No, I don't resent them. In fact, I'm grateful, in many ways, for what I've experienced. I'm not saying that I wouldn't be happy if I'd be born different, if I'd been completely normal. I'd probably be increadibly thankful that I wasn't sick. I'd probably have done much better in school, had more friends, actually learned some useful skills (I'm a philosophy student;-).
What I'm saying though is that, knowing what I know now, and the life I've had, I don't believe normal would be better. Being bipolar is such an integral part of my life--the best and worst--that I can't imagine living any other way. I can't imagine wanting to. (You haven't lived till you've lost your mind.;-)
While I understand why 'what if' questions are important, I don't put much stock in them--both answers are usually correct, and often, as in this case, the are same. If I'd been born a few days early (when St. Helens blew) my entire life would have been different, but I hardly sit around thinking about what it would have been like.
This is an important issue, one that will eventually have be decided on once and for all. For now though--having had some time to think about it--I'll just take heart in the fact that I'll almost certainly be dead before it happens, or becomes popular, anyway, so I don't have to make that decision and move on to more interesting subjects.
There is a great deal of evidence Blake's illness was genetic--the fact that most of his family was mildly insane testifies to that. It has been asserted, with as much evidence as is available, that he was severally bipolar, which is a genetic disease.
Second, his illness lasted his entire life. He was hospitalized for mania at least once, and had hallucinations and delusions, as well as depression, throughout his life. Any page-long biography will tell you that most people who knew him believed he was insane. (Talking to various spirits, his dead brother, believing his toe was possessed by another poet, seeing a baby hovering over the ocean talking. That is not just a once-in-a-lifetime mystical experience.) That was actually the reason I became interested in him; I found him while doing research on mental illness.
To be honest, I could give a fuck about whether it seems horrible to most people (ie, you). Just because I don't believe that suffering is Evil, to be avoided at all costs, doesn't mean I'm just thinking about what neat works I can wring out of the ill. Blake is not one of my favorite poets by any means, but I am fascinated by Blake himself.
Would Blake have wanted insanity if he had a choice? I don't know. I can definately see why he wouldn't, but I can also see why he might. This is entirely pointless speculation of course, since Blake wouldn't have been himself without it. No one wants to be insane until they are.
I'm not even going to address that last point; it's an utterly worthless argument.
I'm biased in this. I am bipolar, and I have suffered enormously because of it. But I wouldn't change it if I was offered the chance--it is what I am, and I cannot imagine being better off without it. Happier, definately, but certainly no better.
I was thinking more along the lines of the flatter (isn't it flatter?) surface possibly changing the amount/way the light is absorbed.
My glasses are indeed tinted slightly purple, part of the UV coating, IIRC. But, though I don't know what effect it would have, my contacts are tinted as well--they're quite blue (I have blue eyes, so it's not serving much of a purpose, but I like it.) I've been thinking about it and though it's probably only be an epiphenomenon of my poor vision, I believe the contacts actually improve my night vision somewhat, compared to my completely unenhanced vision.
I would normally agree that nature is secondary to nurture, but you're simply wrong. Genetics may not control the individual--there's no gene for intelligence or happiness--but the influence can be tremendous. How many mental illnesses are genetic? Certainly most affective disorders, possibly schizo(phrenia/affective), some personality disorders. I can assure you that these have an influence on behavior.
Someone elsewhere mentioned William Blake; he was, from time to time, utterly and completely insane, as well as being a tremendous poet. Would he have been as good if he wasn't insane? Absolutely not. His craft was derived from his insanity as much as from his literacy. He may have been a good poet, even an excellent one, but he would never have been able to match Blake the mystic.
Genetically engineered people would probably be no more boring or stereotypical than people now; in fact, they would quite probably be a bit more interesting. The problem then is that it could mean that everyone would end up ahead, but no one as triumphantly so as people in history: there could be a million Poe's but no Byron. I cannot imagine paying that price so that the majority can be more content.
I have something similar. My night vision when I'm wearing my glasses is absolutely terrible, but without or with my contacts I can fairly easily navigate by starlight, even indoors (w/ windows, of course;-). Without the contacts I still can't see anything but clearly, but at least it's all visisble.
I'm mostly a night person, but I almost never go without significant lighting (eg, several lamps), so I don't think it's an adaptation. Perhaps nearsightedness itself is responsable; because of the shape the eye, perhaps? Someone with some knowledge of optics want to take a shot at it?
Doesn't work. There isn't--AFAWK--a correlation between the 'intelligence genes' (snicker), to the extent they exist, and the 'insanity genes'--the insanity genes may, in some way, be intelligence genes.
Or more accurately, in some people the expression of those genes results in greater intelligence or, and this is the big one, creativity. (How can you not be creative when you're hallucinating?;-) The genes themselves may have nothing to do with it--it's the expression of those genes that results in creativity or intelligence (though the latter is so ill-defined its hardly worth discussing). To some extent, it may be better to view insanity as an enviromental factor relative to the mind, to emphasis that you actually have to be nuts to benefit from it.
