Once the rocket's fuel was spent, SpaceShipOne kept going up for about three minutes to reach 104km, a height at which it lost speed like a spent bullet.
haha! "like a spent bullet"... Only the Arab world would use such an analogy so freely.:)
Most of the people I see everyday on the street and in their homes, at the beach, in the overstuffed grocery store, at the baseball games, climbing mountains, buying houses, praying to God, praying to any god, and giving generously of their time and money don't appear crushed.
Selfish, many may be, self-righteous narcissistic brats, perhaps. But I doubt their character was affected by economics and corporations. It was probably formed by beliefs regarding their soul, the existense or not of deity, the nature of such a deity (personal god, impersonal god like technology, nothingness, etc) and what it means to live well in light of that. Which of course is informed by close people in community such as parents, friends, benefactors, teachers, religous leaders, etc. Hardly a faceless corporation.
Corporations can't change your mind, only beliefs can.
Wasn't this the goal? Having all schoolchildren able to type?
I guess we should revive the time-honored tradition of carving runes on stone tablets, so our children don't miss... um.. something... What are they missing?
Maybe I just feel triumphant since I consistently got C's and below on handwriting throughout grade school. Seriously, somehow all my report cards were saved by my mom. Man, I was bad at math too.
Make teaching valuable by making schools valuable. Teacher accountability and (gasp here) public education privatization (aka vouchers, etc) might help this.
Imagine if you could get a job as a network admin, and as long as you showed up for work you kept your job... the network might not work well, people might not be able to connect to servers, but it's your right to be a network admin, because its a thankless job and you were willing to volunteer for it. This is similar to teaching.
We've been working on a computer project in Morocco for the past two years. It's not building network infrastructure, but outsourcing programming needs from first world countries to developing countries.
The point isn't necessarily to provide Africans with technology but with work, which is in short supply. Also, we want to provide them with a position at a company that isn't corrupt. We want to be a role model of ethical personal and corporate behavior - something that is also in short supply in Africa (much worse than here).
If we offer good jobs with decent pay, they can begin to afford to build the technology. But I don't think technology is the primary ends. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is. In the end, technology may be a part of fulfilling those goals, but of itself it is an empty aspiration.
Different subject: Governments are generally the worst entities to enact reform of any kind. Especially in countries where governments or contragovernments are the problem, it is individuals in leadership that affect change for the better.
You just have to do a lot of legwork with the LEC and other people to make it work. This is feasible for a medium to large company, but I seriously doubt net2phone does this for each home user.
and help people adjust to their new place. My mom does realty work over a large rural area of Southern California and her website and email list help form the community. Of course, this is not like realtor.com, etc, but it does display how the human factor can help things along.
Since all software is basically textual representation of numbers and mathmatical formulas, wouldn't software patents be equivalent of patenting Math so that nobody could use formulas without paying royalties?
No because math and mathematical relationship exists whether people use it or not, or for that matter, whether people exist or not.
The existence of software requires people to organize ideas into discreet functioning entities. So you either need people or a roomful of monkeys and a trillion years to create programs.
Math formulas might be different: By this argument you could say that mathematical formulas could be patentable because because it's the method of reaching the conclusion that could be valuable. But the conclusion has always existed, just as hydrogen has always existed in this universe. I don't think formulas should be patentable though.
Personally I think what they should do is have an educational institution of Professors, and students come up with a resolution to their problems, on both the technological side of things, as well as a legal aspect of it to avoid future scrutiny.
Leaving it up to the community in my eyes is a bad idea, since humans being humans will generally tend to have biased views whether they realize it or not.
A company is running fiber to businesses and hooking it into ethernet networks with a media converter or ethernet switch with an optical interface. On their side the fiber terminates at their ATM access point. This runs back to their central facilities and plugs into their core routers, then out to the internet!
