Re: I've used genetic algorithms
on
Digital Darwin
·
· Score: 1
Because the major reason people reject the idea is because they simply don't think it's plausible. Models may be simplified: but what they do demonstrate quite handily is the plausibility of some mechanism to accomplish what we suggest it can.
You're right: The Brothers Karamazov was way better than Half-Life. Here's your godamn medal, now why don't you go lecture some preschoolers about how rewarding it is to not watch Tv.
This complaint is totally clueless, sort of like the guy that slaps a girl on the left cheek, and then, when she cries out, slaps her on the right cheek. And the bitch still complains! Geez, damned if you do, damned if you don't! Seriously, I know I'm preaching to your jerking knees here, but the problem is not separating good Islam from bad Islam, it's separating beliefs from actions. See, here in America, the idea is that no one has authority over anyone's ideas, no matter how silly or ridiculous others might find them. What we don't tolerate is violence and coercion. THAT is what Bush should have stuck to criticizing, instead of trying to play national theologian and interpret what God thinks and wants for the rest of us.
And geez: left-wingers? I'm a left-winger because I don't agree that America is uniquely and radically secular today, or think that Bush's God rhetoric is different from God rhetoric of the past? Guess I should give up jockeying for the repeal of anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action, and the progressive tax system. You know, now that I'm a "left-winger."
And just to be sure, they even had Jesus fulfill some things that weren't actually prophecies, but mistranslations: like riding on two asses, or being born of a virgin. Then there are the ones where they call him Emmanuel in the text, simply to fulfill what they thought was a prophecy (the actual prophecy being about something totally different that is already described), despite the fact that no one else calls him that.
---large percentage of the American voting public is more liberal and secular now than in previous eras.---
I'm not sure this is true: sounds like a "Good Ole Days" myth. Just because the American public has a better head on its shoulders about separation doesn't mean that it's less religious and more secular. In fact, we've been more religious over the last couple of decades than in many other times in our history: we're on a peak, not a trough.
---Bush's religiosity seems absurd to many people, but it wouldn't have a century ago.---
Not really so either. Again, it isn't religiosity, but the WAY it is expressed and put into the public square. Even Lincoln, who was one of the first Presidents to use religion as a serious talking point (even though he considered his own talk "for the fools") didn't speak of it in the same WAY that Bush does. I mean, last year Bush litterally made a statement that purported to separate "good/true" Islam from "bad/false" Islam. Where does he think he gets that sort of authority? At least none of the other Presidents who were religious thought that the office of President had some special religious power and authority from which to speak. It doesn't: the whole point of separation is not to make religion bad, but to reserve it for the people. We have our own religious leaders which we can freely choose. The government, even as a democracy, has no authority to choose for us, or lecture us on what to believe. The founders understood that.
Previous post was constructed by a careful and time-worn formula:
1) Remind everyone that our knowledge is limited, and we shouldn't claim things beyond what we can substantiate.
2) Make claims "it isn't YOU" "goes deeper than brain" that go beyond what anyone can substantiate.
---1: No torture (yet) is officially sanctioned in the US.---
You mean... within our national borders. If we have to have sub-Americans do our dirty work for us, then it's just fine.
---3: A more credible and much more independent judicial system where if you are disappeared, at least your lawyer can still file paperwork for you and try to get access to you.---
Maybe: but it was pretty up in the air for awhile there, and the governments case WAS that we shouldn't allow lawyers to muck up the executive's perogative.
Anyway, I don't think any sane person can possible compare Iraq to America. That doesn't mean we don't have some major things to worry about. It's not like the very basis of our society defends itself.
---I just find it ironic that someone so keen for war couldn't stomach it himself.---
Why is that ironic? Some people are made to fight wars, some are made to be politicians. Both positions are now voluntary, as they should be.
---Don't worry, I don't like Al Gore much either. Is anyone suprised that the election came down to effectively a draw with two such lacklustre, mediocre men as candidates?---
Don't tell me you're one of those empty-headed third party advocates who can't figure out that we have a median voter system, not a "what'ever Chompsky says is what everyone really believes, the media is just keeping us down!" zealots.
