure rate according to the guy at the shop. 2 RMAs later, I'm on a vertex 4 which hasn't presented issues for me (or others that I know of).
+1 internets to you sir. I find such situations endlessly amusing (and a little tragic).
To be fair, I was stuck in one myself for a long time. As a result of being able to understand both sides of the fence, I'm in the process of formulating a rational argument as to why disbelief needs to be suspended, without being brainwashing yourself. To that end, I'm "borrowing" your post as it sums the whole thing up nicely.
It really depends how verbatim it is. I haven't seen the prompt in question - but the changing of a single word (or even just the tense of a word, although not applicable in this specific case) is enough to completely alter the meaning of a dialogue.
In this case, the stock standard (and correct) fix is to simply label the buttons Yes/No. (Or something like "Stop " and "Resume ".) The text doesn't have to be changed strictly speaking, although it could use some improvement e.g. to state what it is being cancelled.
If Google actually did allow the GP's example in G+ exactly as quoted there, someone was asleep at the wheel. This is basic stuff and not a new concept. (Sure there are technical challenges - someone probably just called a standard dialog API. But writing or integrating an API library that doesn't trivially allow you to select basic button sets such as yes/no vs ok/cancel is bordering on the criminal.)
You almost have a point but missed the key factor: he isn't stealing your physical art.
The correct analogy for what GP is saying would be if he decided your art was too expensive, took a photo with his phone and then printed out a copy when he got home.
I certainly agree this is theft of a kind - you don't get the income you normally would. However you still keep your art and can do whatever you want, including sell copies.
GP's argument is that if someone is selling their art in a steetside stall and charging $1M for some sketches that took a few hours with no real effort put into them, the artist has no real justification to be surprised when people snap pictures instead. (Just to cover the bases: the printed copy is obviously an inferior copy, whilst in the case of digital copying the copy is prefect or even better in the case of killing DRM. That's obviously a difference - I was just attempting to clarify in terms of your analogy)
This is just a prefect opportunity to expand on a basic example that seems to be in about every textbook ever: the polymorphism demonstration with an Animal parent class and the makeNoise() function.
Build a simple app that has a list of animals. Selecting an animal displays a picture and plays the sound. After showing them a very quick VB style "drag and drop" form creation you can demonstrate how the basic idea of classes works, and how basic design principles make coding easier, simpler and more maintainable. Obviously not stated in those terms, but with a practical demonstration of these concepts the kids with the right interest and mindsets will catch on.
I imagine the demonstration of an animal making the wrong noise for the picture being shown should be a pretty clear demonstration of a problem for anything, and at worse case should get some laughs even from those who aren't following.
I don't think its a topic that most are going to grab hold of, but I do know if I saw something like this in grade 2 I would have been intrigued.
The correction is: when the clusters collide, the individual stars and galaxies typically pass through each other unharmed, as they are small compared to the volumne of space involved. Each cluster's contents passes through the centre of the combined system and goes out the other side.
On the other hand, all the gas and dust in the clusters (which make up the majority of observable matter) gets sucked together in the middle of the combined system.
We can measure all the gas is centered by measuring the x-ray spectrum. We then check the matter distribution (via gravitation lensing as I described) and find that all of the gravity is occuring outside of the system centre - i.e. where all the stars (minority of visible mass) are, not where the gas (majority of visible mass) is.
In other words, before the collision, gravity, stars, and gas all lined up. After the collision, the gas (which is where most of the normal matter is) doesn't line up with the stars. But gravity does. This only works if there's some extra type of matter that doesn't smash together and collide like normal matter (i.e., protons, neutrons, and electrons) does.
Hold a magnifying glass up and look at an object, say 1m away. You'll probably notice that the object is distorted and will distort different depending on if the lens is concave or convex. If you know the exact dimensions and shape of your object, you could calculate the exact strength, thickness and shape of your magnifying glass.
We know from Einstein that gravity applies a lensing effect. We can calculate the amount of lensing if we know the gravitational force, or in reverse calculate the amount of gravity from the amount of lensing observed.