Er, what? Part of my point was that free will is psychological: the ontological basis of the choices makes no difference. Choices result from being able to select from one or more mutually exclusive items, whether activities, objects, etc. It is emergent from our experiences--there are things you would like but simply cannot do at the same time, thus creating a choice. There isn't really any useful way of describing this: how many people need to be told what a choice is?
You have restated everything I said: randomness isn't a choice, the alternative is determinism. I take the latter, with the caveat that the determinism at work in the mind is far more complex that we can understand at this point. Determinism doesn't mean simplicity or predicability, by any means, only that the past has influence on the present.
As for Hofstadter, its been argued, convincingly, that we cannot form a mathematical conception of the mind (note: the mind, not the brain). Mathematics is simply too limited to encompass the subject; this is the same reason no one attempts to create mathematically complete models of metaphysics. Logic can explain a lot about the world, but it is still part of that world--a small subset of reality that can no more explain the whole picture than we can explain neuropharmacology using the tools of psychology.
Actually, quantum mechanics has little to do free will (or the mind in general, Penrose, et al's beliefs aside). There has been a great deal of discussion about whether quantum mechanics allowed for a 'cheat' to recover free will, usually structured around the synapses. The theory is that you can sneak uncertainty into ion channels, then add a little nonlinear dynamics and get free will.
IMO, and that of others, this simply doesn't work. It assumes that (1) quantum mechanics is complete and correct, which is far from proven, (2) that for some reason statistical smoothing doesn't happen in synapses, (3) these variation are amplified, due to the 'chaotic' nature of the brain, and (4) that randomness == free will. To be honest, I see no evidence that this *could* work. OTOH, this may be a good thing.
Free will, as most people define it, is about making free choices; that is, being able to choose one alternative over another. By its very nature, this isn't 'free' in the same way that electrons are 'free'. My choices are determined by who I am, by my ethos, my history, my culture, my beliefs, my passions. They aren't random selection, but utterly determined expressions of my will.
What you are looking for is pure freedom, but the only way to find that is to abandon everything else we believe about freedom: that we make choices, as opposed to selections simply being 'made' on their own. Heidegger wrote about this in Being and Time--I don't have it handy, but his point, IIRC, was that the more we understand Being, who we are, the more we understand how valuable, even wonderful, that psychological determinism is: it makes our choices ours, and gives them meaning and purpose.
Where ai becomes stronger and more intelligent than us, and they take over.
Not if I can help it. You seem to be overestimating the human race's ability to put its 'best interests' before its wants. Specifically, I don't want AI's to take over; I'm pretty sure most of the world agrees, even if only out of fear of the unkmown.
Well, those are very real possabilities, but it also cannot be prevented, nor should it be.
Why not? We have no obligation to help our little AI expand. If we don't like what it's doing, we should stomp on it.
We are going to create a ai neural system that will have the potential to far surpass our natural biological potential. That is fact.
No, it isn't. It is possible, maybe even likely, but it is certainly not a fact. Unless of course you don't include empirical evidence in your requirements for 'facts'.[0]
Due to it's nature, it will produce major improvements for itself and it's new offspring that it creates...without human intervention.
Again, baseless. We don't produces major improvements in ourselves, so why should be machine? Machinery is not inherently expandable and upgradable; complex organisms (like minds) do not take well to tinkering.
We are going to have to adapt to that in some way.
True. I vote for controlling it, and killing it if necessary. We are under no obligation to help it evolve, esp. if it runs counter to our interests.
[0]: I hate getting in flamewars about AI. Simply stated, there's more reason to believe it won't work than it will. Evidence--or something resembling it--comes from systems theory, biology, neuroscience, philosophy and even computer science itself. I don't have any references handy, unfortunately, but people should do their own research, anyway.
You say that it's a matter of people only seeing what they want. He points out that, in fact, it a matter of people seeing what the government wants. You say that's OK because it The Law.
So censorship is OK when it a matter of law? If it was suddenly illegal to, say, view all documents critical of this plan, that would be OK because its a law? Just because the German constitution is fscked up doesn't mean that we should accept it, and while we're at it, adopt the same notion of 'rights'.
True, but he said "rid our race of stupid geneitic problems".
It sounded like he was advocating species-wide recoding, not something on a individual basis. You could never convince everyone (ie, the species) to voluntarily alter their DNA; some of us are quite happy with our flawed genes.
*shrug* It doesn't look like that's what he meant after all, but it's what I read.
Alan Kay (of PARC fame) once said something to the effect that teaching algorithms first is the worst thing you can do to someone learning programming, because they'll never grow past it. His success in teaching ten and twelves year-old children programming by just letting them explore the systems seems to vindicate this, to some extent. That they didn't have any trouble learning algorithms later (some of them later worked at PARC as programmers) indictes that it can't do any harm to put it off.
