A built-in curiosity system ('metabrain') continually directs the AIBOs to look for new and more challenging tasks and to cease activities that are not fruitful.
Does this 'meta-brain' draw from any of Lenat's CYC research? Just curious.
To the degree that evolution is predictable, this points to the *possibility* of intelligent design. There are 3 problems, however.
1) Even if evolution *is* predictable, this does not preclude the possibility of that intelligent design source *not* being 'external' to 4D reality. Just because we do not *know* how bacteria "think", does not mean that they do *not*. (By 'think', here, I do not mean the human process of thinking -- a reactive process of a neural net -- but the more general concept of making meaningful decisions based on past experiences. Until we can get inside a bacteria's head -- so to speak -- we will not *know*.) It is possible that a bacteria has as much as a non-material 'mind' as a human and that it is just as observable to us as a human mind -- to wit, not; except by the results of its actions in the universe.
2) As other posters have noted, environmental situations are inherently non-predictable, regardless of the predictability of evolution. If it *could* be shown that organisms are able to "pre-cognitively" adapt *before* the environmental disruption, this has ramifications far beyond evolutionary theory. (This still does not prove the existence of an external designer; in fact, it might strengthen the concept of an *internal* designer.) Of course, it's easy to say that survivors were merely "lucky" to have randomly evolved the very genetic stances that enabled them to pass through the 'eye of the needle', but this is a post-hoc rationalization that does not question the received wisdom of the randomness of evolution. How the reducible algorithm of science might adquately design an experiment to test the hypothesis of "pre-cognitive adaptation" remains a provocative exercise for the reader.
3) Evolution may, in fact, not *be* predictable. Merely showing -- as the article does -- that 'evolution' (or, more accurately, the mechanism of genetic selection) appears to tend to follow the same pattern when faced with the same gradual environmental change -- proves nothing. While it may be a data point pointing to the *possibility* that evolution is -- sometimes -- predictable, it makes no comment at all upon the possibility that the intelligent designer may, in fact, be 'internal'. (If, of course, there is an 'intelligent designer' at all.)
Merely arguing that, since a materialistically-based science has not *yet* found an intelligent designer, it therefore does not exist, simply demonstrates the limit of our knowledge, not an inherent fact of the universe. Scientism's touching faith in randomness is still a form of faith. Postulating that an intelligent designer *may* exist -- without resorting to any kind of hand-waving faith-based theory that such a thing 1)*does* exist and 2)is *external* -- should give anyone who considers him or herself a 'scientist' pause. Just as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, so is any insufficiently understood ontology indistinguishable from randomness. And is that not where we presently stand?
While I agree with the poster in the main, I'd suggest a series of three images, *ending* with the skull.
Image 1: A person's face smiling, bright eyes, long hair.
Image 2: A person -- not smiling; half-closed eyes, massive hair loss.
Image 3: A skull.
This would show the process of radiation poisoning. If anyone ignored the symbols and went beyond them, the people who didn't go could compare the progress of their comrade's painful demise with the pictures and draw the correct conclusion: IF YOU GO HERE, YOU WILL QUICKLY DIE IN A NASTY WAY. Message successfully transmitted down the generations, and probably reinforced locally with an oral tradition: "And in this cave, there lives an invisible monster...".
Water plus caffeine. I drink it every day. No sugar. No bitter taste. I find a cup of it has about half the kick of a standard cup of coffee.
I get mine from a local BP station that also stocks groceries. I've found it sporadically in various places. You can also get it directly from the manufacturer at wwww.waterjoe.com.
I am the State Treasurer of a small political party that doesn't accept corporate contributions, just personal ones, as a matter of principle. Some of our contributions come through PayPal. PayPal of course extracts a small fee for the service, so we don't get the full amount. $5 --> $4.55; $10 --> 9.41; $25 --> $23.97. In a certain sense, then, we are already paying a tax (of sorts; obviously it is a 'user fee'); in fact it's a *regressive* one: the lower the amount given, the higher percentage taken. $5: 9%; $10: 5.9%; $25: 4.12%.
But imagine a *progressive* tax on campaign contributions. The income tax is a kind of progressive tax; the more money you make, the higher your tax rate.
It wouldn't have to be much to raise vast amounts of money. And think of how popular *this* would be with the voters =8^D !
Just off the top of my head, I'd set the rate to be the log-to-the-base-10 of the contribution: it would start kicking in at $10. $10 = 1% (10 cents); $50 = 1.7% (85 cents); $100 = 2% ($2.00); $500 = 2.7% ($13.50); $1000 = 3% ($30), etc. We already have to track every penny we take in; it would be nothing to add another column to the spreadsheet to track this new tax.