Now put these together:
1) Observe sky
2) See a lot of lensing
3) Calculate there is a REALLY STUPIDLY UNACCOUNTABLY HUGE amount of stuff there (from the strength of the lensing)
4) Add up the aproximate mass of everything you can actually observe
5) Compare the two figures. The amount of mass required by the lensing is (made up number) 1 million times greater than than mass of objects you can actually account for. We have now established that there is a large amount of gravitational force coming
In theory this description could be because the technique is not valid - but it has been proven as such plenty of times.
You could also say it might be black holes containing much more mass than expected and therefore exerting much more gravitational force, resulting in more lensing. This is not the case - it goes something like this
1) Obtain two galaxy clusters (big bunches of galaxies)
2) Smash them together. They'll typically merge with most stars intact and reform as a single whole around the midpoint of the collision.
3) Observe distribution of matter (from lensing and scans at other freqnecies)
You'll see that only a small portion of the matter is located on top of the newly formed central galaxy. Most of it is still back where the original galaxies were and there are now no stars or anything whatsoever!
Colour charge refers to the strong nuclear force, which typically holds together 3 quarks to make a proton or neutron. Gravity (even if we don't have the quantum theory yet) would presumably have null/undefined colour charge, same as say a photon. That photon would then exert a (very minor) gravitational force, but does not participate in the strong nuclear/colour force.
However you do make a good point - since we are annihilating both a particle and an anti-particle, why is it that we observe photons (as opposed to anti-photons) as the result of the annihilation? IIRC it has to do with rules for convservation of leptons and/or bosons in any particle system interactions - but I can't remember why we get all regular particles out. Or do we get both a photon and an anti-photon, just we cant see the anti-photon?
I don't think the wavelength can go below the plank length. Photons have a fixed maximum energy that corresponds to that length. To release more energy more photons would be emitted instead of more energetic ones. If you could get smaller wavelengths (higher energy), presumably your photon would fall below the threshold of the uncertainty principle, and then I have NFI what would happen.
Also such a super energetic photon would not be a black hole - it exerts gravitational force yes, but a tiny one. Even assuming we managed to bump that up several orders of magnitude worth of "magical fudge factor", the force is negligible. Assuming anything else is around (e.g. this is occurring on earth) other forces (earth's gravity) would completely dominate any effect the photon could have.
(I can't believe we actually have to manually line break. Wtf?)
Slashdot Mirror
http://codinginmysleep.com/ponzi-schemes-in-plain-english/
OK, I'll stop now :)
To update my own post: I did some more reading, and it is apparently no longer practical to really "buy in" via mining.
In the early days of Bitcoin, it was easy for anyone to find new blocks using standard CPUs. As more and more people started mining, the difficulty of finding new blocks has greatly increased to the point where the average time for a CPU to find a single block can be many years. The only cost-effective method of mining is using a high-end graphics card with special software (see also Why a GPU mines faster than a CPU) and/or joining a mining pool. Since solo CPU mining is essentially useless, it was removed from the GUI of the Bitcoin software.
That makes it even more favourable for the early miners, but still not a ponzi scheme. A BTC bought by a new participant is irrevocable theirs and is gained (almost) immediatly and has nothing to do with return on a (feigned) investment.
Can people please stop saying this? It's getting old. No transfer of money or assets takes place between new and old investors. The early coins are simply easier to get. In fact, you could argue that the early investors are hurt by more people jumping on board. The low hanging fruit is gone, and a larger pool means the time required per coin grows faster with more people activly mining them. Of course, they realisitically benefit more in the long run by having a large active community around the currency. (I'm not denying that early investors had it much better, but that does NOT equal ponzi scheme.)