You couldn't actually port someone, per se. There you be a copy running on the machine, but the original would keep going; at the moment of replication they become two different people with different histories, albeit only recent histories.
As far as personality: being a 'person' requires consciouness, which at this point we can't even define, let alone figure out how to impart on computers.
You're correct that we have a long way to go. Unfortunately for ideas like this, it's quite possibly that along the way we'll learn that AI is an impossible dream. (To be honest, there isn't any reason to believe that it's possible anyway; it's always been metaphysical speculation and wishful-thinking.)
God no, whatever you do *DON'T START WITH DENNETT*. He is probably the single most destructive influence on philosophy students of the last decade, and I shudder to think what he's done to the 'interested amateurs'. Hofstadter isn't so bad, but he coming out of AI so you shouldn't expect a completely unbiased view. (No offense to AI workers, but the field tends to be a quite a ways behind neuroscience and philosophy.)
Back to Dennett, his primary interest seems to be the philosophy of mind, and his primary tactic is to ignore the difficult parts, or just as often, rewrite the problem into a form he can solve in under one paragraph. He's done an excellent job at maing it *look* like he's getting things done, but in reality, he isn't. (Williams Seager, in his latest book (can't remember the name) devotes two chapters to analyzing Dennett. John Searle inevitably opposes him and I believe David Chalmers and Owen Flanagan have been critical of Dennett in recent work, as well as many others I can't remember.)
Unfortunately, there aren't many good introductions to the philosophy of mind available today, and fewer that don't follow the Dennett-Churchland line of reasoning. Nagel had one, but it's a bit dated now, and basically finishes up with his neutral-monism/panpsychism view.[0] Flanagan "Consciousness Revisited"[1] was fairly good, from what little I remember. Chalmers would be OK, except that he tends to use rather questionable grounds for his arguments.[2] *sigh* Oh well, there goes philosophy...
[0]: Which I'm fond of, but which isn't very popular in most circles. I think a more balanced presentation would be preferable.
[1]: That was the title, I hope. There have been several books on philosophy published in the last few years titled 'Consciousness something or other'.
[2]: I agree with Dennett on several fronts, including his belief that zombies are absurd philosophical tools. Unfortunately, his argument against them is equally absurd (along the lines of 'we're all zombies (or zimboes)', IIRC).
Regarding fMRI's: I've read a bit about this in relation to studying the 'limbic system' (Here somewhere, I believe; interesting papers, even if it isn't).
All functional mapping tends to paint a biased picture of the brain. In particular, the cortex tends to be over-represented, compared to the limbic system. Unfortunately, I don't think this can be avoided at present.
Carrying that further, I'm not terribly confident about how usefull non-invasive techniques can be: in particlar, it is currently rather difficult to study neurochemistry without taking apart brains, which tends to result in death, and even then you cannot extract much detailed information. I'm not sure I'd consider 'functional mapping' to be accurately mapping any functions, esp. sub-cortical functions, while it's based entirely on neural firing patterns.
I just love responding when the recipient will never read it.
First of all, the term is "ternary"
No, trinary is very much valid. There have been a number of discussions on this in the past on/.; both are correct, it is a matter of preference. I prefer the feel of trinary.
and there is not a single shred of evidence that planets can't form around ternary or binary systems because our telescopes do not have the resolution power.
1: We have no empirical verification that there are other planets in any solar systems (since you seem to demand optical telecopes).
2: I'm discussing gravity which can be effectively and accurately predicted without evidence.
3: I said it was unlikely, not that it didn't happen. It is, AFAIK, less likely that solid bodies will form, due to gravity, but I definately can occur. (They just found a nice sized gas giant around a binary star.)
As for the chemical makeup, the Earth's inner core it made of solid Iron.
Yes, I know. An iron crystal. I seem to recall writing a paper on that some years back, when the original idea was proposed.
All the carbon and (relatively) heavy elements of the solar system were formed from a supernova that occurred about a billion years before the sun reached ignition.
Now who's making statements without evidence? There probably was a SN x-billion years ago, but can you honestly claim that you know that formed our solar system?
In any event, you mistated in your original post; you were referring to star formation, not planets.
Stars are made of the same stuff, but if you knew anything about how stars are formed, you'd know that they fuse atoms starting with hydrogen and progressing to iron.
*sigh* Did you read my post? I said 'hydrogen, helium, carbon, etc'. See that word on the end? It means I am omitting other elements to save space. I never said anything regarding iron fusion.
And once agin, you said that the supernova created the local stars, not planets. Maybe if you read your own arguments people wouldn't question them so often.
Finally, how can you claim I don't know anyting about stars when you didn't know what our closest neighbor was. Let me guess, you're a physicist who doesn't get out much.
