Yeah, making animals spient would proabbly cause a lot of problems. It would be really interesting, though, to see their prospective on the world.
Re:When did we decide "no more progress?"
on
The Rights of GM Humans
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Another, equally common, mistake is to fear effects that never end up materializing. When test tube babies were introduced, many people predicted that they would be abused, that people would have the children of rich or famous people. Even anesthesia was considered immoral and dangerous when it was first intorduced. Also, it seems to me that the second order effects never seem to be as bad as teh first order effects are good.
Even if it is dice, the dice can be weighted. There is absolutly no advantage for having sickle cell anemia. There is an advantage confered by the dominant allele of the sickle cell gene, and peple in high malaria regions might want one copy of the gene, but nobody in their right mind would want two.
Being a transhumanist myself I have to object to your characterization of us. For your information, I do have a girlfriend, and I wouldn't say that I have any more trouble with females than average.
All your arguments against genetic engineering apply equally to our "natural," diverse and unmodified status. I'm really good at visualizing physical situations. Is that because I like it, or just because of genetic chance? I certainly don't care, and I woulnd't if I had been genetically engineered either.
As to whether genetically engineered people are capable of judgeing their situation, they are just as able as you or I, who happen to sit on the other side of the fence. In fact, my positive opinion of GE if direct evidense that she could be against it. Part of a catalogue, accident of nature, it doesn't matter. Either is an equally bad thing to be, and either shold be equally irrelevant to our thinking. What matters is who we are, not how we got to be that way.
I agree that I certainly woulnd't want to live in a Brave New World, though.. "Overspecialize and you breed in weakness. Its slow death." I'm pretty sure that that society is doomed one way or another.
Humans are adapted to running around digging up roots and pokeing things with sharp sticks. It should be no supprise that we so often do stupid things in the modern world, or that we get fat of the (unnaturally) large food supply we have, or have high blood pressure because of the easy availability of sodium.
If we ever move into space we'll need further change not to have our bones decay in microgravity. Being less worried about violent death, we could also tune our metabolisms for longer life. A prehensile tail would be cool too:)
Here's my reasoning for why most/any restiction on scientific or technological development would be a Bad Idea.
First, it seems we have two choices, to restrict or not to restrict technology.
If we restrict technological development, there are three possible outcomes. First, we could chagne as a society and repeal the restrictions. Second, we could be knocked back to the stone age, and then redevelop. Or third, a metior of gamma ray burst or such could wipe out our species.
After the best of these scenarios, we will be right where we are now, and will have just postponed the danger of dealing with new technologies. In the second best, we will also have to deal with the dangers of nuclear war which we seem to have avoided succesfully.
Is there hope? Yes, I think so. Bio and Nano technology would make it easier to colonize other planets, and computer science might one day yield real, Friendly, superintelligent AIs to help us sort ourselves out. Nuero-science might give us a real lie detector. I'm actually quite optomistic about our chances, but even if I was pessimistic the argument would be the same.
As to developing things in secrecy, I would advise against it. Secrecy tend to breed curruption, and people behave much better if they think that other people might be watching. In our(relativly) open (almost) global technological development, I don't think that secret labs stand much chance, but they would be much more dangerous in a restricted scenario.
I believe that it was indeed illegal at the time it was used, as you suggest. For tear gas, I can't say I really care all that much; especially since the entire NVA strategy was not in accord to the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions aren't really international law, all that happens if one side breaks them is that the other feels free to break them as well.
The story in the link above tries to show very hard that Von Neumann was not the first to develop the Von Neumann architecture, but fails. One person making vauge comments about the possiblility of a program altering itself isn't at all the same thing as the
I/O ALU Memory
system that Von Neumann describes. And, after all, how can one trust a person who tries to discredit Game Theory, and Von Neumann with it, by saying that it does not adequetly explain the creation of wealth! I think that even if I had read that essay without any preconceptions about Von Neumann I still would have thought that the auhor was full of $&^@; based on things like quotes obviously taken out of context, straw man arguments, and the like.
One could argue that the Von Nuemann architecture should be called the Princeton architecture, because there were some other proponents of it at Princeton as well, fighting with the advocates of the Harvard architecture.
I'm not saying that machine guns aren't effective, just that an entrenched force of machinegunners outclasses some doughboys with a semi-autos and grenades the same way an entrenched force with rifles and cannons outclasses some people charging single shot rifles and bayonets.
