I've taken a brief look at D a while ago. The compiler implementations don't seem to be solid.
In particular, DMD is Linux 32bit x86 only, which is basically useless these days when 64-bit systems are everywhere. GDC is relatively recent, haven't really tried it out yet.
I wouldn't say it's definitely not compressible. But intuitively it just doesn't seem right. Assuming there's a finite number of states in a finite amount of space/matter, and that a smaller amount of space/matter has strictly fewer states, for the states in the universe to be compressible, there must be a pattern. and yet our "computer", also in this universe, needs to be "denser" in information than that pattern. How can our computer be "denser" than the pattern? The creators would then have to create patterns of states of matter which do not appear anywhere else in the universe. How likely is that?
Of course, the other possibility is that each finite amount of space/matter can hold infinitely many states. Then if the cardinality (is this the right term?) of a small finite space is the same as that of the entire universe, then theoretically something the size of our desktops could store the information of the whole universe. Even if this is theoretically correct, the finite limits of human beings probably makes this a practical impossibility.
The problem is, the chances of finding a valid, useful signal from ETI by sifting through cosmic EM signals is pretty low.
It's the kind of mentality "there's *gotta* be something in there... look, it might be in the next set of data I'm about to process.... yes, the next one, yeessss..." which isn't too far away from the GGG(G?)P's post...
The difference between SET@home and Christmas lights is that... Christmas lights do not pretend they are doing anything useful other than providing atmosphere and entertainment.
As far as understand it, the contract (if any) is between the NICs and the whois user. The middle third party (particularly for ISP's) are not in breach of any terms of use for looking up whois data, since they are not party to the contract.
It might be a bit of a grey area for websites that "forwards" the whois requests from a web form though, since it might be construed as two transactions, one between the "end user" and the website, the other between the website and the NIC.
And breaching a contract is generally not a crime btw. (how did that get modded interesting??)
You don't need the fear to do right, but others do. You don't need strict rules of sexual and relationship behavoir to prevent making burdensome offspring, but you do need to follow the same rules to set an example for those who aren't as capable as you.
That's why as individualists, as seekers of the truth, we try to resist religious oppression as much as possible. When society retreats back into witch hunting... all is lost.
Besides, aren't there already rules that are supposed to ensure well-being of society? They are called "laws", and even most stupid people know that it's not very pleasant to break them without good reason.
There are many other flaws in your argument, which I wouldn't go into, but the whole idea that one is to conform contrary to ones belief because we need to "trick" the "stupid" people into conforming with the establishment is simply wrong, and sick, and contrary to all the principles that make humans human. We aren't slaves.
To them, it is just a tool. It is just a tool. The fact that you also think it's a toy is besides the point.
We won't see widespread security and privacy practices until the costs of not implementing such things grow larger than the costs of hiring people to do it. It might only take you a few seconds to get a basic firewall running, but for lay people it's probably a few hours of reading, mingling and frustration -- and even then they'd probably mess up the settings and be no better than when they started.
Because the western countries, USA in particular, are all worked up when the magic words "Tienanmen Square" appear.
The first principles are: #1 Anybody who sides with the Communists are evil #2 Anybody who sides with the dissidents are heroes
The rest follows.
Due process? But no! -- you're supporting an evil, evil regime!!! What's more, you're complying with law!! What a horrible, horrible thought!!
I mean, I never really sensed a high regard for the rule of law in America (not that there's any in China though), but it still surprises me that Yahoo is being slapped all over for complying with the law.
It's just media hype, and all you people are falling for it. Almost two decades after Tienanmen Square and the western media still has wet dreams on it. Look, most people in China has passed the issue and has moved on. It's OK to bitch about the current human rights situation in China which leaves much to be desired, but beating this dead horse would be like teasing the Americans for electing a chimp into office twenty years later. I mean, what do you want the Chinese government to do? Revive the dead?
The whole recurring Tienanmen thing is just a ploy by the western media/governments to impose the illusion that your own country is "free" and "democratic" by pointing fingers at someone else. By shifting the focus to this media G-spot, they get you all hyped up and excited so you won't notice your own rights slowly eroding.
It makes you miss the real pressing issues in China too. Censorship is one. I know some people bitched when Google, Yahoo, etc. filtered some searches upon request by the Chinese govt, but then they didn't hold a hearing in the USA with a politician slapping the Yahoo execs with "pygmies". (I'm sure the Chinese would love some monetary compensation with the "reduced quality" searches.) Now they've revived a 3 year old case (the Yahoo incident happened in 2004), on a 18 year old event, and everybody is pointing fingers at Yahoo just to make themselves look good.