We have to report all of our receipts and expenditures already, albeit to different organizations: expenditures to the FEC, receipts to the state. In fact, we report our receipts by transaction, so it would be fairly easy for the state to update its software to automatically figure the amount of state tax due on each transaction, and the required sum would automatically be reported to the state when we file our reports electronically. There is already a system in place to track and fine committees who do not file when required, so the amount of additional overhead required to track and invoice tax due would be negligible.
Needless to say, the only people who would be against it would be those who benefit from raking in *very large* contributions; you know, those parties already in power. A tax that no-one would hate EXCEPT politicians. And it is extremely fair. It would make a great wedge issue for us!
Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;....
No problem, we'll just establish a separate entity called the Federal Communications Commission to do our dirty work!
No person shall... be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;...
No problem, we'll just make it an administrative fine -- no trial necessary!
If the Bill of Rights were proposed on the floor of Congress today, it would be: 1) excoriated as too liberal, 2) vetoed by the President (if, by some miracle, it passed both Houses of Congress), and 3) ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court as insufficiently respectful of the government's right to secrecy and duty of national security.
So much for "protecting and defending the Constitution".
The political system is proportional representation and its assumed there is only one opposing party.
First of all, this is unrealistic. If you are trying to sell this to Americans, they don't grasp "proportional representation" (although it would be a good idea!) They do understand "first past the post". Also, there *is* more than one opposing party, although I concede that Americans do act like there is only one. In Europe, however, exactly the opposite is true.
Setting up your game the way you have, however, models *no actual democracy*. In countries where there is proportional representation, there tend to be multiple parties; in countries where is there is only one opposing party (or where it seems like that), there is no proportional representation. Thus people who get as far as downloading your *six MEG demo* (there's another problem) quickly see that this game does not actually model democracy, but your *fantasy* of democracy. It is therefore not actually a "simulation", but a fantasy role-playing game. The point that you made that all your voters rationally turn out for the election certainly clinched that point.
Another problem is the amateurishness of your site. Misspellings and uncapitalized sentences raise serious doubts as to how well the game is coded, as well as signifying that the entire company likely consists of one person. (However, the endorsements and "2005 Game of the Year' are good, and should be kept.)
I clicked through to your website because I was excited by the possibility that there *is* a decent simulation of democracy out there. Some things on your site gave me hope: for example, I think using a neural network is excellent! (I do not think, however, that this *feature* sells the *benefit* of using the game.) Ultimately, the points that I outlined above kept me from checking out the game itself.
Do not despair, however; I think that you have the *core* of a winner. For example, you could diversify and offer *both* a European and an American version of the game, each of which model your markets more closely. Your voters could be less rational and not turn out like happy robots; perhaps each voter (or type of voter) could make a voting-day judgement based on how excited they feel about the candidates, which would be tied to the promises the candidates have made. (If I'm an "environmentalist" and the candidate has promised to "get rid of all nuclear power plants", I'm there!) Voters might also turn out because they *don't* like a candidate -- that's definitely more realistic.
A more professional presentation would help very much. Try contacting the graphic design department at your local community college, and asking a class of advanced students to criticize your site. Adding a.CSS file would also help the appearance of your site.
You might want to consider who your audience really is for this simulation; that isn't really clear. Teachers? Students? Political parties? General consumers? In my case, I have interests in both education and politics, so I was strongly attracted right off the bat.
Once you have thought through who your audience is, look for niche magazines which serve that market. Your local librarian can help you with this. If you can get them to interview you and feature your simulation, that's gold. At worst, you could advertise in there. Look for sites associated with your simulation and trade banner ads with them. Look for stores (both bricks-and-mortar and on-line) who might be willing to stock your simulation. Make sure it can run on the Windows platform first of all (it wasn't clear on your site what platform it runs on), then port it over to other less widespread platforms.
You have a lot of work to do, but I encourage you to do so. You obviously have a passion for your simulation; make it work for you. I will bookmark your site and check back again in six months. Good luck!
Gravity gets all the attention, but magnetism and it's right-angled brother electricity are probably where the action is going to be.
Yeah, the Phil.exp. my first thought too. As to comment, what about the strong and weak forces? Electromagnetism too-timebound to account for temporal instantation visit to home base. Perhaps this is where EPR action really is.
Eagle was also able to see that the Red Sox's improbable breaking of the World Series curse shook even the world of MIT engineers. "I actually saw deviation patterns when the Red Sox won," Eagle said. "Everyone went deviant."
