Not that I wish to start a heady argument, but I doubt the result of replacing your brain with a chip would still be you.
If I make a copy of my World of Warcraft program, is it not still the same program?
I understand that there are people who buy the illusion of individuality and "self" to the extent that they think a copy of them wouldn't be them in the same sense they already are. I just don't buy it. To the extent people think that, they're engaging at some level in the same kind of mysticism as people who go on about your unique soul.
If you make three copies of me, there are now four me's. Each one experiences the world from their own location, and in that sense they're all different people, but if you consider that important, none of them are me, as only I right now in this very moment experience the world from my present position in time and space. No one will experience it the same way tomorrow. Does that mean I won't be here tomorrow? If you say yes, then it follows that none of those four are "me". If you say no, then it follows that the particular viewpoint is not important, just the "program" running, and therefore all four of them are "me". Concluding that one of them is "me" and three are not requires some belief in a mystical connection between one of them and "me".
Bringing this back around to the original post -- if the program on the chip is sufficiently accurate, it will still be "me" to the degree that I'll still be "me" next year, regardless. If your definition of "self" excludes the possibility that it will be me, I'm find with that, too, I just also understand that under that definition of "self", I won't be here then even if my brain is not replaced with a chip. Matter flows in and out of my body every day. The only constant is the "program" running on this dynamic hardware. If it's the matter that defines what is me, it won't be "me" next year. If it's the "program" that defines what is me, it will be me even if the brain is replaced with a chip. Barring the existence of a non-physical soul, I don't see a third option here.
that actually makes a hell of a lot more sense than someone just saying "I'm bored, let's do something else" and giving a 5 million computer botnet up. I mean come on, what are they, insane?! That's like the computer criminal version of buying a buying an italian sports car and then driving it into a lake on purpose. You just don't do that once you finally have one. This article is just stupid beyond words! There is no way in hell it was just "given up." The person behind it either died or is feeling some serious heat from people trying to catch them.
This shows an immense failure of imagination. Just off the top of my head, maybe the developed something better. Maybe they've found something more profitable to do. If you spend more than two seconds, I'm sure you too can think of other alternatives. And you're apparently calling it "insane" and/or "immensely stupid" to not fall for the sunk costs fallacy. It doesn't matter how much time or effort they sunk into it making it. If the continued costs of running that car are too much, if you aren't a victim of the sunk costs fallacy, you abandon it, regardless of how much you went through to get it to begin with. Here the analogy breaks down, since you can probably sell the car for at least some payback with little risk, whereas selling your botnet is a very risky activity, even if it's potentially quite lucrative. If that Italian sports car was stolen and you probably can't sell it without getting caught, then yeah, driving it into the lake may be the best thing you can do when you no longer have a need or desire for it. (This is also a bad analogy in that what the botnet creator is alleged to have done here isn't drive it into a lake, but merely to walk away. The equivalent of driving it into the lake would be to dismantle the botnet, rather than just leave it out there...)
Actually, it should be noted that they used plexiglass inside the Klingon ship for the whale tank, not transparent aluminum. They got the plexiglass with no money by giving the owner of the company the formula for transparent aluminum, but they didn't wait for the years he said it would take him to make it into a practical product.
(1) Nothing in the title or summary makes any claims about what wavelength the material is transparent to.
(2) While mentioning Star Trek, also talks about the "real material" as if it were a different thing.
(3) Nothing in the title or summary makes any claims about how long the material lasts.
In short (and unlike some examples), the summary is perfectly accurate. However, the reading comprehension of a lot of/. readers is not, having a tendency to "read into" them things that aren't actually there (then blaming/. editors when the actual article doesn't say what they mistakenly read the summary as saying).
Summary of the parent comment: "I didn't understand the article, failed to understand what was different about what occurred, therefore, it follows that the article is gibberish and nothing different occurred." (Certainly it isn't possible that I missed something, right?)
Hint: If you think what they accomplished is anything at all like what "ordinary vacuum tubes" do, you've utterly misunderstood what occurred.
Why do/. users assume research physicists have a shallower understanding of physics than they do? Any time a/. user fails to grasp the intricacies of something, do they say, "wow, that's beyond me?" No, they say, "hey, that doesn't jive with my more limited understanding -- the scientists are obviously making shit up."