Not that I completly disagree with you (I think the previous poster did overstate his case) but to address some of your points:
It was really the invention of the railroad and the rifle far more than the machinegun that resulted in trench warfare. Infact, you saw exactly the same sort of thing in the Civil War as WWI; its just that the civil war generals were even more lkely to launch suicidal offensives. The rifle, by allowing fire at range, gave dug in troops a greater advantage, and the railroad allowed generals to shift troups behind their lines to counter enemy advances with a speed that the attacking soldiers couldn't match on foot.
Regarding teh surrender at Austerlitz and at Harper's Ferry, these were surrenders after the battle was over; and so the vicorious general could spare the 10 men to watch the 20.
On the other hand, the machine gun does allow police states to gun down mobs of revolting peasants easily, so it certainly isn't all fun and games.
Yeah, I agree that some modification is needed to fire protons from the CRTs instead of electrons. However, if you have two CRTs pointed at each other you can double the energy at the collision site and power duetrium-duetrium fusion. Of course this setup would be horrendously inefficient...but it would be fusion (at least a little). When I finally get around to building it I'll post, I promise.
Unfortunatly, I don't know of any way to print diamonds on chips, which is the one big advantage of SQUID based superconductors. Right now the research group I'm a solder monkey for is using Niobium printed on silicon for the SQUIDs. It would be nice if we could run the thing at temeratures above 200 mK (and use He-3 instead of He-4), but I just don't think that diamonds would be practical for our work.
Slightly unfair to the reviewers
on
Review: Cowboy Bebop
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I think that the poster was being a mite unfair to the reviewers. Its true that there are some out there who would deride this as "only a cartoon," but those guys didn't seem to be at the Rotton Tomatos website, which I think did a very good job of showing what was good and what was bad about the movie.
There is a lot of bad anime, and its comonly recognized that "90% of anything is crap" be it SciFi, code, movies, books, or anime. The Cowboy Bebop series is emphaticly *not* in the 90%, but the movie does slip a little.
When I first saw a fansub of the movie at the MIT anime club at the Halloween 2001 showing, I liked it, but I didn't love it the way I did some of the episodes in the TV series. Of course, comparing anything to say-Ballad of Fallen Angels is completly unfair, but it isn't unreasonable for critics to complain that the movie falls from the heights that are Cowboy Bebop.
The movie had great animation and a solid plot, but it lacked some of the series' style and was a little slow (and not the good slow that GitS represents). If you liked the series, I'd recomend it, but it isn't in the same leauge as Spirited Away.
The ones who approve of it seem to do so for the usual reason: it's anime
Not at all. 90% of anime is crap . It just so happens that Cowboy Bebop is part of the 10% that is really good, though the fansub of the movie that I saw seemed in the low average of the series quality. It was much better than that silly episode with the fat hitman, but much, much worse than the ending.
PS: I saw the fansub before the movie was liscenced. Quite legal.
the famous Ada Lovelace, the world's very first computer programmer. Back when Babbage's analytical engine was just an idea she was already writing programs for it.
I heard that if you take the appropriate ammounts of oxygen and gasoline, mix in some epoxy, put it into a cylinder a high pressure and spin it until it sets you can get performance per pound approaching the solid rockets on the space shuttle.
In that incident the astonaughts were in one full ATM of oxygen. When in space the astronaughts would fly at the standard partial pressure of oxygen (about.1 atm or so, I forget). In zero-G at least, adding.9 atm nitorgen to the.1 atm oxygen won't make the slightest diffenrece to how things burn. Its only when you increaste the partial pressure of oxygen that things get...interesting.
I guess I should have been more clear. I meant they were masterpieces from the perspective of a deranged terrorist, not from the perspective of evolution, since, as you say, its better for a parasite to keep its host alive.
would be leaving notes a different locations. If the food at a restaurant is really good, I could leave a message telling other people at its doorway for other people to read, or a nasty note if the restaurant isn't. It just has to have a good SPAM filter, for obvious reasons.
If you want to know what one is like...
on
AI in Sci-Fi
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· Score: 1
Would be to use your phone to leave messages for other people at the same geographic location. Imagine going up to a restuarant, consulting your phone, and seeing that there are a bunch of messages saying how good the food and service is. Just make sure you have a good interface and really good spam filters.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, making animals spient would proabbly cause a lot of problems. It would be really interesting, though, to see their prospective on the world.