Predictably, unpredictability has ripple effects. This could have unexpected -- and interesting -- side effects for his social networking service, by "stirring the pot", so to speak.
Imagine: "Yeah, we met the night the Red Sox won. Me and my roommates were down at the bar celebrating, and then my cellphone told me that there was this other person in the bar who liked [ancient obscure band], so I called, and it was her."
If gas stations were required to accept and sequester this CO2, we could effectively eliminate CO2 emissions from most new automobiles without criss crossing the world with Hydrogen delivery lines or developing a totally new CO2 free hydrogen creation system.
Hmmm....run it up to the roof, use the sunlight there, with water from rain, and *grow* stuff in a *controlled environment*. Pharming, in particular, comes to mind: rare high-profit GM'd crops -- say, taxol or various "orphan drug" crops. If that's too hard, what about ginseng? There *is* a market for this sort of thing. See: grow+crops+underground.
*Somebody* had to invent the device that made a spear fly both truer and harder -- no longer did you have to slink back to camp and say to the missus: "You should have seen the mastodon that got away -- it could have fed us all winter!"
It sure wasn't one of those guys with the bear grease in their hair who were always hanging around the young maidens, comparing their eyes to the flowers that grew down by the river, and slipping off with them into the nightshadows while the shaman told scary tales of 12-feet tall bears by the firelight. Nope, it was the short guys who had to squint to see anything, who couldn't throw a rock more than twenty feet, who ended up living in caves with their mothers, always scratching on the cave walls with bits of charcoal. You know those guys: their motto was, "Must innovate to procreate!" It was those of whom it was later said: "He is not so good in battle, but watch him throw that atlatl!"
...you do not have to be in one state or another like a computer, but can have values in between -- you can be partially in one state and another, and then eventually gravitate to a unique interpretation...
We've finally found where the quantum states at the macro level are: *inside*, not "outside". By this logic, we've found "God": the *external*, "quantum" events *we* 'observe' are *inside* the 'universal conciousness': there isn't really any 'outside'.
Wrap your mind around that: as if you could avoid doing so...8^D
That's why I say Wheeler was right: all universes in 'fact' *do* exist, probabilities are allways [sic] 'splitting off' and the four dimensions we "perceive" are kind of a 'hypnotic illusion' we accept AS "reality" (wonder why). (Although some humans perceive more than four.) Those who "draw a line" between 'inside' and 'outside' are *less* "sane" (in the sense of correctly comprehending "reality"), because they have accepted a limitation that doesn't "really" exist. ('Sanity' defined that way is more 'realistic' than defining sanity as 'correctly adhering to the group perceptual norm'.) If we truly understood the nature of the physical system, we wouldn't even be 'perceiving' -- but we would most *certainly* 'know'.
If you can't *erase the line in your mind*, look at it like this: Scientifically, look at it in terms of string theory: 4 external "fixed" dimensions, 7 internal "probabilistic" dimensions. Religiously, look at it this way: an external universe bounded by God's laws, an internal universe bounded by God's imagination. (It's a start.)
If there is no "outside", then 'God' must be right here inside *with* us; to draw a crude analogy, the 'electromagnetic noise' of our own consciousness usually overwhelms the 'gravity' of "his". It cannot be *proven*; we cannot meet [him] (except, perhaps, "symbolically" -- but what, then, *isn't* a symbol?): yet, you just 'know' "it".
The brain, then, is like a useful 'lens' for us beginning conciousnesses; otherwise, we'd be like a baby, continually experiencing a "blooming, buzzing confusion", as we perceived *everything at once*. like 'God' does. We needed to cut down the stimuli to get things done, but, with our 'ego', we've cut it down *too much*: we *should be* perceiving more of the continually branching probablity states than we [generally] do. It's time to really *use our brains* to *really* use our brains.
If we were able to design a more subjective science of conciousness, we wouldn't be so susceptible to religion-based manipulations of our perceptual and conceptual 'inceptions', because we'd *see through* better. Clever experiments, like this one, are a start, but they are still treating the brain behavioristically, like a black box. We need a 21st century William James (who very nicely conceptualized 'introspection' back in the 19th century -- before the advent of Freud's "objective" psychoanalysis.)
One idea that occurs to me, is that a useful tool would be something that can seperate CO2 from the air.
OK, then see this.
Other people have been thinking along the same lines. Apparently, it is well-known how to do a 'low-grade' scrubbing of the air, using oxide reduction, but the holy grail is a 'high-grade' scrubbing. So far, it appears that it will be both large and expensive. It is clearly worth thinking about.