When a supernova occurs, it spontaneously fuses atoms up to radioactive elements in small quantities, and scatteres its contents to the local area.
1: Nothing happens spontaneously.
2: So? We weren't discussing radioactivity.
There would essentially be no heavy elements orbitting the sun if it were not for this explosion.
Evidence? Preferrably via telescope, as you're so fond of demanding.
As for what this has to do with the formation of life, I don't know of a single organic structure that isn't based in part off a carbonic structure.
What the hell does that have to do with anything? I never said a word about carbon-based life; all I said was that radiation kills living things. Obviously you don't know of any non-carbon derived life: there isn't much here. Which has no bearing on whether it can exist elsewhere.
1. GNU/Linux people are excessively anal. 2. No one cares about this debate anyway. 3. Because of 1-2, most people consider couldn't care less about what you think. 4. Precision is for mathematics, not language. "Linux" is easier to say than "GNU/Linux". 5. Because of 1-4, I am going to be flamed and/or moderated down.
You can't be that dumb. The only time anyone respects the line is when no one is left on the other side.
Do you really think that all the cops are trustworthy, that if you tell them "stop here", they will? Christ, do you know how few cops even know all of the laws they are supposed to be enforcing?
Tell me, how does this measure make "it easier to delineate between criminals and law abiding citizenry"? Only people with illegal material on their machines are ciminals, right? So, how the fuck are the cops supposed to know who has illegal material before they search? The cops can't know that the target of the warrant is innocent till they carry it out, and by then the damage has been done. This law doesn't respect the line, it establishes the line; and it does so anywhere it damn well pleases, with no concern for rights or liberty.
Actually, they don't cost all that much. GM is supposed to offering an IR camera hooked to a console display as an option on their sedans in a couple years (2002 product year, IIRC). I've seen some demo's on the news; very cool. AFAIK, you can already buy something like it after-market. I've also seen at demo of an FLIR hooked to a HUD on the windshield which was very, very cool.
And Linus uses SuSE on his home machine[0], what's your point? Free clue: all the distro's are built from the same basic code base; it doesn't matter who works where.
[0]: I've seen this at least once on/., and a few times elsewhere (interviews, etc).
OK, mass reply. Before I get things started, I'd like to say this: If the PPC is actually '64-bit', than things are worse that I thought. The Alpha's only have, what, 3x the specFP score at the same speed?
Secondly, I don't believe the PPCs are true 64-bit. There is simple marketting evidence: the 620 was suppose to be the 64-bit PPC, it never materialized, leaving the 32-bit line, the 601, 603 and 604. The G3 is a third-generation 603 (the second being the 603e), and I heard nothing about it being switched to 64-bit. Everything I've heard about the chips indicates that they are 32-bit.
IBM makes several 64bit chips. The PowerPC 620, 630 (Power3), Power2 64, and soon the Power4. There will also be a 64bit version of the G4 by both IBM and Motorola. Check the roadmaps on their websites.
Yes, I know. I mentioned the 620. The POWER4 won't be shipping till 2002, which is too late. The 64-bit G4's apparently aren't being used much (Apple's sticking with 32-bit so they can use the G3 and G4 in the same model.) The POWER chips aren't really PPCs; the PPC is a scaled down, simplified and cheaper POWER.
64-bitness in the PPC world is a bit hard to define anyway. The instruction set is designed to support 32-bit and 64-bit modes equally well. It's just a matter or whether or not the processor supports 32-bit or 64-bit memory access. I think that the current 64-bit chips still do 32-bit integer math. I know all of them use 64-bit FPs.
It doesn't show;-) I was thinking of 'true 64'; the PPCs are still partially 32. (God, what a strange chip.)
Plus, I don't know how much better an equally clocked Alpha is going to compare to that POWER4 beast -- especially if you factor in multiple cores and the 500 MHz memory bus.
POWER3s aren't terribly fast--they need multiple cores to stay competetive, and even then they don't touch the Alpha or HP-RISC. The POWER4s may be better, but they aren't shipping till 2002. The Alpha 21364, comming very soon, supports 400MHz busses and clocks at >1GHz; by 2002 we should be onto the 21464, which will slaughter the POWER4.
Does't the G4 w/ Altivec has a 32 bits integer unit, 64 bits FP unit and a 128 bits vector unit? Isn't that a better deal than just 64 bits for integer and FP?
Not if I need longer integers, or I'm not using vector calc's. BTW,has anyone seen any evidence that AltiVec will push the G4 above, say, 50 specFP equivelent, where the Alpha is now?
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No, I don't resent them. In fact, I'm grateful, in many ways, for what I've experienced. I'm not saying that I wouldn't be happy if I'd be born different, if I'd been completely normal. I'd probably be increadibly thankful that I wasn't sick. I'd probably have done much better in school, had more friends, actually learned some useful skills (I'm a philosophy student ;-).