Also, it is designed to work down to any number of decimal places. The hard cap on the number of BTC that can exist is designed to prevent endless money printing, which is far more likely to cause deflation. Once the coin cap is reached, the value of one BTC in "real" currency GROWS, but the consumer uses less of their coin to purchase the same goods. E.g. evnetually with sufficent growth in user base it may cost 10 bit-cents for a big mac rather than $1, then that falls to 1 cent, then .1 then .01 and so on. (Obviously it doesn't have to go in factors of 10.) This is hardly deflation - but yes it's also good for the early adoptors.
I'm far from a BTC expert and have nothing to do with them. I have no idea whether or not the stated goals will work out, but willful ignorance repeated over and over is annoying. Hopefully calling it out will do more good than blowing a mod point.
So that is not an "it cannot be done", but a "we have no clue whether it can be done or not, but we know it cannot be done with anything we tried so far and we have tried some pretty impressive things". This means it may turn out to be impossible, it may turn out that one specific idea was missing or that we will never know either way (by incompleteness).
I just did some reading on the topic and reached more or less the same conclusion you expressed in the quote. (Pretty wiped out from work, so I totally forgot that you said that.) It seems that most of the effort has quite understandably been devoted to focused problems in a narrow domain, and the problem of moving forward is that such systems fall apart outside of their domain or when exposed to more general/human oriented data.
This quote on machine translation illustrates it fairly well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-complete)
To translate accurately, a machine must be able to understand the text. It must be able to follow the author's argument, so it must have some ability to reason. It must have extensive world knowledge so that it knows what is being discussed — it must at least be familiar with all the same commonsense facts that the average human translator knows. Some of this knowledge is in the form of facts that can be explicitly represented, but some knowledge is unconscious and closely tied to the human body: for example, the machine may need to understand how an ocean makes one feel to accurately translate a specific metaphor in the text. It must also model the authors' goals, intentions, and emotional states to accurately reproduce them in a new language. In short, the machine is required to have wide variety of human intellectual skills, including reason, commonsense knowledge and the intuitions that underlie motion and manipulation, perception, and social intelligence. Machine translation, therefore, is believed to be AI-complete: it may require strong AI to be done as well as humans can do it.
So in short, we need more general AIs (including functions that will let them understand and "feel" emotions) and to actually have them "live" in the context we wish them to understand. Having them "grow up" (not physically, necessarily) a live with a parent experiencing the human world would be a good start. I doubt Watson would have broken down in the same way had this been his learning phase, rather than just being fed raw data. (I also recall that when fed Urban Dictionary he totally lacked the context for when to use the various forms of slang. Having actually experienced "life" in some form appears to directly address that kind of problem.)
I would say this is the definition (or at least a major part of) your "something else". I don't see any particular reason why that can't be achieved with sufficent time and effort - it seems we are reaching the point where we can begin to attempt it, or at least first steps in such directions.
My working definition of intelligence is just an information system with the ability to self reference, i.e. some equivilent of the 'this' keyword*. I generally consider the self reference to be emergant behaviour from a mechanical/determinanistic process, which has the ability to potentially make the process non-determinaistic (or give illusions thereof, a major point I have yet to pin down.). I don't have a hard time believing that some time in the future we'll be able to produce self aware intelligent machines, although obviously a lot more work is required.
(*This is also my definition for reality/existance at the n-1 level - with the highest level n being pure awareness without sense of self. The "twist" referred to at the end of my last post being the introduction of self reference. Hopefully that also clarifies why I'm arguing that everything is MADE of consciousness without necessarily DEMONSTRATING it.)
I'd be interested to know why your friend thinks it can't be done. What is wrong with the types of machines we are building now that they can't be considered intelligent with an arbitrary number of orders of magnitude worth of improvements? We certainly seem to be making good progress breaking down barriers, although I don't follow AI especially closely. (As a programmer I'd like to think I focus on the patterns aspect of things much more than just hacking together code. I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about how many mystical seeming concepts can be best explained to ordinary people in terms of programming concepts and design patterns, so I find what you said a little surprising. Although in my more cynical moments I despair of most people ever taking the necessary brain cycles to bother trying.)