Personally, I was thinking first of a nanoscale centrifuge, since, as the other poster pointed out, CO2 is heavier than air. But utilizing a well-known and naturally evolved technique -- plant life -- is what led me to grow!food!in!space!
...if we create tents on the farm fields and pump CO2 in, if it would improve the crop yield and speed?
This is a well-known phenomenon in *highly controlled* environments like greenhouses, where all possible growth variables are controlled, and insect predation is minimized. See this. As a global phenomenon, however, it is likely to lead to higher foliage growth without necessarily an increase in yield. But I guess we'll never know unless we do the experiment. Oh, wait... =8^O
The 'lower pressures' point is intriguing. This could definitely be a problem Up There, affecting transpiration, for instance. On the other hand, all other factors being equal, it *could* lead to inceased internodal growth, and thus bigger plants. I hadn't taken decreased pressures into account, assuming a closed environment that had "normal" [sea-level] air pressures. Presumably you could pressurize the environment to whatever you want, assuming a sufficiently rigid external structure that wouldn't break under the pressure differential between 'inside' and 'outside'.
And your point about using interatmospheric conditions to adapt plants to the growing conditions on other planets is very interesting. I smell a scifi novel -- or a NASA grant --in there somewhere.
CO2's heavier than air.
Hmmm. Well, then we'll never have a problem with CO2 as a greenhouse gas because it will never rise above ground level!
I joke. Actually, you are -- as you know -- correct. Let's substitute, then, another gas: how about methane (CH4)? That's about 1/2 the density of air. Sure, helium or hydrogen would be better, but I wanted something 1) readily available which 2) didn't incur much of an energy cost to create it (as, say, pure hydrogen would). CH4 is good (although admittedly flammable) because here is a use of a *worse* greenhouse gas than CO2. And it remains gaseous down to 191 K., which is important in the low temperature environments up there; being able to *be* heated by radiant solar energy would be rather handy, as it would keep the CH4 from liquifying.
Furthermore, I am not talking about hot-*air* balloons; I am talking about closed balloons designed to go up into the high atmostphere *where the CO2* is, which can then be used to grow the plants.
I know why I used CO2: I was thinking "well, air is a liquid" with one part of my brain, and then I visualized CO2 bubbles rising through liquid. And if only air WERE water, I would have been right. But it isn't, of course. There's a difference in density of about 2 orders of magnitude or so. D'oh!
There are at least 3 angles at work here, which require 3 different strategies (solutions): probablities (relatively easy); interactive competition (Multi-player Prisoner's Dilemma); bluffing (neural networks to deal with random -- or deliberate -- variations in other players' deviations from TitForTat). Each of these respectively requires a meta-level 'awareness' relative to the previous angle.
I daresay that solving this *overall* problem would require good (but not necessarily optimal) solutions to each of these 3 separate angles. So... who is going to host the First Slashdot Pokerbot Competition?
The energy required to compress CO2 and then pump it underground leads to the generation of yet more CO2, because the process is not (and can never be) 100% efficient.
What we *need* is giant balloons (filled with sunwarmed gaseous CO2) carrying food-bearing plants to float in the atmosphere. Using the abundant solar energy, the plants can be kept at the proper temperature to grow; they can be grown hydroponically using sun-melted frozen water (from the same place as the frozen CO2); they are right there in the sunlight; and the frozen CO2 all around them can be melted and fed to them (thus generating oxygen in the process, which, when bled off, can, at those altitudes, be zapped by cosmic rays and create more protective ozone.)
When the food-bearing plants are mature, segments can be split off and ferried directly by remote control back down to places on earth where famine is epidemic, thus bypassing corrupt governments. The fuel would be methane generated by using sunlight and water to compost non-food stalks and roots.
Seriously. Except for the obvious lack of political will to do this, it is only an engineering problem. At one stroke it will solve the excess-CO2 problem AND the lack-of-ozone problem AND food shortages anywhere on the globe.
Come on, slashdotters: find something technically wrong with this proposal. Can you?
While this is pretty good advice for the average person, it's a fact that many people who read/. have *unusual* brains: neurocognitively deviant from 'normal'. I went to brainplace.com and took the Amen Brain System Checklist to see if I had any potential deviations. Indeed, it appeared "highly probable" that I had one of them. Certain over-the-counter supplements were recommended, and they indeed have had a salutary effect.
By the way, Dr. Amen has a little article on him in the most recent issue of MIT's Technology Review.