Dead on. Take a look at those games where are the best of even the conventional shooter genre. Half-Life didn't have "levels"- it had a story. It's places and monsters fit into that story. Of course, I'm exaggerating, but at least trying that route was what made it stand out. Same thing with Crono Trigger: basically your standard RPG, but at least it tried to work enemies into the game, rather than randomly dumping them on you.
The problem is, though, trying slightly new things is a risk. People like familiar interfaces, conventions.
Are you suggesting that we should give up on the idea of civilian control over the military? Combat vets only need apply? Service brings citizenship? I don't doubt that Bush weaseled out of active duty: he even seemed to weasel out of reserve duty. But I don't buy the principle you're pushing here at all.
Did he actually mention the strike at all? I don't remember it (the translation was so immediate and rough though) It could have been pre-recorded, couldn't it?
I agree. I happen to be well-schooled in both the humanities and the sciences (and picked a profession, economics/social science, that basically spans them both), and I never get over how different the mind-sets are. Steven Landsburg has this great anecdote about a political talk program where a social scientist talked about the probable outcome of some election, and presented a model that included such things as the growth rate, the number of U.S. troops on foriegn soil, unemployment, and so on. He developed a regression based on past history that was to be his best take on what the past could tell us about the future.
The next guest was a historian. He was absolutely horrified with the previous guest: he called it reductionism to the point of absurdity. He then proceeded to explain how a historian would forecast: you'd have to think about unemployment, the growth rate... etc.
As Landsberg notes, the guy didn't actually object to the political scientist's method: he just objected to being CAREFUL about what he was doing, instead of vaguely rambling on about it!
I have a solution: write deep-nested books. Obviously, this would work best with computers, but you can do it with physical books as well (a sort of choose your own adventure). Basically, the idea is to write information that can be expanded for detail along multiple axises when needed. Instead of only splitting up a book by chapters, split it up by level of detail/type of detail.
Can you explain, in layman's terms, what a "real relational database" actually is? And why MySQL isn't one, and what it would have to do to be one? And NOT by saying "well, it's got to have wvcsde and werdfskfk!" I mean, I don't know too much, but people have got to be able to explain these operations, and the theories behind the data structure, in better ways than most people here are doing, reffering to various features. Not all of us here are geniuses, or work with databases regularly.:)
I'm not sure you actually listened. First of all, most estimates of yAdam and mEve put them millenia apart. Second of all, these designations are not permanent: they are contigent. Nor is there any "narrowing down" of the human race implied. What is "narrowed down" over time is the number of links to unique connections. The yAdam/mEve phenomenon would occur even if the human population remained at a steady level (say, a million). It has nothing to do with descent from two single individuals. I understand you hold out for the possibility... but there is a ridiculous amount of evidence that speaks directly against it.
---I understand you consider mEve and YAdam theoretical - but remember, in the absence of an eyewitness to this, this is a *hypothesis* put forward to fit the bottlenecking data (and perhaps, it does fit the data).---
No no, not theoretical as in, they didn't exist: theoretical as in conceptually defined. The designation mEve could pass onto another woman tommorow. We could find an alternate isolated lingeage tommorow that puts the designation mEve on an even older woman. You seem to think that it's an almost magical designation. But you're just cherry picking what you want to hear out of these studies and ignoring everything else. That's not the way to do science. The bottleneck itself is also conceptual: it doesn't reflect an actual bottleneck in the population (that is, it's not evidence of the total human population at any time being just 2 or even 5 individuals): it reflects a basic geometric necessity. Even the human population had been around for a billion years at roughly the size the human population has been prior to recorded history, there would still be a relatively _recent_ mEve, who would have nothing to do with early humans.
---Critics thrust back saying techniques like Radio-carbon dating give older ages....---
So, I see. If we pick and choose whatever evidence we need, arbitrarily giving near, unquestioning certainty to those studies that happen to fit into your pre-concieved notions, and casting doubt on all those that don't... I mean the hundreds of other chains of evidence about age are all found in peer reviewed journals as well: why is "peer-reviewed" a magical veil of protection in one case, but of no worth in another? You don't think genetic studies have assumptions and holes as well that you could scoff at if they turned out not to agree with your theory the way you think it does? You must know, of course, that radio-carbon dating is harly the only technique used for these various issues, and indeed it is not even the most important for determining key ages of the earth.