It's nothing more than Paris Hilton gossip in the politics world.
It doesn't matter how good the US military is. If the aim is to "beat the bad guys up", as a means of "punishment", then sure, I bet the US has enough nukes to bring Beijing to ashes. However, if you're trying to *change* a country... uh, we've seen all the petty tricks the US could pull in Iraq...
If it's hard to get Iraq under control, imagine how difficult it would be to get China under control... (ask the CCP, they know how hard it is) 1.3 billion people, many of them strongly "patriotic" (mind you, there are those who do not support the CCP, yet would still do whatever they could to resist a foreign occupation), and you'd still think the USA is really up to the job of setting up a government in China? That actually upholds the "good" ideals?
Besides, with the Iraqi mess I really doubt whether the US military has enough extra resources (at least in the foreseeable future) to launch a non-nuclear assault on China...
====
To use a rather tasteless analogy: if you have strong arms and a large p***s, you can rape a woman, but it doesn't mean you can get her to marry you, much less side with your ideals. My impression is that a number of Americans only focus on the p***s part... which, I dunno, probably has something to do with the unsolicited emails I get all the time.
Re:I'd say it depends on who you ask...
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Is SETI Worth It?
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· Score: 1
If anything, such a discovery would only lead to more problems, since in one single swoop, a number of major religious beliefs would be shattered, therefore leaving a bunch of pissed-off fundamentalists in a tizzy You're underestimating the abilities of religions to "interpret" themselves out of their factual/logic problems.
Religion was not "shattered" when Darwin proposed (and gave strong evidence for) evolution. Religion was not "shattered" when they discovered fossils of dinosaurs. Religion was not "shattered" when archaeological evidence shows that the Earth or the Universe is billions of years old. Religion was not "shattered" by the Big Bang theory (though, admittedly, we're much less sure of this one compared to the above examples). Religion was not "shattered" when we discovered that heaven are not (physically) in the sky... Religion was not "shattered" when historical evidence casts doubt on the existence of Jesus.
Basically religious people will continue to believe what they have been believing regardless. The existence of aliens will simply be an event where they have to exercise extra vigor in convincing themselves that everything written their Holy Book is literally true, aliens or not.
If someday they find messages from 'little green/alien men', great. I'd be willing to wager that none of us will be around to congratulate them. Well I for one will be interested in seeing what they managed to decode in the message. The latency might be huge (if they live thousands of light years away), but their initial message would be too interesting enough to discard without even looking at it. If I were an advanced alien civilization trying to contact another intelligent race, the first thing I'd is to tell them how to contact you. If I knew a way to overcome the speed of light limitation, it'd be the first thing I'd put in the initial message. *Maybe* we'll learn technology to IM with them... that'd be fun.
Re:3 million dollars per year is a pittance
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Is SETI Worth It?
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· Score: 1
Ten dollars a week is a small price to pay for the chance to become a millionaire, even if it's a longshot.
An individual human is a "pack" of cells that work together, but is considered as a single entity in most cases.
Obviously the alien cannot be a single atom, or a single molecule, so there must be some kind of structure, whether physical, biological or social. However, your assumption that there must be a social structure is simply assuming too much.
It's not even that far fetched to imagine an intelligence that does not form packs -- say in a few hundred years humans finally invent a machine that compares to human intelligence -- which knows how to construct spaceships, work on metals, and so on, and humans send that machine to outer space to look for aliens. Obviously that machine does not work in a pack, and for all purposes of the alien that machine *is* some kind of alien intelligence. However, the machine does not necessarily have the psychology of that of humans.
So what's to prevent aliens from sending machines to us which does not have a human-like psychology? And then if that kind of thing can exist, why can't non-social aliens find out ways of space travel? Like if that alien lifeform is a monolithic chunk that evolves itself without dying, then it could accumulate enough knowledge over the years to an advanced intelligence. Granted it's not very likely, but then we're talking about aliens here.
You're proposing a technical solution to a social problem (a common theme here on slashdot).
The problem(s):
- people that don't really understand technology, and have no incentive to - people who couldn't care less whether their messages are kept private or not - people value ease of use more than privacy - people whine and complain loudly as they shockingly discover their ignorance and stupidity
There's no technical substitute for a brain and a clear sense of what you exactly want to do...