In order to make a single irresponsible Congressman with totalitarian leanings happy, the Senate leadership let him write the bill and then slipped it into a another bill, one that would keep our fighting men and women taken care of in Iraq and Afghanistan.
F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) wrote the Real ID act (HR.418). The bill into which it was dropped was the Making emergency supplemental appropriations act (HR.1268). *That's* the one which is coming up for a vote and the one you want to fight. Take out $82 Billion in unchecked military waste *and* the Real ID sub-bill all at once. Then, when that's gone, go back and fight HR.418, because it will come back again. Enter HR.418 or HR.1268.RFS at thomas.loc.gov for more info. (retain the periods)
This sounds a little like planetary formation. What if these 'halos' were really rings, due to some sort of spin in the original setup? Do they have to be a 3-dimensional halo?
IANAA, but it seems reasonable to me that a 3-D rotating ellipsoid *would* collapse (due to gravitation) along its smallest axis -- the one running "vertically" through the center of the galactic mass -- thus "flattening out" in the other two dimensions.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this 'meta-brain' draw from any of Lenat's CYC research? Just curious.
1) Even if evolution *is* predictable, this does not preclude the possibility of that intelligent design source *not* being 'external' to 4D reality. Just because we do not *know* how bacteria "think", does not mean that they do *not*. (By 'think', here, I do not mean the human process of thinking -- a reactive process of a neural net -- but the more general concept of making meaningful decisions based on past experiences. Until we can get inside a bacteria's head -- so to speak -- we will not *know*.) It is possible that a bacteria has as much as a non-material 'mind' as a human and that it is just as observable to us as a human mind -- to wit, not; except by the results of its actions in the universe.
2) As other posters have noted, environmental situations are inherently non-predictable, regardless of the predictability of evolution. If it *could* be shown that organisms are able to "pre-cognitively" adapt *before* the environmental disruption, this has ramifications far beyond evolutionary theory. (This still does not prove the existence of an external designer; in fact, it might strengthen the concept of an *internal* designer.) Of course, it's easy to say that survivors were merely "lucky" to have randomly evolved the very genetic stances that enabled them to pass through the 'eye of the needle', but this is a post-hoc rationalization that does not question the received wisdom of the randomness of evolution. How the reducible algorithm of science might adquately design an experiment to test the hypothesis of "pre-cognitive adaptation" remains a provocative exercise for the reader.
3) Evolution may, in fact, not *be* predictable. Merely showing -- as the article does -- that 'evolution' (or, more accurately, the mechanism of genetic selection) appears to tend to follow the same pattern when faced with the same gradual environmental change -- proves nothing. While it may be a data point pointing to the *possibility* that evolution is -- sometimes -- predictable, it makes no comment at all upon the possibility that the intelligent designer may, in fact, be 'internal'. (If, of course, there is an 'intelligent designer' at all.)
Merely arguing that, since a materialistically-based science has not *yet* found an intelligent designer, it therefore does not exist, simply demonstrates the limit of our knowledge, not an inherent fact of the universe. Scientism's touching faith in randomness is still a form of faith. Postulating that an intelligent designer *may* exist -- without resorting to any kind of hand-waving faith-based theory that such a thing 1)*does* exist and 2)is *external* -- should give anyone who considers him or herself a 'scientist' pause. Just as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, so is any insufficiently understood ontology indistinguishable from randomness. And is that not where we presently stand?
You mean Hari.
*/burp/*
Someone's been drinking too much Spudwiser...
Image 1: A person's face smiling, bright eyes, long hair.
Image 2: A person -- not smiling; half-closed eyes, massive hair loss.
Image 3: A skull.
This would show the process of radiation poisoning. If anyone ignored the symbols and went beyond them, the people who didn't go could compare the progress of their comrade's painful demise with the pictures and draw the correct conclusion: IF YOU GO HERE, YOU WILL QUICKLY DIE IN A NASTY WAY. Message successfully transmitted down the generations, and probably reinforced locally with an oral tradition: "And in this cave, there lives an invisible monster...".
I get mine from a local BP station that also stocks groceries. I've found it sporadically in various places. You can also get it directly from the manufacturer at wwww.waterjoe.com.
Try it -- you'll like it!
What doesn't destroy intellectual property rights makes them stronger.
Like, say, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use.
Hey, wait: you might have something there.
I am the State Treasurer of a small political party that doesn't accept corporate contributions, just personal ones, as a matter of principle. Some of our contributions come through PayPal. PayPal of course extracts a small fee for the service, so we don't get the full amount. $5 --> $4.55; $10 --> 9.41; $25 --> $23.97. In a certain sense, then, we are already paying a tax (of sorts; obviously it is a 'user fee'); in fact it's a *regressive* one: the lower the amount given, the higher percentage taken. $5: 9%; $10: 5.9%; $25: 4.12%.