Guaranteed basic rate is 1.5Mbps. The speed can be shared using vlans, or I think it can be increased.
science relies on the repeatable experiment as its' basis,
While it is true that science uses a method of examining empirical data and evidence, for science to be practiced it's practioners must hold certain philosophical premises to be true. These premises cannot be repeated in experiments. they can be shown to be true if one accepts logic and a priori knowledge to be valid forms of truth. Such premises include the idea that everything is itself. Or the number 7 is 7. etc.
and religion relies on articles of faith as its' basis.
Yes, because God cannot be empirically proved or philosophically reasoned into existence, you have to exert faith. But, at least for Christianity, this faith is not, or should not be, a Kierkegaardean "leap of faith," but it is a faith that is well reasoned, shown beyond reasonable doubt to be true.
It's not that they're incompatible, it's that they're asking totally different questions. Science asks: How ??? Religion asks: Why ???
science relies on the repeatable experiment as its' basis,
While it is true that science uses a method of examining empirical data and evidence, for science to be practiced it's practioners must hold certain philosophical premises to be true. These premises cannot be repeated in experiments. they can be shown to be true if one accepts logic and a priori knowledge to be valid forms of truth. Such premises include the idea that everything is itself. Or the number 7 is 7. etc.
and religion relies on articles of faith as its' basis.
Yes, because God cannot be empirically proved or philosophically reasoned into existence, you have to exert faith. But, at least for Christianity, this faith is not, or should not be, a Kierkegaardean "leap of faith," but it is a faith that is well reasoned, shown beyond reasonable doubt to be true.
It's not that they're incompatible, it's that they're asking totally different questions.
Science asks: How ???
Religion asks: Why ???
Christians can consider this article fairly and still believe in God.
A lot of Christians (Christians being primarily religious conservatives, and "bible believing" people) I know are fairly certain that an OEC, or Old Earth Creation happened/is happening. Some of the points of this position are that the begining of the universe likely occured with some "big bang", and evolution proceeded out of that. This is backed up scientifically and does not put a strain on who God is, as God is defined by the Bible and philosophy. The only part of the begining of the universe and people as recorded in Genesis that must be interpreted literally in order to maintain harmony with the rest of the Bible is an actual, individual creation of Adam and Eve. (This has to occur because original sin was/is a personal occurance involving an individuals choice, etc)
I think many Christians get hung up and don't want to explore the possibilities of evolution/big bang because they think that if they do hold evolution to be true, or likely to be true, that they have to drop the whole idea of God; there goes their foundation for existence and meaning. This doesn't have to be the case though.
Quick argument showing the above isn't necessarily true:
Everyone has to at entertain and establish some premise or set of premises from the following exhuastive dilemas:
1. Either the universe has a begining or it does not.
If the universe had a begining then:
2. Either the begining was caused or uncaused
If the the universe was caused then:
3. The cause was either personal or impersonal.
This line of reasoning (Kalam cosmological argument) does not necessarily exclude God or evolution from the whole thing. Just a word to those Christians who want to know.
The anti-social argument against online classrooms is old hat. While I don't have statistics I do have anectdotal evidence that homeschoolers are more well-adjusted, social, normal people by the time they reach college (which is often by age 16) than many public and formal private school kids. They often hold classes in groups, not one on one at home. Online learning has so far been a supplement to interactive (people-to-people) learning.
Who says intense socialization must occur at school? Shouldn't intense learning be occuring? How much time can efficient learning really be spent socializing. There are other ways to socialize. Plenty of homeschoolers get socialization from extracurricular activity. Often they gain deeper, long-lasting social interaction from their church.
Home schoolers, as it has been noted, have been doing online learning for several years. One site I know of that's associated with the home school group my wife studied with, http://www.gbt.org offers great in depth studies for older kids. I know there are many more like this.
I assume several things in this post since arguments for the assumptions might be very long and tedious to read in this format.