Whatever happened to "Trust No One"? Being open does not imply conformance. Rather the opposite.
Being open means you admit differences between you and the norm. Being open means you accept differences between others and the norm.
You need to get blackmailed. It'll work wonders for your world view. I'm sorry if you were blackmailed before. But it's not like everybody who publishes his/her address/phone/whatever gets blackmailed as a matter of course.
Also if you really understood NP-complete problems, most of them require finding a particular combination/permutation (of "stuff") to match the problem criteria. However, factoring is mathematical. The two types of problems simply "feel" different.
anyone does have some interesting proofs for atheism I just had an idea. It doesn't prove atheism, but gives it a good thrust in argument. I don't claim it to be a rigid and sound one. But a rough sketch follows:
Basic definitions: Science is defined the study of all phenomena in this Universe that lends itself to scientific study (through methods of empirical observation, formulating useful hypothesis to predict things, testing the hypothesis and refining them to meet observations if necessary). This Universe is defined as everything that exists. God and any other metaphysical are defined as things that cannot be explained by science.
Now the main argument:
Anything that has a observable pattern can be (in theory) formulated into a scientific theory. (I don't know how to "prove" this, but the idea is that scientific theories are just formal descriptions of observable "patterns") Note that observable pattern implies that it is repeatable.
Suppose to the contrary (to atheism) that God exists. God exists, so God is part of this "Universe" [Note1]. Since God is metaphysical, it does not lend itself to scientific explanation. Therefore the "God" phenomenon has no observable pattern. Since God has no observable pattern, we cannot make any meaningful hypothesis as to what it is, or what it will be (however, mentions of what God has done in the past is still logical here, since God might have made acts in the past which were observable, but without any pattern). So according to definition, either God can be known scientifically, or we will never know what it is... or what will be.
Note1: people tend to like to think that metaphysical stuff are not part of this "universe". But for this to be true the Universe is not "everything that exists", but merely "everything known to science that exists" -- which is inappropriate since science has a history of discovering new things (atoms, electrons, quarks, etc) that were not known to exist. Also note that either these metaphysical things can be causally affected by the "physical" universe or they cannot. If they cannot, then they cannot be observed, and they cannot affect us, and that cannot be observed nor affect us does not exist (at least for the purposes of this argument. I don't think any relgious claim about God goes as far as to say that God cannot affect us in any way)
Note2: This sounds more agnostic than atheistic. Perhaps it can be said to be weak atheism.
Note3: There is at least one thing that qualifies as metaphysical -- I. Also known as my consciousness. I have no idea how to deal with it scientifically, and I have no idea how to replicate my consciousness (with TWO mes), so i think that should qualify as metaphysical. Another good candidate might be the universe itself. The phenomena happening within the universe has observable pattern since it is repeatable, but I don't think we can ever experimentally repeat "the universe" (for example repeating its creation). A third good candidate would be Godelian weirdness where things are just "incomplete"... perhaps the "missing parts" (if they exist at all!) is metaphysical. Personally the second and third candidate combined is my interpretation of "God", if one exists.
Note4: I havne't slept and it's 8:15am in the morning. Typos and other errors must exist, and language might be a bit blurred. Please pardon.
People can believe things for reasons other than the truth of the thing at hand.
As I've mentioned in another post, I am willing to believe that angels push celestial objects around the sky if it makes me feel happier (and if I can con myself into believing such an irrational idea).
Uh, a better example would be to believe that you would succeed in overcoming a significant hurdle (eg. getting into that prestigious University, getting laid with that hot chick, finding that perfect job, etc). Sure it might not seem rational if you think about the actual chances of suceeding (suppose it's exceedingly small), but that belief itself might have some useful side effect (in this case it raises the possibility of succeeding), so even if you don't think what you believe is true, sometimes you're still justified in believing it...
Slashdot Mirror
I've taken a brief look at D a while ago. The compiler implementations don't seem to be solid.
In particular, DMD is Linux 32bit x86 only, which is basically useless these days when 64-bit systems are everywhere. GDC is relatively recent, haven't really tried it out yet.
I wouldn't say it's definitely not compressible. But intuitively it just doesn't seem right.