But imagine a *progressive* tax on campaign contributions. The income tax is a kind of progressive tax; the more money you make, the higher your tax rate.
It wouldn't have to be much to raise vast amounts of money. And think of how popular *this* would be with the voters =8^D !
Just off the top of my head, I'd set the rate to be the log-to-the-base-10 of the contribution: it would start kicking in at $10. $10 = 1% (10 cents); $50 = 1.7% (85 cents); $100 = 2% ($2.00); $500 = 2.7% ($13.50); $1000 = 3% ($30), etc. We already have to track every penny we take in; it would be nothing to add another column to the spreadsheet to track this new tax.
We have to report all of our receipts and expenditures already, albeit to different organizations: expenditures to the FEC, receipts to the state. In fact, we report our receipts by transaction, so it would be fairly easy for the state to update its software to automatically figure the amount of state tax due on each transaction, and the required sum would automatically be reported to the state when we file our reports electronically. There is already a system in place to track and fine committees who do not file when required, so the amount of additional overhead required to track and invoice tax due would be negligible.
Needless to say, the only people who would be against it would be those who benefit from raking in *very large* contributions; you know, those parties already in power. A tax that no-one would hate EXCEPT politicians. And it is extremely fair. It would make a great wedge issue for us!
Thanks for your brilliant suggestion!
No problem, we'll just establish a separate entity called the Federal Communications Commission to do our dirty work!
No person shall ... be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;...
No problem, we'll just make it an administrative fine -- no trial necessary!
If the Bill of Rights were proposed on the floor of Congress today, it would be: 1) excoriated as too liberal, 2) vetoed by the President (if, by some miracle, it passed both Houses of Congress), and 3) ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court as insufficiently respectful of the government's right to secrecy and duty of national security.
So much for "protecting and defending the Constitution".
First of all, this is unrealistic. If you are trying to sell this to Americans, they don't grasp "proportional representation" (although it would be a good idea!) They do understand "first past the post". Also, there *is* more than one opposing party, although I concede that Americans do act like there is only one. In Europe, however, exactly the opposite is true.
Setting up your game the way you have, however, models *no actual democracy*. In countries where there is proportional representation, there tend to be multiple parties; in countries where is there is only one opposing party (or where it seems like that), there is no proportional representation. Thus people who get as far as downloading your *six MEG demo* (there's another problem) quickly see that this game does not actually model democracy, but your *fantasy* of democracy. It is therefore not actually a "simulation", but a fantasy role-playing game. The point that you made that all your voters rationally turn out for the election certainly clinched that point.
Another problem is the amateurishness of your site. Misspellings and uncapitalized sentences raise serious doubts as to how well the game is coded, as well as signifying that the entire company likely consists of one person. (However, the endorsements and "2005 Game of the Year' are good, and should be kept.)
I clicked through to your website because I was excited by the possibility that there *is* a decent simulation of democracy out there. Some things on your site gave me hope: for example, I think using a neural network is excellent! (I do not think, however, that this *feature* sells the *benefit* of using the game.) Ultimately, the points that I outlined above kept me from checking out the game itself.
Do not despair, however; I think that you have the *core* of a winner. For example, you could diversify and offer *both* a European and an American version of the game, each of which model your markets more closely. Your voters could be less rational and not turn out like happy robots; perhaps each voter (or type of voter) could make a voting-day judgement based on how excited they feel about the candidates, which would be tied to the promises the candidates have made. (If I'm an "environmentalist" and the candidate has promised to "get rid of all nuclear power plants", I'm there!) Voters might also turn out because they *don't* like a candidate -- that's definitely more realistic.
A more professional presentation would help very much. Try contacting the graphic design department at your local community college, and asking a class of advanced students to criticize your site. Adding a .CSS file would also help the appearance of your site.
You might want to consider who your audience really is for this simulation; that isn't really clear. Teachers? Students? Political parties? General consumers? In my case, I have interests in both education and politics, so I was strongly attracted right off the bat.
Once you have thought through who your audience is, look for niche magazines which serve that market. Your local librarian can help you with this. If you can get them to interview you and feature your simulation, that's gold. At worst, you could advertise in there. Look for sites associated with your simulation and trade banner ads with them. Look for stores (both bricks-and-mortar and on-line) who might be willing to stock your simulation. Make sure it can run on the Windows platform first of all (it wasn't clear on your site what platform it runs on), then port it over to other less widespread platforms.