If you discover a way to reverse gravity fields, thousands of/. users will point out that it's been done a million times before and post links to articles about blimps and hovercraft. "Nothing new here..."
To dogpile on the wabbit, the/. summary also fails to mention that the aluminum that it only stayed transparent for about 40 femtoseconds, and the focal point was about 1/20 the width of a human hair (implies the piece of aluminum turned transparent was that small, although that's unclear from TFA). Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along.
It's funny that we get a "nothing to see here" to something that's far, far cooler, more revolutionary, and has broader scientific implications than what apparently the reader here was expecting/hoping for.
The last time I checked, the colloquail definition of "transparent" means "passes visible light".Glad to know those scientists can see in the UV range - sounds like evolution is moving apace.
Most scientists use words in a way that's congruent to their actual meaning, not to how they are commonly misunderstood and misused by the uneducated.
Only at certain UV spectrum, according to the article.
Indeed, most "transparent" materials (glass, for instance) are only transparent to certain wavelengths. Is there a reason you felt the need to include quotes around "transparent" while noting this common feature of all transparent materials?
Nothing in the article makes it sound very transparent in the way we'd imagine transparency.
No, it just makes it sound transparent in the way understood by anyone who actually understands what the word "transparent" means. Alas, this apparently excludes a large number of people.
Actually I suggested that Democrats are the party of more government...
This is often claimed, but I have never, ever observed this to be the case. Aside from a short period of small examples early in the Clinton administration, I've never observed either party make any significant effort to shrink government. Ever since Ford (the first president I remember), every party, every administration, and every congress has been the party, administration, and congress of more government. Lip-service aside, no one is committed to anything else. You can gauge someone's gullibility by the degree to which they believe one party the other favors smaller government, rather than just larger or smaller roles in various areas (each favors an expanded role in some areas and a smaller role in others).
Isn't "full disclosure" really just meant to say "Hey, FYI I might be biased"? Not, "Hey, I might be biased, now let me promote myself!".
No. In fact, your point is self contradictory. If it means the former, it necessarily includes the latter. It's not possible for the first thing you said it meant to be true while the second is false. Rather like it's impossible for a basket that contains five apples to not contain three apples. Just because you include more than the first thing doesn't mean you no longer include the first thing. If "full disclosure" means including a notice of how you might be biased, including that notice and saying something else as well does not mean you failed to include the notice, so it's still "full disclosure".
Like people who waste money on weapon-systems that don't actually make you any safer? BTW, don't you think our soldiers in the field would have a use for that money we're spending on weapons we don't even use, because they have no use in the current wars were fighting? Don't you support our troops? Why are you in favor of taking money we could be spending on armored transports for them and instead sinking it into planes that sit on airfields because they're designed to fight a different war that never happened? Is it really that bad an idea to spend money on weapons our troops can actually put to use than ones they can't?
We can give them 4 billion dollars and have aircraft to show for it, or give them 4 billion in bailout money to save the jobs this will impact and have NOTHING to show for it.:-)
Or better yet, we can ignore both options of your false dilemma and instead give them 4 billion dollars and have useful aircraft (F-35s) to show for it.
The original point of the F22 was to replace an aging F15 for air superiority. So we have 600 F-15s to be replaced by 188 F-22s.
...and many, many more F-35s, and many other planes. Yes, the F-35 is multirole. It still fulfills the air superiority role much better than an F-15.
Lost in the shuffle is that the argument that we do not need to invest in air superiority because we already have it. Air superiority comes from the aircraft, and if you don't have them, you don't have it. The USA has just given up strategic air superiority, is what this means.
Really? We would have had air superiority if we'd had 205 F-22s, but not with only 187? We're really riding the edge that closely? And who have we lost it to, that we would still have had it over if we had 205 vs 187 F-22s?
We did good for a while because nobody could touch the F-15, but, in simulated missions a flight of USAF F15s were shot to pieces by an Indian Air Force flying more modern Mirages.