;-)
What I'm saying though is that, knowing what I know now, and the life I've had, I don't believe normal would be better. Being bipolar is such an integral part of my life--the best and worst--that I can't imagine living any other way. I can't imagine wanting to. (You haven't lived till you've lost your mind.
While I understand why 'what if' questions are important, I don't put much stock in them--both answers are usually correct, and often, as in this case, the are same. If I'd been born a few days early (when St. Helens blew) my entire life would have been different, but I hardly sit around thinking about what it would have been like.
This is an important issue, one that will eventually have be decided on once and for all. For now though--having had some time to think about it--I'll just take heart in the fact that I'll almost certainly be dead before it happens, or becomes popular, anyway, so I don't have to make that decision and move on to more interesting subjects.
*sigh* Taking the paragraphs in order:
There is a great deal of evidence Blake's illness was genetic--the fact that most of his family was mildly insane testifies to that. It has been asserted, with as much evidence as is available, that he was severally bipolar, which is a genetic disease.
Second, his illness lasted his entire life. He was hospitalized for mania at least once, and had hallucinations and delusions, as well as depression, throughout his life. Any page-long biography will tell you that most people who knew him believed he was insane. (Talking to various spirits, his dead brother, believing his toe was possessed by another poet, seeing a baby hovering over the ocean talking. That is not just a once-in-a-lifetime mystical experience.) That was actually the reason I became interested in him; I found him while doing research on mental illness.
To be honest, I could give a fuck about whether it seems horrible to most people (ie, you). Just because I don't believe that suffering is Evil, to be avoided at all costs, doesn't mean I'm just thinking about what neat works I can wring out of the ill. Blake is not one of my favorite poets by any means, but I am fascinated by Blake himself.
Would Blake have wanted insanity if he had a choice? I don't know. I can definately see why he wouldn't, but I can also see why he might. This is entirely pointless speculation of course, since Blake wouldn't have been himself without it. No one wants to be insane until they are.
I'm not even going to address that last point; it's an utterly worthless argument.
I'm biased in this. I am bipolar, and I have suffered enormously because of it. But I wouldn't change it if I was offered the chance--it is what I am, and I cannot imagine being better off without it. Happier, definately, but certainly no better.
I was thinking more along the lines of the flatter (isn't it flatter?) surface possibly changing the amount/way the light is absorbed.
My glasses are indeed tinted slightly purple, part of the UV coating, IIRC. But, though I don't know what effect it would have, my contacts are tinted as well--they're quite blue (I have blue eyes, so it's not serving much of a purpose, but I like it.) I've been thinking about it and though it's probably only be an epiphenomenon of my poor vision, I believe the contacts actually improve my night vision somewhat, compared to my completely unenhanced vision.
I would normally agree that nature is secondary to nurture, but you're simply wrong. Genetics may not control the individual--there's no gene for intelligence or happiness--but the influence can be tremendous. How many mental illnesses are genetic? Certainly most affective disorders, possibly schizo(phrenia/affective), some personality disorders. I can assure you that these have an influence on behavior.
Someone elsewhere mentioned William Blake; he was, from time to time, utterly and completely insane, as well as being a tremendous poet. Would he have been as good if he wasn't insane? Absolutely not. His craft was derived from his insanity as much as from his literacy. He may have been a good poet, even an excellent one, but he would never have been able to match Blake the mystic.
Genetically engineered people would probably be no more boring or stereotypical than people now; in fact, they would quite probably be a bit more interesting. The problem then is that it could mean that everyone would end up ahead, but no one as triumphantly so as people in history: there could be a million Poe's but no Byron. I cannot imagine paying that price so that the majority can be more content.
I have something similar. My night vision when I'm wearing my glasses is absolutely terrible, but without or with my contacts I can fairly easily navigate by starlight, even indoors (w/ windows, of course ;-). Without the contacts I still can't see anything but clearly, but at least it's all visisble.
I'm mostly a night person, but I almost never go without significant lighting (eg, several lamps), so I don't think it's an adaptation. Perhaps nearsightedness itself is responsable; because of the shape the eye, perhaps? Someone with some knowledge of optics want to take a shot at it?
Doesn't work. There isn't--AFAWK--a correlation between the 'intelligence genes' (snicker), to the extent they exist, and the 'insanity genes'--the insanity genes may, in some way, be intelligence genes.
;-) The genes themselves may have nothing to do with it--it's the expression of those genes that results in creativity or intelligence (though the latter is so ill-defined its hardly worth discussing). To some extent, it may be better to view insanity as an enviromental factor relative to the mind, to emphasis that you actually have to be nuts to benefit from it.
Or more accurately, in some people the expression of those genes results in greater intelligence or, and this is the big one, creativity. (How can you not be creative when you're hallucinating?