Although I didn't address it, your explanation for your conclusions about presence of intelligence makes good sense. I reach different conclusions only because I'm working from an additional (spiritual) body of knowledge which many people don't have the benefit of any "evidence" for.
Of course this does not preclude "lesser attachments", but I would expect if they were common, some animals with human-like intelligence would occasionally emerge even in non-primates. So far, parts of human intelligence are observable in primates, some birds, and some other animals. But never the full range. Whether that is a biological limitation or a limitation of the "other component" is unclear of course.
Just because I apparently can't help myself: I would say the parts you mentioned are observed in birds and other animals ARE the other exmaples you're looking for. There's nothing to say there has to be multiple equally advanced examples of the same thing present at the same time, or that more examples won't evolve given enough time.
The rational discussion is much appreciated. Likewise, this is the longest I've managed to go on these sorts of topics in a while, without it breaking down in some way or another.
Yes, they could be. It just seems very unlikely to me as the planning intelligence and tool user part is missing. Note that this is a subjective judgment by me and may of course be wrong.
Well you are welcome to your opinion, but you are holding into a very strict definition of consciousness. I agree that planning and tool use are key components of consciousness as demonstrated by humans and primates. But IMO you need an argument as to why abstract non-physical consciousness must always demonstrate these attributes.
It seems like you are using the word consciousness in place of intelligence. We can agree that only humans/primates/etc demonstrate intelligence, but I can't comprehend any definition of the world that excludes lower animals and insects from being considered conscious. They clearly have senses with which they observe the world and make actions based on input, even if a lot of the decision making is hard wired and lacking intelligence. They usually have brain activity which can be measured.
Actually, I just realised you are probably using consciousness in the sense of "awareness of self" e.g. the mirror test. I disagree with the mirror test for various reasons, the most significant of which is covered at the end of this post.
It is also possible that consciousness can exist in a non-effective state where it is a mere observer. Most humans have made that observation when their body does something they do not actively participate in and that is more of a simple reflex. For example, I jumped away from a car that was about to run me over on a zebra-crossing, pure body action, my mind took several seconds to fact up with what was happening and I was annoyed during the jumping, because I noticed the loss of control immediately. As I was immediately annoyed, I do not buy the theory that consciousness always a second or so behind. I rather think it has some communication delay in causing actions, but the sensory input is immediate. That would incidentally fit an attachment via quantum-effects very well, as influencing statistical probabilities always takes time.
I have experienced a range of similar things, but there is a much simpler explanation. We know the brain is made up of different parts/layers with different ages, complexities and processing speeds. A complex abstract thought chain takes a lot longer to process than the fight or flight reaction.
When I had a car accident, the first thing I was aware of was, "ALERT, YOU'RE SCREWED" before I even knew there was another car. Then the details began to flow in over time: first awareness of basic sense inputs, then their meanings, then advanced calculations such as where I was going to be hit and where my car was going to end up after the hit. All this means is that my lizard brain can shoot me full of adrenelin faster than sense input can be processed, that the raw sense input is faster to process than actually extracting meaning from it, and getting this meaning is faster than performing calculations and making estimates based up data. No quantum interface required. (As previously mentioned I'm not against the idea, but don't believe it applies here. I would generally say that any quantum interfact would be where/how humans exercise their choice over the world, not lose it via automatic reactions.)
You'll be skeptical about this but anyway: both the observer and the observed are the same consciousness twisted upon itself in such a way that the illusion of seperateness comes into being. It is in fact this "twist" that is the creation of duality out of the absolute. This observation is made as one of the final steps in the immediate moments before enlightenment. I had a reference for that but I can't find it right now.
I am implying that the physical side and the non-physical side must both contribute a significant part of the hybrid construct, otherwise it falls apart.
Definitely both parts play significant roles in humans and animals, but you're assuming that abstract, non physical consciousness can only manifest as physical consciousness. There is nothing to say it can't manifest as e.g. insects, plans, inanimate objects. I'm not saying that these exhibit consciousness according to the definition you provided, simply that they are (could be) a different type of projection of consciousness into our physical world.
