> People will create even if they're not paid.
> There were writers before copyright law,
> musicians and artists too. Get over yourself.
Except that even things like Linux haven't gotten out of the garage band state, or the guy-souping-up-his-own-car state. Meanwhile the corporations keep spitting out the Britneys and boybands, a new one every other year (O Spice Girls, how I miss thee) sucking up 99% of the profits and defining the direction the industry goes as a whole.
Yes, the design of slash-dot and other similar sites is good, but they forgot to ask the age old question, "Who moderates the moderators?"
If moderators give bad moderations, people should be able to mod-down the moderator's modding ability. Enough bad moddings, and the moderator could -1000000 someone and still barely affect the score of a post.
Also, assume for the moment you have a gigantic computer capable of simulating all physical phenomena, perhaps with a true random number generator (described elsewhere) to simulate the quantum mechanics. Now plug in a perfect copy of a human brain and start asking it questions.
It might very well respond exactly like the person on whom it's modeled. That would tell us human thought derives purely from the brain from known mechanics, but it does not imply the simulation has a subjective perceptual experience, and I think that's where most philosophers trip up. Your subjective perception (the experience of pain you feel, the color blue you see) may have nothing to do whatsoever with your thinking or your memories.
You, after death: But I couldn't help the evil I did!
God: Yes you could. You, as a computational system, had inputs, and thus knowledge of, painful experiences that might very well happen depending on the course of action you, as a computational system, chose. The afterlife consists of further punishment of you, as a computational system, in the hopes that it will eventually correct its poor decision making.
You're just arguing semantics here. There is no reason whatsoever that consciousness can't be studied like any other thing, and as a matter of fact, it is heavily studied.
We have tremendous evidence that the subjective perceptual experience arises from purely mechanical means -- your living brain. Current understanding of ai shows ample evidence a computational device capable of everything you are can arise from a simulation -- except for the subjective perceptual experience. So there is a disconnect here, but when people start hauling out quantum mechanics, they may be entering the realm of hucksterism rather than science -- because qm doesn't explain it, either, and if you look closely, it is a buzzword in this context, substuting for a dualist's spritual realm.
Consciousness doesn't have to depend on randomness. All randomness gets you is nondeterminism. People sometimes guess that this further solves questions about consciousness, or free will as well, but it really has no bearing on either.
> the US was the largest debtor nation with a huge
> crippling national debt.
Although let's be fair here. There are plenty of people on the left who argued for far larger national debts, pointing out how many European countries and Canada had 1.5x the debt the US had, or more, and argued it out of a sense of social responsibility, and that the amounts, see, were not that bad. The Democrats had no problem with the debt; they just didn't like what it was spent on.
> And since I didn't read the footnote explaining
> that, I obviously understood exactly 0% of the
> document. Huh?
That's completely idiotic. A footnote is like a parenthetical expression. It is a little bit of extra info that's not directly important to the discussion at hand.
And the reason given by Scientology why they don't tell you this for ages, is that your mind would explode and you'd go mad, if you heard about this before you were ready.
Dang! Someone should put this in the alt.basilisk FAQ quickly!
> Let's see: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: greeks.
> Solomon, Moses: hebrews. Who is the Westerner
> here?
The Western Tradition means Greek philosophy, esp. science, as it migrated around Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa over the last two thousand years.
The only difference between your analogy and religion is that the closer we study the earth, the more evidence builds that it is round, not flat. The more religious stuff is studied, the more religions fall back behind the argument that God is deliberately hiding from any scientific testing. Kind of a funny god if you ask me. It's also nice to know we have so much power over the supernatural gods, spirits, whatever, such that any time we look for them, we can force them to hide!
For the most part, Hollywood stars have a ton of money, but not really the brains to earn it. Rather, they earn it by being cute.
Then they become autosurrounded by an entourage of yes-men and people who tell them how great they are. This, combined with their vast wealth, confuses them such that they think their greatness is due not to their cute face, but to their vast intellects (nonexistant, of course.)
This leads to things like being prey for goofy religious theories (not just Scientology, but see also Shirley MacLaine), socialism/environmentalism (try and tell me any star even begins to understand any politics or science at anything but a babyish, that's-what's-moral-because-daddy-says-so level), and suddenly they are Rosie O'Donneling about anything their wee widdle minds can tink upsie.