Er, what? Part of my point was that free will is psychological: the ontological basis of the choices makes no difference. Choices result from being able to select from one or more mutually exclusive items, whether activities, objects, etc. It is emergent from our experiences--there are things you would like but simply cannot do at the same time, thus creating a choice. There isn't really any useful way of describing this: how many people need to be told what a choice is?
You have restated everything I said: randomness isn't a choice, the alternative is determinism. I take the latter, with the caveat that the determinism at work in the mind is far more complex that we can understand at this point. Determinism doesn't mean simplicity or predicability, by any means, only that the past has influence on the present.
As for Hofstadter, its been argued, convincingly, that we cannot form a mathematical conception of the mind (note: the mind, not the brain). Mathematics is simply too limited to encompass the subject; this is the same reason no one attempts to create mathematically complete models of metaphysics. Logic can explain a lot about the world, but it is still part of that world--a small subset of reality that can no more explain the whole picture than we can explain neuropharmacology using the tools of psychology.
Actually, quantum mechanics has little to do free will (or the mind in general, Penrose, et al's beliefs aside). There has been a great deal of discussion about whether quantum mechanics allowed for a 'cheat' to recover free will, usually structured around the synapses. The theory is that you can sneak uncertainty into ion channels, then add a little nonlinear dynamics and get free will.
IMO, and that of others, this simply doesn't work. It assumes that (1) quantum mechanics is complete and correct, which is far from proven, (2) that for some reason statistical smoothing doesn't happen in synapses, (3) these variation are amplified, due to the 'chaotic' nature of the brain, and (4) that randomness == free will. To be honest, I see no evidence that this *could* work. OTOH, this may be a good thing.
Free will, as most people define it, is about making free choices; that is, being able to choose one alternative over another. By its very nature, this isn't 'free' in the same way that electrons are 'free'. My choices are determined by who I am, by my ethos, my history, my culture, my beliefs, my passions. They aren't random selection, but utterly determined expressions of my will.
What you are looking for is pure freedom, but the only way to find that is to abandon everything else we believe about freedom: that we make choices, as opposed to selections simply being 'made' on their own. Heidegger wrote about this in Being and Time--I don't have it handy, but his point, IIRC, was that the more we understand Being, who we are, the more we understand how valuable, even wonderful, that psychological determinism is: it makes our choices ours, and gives them meaning and purpose.
This is so wrong, I don't know where to start.
Where ai becomes stronger and more intelligent than us, and they take over.
Not if I can help it. You seem to be overestimating the human race's ability to put its 'best interests' before its wants. Specifically, I don't want AI's to take over; I'm pretty sure most of the world agrees, even if only out of fear of the unkmown.
Well, those are very real possabilities, but it also cannot be prevented, nor should it be.
Why not? We have no obligation to help our little AI expand. If we don't like what it's doing, we should stomp on it.
We are going to create a ai neural system that will have the potential to far surpass our natural biological potential. That is fact.
No, it isn't. It is possible, maybe even likely, but it is certainly not a fact. Unless of course you don't include empirical evidence in your requirements for 'facts'.[0]
Due to it's nature, it will produce major improvements for itself and it's new offspring that it creates...without human intervention.
Again, baseless. We don't produces major improvements in ourselves, so why should be machine? Machinery is not inherently expandable and upgradable; complex organisms (like minds) do not take well to tinkering.
We are going to have to adapt to that in some way.
True. I vote for controlling it, and killing it if necessary. We are under no obligation to help it evolve, esp. if it runs counter to our interests.
[0]: I hate getting in flamewars about AI. Simply stated, there's more reason to believe it won't work than it will. Evidence--or something resembling it--comes from systems theory, biology, neuroscience, philosophy and even computer science itself. I don't have any references handy, unfortunately, but people should do their own research, anyway.
You don't see what's wrong here?
You say that it's a matter of people only seeing what they want. He points out that, in fact, it a matter of people seeing what the government wants. You say that's OK because it The Law.
So censorship is OK when it a matter of law? If it was suddenly illegal to, say, view all documents critical of this plan, that would be OK because its a law? Just because the German constitution is fscked up doesn't mean that we should accept it, and while we're at it, adopt the same notion of 'rights'.
Agreed. My complaint was about the comment:
rid our race of stupid geneitic problems
Which sounds like you mean species-wide recoding, not changes to individuals. Perhaps I misunderstood.
True, but he said "rid our race of stupid geneitic problems".
It sounded like he was advocating species-wide recoding, not something on a individual basis. You could never convince everyone (ie, the species) to voluntarily alter their DNA; some of us are quite happy with our flawed genes.
*shrug* It doesn't look like that's what he meant after all, but it's what I read.
But what counts as a 'stupid genetic problem'? Anything that isn't the result of your enviroment? Who gets to decide if something is a problem?
Alan Kay (of PARC fame) once said something to the effect that teaching algorithms first is the worst thing you can do to someone learning programming, because they'll never grow past it. His success in teaching ten and twelves year-old children programming by just letting them explore the systems seems to vindicate this, to some extent. That they didn't have any trouble learning algorithms later (some of them later worked at PARC as programmers) indictes that it can't do any harm to put it off.