As far as I can see, a human mind is indistinguishable in practice from a very large deterministic system in a chaotic environment. Apparently nondeterministic actions are adequately explained by strong sensitivity to input and the chaotic, effectively unpredictable nature of this input.
So, rather than making a blanket statement that the human mind can't be emulated by a deterministic machine, you're going to have to prove that it isn't already one:).
Assume that a thing in a state cannot change that state without a cause enacted on it. This is true in classical physics, and it has not been disproved in quantum physics.
The state of a single transistor in a computer cannot then change without a cause. And causes cannot be effected without programming from a human, doing electrical rewiring, or turning the power on or off. Yes, a program could be written to change the state rather than having a human directly change the state. Even the simplest algorithm will accomplish this. Yet the change of state is still indirectly caused by a human. I take it for granted that a computer could be programmed to simulate intelligence. If that is true, then that is all they can do; they would not necessarily be the source of intelligence. (Hence the name, AI.)
If we assume that a physical state does not equal Truth, we might be able to get closer to a proof of the human mind as something other than deterministic. (However, I do not think it is possible to completely empirically prove this.) By a state not equalling truth I mean that a state simply exists as it is with it's own qualities. For example, an apple exists in a hanging state when it is on the tree. It is true that it exists in that state, but that state is not Truth.
Assume then that Truth is "being as it is, with reason but without cause." Then human choices of the mind, a metaphysical rather than physical mind becomes more possible, and the possibility of the ability of a computer to simply "make up" or "create stuff" diminishes.
I'm using "human mind" instead of "conscious mind" above because you're going to have one hell of a time defining "consciousness".
Here's an idea that illustrates that complexity does not necessarily equal conciousness. I guess this is part of helping define conciousness and arguing against the "complex neural network of the ganglia" theory.
The weather is an extremely complex series of events that is not well understood. I would venture to say that it is far more complex than any computer is, and it is possibly more complex than the human brain. Yet you don't say that the tornado is out to get you, that warm breezes are coming because they want to make you feel better. In short, the weather does not have reason. Yet we apparently have reason. So if reason exists then complexity as the only defining factor of the mind or "conciosness" might safely be ruled out.
Slashdot Mirror
I like the way it's reported here!
:)
Once the rocket's fuel was spent, SpaceShipOne kept going up for about three minutes to reach 104km, a height at which it lost speed like a spent bullet.
haha! "like a spent bullet"... Only the Arab world would use such an analogy so freely.
Most of the people I see everyday on the street and in their homes, at the beach, in the overstuffed grocery store, at the baseball games, climbing mountains, buying houses, praying to God, praying to any god, and giving generously of their time and money don't appear crushed.
Selfish, many may be, self-righteous narcissistic brats, perhaps. But I doubt their character was affected by economics and corporations. It was probably formed by beliefs regarding their soul, the existense or not of deity, the nature of such a deity (personal god, impersonal god like technology, nothingness, etc) and what it means to live well in light of that. Which of course is informed by close people in community such as parents, friends, benefactors, teachers, religous leaders, etc. Hardly a faceless corporation.
Corporations can't change your mind, only beliefs can.
Is there any feasible way to turn all the heat generated by these new CPUs into electricity and use it to partly power the computer?
Wasn't this the goal? Having all schoolchildren able to type?
I guess we should revive the time-honored tradition of carving runes on stone tablets, so our children don't miss... um.. something... What are they missing?
Maybe I just feel triumphant since I consistently got C's and below on handwriting throughout grade school. Seriously, somehow all my report cards were saved by my mom. Man, I was bad at math too.
Copy the audio output with Total Recorder and then you can have it wherever you want in whatever format you want it.
All TR does is play the file and copy the audio stream (digitally of course, not with a mic, although you could) to a new file. voila!
I've often thought of vocalizing my lan. Does anyone know where to start to realize tcp packets as sounds?