Say what? What does that have to do with anything? I'm sorry, but this bit of hand-waving doesn't support your point any more than pointing out that P-51D Mustangs don't do well against modern Mirages either. Is there some reason to think the Indian Air Force would be defeated by 205 F-22s and a few hundred F-15s, but not by 187 F-22s and a few hundred F-35s?
Yes and no. Aircraft carriers are far from obsolete. You're pointing out that they'd be less useful in a particular situation, but neglecting to point out that they're extremely useful in the kinds of wars we most commonly fight. The F-22 is closer to being obsolete, since it was designed to fight an enemy that disappeared years ago in a type of war we haven't witnessed since WWII. Technologically, wonderful, but in terms of meeting the needs of today's military in the kinds of missions it faces, it's the F-22 that's obsolete, and the carrier that meets current needs.
I don't know why they went with the F-22 over the "F-23" anyway. It was a better plane on many levels...
Both planes met USAF requirements. One was produced by Lockheed, the company that had recently delivered the F-117 on-time and under budget. The other by Northrop, which had suffered delays and extreme cost overruns on the B-2, and McDonnell Douglas, which was having even greater problems with the A-12 bomber (the DoD would eventually sue them over this one).
The plane may have been better, but the companies behind it where not. Since both planes met requirements and were good aircraft, DoD chose the company with the better track record.
How many of the companies you own stock in trade with/do business in red china (or Viet Nam for that matter)? Or put it another way, how many *don't*?
I believe by "commies" he was referring to actual communists. If there are any actual communists left in China these days, they're probably repressed by the Chinese government for advocating radical philosophies fundamentally opposed to that of the party.:p
That's nice. May I ask what your academic credentials are, and what research studies you've published or been involved with that would make your opinion better informed than asking my cat what she thinks on the question at hand?
I doubt it. If our species survives 100,000 years, at best that step would be talked about like we currently talk about Gilgamesh, Moses, and Achilles, although probably with substantially less fact and more mythologizing, given the relative timeframes. More likely it'll simply have been utterly forgotten. They'll remember the first man who set foot on the moon with all the clarity that we remember the first person to set foot in what would come to be called the "New World" some twenty thousand years or so later (that may be highly inaccurate, I don't recall what the best estimates are today when humans first crossed the ice-bridge between Asia and North America). We know it happened sometime in the distant past, but no one today knows the first detail about this person. They'll have some estimate as to when humans first evolved. If we're lucky, they might even still know which planet it occurred on. They'll have some shaky figure as to when they first set foot on another worth, but it'll be "plus or minus a few thousand years", and the details we be lost.
Well, given The Pope claims to be His representative and The Vatican hoards gagillions of dollars in assets (aside: while begging for donations), God's a very ripe target with plenty of ability to pay.
Hmm. If the Vatican can be held financially liable for acts of God...
The downside of this idea is that the primary beneficiary of it would be hordes of lawyers. I'm agnostic but I'd rather give the money to Catholic Charities.
Remember, the reason they need to deorbit it is because they don't have the money to keep it up. Given that the basic problem is a lack of funds, how were you going to send it to Mars? Pray it there?
And the NASA can just say: "Sorry, rest of the world, shows over in 2016."?
Don't the ESA, JAXA, RKA...etc have a say in this?
They have no more choice in the matter than NASA does. (You aren't under the misimpression that NASA wants to do this, are you?) Reality is what it is. They can all say "keep it up", but when the money runs out, they have no more power to keep it up than they have to repeal the law of gravity. They have to deal with the facts as they are, not as they might wish them to be.
Now that the shuttle is out of the picture, I'm not sure why they can't move it up to a more sensible orbit.
...
You understand the reason they're planning on deorbiting it is because it costs money to keep it in orbit, and that's when the money runs out, right? They don't want to deorbit it, they just don't have any money to keep it up after 2015.
Remember the challenge here isn't scientific, it's economic. Their plan on dealing with no money is to deorbit. Your plan on dealing with no money is to boost to a more sensible orbit? How do you do that, given that the reason you're doing that is because you have no money? You have a way to boosting it to a higher orbit with no money?
Slashdot Mirror
Not that I wish to start a heady argument, but I doubt the result of replacing your brain with a chip would still be you.
If I make a copy of my World of Warcraft program, is it not still the same program?