Of course, then the challange is to be both a qualified particle physicist and exceptionally skilled meditator at the same time...
And yeah, a lot of what many people say are mostly the same thing in slightly different ways... which was half the problem I had when talking to others about such things. .
Not just slightly different, but complete polar opposites. E.g. "we are all one" against "there is no self". This can be a hugely divisive issue, but really they are both just opposites of the same duality. A good way to find out how open minded supposedly "open minded" people are :)
Understood. Determining the difference between delusion and geniune insight (especially from the outside) is a MAJOR challange, one that greatly impedes the acceptance of alternative subjects.
The point that I forgot to make was this: the hard scientific mindset examines each tree one by one and comes up with a possible explanation, then rejects it because "it is not a forest!". I.e. supernatural phenomina can be explained away individually with plausable explanations, but this denies the possibility of any bigger picture. (There are many claims of such phenomina that are outright hoaxes or have well understood scientific causes - another major challange - but not all.)
There are many people out there with many crazy theories that seem to be contradictory. When the bigger picture is seen, it is revealed that they are actually mostly saying the same thing in different ways (with a health helping of poor understanding, poor explanations and being right on some parts/wrong on others, compounded by the immense difficulty of explaining this "big picture".
IMO science would progress a lot faster and further if more scientists had more knowledge (by which I mean experience) of spiritual concepts.
Only if you insist on rejecting any possibility that evidence can exist, because you're only accepting one form of evidence as valid.
I doubt whether reincarnation or other similar spiritual topics will ever be proven in the manner of hard science - i.e. in a way that you can write papers about and measure with machines. (Any machine that could make the necessary developments would probably only be possible after a large portion of the population took themselves outside of the box.) However it is very possible (but not easy) for any individual to prove it themselves, on the basis of their own senses and experience.
I argue that there are well documented, unchanging processes that have existed for thousands of years, that when followed lead the individual through a set of documented stages which culminate in the individual having all the direct proof they need, of reincarnation and more. In particular I am talking about meditation and Buddhism (religious trappings optional.)
There are several complications: it is not a short or easy process and cannot be completed on a whim, the end results can never be shared with anyone else in the manner of hard evidence, and that someone who has completed the process is now in the possession of considerable knowledge which disinclines them to make the effort to convince sceptics.
You can argue that the plural of anecdote is not data. But at some point once a statistically significant amoung of people stand up and say "I did X and Y happened" in enough seperate times and places (backed up by your own experience), you have a solid argument for believing the implications of Y and having people try X.
Karma does not involve judgement or punishment, any more than gravity "punishes" you when you jump off a cliff. It is a simple impersonal force that behaves according to well defined rules. Karma is the same - the principle states that the intention behind actions has an impact on higher spiritual/energetic dimensions/realities. These realities behave according to laws of cause and effect just the same as we know in physics (although obviously very different laws).
I'm not 100% sure on what you said about basic signal theory, but I'm pretty sure you're describing the basis of how actions end up having karmic impacts. If you accept that intention/thoughts behind an action exist and are mesureable (they are, even just scientifically in the brain) it is not inconcievable that this can have carry on effects to other, unknown, sets of rules/realities.
I think of it like harmonic resonance. If you have a tuning fork and set it vibrating then place it near another still fork, the 2nd one will begin to vibrate. That is basically how it works: like causes like. (Obviously the underlying physics behind how the "vibration" propergates is different.)
Are you trying to say that humans must reincarnate as something with roughly human intelligence due to the magnitue of their consciousness? I disagree with this, on the basis that in the higher realms, time and space are not relevent (and don't exist).Any measurement of magnitude does not apply. The measure of similarity is nature, which is basically the sum total of the nature (intentions) that has "previously" been demonstrated by that "individual". I definitely think there is a lot to learn about how this fits with quantum behaviour in the brain.