Scientology's status as a religion seems to be about the same as professional wrestling's status as a sport, straddling the line, trying to get the best of both worlds.
And funneling your money into their pocket.
If we could get Tom Cruise to star as Rowdy Roddy Piper in a wrestling movie, life would be beautiful.
> I hope you are not calling the Church of
> Scientology, in which I devoutly believe, con
> artists?
Artists? Never. That sloppy religion is hardly artistic. Elron didn't know a well-written sentence from random scratchings by a monkey with a number 3 pencil on slate rock.
Well, it's not just that, but all religions, even good intentioned ones, rely on simple snake oil salesman techniques and ancient texts that, if published today and someone asked you to believe, you'd look at them like they were on crack.
Teary emotional epiphanies are not a sign of the existance of a god, but can easily be used by a charlatan to get them to give them money (note that this works even if the charlatan doesn't realize they are a charlatan -- i.e. they believe in the goodness of what they do.) Sitting and mentally calming yourself is not a sign of the existance of a god, but can easily be used by a charlatan to get them to give them money. Talking breathily until people are in a frenzy, then hitting people on the forehead and saying they're healed, collecting a lot of money, then leaving town before people realize the sick weren't healed or were healed of things they weren't even afflicted by isn't a sign of the existance of a god, but can easily be used by a charlatan to get them to give them money.
Slashdot Mirror
> People will create even if they're not paid.
> There were writers before copyright law,
> musicians and artists too. Get over yourself.
Except that even things like Linux haven't gotten out of the garage band state, or the guy-souping-up-his-own-car state. Meanwhile the corporations keep spitting out the Britneys and boybands, a new one every other year (O Spice Girls, how I miss thee) sucking up 99% of the profits and defining the direction the industry goes as a whole.
Yes, the design of slash-dot and other similar sites is good, but they forgot to ask the age old question, "Who moderates the moderators?"
If moderators give bad moderations, people should be able to mod-down the moderator's modding ability. Enough bad moddings, and the moderator could -1000000 someone and still barely affect the score of a post.
Also, assume for the moment you have a gigantic computer capable of simulating all physical phenomena, perhaps with a true random number generator (described elsewhere) to simulate the quantum mechanics. Now plug in a perfect copy of a human brain and start asking it questions.
It might very well respond exactly like the person on whom it's modeled. That would tell us human thought derives purely from the brain from known mechanics, but it does not imply the simulation has a subjective perceptual experience, and I think that's where most philosophers trip up. Your subjective perception (the experience of pain you feel, the color blue you see) may have nothing to do whatsoever with your thinking or your memories.
You, after death: But I couldn't help the evil I did!
God: Yes you could. You, as a computational system, had inputs, and thus knowledge of, painful experiences that might very well happen depending on the course of action you, as a computational system, chose. The afterlife consists of further punishment of you, as a computational system, in the hopes that it will eventually correct its poor decision making.
You're just arguing semantics here. There is no reason whatsoever that consciousness can't be studied like any other thing, and as a matter of fact, it is heavily studied.
We have tremendous evidence that the subjective perceptual experience arises from purely mechanical means -- your living brain. Current understanding of ai shows ample evidence a computational device capable of everything you are can arise from a simulation -- except for the subjective perceptual experience. So there is a disconnect here, but when people start hauling out quantum mechanics, they may be entering the realm of hucksterism rather than science -- because qm doesn't explain it, either, and if you look closely, it is a buzzword in this context, substuting for a dualist's spritual realm.
Consciousness doesn't have to depend on randomness. All randomness gets you is nondeterminism. People sometimes guess that this further solves questions about consciousness, or free will as well, but it really has no bearing on either.
> the US was the largest debtor nation with a huge
> crippling national debt.
Although let's be fair here. There are plenty of people on the left who argued for far larger national debts, pointing out how many European countries and Canada had 1.5x the debt the US had, or more, and argued it out of a sense of social responsibility, and that the amounts, see, were not that bad. The Democrats had no problem with the debt; they just didn't like what it was spent on.
> What the hell is wrong with moderators here?