I understand that there are people who buy the illusion of individuality and "self" to the extent that they think a copy of them wouldn't be them in the same sense they already are. I just don't buy it. To the extent people think that, they're engaging at some level in the same kind of mysticism as people who go on about your unique soul.
If you make three copies of me, there are now four me's. Each one experiences the world from their own location, and in that sense they're all different people, but if you consider that important, none of them are me, as only I right now in this very moment experience the world from my present position in time and space. No one will experience it the same way tomorrow. Does that mean I won't be here tomorrow? If you say yes, then it follows that none of those four are "me". If you say no, then it follows that the particular viewpoint is not important, just the "program" running, and therefore all four of them are "me". Concluding that one of them is "me" and three are not requires some belief in a mystical connection between one of them and "me".
Bringing this back around to the original post -- if the program on the chip is sufficiently accurate, it will still be "me" to the degree that I'll still be "me" next year, regardless. If your definition of "self" excludes the possibility that it will be me, I'm find with that, too, I just also understand that under that definition of "self", I won't be here then even if my brain is not replaced with a chip. Matter flows in and out of my body every day. The only constant is the "program" running on this dynamic hardware. If it's the matter that defines what is me, it won't be "me" next year. If it's the "program" that defines what is me, it will be me even if the brain is replaced with a chip. Barring the existence of a non-physical soul, I don't see a third option here.
that actually makes a hell of a lot more sense than someone just saying "I'm bored, let's do something else" and giving a 5 million computer botnet up. I mean come on, what are they, insane?! That's like the computer criminal version of buying a buying an italian sports car and then driving it into a lake on purpose. You just don't do that once you finally have one. This article is just stupid beyond words! There is no way in hell it was just "given up." The person behind it either died or is feeling some serious heat from people trying to catch them.
This shows an immense failure of imagination. Just off the top of my head, maybe the developed something better. Maybe they've found something more profitable to do. If you spend more than two seconds, I'm sure you too can think of other alternatives. And you're apparently calling it "insane" and/or "immensely stupid" to not fall for the sunk costs fallacy. It doesn't matter how much time or effort they sunk into it making it. If the continued costs of running that car are too much, if you aren't a victim of the sunk costs fallacy, you abandon it, regardless of how much you went through to get it to begin with. Here the analogy breaks down, since you can probably sell the car for at least some payback with little risk, whereas selling your botnet is a very risky activity, even if it's potentially quite lucrative. If that Italian sports car was stolen and you probably can't sell it without getting caught, then yeah, driving it into the lake may be the best thing you can do when you no longer have a need or desire for it. (This is also a bad analogy in that what the botnet creator is alleged to have done here isn't drive it into a lake, but merely to walk away. The equivalent of driving it into the lake would be to dismantle the botnet, rather than just leave it out there...)
Transparant aluminum == aluminum oxynitride.
...
Aluminum (transparent or otherwise) != aluminum oxynitride. Leaded glass is also not "transparent lead". "X contains Y" does not mean "X is Y".
Actually, it should be noted that they used plexiglass inside the Klingon ship for the whale tank, not transparent aluminum. They got the plexiglass with no money by giving the owner of the company the formula for transparent aluminum, but they didn't wait for the years he said it would take him to make it into a practical product.
(1) Nothing in the title or summary makes any claims about what wavelength the material is transparent to.
(2) While mentioning Star Trek, also talks about the "real material" as if it were a different thing.
(3) Nothing in the title or summary makes any claims about how long the material lasts.
In short (and unlike some examples), the summary is perfectly accurate. However, the reading comprehension of a lot of /. readers is not, having a tendency to "read into" them things that aren't actually there (then blaming /. editors when the actual article doesn't say what they mistakenly read the summary as saying).
Summary of the parent comment: "I didn't understand the article, failed to understand what was different about what occurred, therefore, it follows that the article is gibberish and nothing different occurred." (Certainly it isn't possible that I missed something, right?)
Hint: If you think what they accomplished is anything at all like what "ordinary vacuum tubes" do, you've utterly misunderstood what occurred.
Why do /. users assume research physicists have a shallower understanding of physics than they do? Any time a /. user fails to grasp the intricacies of something, do they say, "wow, that's beyond me?" No, they say, "hey, that doesn't jive with my more limited understanding -- the scientists are obviously making shit up."