Another, equally common, mistake is to fear effects that never end up materializing. When test tube babies were introduced, many people predicted that they would be abused, that people would have the children of rich or famous people. Even anesthesia was considered immoral and dangerous when it was first intorduced. Also, it seems to me that the second order effects never seem to be as bad as teh first order effects are good.
Actually, its more like 1/200 of caucasians who are immune(I might be off by a factor of two or so).
Even if it is dice, the dice can be weighted. There is absolutly no advantage for having sickle cell anemia. There is an advantage confered by the dominant allele of the sickle cell gene, and peple in high malaria regions might want one copy of the gene, but nobody in their right mind would want two.
Being a transhumanist myself I have to object to your characterization of us. For your information, I do have a girlfriend, and I wouldn't say that I have any more trouble with females than average.
All your arguments against genetic engineering apply equally to our "natural," diverse and unmodified status. I'm really good at visualizing physical situations. Is that because I like it, or just because of genetic chance? I certainly don't care, and I woulnd't if I had been genetically engineered either.
As to whether genetically engineered people are capable of judgeing their situation, they are just as able as you or I, who happen to sit on the other side of the fence. In fact, my positive opinion of GE if direct evidense that she could be against it. Part of a catalogue, accident of nature, it doesn't matter. Either is an equally bad thing to be, and either shold be equally irrelevant to our thinking. What matters is who we are, not how we got to be that way.
I agree that I certainly woulnd't want to live in a Brave New World, though.. "Overspecialize and you breed in weakness. Its slow death." I'm pretty sure that that society is doomed one way or another.
Humans are adapted to running around digging up roots and pokeing things with sharp sticks. It should be no supprise that we so often do stupid things in the modern world, or that we get fat of the (unnaturally) large food supply we have, or have high blood pressure because of the easy availability of sodium.
:)
If we ever move into space we'll need further change not to have our bones decay in microgravity. Being less worried about violent death, we could also tune our metabolisms for longer life. A prehensile tail would be cool too
Here's my reasoning for why most/any restiction on scientific or technological development would be a Bad Idea.
First, it seems we have two choices, to restrict or not to restrict technology.
If we restrict technological development, there are three possible outcomes. First, we could chagne as a society and repeal the restrictions. Second, we could be knocked back to the stone age, and then redevelop. Or third, a metior of gamma ray burst or such could wipe out our species.
After the best of these scenarios, we will be right where we are now, and will have just postponed the danger of dealing with new technologies. In the second best, we will also have to deal with the dangers of nuclear war which we seem to have avoided succesfully.
Is there hope? Yes, I think so. Bio and Nano technology would make it easier to colonize other planets, and computer science might one day yield real, Friendly, superintelligent AIs to help us sort ourselves out. Nuero-science might give us a real lie detector. I'm actually quite optomistic about our chances, but even if I was pessimistic the argument would be the same.
As to developing things in secrecy, I would advise against it. Secrecy tend to breed curruption, and people behave much better if they think that other people might be watching. In our(relativly) open (almost) global technological development, I don't think that secret labs stand much chance, but they would be much more dangerous in a restricted scenario.
I believe that it was indeed illegal at the time it was used, as you suggest. For tear gas, I can't say I really care all that much; especially since the entire NVA strategy was not in accord to the Geneva Conventions. The Conventions aren't really international law, all that happens if one side breaks them is that the other feels free to break them as well.
The story in the link above tries to show very hard that Von Neumann was not the first to develop the Von Neumann architecture, but fails. One person making vauge comments about the possiblility of a program altering itself isn't at all the same thing as the
I/O ALU Memory
system that Von Neumann describes. And, after all, how can one trust a person who tries to discredit Game Theory, and Von Neumann with it, by saying that it does not adequetly explain the creation of wealth! I think that even if I had read that essay without any preconceptions about Von Neumann I still would have thought that the auhor was full of $&^@; based on things like quotes obviously taken out of context, straw man arguments, and the like.
One could argue that the Von Nuemann architecture should be called the Princeton architecture, because there were some other proponents of it at Princeton as well, fighting with the advocates of the Harvard architecture.
I'm not saying that machine guns aren't effective, just that an entrenched force of machinegunners outclasses some doughboys with a semi-autos and grenades the same way an entrenched force with rifles and cannons outclasses some people charging single shot rifles and bayonets.