Assuming there's a finite number of states in a finite amount of space/matter, and that a smaller amount of space/matter has strictly fewer states, for the states in the universe to be compressible, there must be a pattern. and yet our "computer", also in this universe, needs to be "denser" in information than that pattern. How can our computer be "denser" than the pattern? The creators would then have to create patterns of states of matter which do not appear anywhere else in the universe. How likely is that?
Of course, the other possibility is that each finite amount of space/matter can hold infinitely many states. Then if the cardinality (is this the right term?) of a small finite space is the same as that of the entire universe, then theoretically something the size of our desktops could store the information of the whole universe. Even if this is theoretically correct, the finite limits of human beings probably makes this a practical impossibility.
How the heck are you going to store the data of the universe in a tank of the size of the sun??
Also, in the simulation, "real time" presumably means nothing.
The problem is, the chances of finding a valid, useful signal from ETI by sifting through cosmic EM signals is pretty low.
It's the kind of mentality "there's *gotta* be something in there... look, it might be in the next set of data I'm about to process.... yes, the next one, yeessss..." which isn't too far away from the GGG(G?)P's post...
The difference between SET@home and Christmas lights is that... Christmas lights do not pretend they are doing anything useful other than providing atmosphere and entertainment.
Of course.
I'll add that probably many people, including me, may not have heard about other distributed computing projects such as yours.
As far as understand it, the contract (if any) is between the NICs and the whois user. The middle third party (particularly for ISP's) are not in breach of any terms of use for looking up whois data, since they are not party to the contract.
It might be a bit of a grey area for websites that "forwards" the whois requests from a web form though, since it might be construed as two transactions, one between the "end user" and the website, the other between the website and the NIC.
And breaching a contract is generally not a crime btw. (how did that get modded interesting??)
It seems that they are using NSIS for their installer http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=389992&cid=21706528
Since NSIS is open source, you may wish to help out a bit instead of trying to "fire" an open source developer (no idea how you'd do it)...
As for inconsistencies... I can guarantee you'd find lots more inconsistent crap in Microsoft systems any day...
"Interested. I'm in."
You don't need the fear to do right, but others do. You don't need strict rules of sexual and relationship behavoir to prevent making burdensome offspring, but you do need to follow the same rules to set an example for those who aren't as capable as you.
That's why as individualists, as seekers of the truth, we try to resist religious oppression as much as possible.
When society retreats back into witch hunting... all is lost.
Besides, aren't there already rules that are supposed to ensure well-being of society? They are called "laws", and even most stupid people know that it's not very pleasant to break them without good reason.
There are many other flaws in your argument, which I wouldn't go into, but the whole idea that one is to conform contrary to ones belief because we need to "trick" the "stupid" people into conforming with the establishment is simply wrong, and sick, and contrary to all the principles that make humans human. We aren't slaves.
We won't see widespread security and privacy practices until the costs of not implementing such things grow larger than the costs of hiring people to do it. It might only take you a few seconds to get a basic firewall running, but for lay people it's probably a few hours of reading, mingling and frustration -- and even then they'd probably mess up the settings and be no better than when they started.
Because the western countries, USA in particular, are all worked up when the magic words "Tienanmen Square" appear.
The first principles are:
#1 Anybody who sides with the Communists are evil
#2 Anybody who sides with the dissidents are heroes
The rest follows.
Due process? But no! -- you're supporting an evil, evil regime!!!
What's more, you're complying with law!! What a horrible, horrible thought!!
I mean, I never really sensed a high regard for the rule of law in America (not that there's any in China though), but it still surprises me that Yahoo is being slapped all over for complying with the law.
It's just media hype, and all you people are falling for it. Almost two decades after Tienanmen Square and the western media still has wet dreams on it. Look, most people in China has passed the issue and has moved on. It's OK to bitch about the current human rights situation in China which leaves much to be desired, but beating this dead horse would be like teasing the Americans for electing a chimp into office twenty years later. I mean, what do you want the Chinese government to do? Revive the dead?
The whole recurring Tienanmen thing is just a ploy by the western media/governments to impose the illusion that your own country is "free" and "democratic" by pointing fingers at someone else. By shifting the focus to this media G-spot, they get you all hyped up and excited so you won't notice your own rights slowly eroding.