You have a lot of work to do, but I encourage you to do so. You obviously have a passion for your simulation; make it work for you. I will bookmark your site and check back again in six months. Good luck!
Yeah, the Phil.exp. my first thought too. As to comment, what about the strong and weak forces? Electromagnetism too-timebound to account for temporal instantation visit to home base. Perhaps this is where EPR action really is.
Read the books (#3 and #4),, don't just see the movies.
(Look down at the bottom of the page as well for the Commander X and Charles Berlitz books -- OP.)
Predictably, unpredictability has ripple effects. This could have unexpected -- and interesting -- side effects for his social networking service, by "stirring the pot", so to speak.
Imagine: "Yeah, we met the night the Red Sox won. Me and my roommates were down at the bar celebrating, and then my cellphone told me that there was this other person in the bar who liked [ancient obscure band], so I called, and it was her."
Hmmm....run it up to the roof, use the sunlight there, with water from rain, and *grow* stuff in a *controlled environment*. Pharming, in particular, comes to mind: rare high-profit GM'd crops -- say, taxol or various "orphan drug" crops. If that's too hard, what about ginseng? There *is* a market for this sort of thing. See: grow+crops+underground.
It sure wasn't one of those guys with the bear grease in their hair who were always hanging around the young maidens, comparing their eyes to the flowers that grew down by the river, and slipping off with them into the nightshadows while the shaman told scary tales of 12-feet tall bears by the firelight. Nope, it was the short guys who had to squint to see anything, who couldn't throw a rock more than twenty feet, who ended up living in caves with their mothers, always scratching on the cave walls with bits of charcoal. You know those guys: their motto was, "Must innovate to procreate!" It was those of whom it was later said: "He is not so good in battle, but watch him throw that atlatl!"
We've finally found where the quantum states at the macro level are: *inside*, not "outside". By this logic, we've found "God": the *external*, "quantum" events *we* 'observe' are *inside* the 'universal conciousness': there isn't really any 'outside'.
Wrap your mind around that: as if you could avoid doing so...8^D
That's why I say Wheeler was right: all universes in 'fact' *do* exist, probabilities are allways [sic] 'splitting off' and the four dimensions we "perceive" are kind of a 'hypnotic illusion' we accept AS "reality" (wonder why). (Although some humans perceive more than four.) Those who "draw a line" between 'inside' and 'outside' are *less* "sane" (in the sense of correctly comprehending "reality"), because they have accepted a limitation that doesn't "really" exist. ('Sanity' defined that way is more 'realistic' than defining sanity as 'correctly adhering to the group perceptual norm'.) If we truly understood the nature of the physical system, we wouldn't even be 'perceiving' -- but we would most *certainly* 'know'.
If you can't *erase the line in your mind*, look at it like this: Scientifically, look at it in terms of string theory: 4 external "fixed" dimensions, 7 internal "probabilistic" dimensions. Religiously, look at it this way: an external universe bounded by God's laws, an internal universe bounded by God's imagination. (It's a start.)
If there is no "outside", then 'God' must be right here inside *with* us; to draw a crude analogy, the 'electromagnetic noise' of our own consciousness usually overwhelms the 'gravity' of "his". It cannot be *proven*; we cannot meet [him] (except, perhaps, "symbolically" -- but what, then, *isn't* a symbol?): yet, you just 'know' "it".
The brain, then, is like a useful 'lens' for us beginning conciousnesses; otherwise, we'd be like a baby, continually experiencing a "blooming, buzzing confusion", as we perceived *everything at once*. like 'God' does. We needed to cut down the stimuli to get things done, but, with our 'ego', we've cut it down *too much*: we *should be* perceiving more of the continually branching probablity states than we [generally] do. It's time to really *use our brains* to *really* use our brains.
If we were able to design a more subjective science of conciousness, we wouldn't be so susceptible to religion-based manipulations of our perceptual and conceptual 'inceptions', because we'd *see through* better. Clever experiments, like this one, are a start, but they are still treating the brain behavioristically, like a black box. We need a 21st century William James (who very nicely conceptualized 'introspection' back in the 19th century -- before the advent of Freud's "objective" psychoanalysis.)
Remember: "it's all inside".
(It had to be said 8^D)
OK, then see this. Other people have been thinking along the same lines. Apparently, it is well-known how to do a 'low-grade' scrubbing of the air, using oxide reduction, but the holy grail is a 'high-grade' scrubbing. So far, it appears that it will be both large and expensive. It is clearly worth thinking about.