Imagine if you could get a job as a network admin, and as long as you showed up for work you kept your job... the network might not work well, people might not be able to connect to servers, but it's your right to be a network admin, because its a thankless job and you were willing to volunteer for it. This is similar to teaching.
The point isn't necessarily to provide Africans with technology but with work, which is in short supply. Also, we want to provide them with a position at a company that isn't corrupt. We want to be a role model of ethical personal and corporate behavior - something that is also in short supply in Africa (much worse than here).
If we offer good jobs with decent pay, they can begin to afford to build the technology. But I don't think technology is the primary ends. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is. In the end, technology may be a part of fulfilling those goals, but of itself it is an empty aspiration.
Different subject: Governments are generally the worst entities to enact reform of any kind. Especially in countries where governments or contragovernments are the problem, it is individuals in leadership that affect change for the better.
Brandon
You just have to do a lot of legwork with the LEC and other people to make it work. This is feasible for a medium to large company, but I seriously doubt net2phone does this for each home user.
Brandon
That said, I think I would rather see students and professors rather than corporations fill this sort of role. I tend towards their bias more.
Brandon
No because math and mathematical relationship exists whether people use it or not, or for that matter, whether people exist or not.
The existence of software requires people to organize ideas into discreet functioning entities. So you either need people or a roomful of monkeys and a trillion years to create programs.
Math formulas might be different: By this argument you could say that mathematical formulas could be patentable because because it's the method of reaching the conclusion that could be valuable. But the conclusion has always existed, just as hydrogen has always existed in this universe. I don't think formulas should be patentable though.
Brandon
Leaving it up to the community in my eyes is a bad idea, since humans being humans will generally tend to have biased views whether they realize it or not.
And professors and students aren't biased?
A company is running fiber to businesses and hooking it into ethernet networks with a media converter or ethernet switch with an optical interface. On their side the fiber terminates at their ATM access point. This runs back to their central facilities and plugs into their core routers, then out to the internet!
Guaranteed basic rate is 1.5Mbps. The speed can be shared using vlans, or I think it can be increased.
But it costs as much as a T1.
While it is true that science uses a method of examining empirical data and evidence, for science to be practiced it's practioners must hold certain philosophical premises to be true. These premises cannot be repeated in experiments. they can be shown to be true if one accepts logic and a priori knowledge to be valid forms of truth. Such premises include the idea that everything is itself. Or the number 7 is 7. etc.
and religion relies on articles of faith as its' basis.
Yes, because God cannot be empirically proved or philosophically reasoned into existence, you have to exert faith. But, at least for Christianity, this faith is not, or should not be, a Kierkegaardean "leap of faith," but it is a faith that is well reasoned, shown beyond reasonable doubt to be true.
It's not that they're incompatible, it's that they're asking totally different questions. Science asks: How ??? Religion asks: Why ???
True. True.
While it is true that science uses a method of examining empirical data and evidence, for science to be practiced it's practioners must hold certain philosophical premises to be true. These premises cannot be repeated in experiments. they can be shown to be true if one accepts logic and a priori knowledge to be valid forms of truth. Such premises include the idea that everything is itself. Or the number 7 is 7. etc.
and religion relies on articles of faith as its' basis.
Yes, because God cannot be empirically proved or philosophically reasoned into existence, you have to exert faith. But, at least for Christianity, this faith is not, or should not be, a Kierkegaardean "leap of faith," but it is a faith that is well reasoned, shown beyond reasonable doubt to be true.
It's not that they're incompatible, it's that they're asking totally different questions. Science asks: How ??? Religion asks: Why ???
True. True.
Christians can consider this article fairly and still believe in God.
