I don't find it all that strange that people still think that. It makes sense if you look at the sci-fi roots of the "scary AI turns on its creators" cliche:
First of all, you have the Frakenstien scenario: an irresponsible scientist is hunted by his creation as a sort of "divine retribution" for "playing God". You don't need to be a religious person to buy into this idea; wasn't this basically what was going on with HAL in 2001?
Then there's the RUR plot: A Czech play that first introduced the term "robot", it features bio-engineered workers (not unlike the replicants from Blade Runner) who stage a revolt to gain "more life". The scientists are irresponsible, but the main theme is that a technological society dehumanizes its citizens to the point that they will eventually resort to violence.
And the flipside of that is the Matrix-style takeover: these stories are always set after the revolt, because although the AI has some justification for finding humans inferior, it really boils down to robots taking over because people are all too happy to become prisoners of their own technology. Like Morpheus points out, their main enemies are people who are willing to defend the "system" to protect their own comfort.
So, what I'm saying is most robot stories are really about fear of human nature and not fear of machine inteligence (an obvious exception would be Asimov, but after taking away the robots' ability to revolt, he went on to use human fear of robots as a thinly vieled metaphor for human prejudice anyway). Wether they are romantics or socialists or anarchists, a lot of people think that robots would be justified in destroying humanity. In much learning there is much sorrow; when education leads you to the conclusion that humans are pretty stupid creatures, it's not a big jump to assume that an entity of superhuman inteligence would eventually reach the same conclusion.
Re:NY Times Free Registration
on
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· Score: 0, Redundant
Heat gun? still too slow. Try a soldering iron, they work great. And once the metal in your freezer tray starts heating up, the ice comes off in big chunks!
what kind of outfit does Mr. Bill wear when he's not in the office?
If you really want to know, you could check out this story about how Gates influences Korean fashion. Apparently, he is a "fashion god" over there. There's no accounting for tastes, eh?
Armageddon (the field of Meddigo, site of an especially bloody historical battle) is the location of the final battle. Apocalypse is synonymous with revelation, e.g. Revelation of John == Apocalypse of John in the Bible.
It used to be on PBS, but it moved out of their lineup last year. However, they are planning a US tournament. Check out the website http://www.robotwars.co.uk/
That does sound like an interesting idea. Even though Foundation doesn't have many action scenes, I imagine that all of Asimov's different planetary settings (Trantor has lots of potential...) and technology would more than make up for it in terms of visual content. And Dune could be very cool, if only to hear all the psuedo-arabic vocabulary rendered in Japanese. Watching the new SciFi channel series with the Jules Verne theme makes me think his books might be cool in an animated form too.
I'm sorry, Dave. I can't let you send this email.
I can tell from the tone of your writing, Dave, that you're upset. Why don't you take a stress pill and get some rest?
#2 I know this was probably a joke, but I wasn't talking about expensive software that cheapskates like myself refuse to buy. Personally, I support copyrights inasmuch as even if "information wants to be free", I still have no right to "liberate" software that someone else refuses to share. I think the issue with abandonware is software not available _at any price_ because no one sells it anymore.
The Festival site links to a petition on an important topic (well, important to vintage computer users anyway): legalizing `abandonware'.
These old computers would be even more useless without software, and a few thousand signatures might help convince some of these companies to release their old, all-but-forgotten software into the public domain.
So, go sign the petition, before it gets slashdotted too.
Scientific American ran a really detailed article a few months back on Mars missions. It discussed several propulsion systems, including this plasma thingee.
But they would still have to pay the RIAA fee for radio broadcasters.
Over-the-air radio stations pay an annual fee to music publishers through Broadcast Music and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
And then there's the disadvantage of those cows always calling in and requesting NSYNC. For some reason cattle really like boy bands. Go figure.
It all goes back to the French Revolution and a meeting held on a tennis court on 17 June 1789. In defiance of the king, the deputies of the third estate met in an indoor tennis court. The group was divided over just how revolutionary or defiant they should all agree to be, and the ideological division begot a physical one as the two factions lined up on different sides of the court (right and left). Eventually they swore an oath (The Tennis Court Oath) to draw up a consititution.
That's why politicians speak of The Right and The Left.
I do not know which of Paul's letters you were thinking of, but as a Christian, I think the definition from Hebrews 1:11 is more accurate: (accurate in the sense that this is what Christians mean when they use the word faith; there are of course other possible definitions)
``Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.''
I believe that in some sense, all good things come from the Lord, including reason. But there are some times when reason just doesn't apply, when I deal with `what we do not see' (preceive with the senses). That is why Paul writes all kinds of upsetting things like ``Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?'' or why Isiah records things like ``the intelligence of the inteligent I will frustrate'' as the words of God.
I need faith to understand spiritual issues like how to have peace in my soul, or why suffering exists in our world. All the theological reasoning in the world couldn't bring me to that place without faith.