If you discover a way to reverse gravity fields, thousands of /. users will point out that it's been done a million times before and post links to articles about blimps and hovercraft. "Nothing new here..."
To dogpile on the wabbit, the /. summary also fails to mention that the aluminum that it only stayed transparent for about 40 femtoseconds, and the focal point was about 1/20 the width of a human hair (implies the piece of aluminum turned transparent was that small, although that's unclear from TFA). Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along.
It's funny that we get a "nothing to see here" to something that's far, far cooler, more revolutionary, and has broader scientific implications than what apparently the reader here was expecting/hoping for.
The last time I checked, the colloquail definition of "transparent" means "passes visible light".Glad to know those scientists can see in the UV range - sounds like evolution is moving apace.
Most scientists use words in a way that's congruent to their actual meaning, not to how they are commonly misunderstood and misused by the uneducated.
Only at certain UV spectrum, according to the article.
Indeed, most "transparent" materials (glass, for instance) are only transparent to certain wavelengths. Is there a reason you felt the need to include quotes around "transparent" while noting this common feature of all transparent materials?
Nothing in the article makes it sound very transparent in the way we'd imagine transparency.
No, it just makes it sound transparent in the way understood by anyone who actually understands what the word "transparent" means. Alas, this apparently excludes a large number of people.
Actually I suggested that Democrats are the party of more government...
This is often claimed, but I have never, ever observed this to be the case. Aside from a short period of small examples early in the Clinton administration, I've never observed either party make any significant effort to shrink government. Ever since Ford (the first president I remember), every party, every administration, and every congress has been the party, administration, and congress of more government. Lip-service aside, no one is committed to anything else. You can gauge someone's gullibility by the degree to which they believe one party the other favors smaller government, rather than just larger or smaller roles in various areas (each favors an expanded role in some areas and a smaller role in others).
Isn't "full disclosure" really just meant to say "Hey, FYI I might be biased"? Not, "Hey, I might be biased, now let me promote myself!".
No. In fact, your point is self contradictory. If it means the former, it necessarily includes the latter. It's not possible for the first thing you said it meant to be true while the second is false. Rather like it's impossible for a basket that contains five apples to not contain three apples. Just because you include more than the first thing doesn't mean you no longer include the first thing. If "full disclosure" means including a notice of how you might be biased, including that notice and saying something else as well does not mean you failed to include the notice, so it's still "full disclosure".
... those who make bad decisions.
Like people who waste money on weapon-systems that don't actually make you any safer? BTW, don't you think our soldiers in the field would have a use for that money we're spending on weapons we don't even use, because they have no use in the current wars were fighting? Don't you support our troops? Why are you in favor of taking money we could be spending on armored transports for them and instead sinking it into planes that sit on airfields because they're designed to fight a different war that never happened? Is it really that bad an idea to spend money on weapons our troops can actually put to use than ones they can't?
We can give them 4 billion dollars and have aircraft to show for it, or give them 4 billion in bailout money to save the jobs this will impact and have NOTHING to show for it. :-)
Or better yet, we can ignore both options of your false dilemma and instead give them 4 billion dollars and have useful aircraft (F-35s) to show for it.
The original point of the F22 was to replace an aging F15 for air superiority. So we have 600 F-15s to be replaced by 188 F-22s.
...and many, many more F-35s, and many other planes. Yes, the F-35 is multirole. It still fulfills the air superiority role much better than an F-15.
Lost in the shuffle is that the argument that we do not need to invest in air superiority because we already have it. Air superiority comes from the aircraft, and if you don't have them, you don't have it. The USA has just given up strategic air superiority, is what this means.
Really? We would have had air superiority if we'd had 205 F-22s, but not with only 187? We're really riding the edge that closely? And who have we lost it to, that we would still have had it over if we had 205 vs 187 F-22s?
We did good for a while because nobody could touch the F-15, but, in simulated missions a flight of USAF F15s were shot to pieces by an Indian Air Force flying more modern Mirages.