A lot of Christians (Christians being primarily religious conservatives, and "bible believing" people) I know are fairly certain that an OEC, or Old Earth Creation happened/is happening. Some of the points of this position are that the begining of the universe likely occured with some "big bang", and evolution proceeded out of that. This is backed up scientifically and does not put a strain on who God is, as God is defined by the Bible and philosophy. The only part of the begining of the universe and people as recorded in Genesis that must be interpreted literally in order to maintain harmony with the rest of the Bible is an actual, individual creation of Adam and Eve. (This has to occur because original sin was/is a personal occurance involving an individuals choice, etc)
I think many Christians get hung up and don't want to explore the possibilities of evolution/big bang because they think that if they do hold evolution to be true, or likely to be true, that they have to drop the whole idea of God; there goes their foundation for existence and meaning. This doesn't have to be the case though.
Quick argument showing the above isn't necessarily true:
Everyone has to at entertain and establish some premise or set of premises from the following exhuastive dilemas:
1. Either the universe has a begining or it does not.
If the universe had a begining then:
2. Either the begining was caused or uncaused
If the the universe was caused then:
3. The cause was either personal or impersonal.
This line of reasoning (Kalam cosmological argument) does not necessarily exclude God or evolution from the whole thing. Just a word to those Christians who want to know.
The anti-social argument against online classrooms is old hat. While I don't have statistics I do have anectdotal evidence that homeschoolers are more well-adjusted, social, normal people by the time they reach college (which is often by age 16) than many public and formal private school kids. They often hold classes in groups, not one on one at home. Online learning has so far been a supplement to interactive (people-to-people) learning.
Who says intense socialization must occur at school? Shouldn't intense learning be occuring? How much time can efficient learning really be spent socializing. There are other ways to socialize. Plenty of homeschoolers get socialization from extracurricular activity. Often they gain deeper, long-lasting social interaction from their church.
Home schoolers, as it has been noted, have been doing online learning for several years. One site I know of that's associated with the home school group my wife studied with, http://www.gbt.org offers great in depth studies for older kids. I know there are many more like this.
As far as I can see, a human mind is indistinguishable in practice from a very large deterministic system in a chaotic environment. Apparently nondeterministic actions are adequately explained by strong sensitivity to input and the chaotic, effectively unpredictable nature of this input.
So, rather than making a blanket statement that the human mind can't be emulated by a deterministic machine, you're going to have to prove that it isn't already one :).
Assume that a thing in a state cannot change that state without a cause enacted on it. This is true in classical physics, and it has not been disproved in quantum physics.
The state of a single transistor in a computer cannot then change without a cause. And causes cannot be effected without programming from a human, doing electrical rewiring, or turning the power on or off. Yes, a program could be written to change the state rather than having a human directly change the state. Even the simplest algorithm will accomplish this. Yet the change of state is still indirectly caused by a human. I take it for granted that a computer could be programmed to simulate intelligence. If that is true, then that is all they can do; they would not necessarily be the source of intelligence. (Hence the name, AI.)
If we assume that a physical state does not equal Truth, we might be able to get closer to a proof of the human mind as something other than deterministic. (However, I do not think it is possible to completely empirically prove this.) By a state not equalling truth I mean that a state simply exists as it is with it's own qualities. For example, an apple exists in a hanging state when it is on the tree. It is true that it exists in that state, but that state is not Truth.
Assume then that Truth is "being as it is, with reason but without cause." Then human choices of the mind, a metaphysical rather than physical mind becomes more possible, and the possibility of the ability of a computer to simply "make up" or "create stuff" diminishes.
I'm using "human mind" instead of "conscious mind" above because you're going to have one hell of a time defining "consciousness".
Here's an idea that illustrates that complexity does not necessarily equal conciousness. I guess this is part of helping define conciousness and arguing against the "complex neural network of the ganglia" theory.
The weather is an extremely complex series of events that is not well understood. I would venture to say that it is far more complex than any computer is, and it is possibly more complex than the human brain. Yet you don't say that the tornado is out to get you, that warm breezes are coming because they want to make you feel better. In short, the weather does not have reason. Yet we apparently have reason. So if reason exists then complexity as the only defining factor of the mind or "conciosness" might safely be ruled out.
Brandon