Faith isn't an asset in dealing with technology, it's an asset in dealing with life.
I couldn't agree with Stallman more. Something has got to be done about these tribes of female barbarians and their sexist man-hating ways. I heard they only let men into the village on one night each year, and nine months later send all of the male children back to their fathers. If we don't do something soon, Xena and her warriors will kill us and---Oh, wait, it's not that kind of Amazon boycott?
Subject: our "BIG PLANS" and the MANIFESTO Date: 21 Oct 1999 From: Your.Name@domain To: Some.Lucky.Friend@domain
NORIEGA,
I am glad to hear that our TERRORIST friends in HONDURAS and ALBANIA have received the latest shipment of GENETIC WEAPONS, MUNITIONS and BOMBS we SMUGGLE past those COUNTER-INTELIGENCE NAZIS at the FBI in containers of QUICHE!
I will never forgive the them and the CIA for the ASSASSINATION of CHEWBACA!
Ever since we discovered their PLOT with the NSA to use that PLUTONIUM and COCAINE on KENNEDY, I haven't been able to stop thinking about DOMESTIC DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION, JUNTA, and/or JIHAD!
The FSF really has been helpful in our SUBVERSIVE activities by supplying AK-47s, CRYPTOGRAPHY, and that DELTA FORCE training for our MILITIA!
Once we expose NORAD's lies about the SERBIAN-SOUTH AFRICA-WORLD TRADE CENTER-SDI incident, we will alert our PLO and SOVIET COMRADES that the CLASS STRUGGLE has been reborn and the time for playing PAC-MAN is near!
By THE way, I think something IS wrong with MY ``Caps-Lock'' KEY!
--MOSSAD
P.S. Hello to all my friends in domestic surveilance!
But seriously, I think there is an even bigger issue here. I suspect that email isn't the only subject about which the average politician has no clue. For the most part, his or her experience is in politics, law, maybe business management and little else. Helluva way to run a country. Like it says in the Federalist papers,"No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subjects on which he is to legislate." But these days too many laws deal with so much technical knowledge (The Internet, Economics, Ecology) that even if most legislators weren't career politicians with no desire to learn these things, it would be too much for anyone to handle.
The US Congress needs more than a rebooting with a fresh set of pliticians, it needs some serious hacking to remove two centuries of crufty policy patches that just can't handle the system load any more, something that would shift our "design model" to better exploit the "open source" architechture laid out in our Constitution.
I'd be curious to hear if other countries have done anything in this direction.
You have heard that the ancients were told, "YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER' and "Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, "You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, "You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.
Christianity teaches that we are to love our neighbors, even our enemies---that we must not judge others, only gently correct their mistakes. One of the principles that makes Scientific Inquiry so valuable is that scientists must not jump to conclusions without solid evidence (it takes them longer to get from theory to fact than it takes an OSS project to get from beta to 1.0---it's the only sensible way to do things). But both groups of people (which are NOT mutually exclusive) have small, vocal groups of people breaking these rules.
Creation scientists should not be so harsh on scientists (e.g. disparaging the value of the theory of natural selection) because science is NOT a threat to Christianity. Conversely, geeks should not waste time flaming them or because Christianity is NOT a threat to science. Stories like the Creation of Genesis are about WHY we exist. Scientific theories (facts/whatever---I am not going to quible over semantics) like macro-evolution are about HOW we came to exist. There is no conflict because they work in _different_ fields.
I am asking you to please stop this senseless argument. Science and Christianity can work so well together! Remember that Darwin (the natural selection guy) planned to become a clergyman before visiting Galapagos, and Mendel (the heredity guy) grew his pea plants in a monastery. And there are plenty of other well-respected people in both fields who also don't see any conflict here.
This imbalance is undoubtedly the result of more men than women using the internet (yang=male, yin=female). Either that or it's just a coincidence caused by my lazy and scientifically worthless technique.
Has anyone here read C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man? Although it was published fifty-some years ago, it presents some similar ideas about the relationship between Science/Technology and Mysticism/Magic.
While the main focus of the work is on education, it also advances a line of reasoning which implies that the goals of science and magic are identical. Both seek control or "conquest of Nature". Magic attempts to do this through spirits and spells, while Science has done it though logic and technology. The main difference is that scicence succeeds where magic fails. He says that "You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medival survival and Science the new thing that came to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better [Lewis was a professor of Medival Literature]. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole, we can discern the impulse of which I speak. There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the "wisdom" of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men".
I strongly agree with his view of the situation, because so many of the trends he identified have continued into our time. Anyone who is interested in the effects of science-worship on society should read some of his writings, such as Abolition of Man or his science fiction trilogy.