---If the amount of radioactivity increased dramatically due to the flood (as described in my earlier post), fossils created before the flood would look artificially "old" since post-flood fossils would have higher amounts of radio-carbon to begin with.---
An increase of such a level would have also irradiated life on Earth, including any Noah. But RC dating isn't simply based on unfounded assumptions: we've done endless experiments on RC under all sorts of different simulated conditions to understand what effects its decay rate, and why levels in living things would be in equilibrium with the atmosphere at certain points. Not to mention methods for spotting and checking the assumptions, including the possibility you are (inexplicably) sugguesting. You're going to have to do a little more than invent an ad hoc theory about how a global flood (which you'd also have to prove) was part of a conspiracy to confuse dating methods. more here... But hey, I'm sure it wont pass the "doesn't fit into my theory test" you seem to think is part of science.
---Also, there is also an "eyewitness" account being claimed here -- God's word in the Bible. How do we examine the trustworthiness of this account?---
You're right: but geez, we've got all this alternative testimony from Homer and Ovid. Come on. This is not scientific _evidence_, it's the very claims you're drawing your ideas from.
---Ultimately I can't *prove* God to you without a doubt.---
Why would you need to prove God to me? We were supposed to be talking about literalist Creationism, not the existence of God. The existence of God is an indepedant question.
---The random mutations that do not improve survivability tend not to get passed on to future generations, the ones that do improve survivability do tend to get passed on.---
This is the creationist understanding of evolution: the idea that you gotta wait around for a lucky mutation to evolve. But that isn't how it works. The vast majority of mutations don't increase survivability in any discrete way: what they do is increase the total pool of variation in a population: slight differences in all sorts of different traits. None of these things may confer any particular advantage at the moment: they could be the grounds for a new selection generations hence when the environment changes.
No, I understand: the problem is that in pragmatic terms, "god" is good enough for most of the gods we discuss today, especially the current version of the JC god. creator outsidea the natural order n all.
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Because the major reason people reject the idea is because they simply don't think it's plausible. Models may be simplified: but what they do demonstrate quite handily is the plausibility of some mechanism to accomplish what we suggest it can.
You're right: The Brothers Karamazov was way better than Half-Life. Here's your godamn medal, now why don't you go lecture some preschoolers about how rewarding it is to not watch Tv.
This complaint is totally clueless, sort of like the guy that slaps a girl on the left cheek, and then, when she cries out, slaps her on the right cheek. And the bitch still complains! Geez, damned if you do, damned if you don't!
Seriously, I know I'm preaching to your jerking knees here, but the problem is not separating good Islam from bad Islam, it's separating beliefs from actions. See, here in America, the idea is that no one has authority over anyone's ideas, no matter how silly or ridiculous others might find them. What we don't tolerate is violence and coercion. THAT is what Bush should have stuck to criticizing, instead of trying to play national theologian and interpret what God thinks and wants for the rest of us.
And geez: left-wingers? I'm a left-winger because I don't agree that America is uniquely and radically secular today, or think that Bush's God rhetoric is different from God rhetoric of the past? Guess I should give up jockeying for the repeal of anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action, and the progressive tax system. You know, now that I'm a "left-winger."
Fermat was a pretty sharp guy...
And just to be sure, they even had Jesus fulfill some things that weren't actually prophecies, but mistranslations: like riding on two asses, or being born of a virgin. Then there are the ones where they call him Emmanuel in the text, simply to fulfill what they thought was a prophecy (the actual prophecy being about something totally different that is already described), despite the fact that no one else calls him that.
You're right! And that totally fits with the current popularity of Harry Potter!
---large percentage of the American voting public is more liberal and secular now than in previous eras.---
I'm not sure this is true: sounds like a "Good Ole Days" myth. Just because the American public has a better head on its shoulders about separation doesn't mean that it's less religious and more secular. In fact, we've been more religious over the last couple of decades than in many other times in our history: we're on a peak, not a trough.
