Battery technology will keep improving, and to convert a sizeable chunk of our infrastructure to hydrogen requires decades not a couple of years. By that time, batteries may be good enough. Also, electrolysis isn't very efficient, and neither are fuel cells. And with enough electric cars hooked up to the grid, you can use their batteries as flexible storage for renewable sources.
There's no real problem making a better charger. Make it 10kV, 50A, and you can charge with 500kW. That should be enough to charge a decent battery in a few minutes.
Long term, fully electric cars make a lot more sense, so it's very wasteful to invest in all the required hydrogen infrastructure, only to abandon it when fully electric technology is mature enough.
That depends on your definitions. You could say that your body has a "desire" to keep a constant temperature of about 37 degrees Celsius, yet this happens mostly unconsciously. Of course, if you equate "desire" with "conscious desire" then you cannot separate the two.
Even simpler: some stuff can't be predicted simply because you don't have sufficient knowledge of the process or its input conditions. A slot machine could be driven by a simple pseudo random generator, 100% predictable, as long as you know the algorithm and the seed. Since the gambler doesn't have access to this information, the spinning dials are completely random to him.
The way I understand Dijkstra is that he says that the question whether a submarine swims is pointless, as it is not so much about the accomplishments of the submarine, but about the arbitrary definition of the word "swim". Instead we should just look at the end results.
This wealth slowdown in reproduction is only a temporary effect. People who only take 0 or 1 children will die out in a few generations, while people who take 4+ children will grow exponentially. It just takes a while for genetics to catch up with the new environment.
is a computer that has been programmed by a human with parameters and a system specifically made by humans for it to take defined variables and combine them in pre-programmed parameters
Which means very little. It is possible for a human to design a framework that leads to results that even the human programmer never could have foreseen. Take chess programming for instance. On fast hardware, a good programmer could write a program to beat a human chess master, even if the programmer didn't understand anything about chess except for the rules.
The Chinese room only shows one thing: that Searle doesn't even understand what the viewpoint of the materialists is. Obviously, if there's any understanding of the language, it should happen at the level of the entire room and all its state, not just whatever goes on inside the head of the operator. The fact that Searle didn't even understand this is just shocking.
You claim "the fact of global cooling showing that most the issue was cyclical rather than man-driven", but where's the proof ? Just based on this (short) trend, it's impossible to say what the cause is. For instance, it could be a human-driven warming trend, combined with a cyclical cooling phenomenon.
The years 2005, 2007 and 2010 were the hottest on single year basis, not averaged. See the source link I provided. And based on records from Jan through Oct, it looks like 2014 is going to end up in the top 3 again, which means that there will be 4 years that were hotter than 1998, which was an outlier year with record high El-Nino.
According to current definitions of "pollutant", CO2 fits the bill. http://www.skepticalscience.co...
And "plant food" and "pollutant" are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Phosphate is also a plant food and a potential pollutant at the same time.
There's barely any useful application of suborbital technology in real space. If anything, it's a big step backwards, even though they have nice new materials and a high gloss paint job.
According to NASA, the years 2005, 2007, and 2010 were hotter. On the 5-year average, all the years 1999-2011 were hotter than 1998. Source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
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Battery technology will keep improving, and to convert a sizeable chunk of our infrastructure to hydrogen requires decades not a couple of years. By that time, batteries may be good enough. Also, electrolysis isn't very efficient, and neither are fuel cells. And with enough electric cars hooked up to the grid, you can use their batteries as flexible storage for renewable sources.
There's no real problem making a better charger. Make it 10kV, 50A, and you can charge with 500kW. That should be enough to charge a decent battery in a few minutes.
There's not much to exploit that we can't get by digging in the Earth for a lower cost.
Long term, fully electric cars make a lot more sense, so it's very wasteful to invest in all the required hydrogen infrastructure, only to abandon it when fully electric technology is mature enough.
Given the odds, I worry more about not getting hit in traffic.
That depends on your definitions. You could say that your body has a "desire" to keep a constant temperature of about 37 degrees Celsius, yet this happens mostly unconsciously. Of course, if you equate "desire" with "conscious desire" then you cannot separate the two.
This is a level of manipulation of time (causality) which is completely out of reach of the most powerful computer.
Why exactly ? Computers can also run simulations.
Even simpler: some stuff can't be predicted simply because you don't have sufficient knowledge of the process or its input conditions. A slot machine could be driven by a simple pseudo random generator, 100% predictable, as long as you know the algorithm and the seed. Since the gambler doesn't have access to this information, the spinning dials are completely random to him.
The way I understand Dijkstra is that he says that the question whether a submarine swims is pointless, as it is not so much about the accomplishments of the submarine, but about the arbitrary definition of the word "swim". Instead we should just look at the end results.
By "random" you mean "as yet unexplained"
Which is the standard use of the word.
This wealth slowdown in reproduction is only a temporary effect. People who only take 0 or 1 children will die out in a few generations, while people who take 4+ children will grow exponentially. It just takes a while for genetics to catch up with the new environment.
The scientific method is just a method that works. Bitches.
Just like the neurons in your brain.
is a computer that has been programmed by a human with parameters and a system specifically made by humans for it to take defined variables and combine them in pre-programmed parameters
Which means very little. It is possible for a human to design a framework that leads to results that even the human programmer never could have foreseen. Take chess programming for instance. On fast hardware, a good programmer could write a program to beat a human chess master, even if the programmer didn't understand anything about chess except for the rules.
Yes, but the point was that we couldn't even get to the level of an amoeba, which has 0.
The Chinese room only shows one thing: that Searle doesn't even understand what the viewpoint of the materialists is. Obviously, if there's any understanding of the language, it should happen at the level of the entire room and all its state, not just whatever goes on inside the head of the operator. The fact that Searle didn't even understand this is just shocking.
Burning fossil fuels at the current rate is also a mega-engineering project.
That's only half the explanation. You also need to explain why CO2 goes back down in the summer.
You claim "the fact of global cooling showing that most the issue was cyclical rather than man-driven", but where's the proof ? Just based on this (short) trend, it's impossible to say what the cause is. For instance, it could be a human-driven warming trend, combined with a cyclical cooling phenomenon.
The years 2005, 2007 and 2010 were the hottest on single year basis, not averaged. See the source link I provided. And based on records from Jan through Oct, it looks like 2014 is going to end up in the top 3 again, which means that there will be 4 years that were hotter than 1998, which was an outlier year with record high El-Nino.
According to current definitions of "pollutant", CO2 fits the bill. http://www.skepticalscience.co... And "plant food" and "pollutant" are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Phosphate is also a plant food and a potential pollutant at the same time.
There's barely any useful application of suborbital technology in real space. If anything, it's a big step backwards, even though they have nice new materials and a high gloss paint job.
That hottest year in 1998
According to NASA, the years 2005, 2007, and 2010 were hotter. On the 5-year average, all the years 1999-2011 were hotter than 1998. Source: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
Maybe they use the best material available, and then make it too thin ?
At least regular airports serve an economic function. This is just a hobby for rich people.