Really. His posts sit right alongside posts about all your base, beowulf clusters, and Natalie Portman as nonsense spam (if much more irritating.)
> Who wants a paper phone anyway?
"You've made me so mad, fool, that I'm not going to hang up on you, I'm going to tear the phone in half. Goodby"
I hereby claim to be the first to introduce the preceeding "dis" of other people.
It would be dishonest to reuse code in a class project if the code copied was part of the course's studies.
In other words, if you're in a 3D course, you'd better write all the 3D code yourself or use code officially supplied by the course/book.
If I recall, the problem with the Hawaii/75 million years ago theory is that Hawaii didn't exist that long ago, by a long shot.
> You know, "Mother Earth" is going to be burnt to
> a crisp by a red giant in a few Mill,
I think you mean a few Bill. Whew! You had me scared there for a moment.
> And you wonder why Nicole and Tom aren't
> together anymore... he's a freak! Run Nicole!
> RUN!!!
I kind of figured that out when he first divorced Mimi Rogers.
> And since I didn't read the footnote explaining
> that, I obviously understood exactly 0% of the
> document. Huh?
That's completely idiotic. A footnote is like a parenthetical expression. It is a little bit of extra info that's not directly important to the discussion at hand.
And the reason given by Scientology why they don't tell you this for ages, is that your mind would explode and you'd go mad, if you heard about this before you were ready.
Dang! Someone should put this in the alt.basilisk FAQ quickly!
> Let's see: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: greeks.
> Solomon, Moses: hebrews. Who is the Westerner
> here?
The Western Tradition means Greek philosophy, esp. science, as it migrated around Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa over the last two thousand years.
> dirty tricks department or hired private
> investigators to dig up dirt on IRS agents
> investigating THEM.
Well, the IRS lives by the sword...
"Elron" was sarcasm, of course.
The only difference between your analogy and religion is that the closer we study the earth, the more evidence builds that it is round, not flat. The more religious stuff is studied, the more religions fall back behind the argument that God is deliberately hiding from any scientific testing. Kind of a funny god if you ask me. It's also nice to know we have so much power over the supernatural gods, spirits, whatever, such that any time we look for them, we can force them to hide!
For the most part, Hollywood stars have a ton of money, but not really the brains to earn it. Rather, they earn it by being cute.
Then they become autosurrounded by an entourage of yes-men and people who tell them how great they are. This, combined with their vast wealth, confuses them such that they think their greatness is due not to their cute face, but to their vast intellects (nonexistant, of course.)
This leads to things like being prey for goofy religious theories (not just Scientology, but see also Shirley MacLaine), socialism/environmentalism (try and tell me any star even begins to understand any politics or science at anything but a babyish, that's-what's-moral-because-daddy-says-so level), and suddenly they are Rosie O'Donneling about anything their wee widdle minds can tink upsie.
The Last Day
Scientology's status as a religion seems to be about the same as professional wrestling's status as a sport, straddling the line, trying to get the best of both worlds.
And funneling your money into their pocket.
If we could get Tom Cruise to star as Rowdy Roddy Piper in a wrestling movie, life would be beautiful.
> I hope you are not calling the Church of
> Scientology, in which I devoutly believe, con
> artists?
Artists? Never. That sloppy religion is hardly artistic. Elron didn't know a well-written sentence from random scratchings by a monkey with a number 3 pencil on slate rock.
Well, it's not just that, but all religions, even good intentioned ones, rely on simple snake oil salesman techniques and ancient texts that, if published today and someone asked you to believe, you'd look at them like they were on crack.
Teary emotional epiphanies are not a sign of the existance of a god, but can easily be used by a charlatan to get them to give them money (note that this works even if the charlatan doesn't realize they are a charlatan -- i.e. they believe in the goodness of what they do.) Sitting and mentally calming yourself is not a sign of the existance of a god, but can easily be used by a charlatan to get them to give them money. Talking breathily until people are in a frenzy, then hitting people on the forehead and saying they're healed, collecting a lot of money, then leaving town before people realize the sick weren't healed or were healed of things they weren't even afflicted by isn't a sign of the existance of a god, but can easily be used by a charlatan to get them to give them money.
I will simply respond that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, well...