It makes you miss the real pressing issues in China too. Censorship is one. I know some people bitched when Google, Yahoo, etc. filtered some searches upon request by the Chinese govt, but then they didn't hold a hearing in the USA with a politician slapping the Yahoo execs with "pygmies". (I'm sure the Chinese would love some monetary compensation with the "reduced quality" searches.) Now they've revived a 3 year old case (the Yahoo incident happened in 2004), on a 18 year old event, and everybody is pointing fingers at Yahoo just to make themselves look good.
It's nothing more than Paris Hilton gossip in the politics world.
It doesn't matter how good the US military is. If the aim is to "beat the bad guys up", as a means of "punishment", then sure, I bet the US has enough nukes to bring Beijing to ashes. However, if you're trying to *change* a country ... uh, we've seen all the petty tricks the US could pull in Iraq...
...
If it's hard to get Iraq under control, imagine how difficult it would be to get China under control... (ask the CCP, they know how hard it is) 1.3 billion people, many of them strongly "patriotic" (mind you, there are those who do not support the CCP, yet would still do whatever they could to resist a foreign occupation), and you'd still think the USA is really up to the job of setting up a government in China? That actually upholds the "good" ideals?
Besides, with the Iraqi mess I really doubt whether the US military has enough extra resources (at least in the foreseeable future) to launch a non-nuclear assault on China
====
To use a rather tasteless analogy: if you have strong arms and a large p***s, you can rape a woman, but it doesn't mean you can get her to marry you, much less side with your ideals. My impression is that a number of Americans only focus on the p***s part... which, I dunno, probably has something to do with the unsolicited emails I get all the time.
Religion was not "shattered" when Darwin proposed (and gave strong evidence for) evolution.
Religion was not "shattered" when they discovered fossils of dinosaurs.
Religion was not "shattered" when archaeological evidence shows that the Earth or the Universe is billions of years old.
Religion was not "shattered" by the Big Bang theory (though, admittedly, we're much less sure of this one compared to the above examples).
Religion was not "shattered" when we discovered that heaven are not (physically) in the sky...
Religion was not "shattered" when historical evidence casts doubt on the existence of Jesus.
Basically religious people will continue to believe what they have been believing regardless. The existence of aliens will simply be an event where they have to exercise extra vigor in convincing themselves that everything written their Holy Book is literally true, aliens or not. If someday they find messages from 'little green/alien men', great. I'd be willing to wager that none of us will be around to congratulate them. Well I for one will be interested in seeing what they managed to decode in the message. The latency might be huge (if they live thousands of light years away), but their initial message would be too interesting enough to discard without even looking at it. If I were an advanced alien civilization trying to contact another intelligent race, the first thing I'd is to tell them how to contact you. If I knew a way to overcome the speed of light limitation, it'd be the first thing I'd put in the initial message. *Maybe* we'll learn technology to IM with them... that'd be fun.
Ten dollars a week is a small price to pay for the chance to become a millionaire, even if it's a longshot.
:-/
It's called the lottery
> However, I have not seen you, so you therefore do not exist.
Number of people I've seen posting on slashdot: at least 1. (me.)
Number of people I've seen posting on internet forums: 10+
> (does that mean your newsletter is ghost-written?)
Number of ghosts I've seen posting on internet forums: 0.
blah.
Pack forming depends on how you look at it.
An individual human is a "pack" of cells that work together, but is considered as a single entity in most cases.
Obviously the alien cannot be a single atom, or a single molecule, so there must be some kind of structure, whether physical, biological or social. However, your assumption that there must be a social structure is simply assuming too much.
It's not even that far fetched to imagine an intelligence that does not form packs -- say in a few hundred years humans finally invent a machine that compares to human intelligence -- which knows how to construct spaceships, work on metals, and so on, and humans send that machine to outer space to look for aliens. Obviously that machine does not work in a pack, and for all purposes of the alien that machine *is* some kind of alien intelligence. However, the machine does not necessarily have the psychology of that of humans.
So what's to prevent aliens from sending machines to us which does not have a human-like psychology? And then if that kind of thing can exist, why can't non-social aliens find out ways of space travel? Like if that alien lifeform is a monolithic chunk that evolves itself without dying, then it could accumulate enough knowledge over the years to an advanced intelligence. Granted it's not very likely, but then we're talking about aliens here.
You're proposing a technical solution to a social problem (a common theme here on slashdot).
The problem(s):
- people that don't really understand technology, and have no incentive to
- people who couldn't care less whether their messages are kept private or not
- people value ease of use more than privacy
- people whine and complain loudly as they shockingly discover their ignorance and stupidity
There's no technical substitute for a brain and a clear sense of what you exactly want to do...