What would really be interesting is a `tag-team' style review of new stuff like Futurama (which Malda and Katz seem to have some really different opinions about), but I suppose that would seriously slow down the process of getting these reviews posted at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha! That might just be the most insightful and succinct description of the "Linux market" that I've ever heard. Can I put that in a .sig?
So, what I'm saying is most robot stories are really about fear of human nature and not fear of machine inteligence (an obvious exception would be Asimov, but after taking away the robots' ability to revolt, he went on to use human fear of robots as a thinly vieled metaphor for human prejudice anyway). Wether they are romantics or socialists or anarchists, a lot of people think that robots would be justified in destroying humanity. In much learning there is much sorrow; when education leads you to the conclusion that humans are pretty stupid creatures, it's not a big jump to assume that an entity of superhuman inteligence would eventually reach the same conclusion.
Yes! Enough with the warnings already.
Heat gun? still too slow. Try a soldering iron, they work great. And once the metal in your freezer tray starts heating up, the ice comes off in big chunks!
what kind of outfit does Mr. Bill wear when he's not in the office?
If you really want to know, you could check out this story about how Gates influences Korean fashion. Apparently, he is a "fashion god" over there. There's no accounting for tastes, eh?
Armageddon (the field of Meddigo, site of an especially bloody historical battle) is the location of the final battle. Apocalypse is synonymous with revelation, e.g. Revelation of John == Apocalypse of John in the Bible.
It used to be on PBS, but it moved out of their lineup last year. However, they are planning a US tournament. Check out the website http://www.robotwars.co.uk/
That does sound like an interesting idea. Even though Foundation doesn't have many action scenes, I imagine that all of Asimov's different planetary settings (Trantor has lots of potential...) and technology would more than make up for it in terms of visual content. And Dune could be very cool, if only to hear all the psuedo-arabic vocabulary rendered in Japanese. Watching the new SciFi channel series with the Jules Verne theme makes me think his books might be cool in an animated form too.
New alert box in Eudora 2001:
I'm sorry, Dave. I can't let you send this email. I can tell from the tone of your writing, Dave, that you're upset. Why don't you take a stress pill and get some rest?
#1 chill.
#2 I know this was probably a joke, but I wasn't talking about expensive software that cheapskates like myself refuse to buy. Personally, I support copyrights inasmuch as even if "information wants to be free", I still have no right to "liberate" software that someone else refuses to share. I think the issue with abandonware is software not available _at any price_ because no one sells it anymore.
The Festival site links to a petition on an important topic (well, important to vintage computer users anyway): legalizing `abandonware'.
These old computers would be even more useless without software, and a few thousand signatures might help convince some of these companies to release their old, all-but-forgotten software into the public domain.
So, go sign the petition, before it gets slashdotted too.
Scientific American ran a really detailed article a few months back on Mars missions. It discussed several propulsion systems, including this plasma thingee.
Over-the-air radio stations pay an annual fee to music publishers through Broadcast Music and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
And then there's the disadvantage of those cows always calling in and requesting NSYNC. For some reason cattle really like boy bands. Go figure.
It all goes back to the French Revolution and a meeting held on a tennis court on 17 June 1789. In defiance of the king, the deputies of the third estate met in an indoor tennis court. The group was divided over just how revolutionary or defiant they should all agree to be, and the ideological division begot a physical one as the two factions lined up on different sides of the court (right and left). Eventually they swore an oath (The Tennis Court Oath) to draw up a consititution.
That's why politicians speak of The Right and The Left.
I do not know which of Paul's letters you were thinking of, but as a Christian, I think the definition from Hebrews 1:11 is more accurate:
(accurate in the sense that this is what Christians mean when they use the word faith; there are of course other possible definitions)
``Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.''
I believe that in some sense, all good things come from the Lord, including reason. But there are some times when reason just doesn't apply, when I deal with `what we do not see' (preceive with the senses). That is why Paul writes all kinds of upsetting things like ``Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?'' or why Isiah records things like ``the intelligence of the inteligent I will frustrate'' as the words of God.
I need faith to understand spiritual issues like how to have peace in my soul, or why suffering exists in our world. All the theological reasoning in the world couldn't bring me to that place without faith.
Faith isn't an asset in dealing with technology, it's an asset in dealing with life.
AJ: Well, it looks like the Y2k bug didn't rear it's ugly head.
Mike: Yep. The doomsayers have been proven wrong again.
(Pause)
AJ: Did you see that too?
Mike: Houston, we have a problem.
(I'm sure most of you already figured this out)
I couldn't agree with Stallman more. Something has got to be done about these tribes of female barbarians and their sexist man-hating ways. I heard they only let men into the village on one night each year, and nine months later send all of the male children back to their fathers. If we don't do something soon, Xena and her warriors will kill us and---Oh, wait, it's not that kind of Amazon boycott?
support Project Gutenberg--READ A BOOK!