I don't think 3 is the case. This is how I would interpret it, although the TFAs are sorely lacking in info. The higgs boson governs the higgs field - the bosons are required for it to opperate and have any effect. The higgs field is CRITICAL to the universe behaving the way it does - if it were not there (or had a different 'value'), physics would look VERY different, to the point where we are dealing with a different set of particles with a different set of fundamental forces. http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/the-known-apparently-elementary-particles/the-known-particles-if-the-higgs-field-were-zero/
So my guess would be, that they estimated in 10 billion years (give or take some) a particular local area of space time will experience enough higgs bosons having decayed that the higgs field colapses. It would be the collapse of the higgs field that propergates and 'infects' the rest of space time. In the wake of the collapse, we would be left with a very different universe.
There are some major problems with this, in particular that particles aren't really a "thing" as such, they are just a label we give to ripples in a field that behave in certain ways and can act as a discrete object at times. (This is certainly the case for the virtual particles, I think it also applies to the rest although it is possible they may have their own existance independant of a field.) You could argue that we could still have these field ripples decay (since we know particles DO decay) and therefor have the higgs bosons drop out of existance enough to cause a problem - but as far as I know, they are being constantly emitted and absorbed in the processing of 'managing' the higgs field, and thus are constantly being (re)created and so should not be vulnerable to decaying.
IANAP
Reading teaches you grammar far moreso than vice versa (so I guess I agree with you). I never learnt (m)any grammar rules BECAUSE of reading. I started with adult books at a young age and consequently didn't pay a shred of attention in english classes. I'm far from perfect but I'd like to think I can outdo your average Joe for the most part.
The Vertex 2s had an insane failure rate according to the guy at the shop. 2 RMAs later, I'm on a vertex 4 which hasn't presented issues for me (or others that I know of).
+1 internets to you sir. I find such situations endlessly amusing (and a little tragic). To be fair, I was stuck in one myself for a long time. As a result of being able to understand both sides of the fence, I'm in the process of formulating a rational argument as to why disbelief needs to be suspended, without being brainwashing yourself. To that end, I'm "borrowing" your post as it sums the whole thing up nicely.
It really depends how verbatim it is. I haven't seen the prompt in question - but the changing of a single word (or even just the tense of a word, although not applicable in this specific case) is enough to completely alter the meaning of a dialogue.
In this case, the stock standard (and correct) fix is to simply label the buttons Yes/No. (Or something like "Stop " and "Resume ".) The text doesn't have to be changed strictly speaking, although it could use some improvement e.g. to state what it is being cancelled.
If Google actually did allow the GP's example in G+ exactly as quoted there, someone was asleep at the wheel. This is basic stuff and not a new concept. (Sure there are technical challenges - someone probably just called a standard dialog API. But writing or integrating an API library that doesn't trivially allow you to select basic button sets such as yes/no vs ok/cancel is bordering on the criminal.)
You almost have a point but missed the key factor: he isn't stealing your physical art.
The correct analogy for what GP is saying would be if he decided your art was too expensive, took a photo with his phone and then printed out a copy when he got home.
I certainly agree this is theft of a kind - you don't get the income you normally would. However you still keep your art and can do whatever you want, including sell copies.
GP's argument is that if someone is selling their art in a steetside stall and charging $1M for some sketches that took a few hours with no real effort put into them, the artist has no real justification to be surprised when people snap pictures instead. (Just to cover the bases: the printed copy is obviously an inferior copy, whilst in the case of digital copying the copy is prefect or even better in the case of killing DRM. That's obviously a difference - I was just attempting to clarify in terms of your analogy)
This is just a prefect opportunity to expand on a basic example that seems to be in about every textbook ever: the polymorphism demonstration with an Animal parent class and the makeNoise() function.
Build a simple app that has a list of animals. Selecting an animal displays a picture and plays the sound. After showing them a very quick VB style "drag and drop" form creation you can demonstrate how the basic idea of classes works, and how basic design principles make coding easier, simpler and more maintainable. Obviously not stated in those terms, but with a practical demonstration of these concepts the kids with the right interest and mindsets will catch on.