You couldn't actually port someone, per se. There you be a copy running on the machine, but the original would keep going; at the moment of replication they become two different people with different histories, albeit only recent histories.
As far as personality: being a 'person' requires consciouness, which at this point we can't even define, let alone figure out how to impart on computers.
You're correct that we have a long way to go. Unfortunately for ideas like this, it's quite possibly that along the way we'll learn that AI is an impossible dream. (To be honest, there isn't any reason to believe that it's possible anyway; it's always been metaphysical speculation and wishful-thinking.)
God no, whatever you do *DON'T START WITH DENNETT*. He is probably the single most destructive influence on philosophy students of the last decade, and I shudder to think what he's done to the 'interested amateurs'. Hofstadter isn't so bad, but he coming out of AI so you shouldn't expect a completely unbiased view. (No offense to AI workers, but the field tends to be a quite a ways behind neuroscience and philosophy.)
Back to Dennett, his primary interest seems to be the philosophy of mind, and his primary tactic is to ignore the difficult parts, or just as often, rewrite the problem into a form he can solve in under one paragraph. He's done an excellent job at maing it *look* like he's getting things done, but in reality, he isn't. (Williams Seager, in his latest book (can't remember the name) devotes two chapters to analyzing Dennett. John Searle inevitably opposes him and I believe David Chalmers and Owen Flanagan have been critical of Dennett in recent work, as well as many others I can't remember.)
Unfortunately, there aren't many good introductions to the philosophy of mind available today, and fewer that don't follow the Dennett-Churchland line of reasoning. Nagel had one, but it's a bit dated now, and basically finishes up with his neutral-monism/panpsychism view.[0] Flanagan "Consciousness Revisited"[1] was fairly good, from what little I remember. Chalmers would be OK, except that he tends to use rather questionable grounds for his arguments.[2] *sigh* Oh well, there goes philosophy...
[0]: Which I'm fond of, but which isn't very popular in most circles. I think a more balanced presentation would be preferable.
[1]: That was the title, I hope. There have been several books on philosophy published in the last few years titled 'Consciousness something or other'.
[2]: I agree with Dennett on several fronts, including his belief that zombies are absurd philosophical tools. Unfortunately, his argument against them is equally absurd (along the lines of 'we're all zombies (or zimboes)', IIRC).
Regarding fMRI's: I've read a bit about this in relation to studying the 'limbic system' (Here somewhere, I believe; interesting papers, even if it isn't).
All functional mapping tends to paint a biased picture of the brain. In particular, the cortex tends to be over-represented, compared to the limbic system. Unfortunately, I don't think this can be avoided at present.
Carrying that further, I'm not terribly confident about how usefull non-invasive techniques can be: in particlar, it is currently rather difficult to study neurochemistry without taking apart brains, which tends to result in death, and even then you cannot extract much detailed information. I'm not sure I'd consider 'functional mapping' to be accurately mapping any functions, esp. sub-cortical functions, while it's based entirely on neural firing patterns.
I just love responding when the recipient will never read it.
/.; both are correct, it is a matter of preference. I prefer the feel of trinary.
First of all, the term is "ternary"
No, trinary is very much valid. There have been a number of discussions on this in the past on
and there is not a single shred of evidence that planets can't form around ternary or binary systems because our telescopes do not have the resolution power.
1: We have no empirical verification that there are other planets in any solar systems (since you seem to demand optical telecopes).
2: I'm discussing gravity which can be effectively and accurately predicted without evidence.
3: I said it was unlikely, not that it didn't happen. It is, AFAIK, less likely that solid bodies will form, due to gravity, but I definately can occur. (They just found a nice sized gas giant around a binary star.)
As for the chemical makeup, the Earth's inner core it made of solid Iron.
Yes, I know. An iron crystal. I seem to recall writing a paper on that some years back, when the original idea was proposed.
All the carbon and (relatively) heavy elements of the solar system were formed from a supernova that occurred about a billion years before the sun reached ignition.
Now who's making statements without evidence? There probably was a SN x-billion years ago, but can you honestly claim that you know that formed our solar system?
In any event, you mistated in your original post; you were referring to star formation, not planets.
Stars are made of the same stuff, but if you knew anything about how stars are formed, you'd know that they fuse atoms starting with hydrogen and progressing to iron.
*sigh* Did you read my post? I said 'hydrogen, helium, carbon, etc'. See that word on the end? It means I am omitting other elements to save space. I never said anything regarding iron fusion.
And once agin, you said that the supernova created the local stars, not planets. Maybe if you read your own arguments people wouldn't question them so often.
Finally, how can you claim I don't know anyting about stars when you didn't know what our closest neighbor was. Let me guess, you're a physicist who doesn't get out much.