---Bush's religiosity seems absurd to many people, but it wouldn't have a century ago.---
Not really so either. Again, it isn't religiosity, but the WAY it is expressed and put into the public square. Even Lincoln, who was one of the first Presidents to use religion as a serious talking point (even though he considered his own talk "for the fools") didn't speak of it in the same WAY that Bush does. I mean, last year Bush litterally made a statement that purported to separate "good/true" Islam from "bad/false" Islam. Where does he think he gets that sort of authority? At least none of the other Presidents who were religious thought that the office of President had some special religious power and authority from which to speak. It doesn't: the whole point of separation is not to make religion bad, but to reserve it for the people. We have our own religious leaders which we can freely choose. The government, even as a democracy, has no authority to choose for us, or lecture us on what to believe. The founders understood that.
Previous post was constructed by a careful and time-worn formula:
1) Remind everyone that our knowledge is limited, and we shouldn't claim things beyond what we can substantiate.
2) Make claims "it isn't YOU" "goes deeper than brain" that go beyond what anyone can substantiate.
Are you calling Fermat a liar?
---1: No torture (yet) is officially sanctioned in the US.---
You mean... within our national borders. If we have to have sub-Americans do our dirty work for us, then it's just fine.
---3: A more credible and much more independent judicial system where if you are disappeared, at least your lawyer can still file paperwork for you and try to get access to you.---
Maybe: but it was pretty up in the air for awhile there, and the governments case WAS that we shouldn't allow lawyers to muck up the executive's perogative.
Anyway, I don't think any sane person can possible compare Iraq to America. That doesn't mean we don't have some major things to worry about. It's not like the very basis of our society defends itself.
---I just find it ironic that someone so keen for war couldn't stomach it himself.---
Why is that ironic? Some people are made to fight wars, some are made to be politicians. Both positions are now voluntary, as they should be.
---Don't worry, I don't like Al Gore much either. Is anyone suprised that the election came down to effectively a draw with two such lacklustre, mediocre men as candidates?---
Don't tell me you're one of those empty-headed third party advocates who can't figure out that we have a median voter system, not a "what'ever Chompsky says is what everyone really believes, the media is just keeping us down!" zealots.
When you tire of beating on drums, you can always beat on a pedophiles butt. No, I'm serious (though, of course, it's Japanese).
Boong-Ga Boong-Ga is the first arcade game that combines of assaulting assholes and fortune-telling.
Dead on. Take a look at those games where are the best of even the conventional shooter genre. Half-Life didn't have "levels"- it had a story. It's places and monsters fit into that story. Of course, I'm exaggerating, but at least trying that route was what made it stand out. Same thing with Crono Trigger: basically your standard RPG, but at least it tried to work enemies into the game, rather than randomly dumping them on you.
The problem is, though, trying slightly new things is a risk. People like familiar interfaces, conventions.
Are you suggesting that we should give up on the idea of civilian control over the military? Combat vets only need apply? Service brings citizenship? I don't doubt that Bush weaseled out of active duty: he even seemed to weasel out of reserve duty. But I don't buy the principle you're pushing here at all.
Did he actually mention the strike at all? I don't remember it (the translation was so immediate and rough though) It could have been pre-recorded, couldn't it?
I wonder: is the term "whoosh" well-known here on Slashdot?
I agree. I happen to be well-schooled in both the humanities and the sciences (and picked a profession, economics/social science, that basically spans them both), and I never get over how different the mind-sets are. Steven Landsburg has this great anecdote about a political talk program where a social scientist talked about the probable outcome of some election, and presented a model that included such things as the growth rate, the number of U.S. troops on foriegn soil, unemployment, and so on. He developed a regression based on past history that was to be his best take on what the past could tell us about the future.
The next guest was a historian. He was absolutely horrified with the previous guest: he called it reductionism to the point of absurdity. He then proceeded to explain how a historian would forecast: you'd have to think about unemployment, the growth rate... etc.
As Landsberg notes, the guy didn't actually object to the political scientist's method: he just objected to being CAREFUL about what he was doing, instead of vaguely rambling on about it!
I have a solution: write deep-nested books. Obviously, this would work best with computers, but you can do it with physical books as well (a sort of choose your own adventure). Basically, the idea is to write information that can be expanded for detail along multiple axises when needed. Instead of only splitting up a book by chapters, split it up by level of detail/type of detail.
Hey, don't knock electrisity: it was my favorite part of physics class!