Say what? What does that have to do with anything? I'm sorry, but this bit of hand-waving doesn't support your point any more than pointing out that P-51D Mustangs don't do well against modern Mirages either. Is there some reason to think the Indian Air Force would be defeated by 205 F-22s and a few hundred F-15s, but not by 187 F-22s and a few hundred F-35s?
Yes and no. Aircraft carriers are far from obsolete. You're pointing out that they'd be less useful in a particular situation, but neglecting to point out that they're extremely useful in the kinds of wars we most commonly fight. The F-22 is closer to being obsolete, since it was designed to fight an enemy that disappeared years ago in a type of war we haven't witnessed since WWII. Technologically, wonderful, but in terms of meeting the needs of today's military in the kinds of missions it faces, it's the F-22 that's obsolete, and the carrier that meets current needs.
I don't know why they went with the F-22 over the "F-23" anyway. It was a better plane on many levels...
Both planes met USAF requirements. One was produced by Lockheed, the company that had recently delivered the F-117 on-time and under budget. The other by Northrop, which had suffered delays and extreme cost overruns on the B-2, and McDonnell Douglas, which was having even greater problems with the A-12 bomber (the DoD would eventually sue them over this one).
The plane may have been better, but the companies behind it where not. Since both planes met requirements and were good aircraft, DoD chose the company with the better track record.
How many of the companies you own stock in trade with/do business in red china (or Viet Nam for that matter)? Or put it another way, how many *don't*?
I believe by "commies" he was referring to actual communists. If there are any actual communists left in China these days, they're probably repressed by the Chinese government for advocating radical philosophies fundamentally opposed to that of the party. :p
My opinion is that makes no sense.
That's nice. May I ask what your academic credentials are, and what research studies you've published or been involved with that would make your opinion better informed than asking my cat what she thinks on the question at hand?
I doubt it. If our species survives 100,000 years, at best that step would be talked about like we currently talk about Gilgamesh, Moses, and Achilles, although probably with substantially less fact and more mythologizing, given the relative timeframes. More likely it'll simply have been utterly forgotten. They'll remember the first man who set foot on the moon with all the clarity that we remember the first person to set foot in what would come to be called the "New World" some twenty thousand years or so later (that may be highly inaccurate, I don't recall what the best estimates are today when humans first crossed the ice-bridge between Asia and North America). We know it happened sometime in the distant past, but no one today knows the first detail about this person. They'll have some estimate as to when humans first evolved. If we're lucky, they might even still know which planet it occurred on. They'll have some shaky figure as to when they first set foot on another worth, but it'll be "plus or minus a few thousand years", and the details we be lost.
Well, given The Pope claims to be His representative and The Vatican hoards gagillions of dollars in assets (aside: while begging for donations), God's a very ripe target with plenty of ability to pay.
Hmm. If the Vatican can be held financially liable for acts of God...
The downside of this idea is that the primary beneficiary of it would be hordes of lawyers. I'm agnostic but I'd rather give the money to Catholic Charities.
Remember, the reason they need to deorbit it is because they don't have the money to keep it up. Given that the basic problem is a lack of funds, how were you going to send it to Mars? Pray it there?
And the NASA can just say: "Sorry, rest of the world, shows over in 2016."? Don't the ESA, JAXA, RKA...etc have a say in this?
They have no more choice in the matter than NASA does. (You aren't under the misimpression that NASA wants to do this, are you?) Reality is what it is. They can all say "keep it up", but when the money runs out, they have no more power to keep it up than they have to repeal the law of gravity. They have to deal with the facts as they are, not as they might wish them to be.
Of course, these are the same people that are pouring billions to save dying companies such as GM, so I should not be surprised.
Hehe. Very apropos question in the title, then, coming from someone who clearly doesn't understand economics.
Now that the shuttle is out of the picture, I'm not sure why they can't move it up to a more sensible orbit.
...
You understand the reason they're planning on deorbiting it is because it costs money to keep it in orbit, and that's when the money runs out, right? They don't want to deorbit it, they just don't have any money to keep it up after 2015.
Remember the challenge here isn't scientific, it's economic. Their plan on dealing with no money is to deorbit. Your plan on dealing with no money is to boost to a more sensible orbit? How do you do that, given that the reason you're doing that is because you have no money? You have a way to boosting it to a higher orbit with no money?