Not that I completly disagree with you (I think the previous poster did overstate his case) but to address some of your points:
It was really the invention of the railroad and the rifle far more than the machinegun that resulted in trench warfare. Infact, you saw exactly the same sort of thing in the Civil War as WWI; its just that the civil war generals were even more lkely to launch suicidal offensives. The rifle, by allowing fire at range, gave dug in troops a greater advantage, and the railroad allowed generals to shift troups behind their lines to counter enemy advances with a speed that the attacking soldiers couldn't match on foot.
Regarding teh surrender at Austerlitz and at Harper's Ferry, these were surrenders after the battle was over; and so the vicorious general could spare the 10 men to watch the 20.
On the other hand, the machine gun does allow police states to gun down mobs of revolting peasants easily, so it certainly isn't all fun and games.
Yeah, I agree that some modification is needed to fire protons from the CRTs instead of electrons. However, if you have two CRTs pointed at each other you can double the energy at the collision site and power duetrium-duetrium fusion. Of course this setup would be horrendously inefficient...but it would be fusion (at least a little). When I finally get around to building it I'll post, I promise.
Heck, the cathode ray tubes in a TV pack enough punch to fuse to protons together, if you point one down the barrel of the other.
Unfortunatly, I don't know of any way to print diamonds on chips, which is the one big advantage of SQUID based superconductors. Right now the research group I'm a solder monkey for is using Niobium printed on silicon for the SQUIDs. It would be nice if we could run the thing at temeratures above 200 mK (and use He-3 instead of He-4), but I just don't think that diamonds would be practical for our work.
I think that the poster was being a mite unfair to the reviewers. Its true that there are some out there who would deride this as "only a cartoon," but those guys didn't seem to be at the Rotton Tomatos website, which I think did a very good job of showing what was good and what was bad about the movie.
There is a lot of bad anime, and its comonly recognized that "90% of anything is crap" be it SciFi, code, movies, books, or anime. The Cowboy Bebop series is emphaticly *not* in the 90%, but the movie does slip a little.
When I first saw a fansub of the movie at the MIT anime club at the Halloween 2001 showing, I liked it, but I didn't love it the way I did some of the episodes in the TV series. Of course, comparing anything to say-Ballad of Fallen Angels is completly unfair, but it isn't unreasonable for critics to complain that the movie falls from the heights that are Cowboy Bebop.
The movie had great animation and a solid plot, but it lacked some of the series' style and was a little slow (and not the good slow that GitS represents). If you liked the series, I'd recomend it, but it isn't in the same leauge as Spirited Away.
The ones who approve of it seem to do so for the usual reason: it's anime
Not at all. 90% of anime is crap . It just so happens that Cowboy Bebop is part of the 10% that is really good, though the fansub of the movie that I saw seemed in the low average of the series quality. It was much better than that silly episode with the fat hitman, but much, much worse than the ending.
PS: I saw the fansub before the movie was liscenced. Quite legal.
the famous Ada Lovelace, the world's very first computer programmer. Back when Babbage's analytical engine was just an idea she was already writing programs for it.
It looks like its that Israeli tank, but with the reactive armor I can't tell for sure.
I heard that if you take the appropriate ammounts of oxygen and gasoline, mix in some epoxy, put it into a cylinder a high pressure and spin it until it sets you can get performance per pound approaching the solid rockets on the space shuttle.
In that incident the astonaughts were in one full ATM of oxygen. When in space the astronaughts would fly at the standard partial pressure of oxygen (about .1 atm or so, I forget). In zero-G at least, adding .9 atm nitorgen to the .1 atm oxygen won't make the slightest diffenrece to how things burn. Its only when you increaste the partial pressure of oxygen that things get...interesting.
I guess I should have been more clear. I meant they were masterpieces from the perspective of a deranged terrorist, not from the perspective of evolution, since, as you say, its better for a parasite to keep its host alive.
would be leaving notes a different locations. If the food at a restaurant is really good, I could leave a message telling other people at its doorway for other people to read, or a nasty note if the restaurant isn't. It just has to have a good SPAM filter, for obvious reasons.
you probably can't beat this site.
Would be to use your phone to leave messages for other people at the same geographic location. Imagine going up to a restuarant, consulting your phone, and seeing that there are a bunch of messages saying how good the food and service is. Just make sure you have a good interface and really good spam filters.