Can you explain, in layman's terms, what a "real relational database" actually is? And why MySQL isn't one, and what it would have to do to be one? And NOT by saying "well, it's got to have wvcsde and werdfskfk!" I mean, I don't know too much, but people have got to be able to explain these operations, and the theories behind the data structure, in better ways than most people here are doing, reffering to various features. Not all of us here are geniuses, or work with databases regularly. :)
Ah yes: because Texas' public education system has won world-reknown...
I'm not sure you actually listened. First of all, most estimates of yAdam and mEve put them millenia apart. Second of all, these designations are not permanent: they are contigent. Nor is there any "narrowing down" of the human race implied. What is "narrowed down" over time is the number of links to unique connections. The yAdam/mEve phenomenon would occur even if the human population remained at a steady level (say, a million). It has nothing to do with descent from two single individuals. I understand you hold out for the possibility... but there is a ridiculous amount of evidence that speaks directly against it.
---I understand you consider mEve and YAdam theoretical - but remember, in the absence of an eyewitness to this, this is a *hypothesis* put forward to fit the bottlenecking data (and perhaps, it does fit the data).---
No no, not theoretical as in, they didn't exist: theoretical as in conceptually defined. The designation mEve could pass onto another woman tommorow. We could find an alternate isolated lingeage tommorow that puts the designation mEve on an even older woman. You seem to think that it's an almost magical designation. But you're just cherry picking what you want to hear out of these studies and ignoring everything else. That's not the way to do science. The bottleneck itself is also conceptual: it doesn't reflect an actual bottleneck in the population (that is, it's not evidence of the total human population at any time being just 2 or even 5 individuals): it reflects a basic geometric necessity. Even the human population had been around for a billion years at roughly the size the human population has been prior to recorded history, there would still be a relatively _recent_ mEve, who would have nothing to do with early humans.
---Critics thrust back saying techniques like Radio-carbon dating give older ages....---
So, I see. If we pick and choose whatever evidence we need, arbitrarily giving near, unquestioning certainty to those studies that happen to fit into your pre-concieved notions, and casting doubt on all those that don't...
I mean the hundreds of other chains of evidence about age are all found in peer reviewed journals as well: why is "peer-reviewed" a magical veil of protection in one case, but of no worth in another? You don't think genetic studies have assumptions and holes as well that you could scoff at if they turned out not to agree with your theory the way you think it does?
You must know, of course, that radio-carbon dating is harly the only technique used for these various issues, and indeed it is not even the most important for determining key ages of the earth.
---If the amount of radioactivity increased dramatically due to the flood (as described in my earlier post), fossils created before the flood would look artificially "old" since post-flood fossils would have higher amounts of radio-carbon to begin with.---
An increase of such a level would have also irradiated life on Earth, including any Noah. But RC dating isn't simply based on unfounded assumptions: we've done endless experiments on RC under all sorts of different simulated conditions to understand what effects its decay rate, and why levels in living things would be in equilibrium with the atmosphere at certain points. Not to mention methods for spotting and checking the assumptions, including the possibility you are (inexplicably) sugguesting. You're going to have to do a little more than invent an ad hoc theory about how a global flood (which you'd also have to prove) was part of a conspiracy to confuse dating methods.
more here...
But hey, I'm sure it wont pass the "doesn't fit into my theory test" you seem to think is part of science.
---Also, there is also an "eyewitness" account being claimed here -- God's word in the Bible. How do we examine the trustworthiness of this account?---
You're right: but geez, we've got all this alternative testimony from Homer and Ovid. Come on. This is not scientific _evidence_, it's the very claims you're drawing your ideas from.
---Ultimately I can't *prove* God to you without a doubt.---
Why would you need to prove God to me? We were supposed to be talking about literalist Creationism, not the existence of God. The existence of God is an indepedant question.
---The random mutations that do not improve survivability tend not to get passed on to future generations, the ones that do improve survivability do tend to get passed on.---
This is the creationist understanding of evolution: the idea that you gotta wait around for a lucky mutation to evolve. But that isn't how it works. The vast majority of mutations don't increase survivability in any discrete way: what they do is increase the total pool of variation in a population: slight differences in all sorts of different traits. None of these things may confer any particular advantage at the moment: they could be the grounds for a new selection generations hence when the environment changes.
No, I understand: the problem is that in pragmatic terms, "god" is good enough for most of the gods we discuss today, especially the current version of the JC god. creator outsidea the natural order n all.