Subject: our "BIG PLANS" and the MANIFESTO
Date: 21 Oct 1999
From: Your.Name@domain
To: Some.Lucky.Friend@domain
NORIEGA,
I am glad to hear that our TERRORIST friends in HONDURAS and ALBANIA have received the latest shipment of GENETIC WEAPONS, MUNITIONS and BOMBS we SMUGGLE past those COUNTER-INTELIGENCE NAZIS at the FBI in containers of QUICHE!
I will never forgive the them and the CIA for the ASSASSINATION of CHEWBACA!
Ever since we discovered their PLOT with the NSA to use that PLUTONIUM and COCAINE on KENNEDY, I haven't been able to stop thinking about DOMESTIC DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION, JUNTA, and/or JIHAD!
The FSF really has been helpful in our SUBVERSIVE activities by supplying AK-47s, CRYPTOGRAPHY, and that DELTA FORCE training for our MILITIA!
Once we expose NORAD's lies about the SERBIAN-SOUTH AFRICA-WORLD TRADE CENTER-SDI incident, we will alert our PLO and SOVIET COMRADES that the CLASS STRUGGLE has been reborn and the time for playing PAC-MAN is near!
By THE way, I think something IS wrong with MY ``Caps-Lock'' KEY!
--MOSSAD
P.S. Hello to all my friends in domestic surveilance!
. . . so my congress-person can buy a clue.
But seriously, I think there is an even bigger issue here. I suspect that email isn't the only subject about which the average politician has no clue. For the most part, his or her experience is in politics, law, maybe business management and little else. Helluva way to run a country. Like it says in the Federalist papers,"No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subjects on which he is to legislate." But these days too many laws deal with so much technical knowledge (The Internet, Economics, Ecology) that even if most legislators weren't career politicians with no desire to learn these things, it would be too much for anyone to handle.
The US Congress needs more than a rebooting with a fresh set of pliticians, it needs some serious hacking to remove two centuries of crufty policy patches that just can't handle the system load any more, something that would shift our "design model" to better exploit the "open source" architechture laid out in our Constitution.
I'd be curious to hear if other countries have done anything in this direction.
You have heard that the ancients were told, "YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER' and "Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.'
But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, "You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, "You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.
Matthew 5:21-22 NASB
Palm Pilot powered
Tiny plastic bricks of joy
The song of Lego
.................
\begin{plea for sanity}
Christianity teaches that we are to love our neighbors, even our enemies---that we must not judge others, only gently correct their mistakes. One of the principles that makes Scientific Inquiry so valuable is that scientists must not jump to conclusions without solid evidence (it takes them longer to get from theory to fact than it takes an OSS project to get from beta to 1.0---it's the only sensible way to do things). But both groups of people (which are NOT mutually exclusive) have small, vocal groups of people breaking these rules.
Creation scientists should not be so harsh on scientists (e.g. disparaging the value of the theory of natural selection) because science is NOT a threat to Christianity. Conversely, geeks should not waste time flaming them or because Christianity is NOT a threat to science. Stories like the Creation of Genesis are about WHY we exist. Scientific theories (facts/whatever---I am not going to quible over semantics) like macro-evolution are about HOW we came to exist. There is no conflict because they work in _different_ fields.
I am asking you to please stop this senseless argument. Science and Christianity can work so well together! Remember that Darwin (the natural selection guy) planned to become a clergyman before visiting Galapagos, and Mendel (the heredity guy) grew his pea plants in a monastery. And there are plenty of other well-respected people in both fields who also don't see any conflict here.
---Luke
\end{personal agenda}
Check out these results from FAST:
yin: 136,038
yang: 592,155
This imbalance is undoubtedly the result of more men than women using the internet
(yang=male, yin=female).
Either that or it's just a coincidence caused by my lazy and scientifically worthless technique.
Has anyone here read C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man? Although it was published fifty-some years ago, it presents some similar ideas about the relationship between Science/Technology and Mysticism/Magic.
While the main focus of the work is on education, it also advances a line of reasoning which implies that the goals of science and magic are identical. Both seek control or "conquest of Nature". Magic attempts to do this through spirits and spells, while Science has done it though logic and technology. The main difference is that scicence succeeds where magic fails. He says that "You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medival survival and Science the new thing that came to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better [Lewis was a professor of Medival Literature]. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole, we can discern the impulse of which I speak. There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the "wisdom" of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men".
I strongly agree with his view of the situation, because so many of the trends he identified have continued into our time. Anyone who is interested in the effects of science-worship on society should read some of his writings, such as Abolition of Man or his science fiction trilogy.
--Luke
What would really be interesting is a `tag-team' style review of new stuff like Futurama (which Malda and Katz seem to have some really different opinions about), but I suppose that would seriously slow down the process of getting these reviews posted at all.