I imagine the demonstration of an animal making the wrong noise for the picture being shown should be a pretty clear demonstration of a problem for anything, and at worse case should get some laughs even from those who aren't following.
I don't think its a topic that most are going to grab hold of, but I do know if I saw something like this in grade 2 I would have been intrigued.
The correction is: when the clusters collide, the individual stars and galaxies typically pass through each other unharmed, as they are small compared to the volumne of space involved. Each cluster's contents passes through the centre of the combined system and goes out the other side.
On the other hand, all the gas and dust in the clusters (which make up the majority of observable matter) gets sucked together in the middle of the combined system.
We can measure all the gas is centered by measuring the x-ray spectrum. We then check the matter distribution (via gravitation lensing as I described) and find that all of the gravity is occuring outside of the system centre - i.e. where all the stars (minority of visible mass) are, not where the gas (majority of visible mass) is.
In other words, before the collision, gravity, stars, and gas all lined up. After the collision, the gas (which is where most of the normal matter is) doesn't line up with the stars. But gravity does. This only works if there's some extra type of matter that doesn't smash together and collide like normal matter (i.e., protons, neutrons, and electrons) does.
Hold a magnifying glass up and look at an object, say 1m away. You'll probably notice that the object is distorted and will distort different depending on if the lens is concave or convex. If you know the exact dimensions and shape of your object, you could calculate the exact strength, thickness and shape of your magnifying glass. We know from Einstein that gravity applies a lensing effect. We can calculate the amount of lensing if we know the gravitational force, or in reverse calculate the amount of gravity from the amount of lensing observed. Now put these together: 1) Observe sky 2) See a lot of lensing 3) Calculate there is a REALLY STUPIDLY UNACCOUNTABLY HUGE amount of stuff there (from the strength of the lensing) 4) Add up the aproximate mass of everything you can actually observe 5) Compare the two figures. The amount of mass required by the lensing is (made up number) 1 million times greater than than mass of objects you can actually account for. We have now established that there is a large amount of gravitational force coming In theory this description could be because the technique is not valid - but it has been proven as such plenty of times.
You could also say it might be black holes containing much more mass than expected and therefore exerting much more gravitational force, resulting in more lensing. This is not the case - it goes something like this 1) Obtain two galaxy clusters (big bunches of galaxies) 2) Smash them together. They'll typically merge with most stars intact and reform as a single whole around the midpoint of the collision. 3) Observe distribution of matter (from lensing and scans at other freqnecies)
You'll see that only a small portion of the matter is located on top of the newly formed central galaxy. Most of it is still back where the original galaxies were and there are now no stars or anything whatsoever!
Colour charge refers to the strong nuclear force, which typically holds together 3 quarks to make a proton or neutron. Gravity (even if we don't have the quantum theory yet) would presumably have null/undefined colour charge, same as say a photon. That photon would then exert a (very minor) gravitational force, but does not participate in the strong nuclear/colour force.
However you do make a good point - since we are annihilating both a particle and an anti-particle, why is it that we observe photons (as opposed to anti-photons) as the result of the annihilation? IIRC it has to do with rules for convservation of leptons and/or bosons in any particle system interactions - but I can't remember why we get all regular particles out. Or do we get both a photon and an anti-photon, just we cant see the anti-photon?
I'm glad I don't have mod points, cause then I'd feel bad for having to mod this as insightful.
I don't think the wavelength can go below the plank length. Photons have a fixed maximum energy that corresponds to that length. To release more energy more photons would be emitted instead of more energetic ones. If you could get smaller wavelengths (higher energy), presumably your photon would fall below the threshold of the uncertainty principle, and then I have NFI what would happen.
Also such a super energetic photon would not be a black hole - it exerts gravitational force yes, but a tiny one. Even assuming we managed to bump that up several orders of magnitude worth of "magical fudge factor", the force is negligible. Assuming anything else is around (e.g. this is occurring on earth) other forces (earth's gravity) would completely dominate any effect the photon could have.
(I can't believe we actually have to manually line break. Wtf?)