When a supernova occurs, it spontaneously fuses atoms up to radioactive elements in small quantities, and scatteres its contents to the local area.
1: Nothing happens spontaneously.
2: So? We weren't discussing radioactivity.
There would essentially be no heavy elements orbitting the sun if it were not for this explosion.
Evidence? Preferrably via telescope, as you're so fond of demanding.
As for what this has to do with the formation of life, I don't know of a single organic structure that isn't based in part off a carbonic structure.
What the hell does that have to do with anything? I never said a word about carbon-based life; all I said was that radiation kills living things. Obviously you don't know of any non-carbon derived life: there isn't much here. Which has no bearing on whether it can exist elsewhere.
1. GNU/Linux people are excessively anal.
2. No one cares about this debate anyway.
3. Because of 1-2, most people consider couldn't care less about what you think.
4. Precision is for mathematics, not language. "Linux" is easier to say than "GNU/Linux".
5. Because of 1-4, I am going to be flamed and/or moderated down.
You can't be that dumb. The only time anyone respects the line is when no one is left on the other side.
Do you really think that all the cops are trustworthy, that if you tell them "stop here", they will? Christ, do you know how few cops even know all of the laws they are supposed to be enforcing?
Tell me, how does this measure make "it easier to delineate between criminals and law abiding citizenry"? Only people with illegal material on their machines are ciminals, right? So, how the fuck are the cops supposed to know who has illegal material before they search? The cops can't know that the target of the warrant is innocent till they carry it out, and by then the damage has been done. This law doesn't respect the line, it establishes the line; and it does so anywhere it damn well pleases, with no concern for rights or liberty.
"But it has to be implemented in a way that's consistent with other values, such as law enforcement,"
Excuse me? Since when is 'law enforcement' a value? Didn't they used to call that justice? Wait, maybe that was something else...
Actually, they don't cost all that much. GM is supposed to offering an IR camera hooked to a console display as an option on their sedans in a couple years (2002 product year, IIRC). I've seen some demo's on the news; very cool. AFAIK, you can already buy something like it after-market. I've also seen at demo of an FLIR hooked to a HUD on the windshield which was very, very cool.
And Linus uses SuSE on his home machine[0], what's your point? Free clue: all the distro's are built from the same basic code base; it doesn't matter who works where.
/., and a few times elsewhere (interviews, etc).
[0]: I've seen this at least once on
This has to be the single most perverse AC stunt I've ever seen. It'll take what, 11 moderator points to bang it down? Jesus.
Nice job, though. ^_^
OK, mass reply. Before I get things started, I'd like to say this: If the PPC is actually '64-bit', than things are worse that I thought. The Alpha's only have, what, 3x the specFP score at the same speed?
;-) I was thinking of 'true 64'; the PPCs are still partially 32. (God, what a strange chip.)
Secondly, I don't believe the PPCs are true 64-bit. There is simple marketting evidence: the 620 was suppose to be the 64-bit PPC, it never materialized, leaving the 32-bit line, the 601, 603 and 604. The G3 is a third-generation 603 (the second being the 603e), and I heard nothing about it being switched to 64-bit. Everything I've heard about the chips indicates that they are 32-bit.
IBM makes several 64bit chips. The PowerPC 620, 630 (Power3), Power2 64, and soon the Power4. There will also be a 64bit version of the G4 by both IBM and Motorola. Check the roadmaps on their websites.
Yes, I know. I mentioned the 620. The POWER4 won't be shipping till 2002, which is too late. The 64-bit G4's apparently aren't being used much (Apple's sticking with 32-bit so they can use the G3 and G4 in the same model.) The POWER chips aren't really PPCs; the PPC is a scaled down, simplified and cheaper POWER.
64-bitness in the PPC world is a bit hard to define anyway. The instruction set is designed to support 32-bit and 64-bit modes equally well. It's just a matter or whether or not the processor supports 32-bit or 64-bit memory access. I think that the current 64-bit chips still do 32-bit integer math. I know all of them use 64-bit FPs.
It doesn't show
Plus, I don't know how much better an equally clocked Alpha is going to compare to that POWER4 beast -- especially if you factor in multiple cores and the 500 MHz memory bus.
POWER3s aren't terribly fast--they need multiple cores to stay competetive, and even then they don't touch the Alpha or HP-RISC. The POWER4s may be better, but they aren't shipping till 2002. The Alpha 21364, comming very soon, supports 400MHz busses and clocks at >1GHz; by 2002 we should be onto the 21464, which will slaughter the POWER4.
Does't the G4 w/ Altivec has a 32 bits integer unit, 64 bits FP unit and a 128 bits vector unit? Isn't that a better deal than just 64 bits for integer and FP?
Not if I need longer integers, or I'm not using vector calc's. BTW,has anyone seen any evidence that AltiVec will push the G4 above, say, 50 specFP equivelent, where the Alpha is now?