Being open means you admit differences between you and the norm.
Being open means you accept differences between others and the norm. You need to get blackmailed. It'll work wonders for your world view. I'm sorry if you were blackmailed before. But it's not like everybody who publishes his/her address/phone/whatever gets blackmailed as a matter of course.
Then don't do anything that would lead to people thinking of you negatively.
That's what they call keeping a positive "image"/"impression"...
What's so hard about that????
Never heard of any proof, but here's some evidence:
FACTOR can be done in P for quantum computers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor's_algorithm
NP-complete problems are still known to require exponential time on quantum computers.
Also if you really understood NP-complete problems, most of them require finding a particular combination/permutation (of "stuff") to match the problem criteria. However, factoring is mathematical. The two types of problems simply "feel" different.
You might also want to take a look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_factorization_problem#Difficulty_and_complexity
Duh.
It was previously (in 2002) mentioned on slashdot
Your UID is much lower than mine, so I suppose you were already here.
Basic definitions:
Science is defined the study of all phenomena in this Universe that lends itself to scientific study (through methods of empirical observation, formulating useful hypothesis to predict things, testing the hypothesis and refining them to meet observations if necessary).
This Universe is defined as everything that exists.
God and any other metaphysical are defined as things that cannot be explained by science.
Now the main argument:
Anything that has a observable pattern can be (in theory) formulated into a scientific theory. (I don't know how to "prove" this, but the idea is that scientific theories are just formal descriptions of observable "patterns") Note that observable pattern implies that it is repeatable.
Suppose to the contrary (to atheism) that God exists. God exists, so God is part of this "Universe" [Note1]. Since God is metaphysical, it does not lend itself to scientific explanation. Therefore the "God" phenomenon has no observable pattern. Since God has no observable pattern, we cannot make any meaningful hypothesis as to what it is, or what it will be (however, mentions of what God has done in the past is still logical here, since God might have made acts in the past which were observable, but without any pattern). So according to definition, either God can be known scientifically, or we will never know what it is... or what will be.
Note1: people tend to like to think that metaphysical stuff are not part of this "universe". But for this to be true the Universe is not "everything that exists", but merely "everything known to science that exists" -- which is inappropriate since science has a history of discovering new things (atoms, electrons, quarks, etc) that were not known to exist. Also note that either these metaphysical things can be causally affected by the "physical" universe or they cannot. If they cannot, then they cannot be observed, and they cannot affect us, and that cannot be observed nor affect us does not exist (at least for the purposes of this argument. I don't think any relgious claim about God goes as far as to say that God cannot affect us in any way)
Note2: This sounds more agnostic than atheistic. Perhaps it can be said to be weak atheism.
Note3: There is at least one thing that qualifies as metaphysical -- I. Also known as my consciousness. I have no idea how to deal with it scientifically, and I have no idea how to replicate my consciousness (with TWO mes), so i think that should qualify as metaphysical. Another good candidate might be the universe itself. The phenomena happening within the universe has observable pattern since it is repeatable, but I don't think we can ever experimentally repeat "the universe" (for example repeating its creation). A third good candidate would be Godelian weirdness where things are just "incomplete"... perhaps the "missing parts" (if they exist at all!) is metaphysical. Personally the second and third candidate combined is my interpretation of "God", if one exists.
Note4: I havne't slept and it's 8:15am in the morning. Typos and other errors must exist, and language might be a bit blurred. Please pardon.
==
Civil responses strongly welcomed.
People can believe things for reasons other than the truth of the thing at hand.
As I've mentioned in another post, I am willing to believe that angels push celestial objects around the sky if it makes me feel happier (and if I can con myself into believing such an irrational idea).
Uh, a better example would be to believe that you would succeed in overcoming a significant hurdle (eg. getting into that prestigious University, getting laid with that hot chick, finding that perfect job, etc). Sure it might not seem rational if you think about the actual chances of suceeding (suppose it's exceedingly small), but that belief itself might have some useful side effect (in this case it raises the possibility of succeeding), so even if you don't think what you believe is true, sometimes you're still justified in believing it...
You are doing it the long-winded way.
Such "proofs" can never be conclusively done.
You can put forward beautifully crafted arguments to *convince* (either for or against), but you can never proof it.