Personally, I was thinking first of a nanoscale centrifuge, since, as the other poster pointed out, CO2 is heavier than air. But utilizing a well-known and naturally evolved technique -- plant life -- is what led me to grow!food!in!space!
This is a well-known phenomenon in *highly controlled* environments like greenhouses, where all possible growth variables are controlled, and insect predation is minimized. See this. As a global phenomenon, however, it is likely to lead to higher foliage growth without necessarily an increase in yield. But I guess we'll never know unless we do the experiment. Oh, wait... =8^O
The 'lower pressures' point is intriguing. This could definitely be a problem Up There, affecting transpiration, for instance. On the other hand, all other factors being equal, it *could* lead to inceased internodal growth, and thus bigger plants. I hadn't taken decreased pressures into account, assuming a closed environment that had "normal" [sea-level] air pressures. Presumably you could pressurize the environment to whatever you want, assuming a sufficiently rigid external structure that wouldn't break under the pressure differential between 'inside' and 'outside'.
And your point about using interatmospheric conditions to adapt plants to the growing conditions on other planets is very interesting. I smell a scifi novel -- or a NASA grant --in there somewhere.
I joke. Actually, you are -- as you know -- correct. Let's substitute, then, another gas: how about methane (CH4)? That's about 1/2 the density of air. Sure, helium or hydrogen would be better, but I wanted something 1) readily available which 2) didn't incur much of an energy cost to create it (as, say, pure hydrogen would). CH4 is good (although admittedly flammable) because here is a use of a *worse* greenhouse gas than CO2. And it remains gaseous down to 191 K., which is important in the low temperature environments up there; being able to *be* heated by radiant solar energy would be rather handy, as it would keep the CH4 from liquifying.
Furthermore, I am not talking about hot-*air* balloons; I am talking about closed balloons designed to go up into the high atmostphere *where the CO2* is, which can then be used to grow the plants.
I know why I used CO2: I was thinking "well, air is a liquid" with one part of my brain, and then I visualized CO2 bubbles rising through liquid. And if only air WERE water, I would have been right. But it isn't, of course. There's a difference in density of about 2 orders of magnitude or so. D'oh!
There are at least 3 angles at work here, which require 3 different strategies (solutions): probablities (relatively easy); interactive competition (Multi-player Prisoner's Dilemma); bluffing (neural networks to deal with random -- or deliberate -- variations in other players' deviations from TitForTat). Each of these respectively requires a meta-level 'awareness' relative to the previous angle.
I daresay that solving this *overall* problem would require good (but not necessarily optimal) solutions to each of these 3 separate angles. So... who is going to host the First Slashdot Pokerbot Competition?
What we *need* is giant balloons (filled with sunwarmed gaseous CO2) carrying food-bearing plants to float in the atmosphere. Using the abundant solar energy, the plants can be kept at the proper temperature to grow; they can be grown hydroponically using sun-melted frozen water (from the same place as the frozen CO2); they are right there in the sunlight; and the frozen CO2 all around them can be melted and fed to them (thus generating oxygen in the process, which, when bled off, can, at those altitudes, be zapped by cosmic rays and create more protective ozone.)
When the food-bearing plants are mature, segments can be split off and ferried directly by remote control back down to places on earth where famine is epidemic, thus bypassing corrupt governments. The fuel would be methane generated by using sunlight and water to compost non-food stalks and roots.
Seriously. Except for the obvious lack of political will to do this, it is only an engineering problem. At one stroke it will solve the excess-CO2 problem AND the lack-of-ozone problem AND food shortages anywhere on the globe.
Come on, slashdotters: find something technically wrong with this proposal. Can you?
By the way, Dr. Amen has a little article on him in the most recent issue of MIT's Technology Review.
MATRIX.
And I don't mean The Matrix. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you need to go learn some stuff before you post again.
Seriously.
F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) wrote the Real ID act (HR.418). The bill into which it was dropped was the Making emergency supplemental appropriations act (HR.1268). *That's* the one which is coming up for a vote and the one you want to fight. Take out $82 Billion in unchecked military waste *and* the Real ID sub-bill all at once. Then, when that's gone, go back and fight HR.418, because it will come back again. Enter HR.418 or HR.1268.RFS at thomas.loc.gov for more info. (retain the periods)
IANAA, but it seems reasonable to me that a 3-D rotating ellipsoid *would* collapse (due to gravitation) along its smallest axis -- the one running "vertically" through the center of the galactic mass -- thus "flattening out" in the other two dimensions.