Actually, until they work out how to generate their own TV signal, they would not be able to prove how the picture was generated.
And this is completely unnecessary for the purpose of understanding of basic nature of TV transmission. I can not generate a DRM'ed to Hell Blu-Ray disk, either, however this does not mean, I should accept the hypothesis that movie studios produce those disks by praying to the deity to digital media distribution.
We have complete knowledge of the foundations of Chemistry, and we have already excluded all non-electrochemical mechanisms from having any role in brain functions. We also know very well that simple foundations are sufficient for extremely complex systems, so there is absolutely no reason to look for hidden divine mechanisms that somehow manage to only manifest themselves in human brains, and are completely undetectable in each and every experiment that happens not to include specifically brains specifically of living humans.
The fastest and most responsive markets exist at the moment when a massive financial crisis starts. Everything productive depends on markets being as slow and stable as possible, as long as they aren's slower than the production itself, and we have crossed that boundary in 19th century.
What a fertile imagination you have. I wonder whether you think this list you imagine is stored digitally somewhere or carved in stone.
There is a thing called scientific method. It works [, bitches]. In fact, all currently available knowledge was obtained through it. And according to it, when ignorant idiots repeatedly assault the researcher with their outlandish fantasies that have no foundation in reality, and no way to verify or falsify, the proper response is "Enough with this bullshit!".
I am talking about hardware manufacturers. Desktop OEMs never make their own software, they just take whatever comes with distributions, and may post packages maintained by the real components manufacturers if distributions aren't sufficient.
And if Valve manages to get even 10% of windows users to switch to Valvebrand Linux, what do you suspect will happen then? I suspect exactly what I said: dropping of support for any other distro by hardware manufacturers.
That's OK because hardware manufacturers don't support any distributions now, sometimes with rare exception for RHEL that no one really uses. All proprietary software support you see in distributions that people actually use, is ported by distributions maintainers.
Outlaws what, manipulation of trade that places financial companies in position of control over productive part of society? A society that minimizes rent-seeking behavior gains advantage over others, not disadvantage.
It also was cute that you tried to use my other comment as a template. Too bad, you are stupid and you ended up writing nonsense.
Your rhetorical bluster merely suggests you don't understand of how science works. There is no such thing as "unqualified for any kind of discussion" -- when you submit a paper for review you will never be asked your qualifications or whether you agree with a prescribed set of opinions. Certainly I am yet to contact the author of any paper I have ever reviewed to say "Before I read your paper, I just want to check you're fundamentally opposed to dualism..."
There are things that were clearly rejected, never to be considered again unless something truly world-shaking will happen. Superstitions about brain and soul is firmly in that list.
Moreover the way we choose to define science (necessarily third party observational) makes this question inaccessible as it is necessarily first party observational. The philosophical question has always been "I am" not "my neurons fire in a particular way", nor even "you are" or "he is".
The philosophical question that has no defense other than "But truly how anyone can know anything?", is by definition, superstitious idiocy.
No, "emergent property" is a term co-opted from complex systems research that if you have enough agents with fairly simple rules (say, termites laying down pheromones) you can get some astonishingly complex macroscopic behaviours (say, termite nests).
That's what information processing is. It's not Computer Science / Information Theory people's fault that people from other areas of science created their own names for it.
You are aware of what the "A" stands for in AI, aren't you?
I was born in a hospital, that for some count as artificial.
Nope, we've found out since the '60s that things work remarkably differently than a computer, and AI is no longer slavishly attempting to replicate theories of human cognition in algorithmic form.
Just because modern "AI research" is enamoured with engineering quick hacks based on things easily implemented on modern computers, does not mean that the whole area of study is somehow reduced to inventing new ways of building Kinects and looking for nonexistent chemical weapons labs in the photos of deserts.
The reason it's a 'well known mechanism' is we know how to build the thing.
No. As I have demonstrated, knowledge of electromagnetic waves and their role in TV is easily available to a person who knows nothing about specifics of TV, leave alone being capable of building one.
Bring somebody from the 18th century to our time and have him work it out and... nope, he's not going to get it. Which... actually that was the point of that analogy.
A scientist from 18th century is perfectly capable of determining that TV depends on some form of radiation coming from a TV transmitter, as he would be able to observe shielding the antenna causing loss of reception. However your example is bullshit because people in 18th century had an incomplete knowledge about forms of radiation (and they knew about it, and researched those things for the whole next century). We, on the other hand, have complete knowledge about fundamentals of electrochemistry that is the only mechanism involved in our brain functioning -- all questions are about things below that layer (Physics, and it's irrelevant for the purpose of brain functionality) or above (structure of the brain, and it's the only thing that is worth studying in this matter). We are absolutely certain that brains are not invisibly remotely controlled by divine beings.
Well, there is no arguing with your beliefs. Beliefs they are and your augmentation is at best sloppy.
Those are facts, not beliefs.
Just one comment: "Emergent property" as used by me here means "unexpected behavior that cannot readily be explained" with a slightly ironic connotation.
That's because you are ignorant and stupid, so you don't know that words have meaning.
Oh, it's rational. Usually nuclear war is a bad thing, but if the choice is between killing a significant fraction of mankind on one side, and the whole mankind going through new Dark Ages over the next tens of thousands of years, possibly even permanently, it's perfectly rational to choose the former.
Not only development of technology is moral, a drive toward it and appreciation of it is a trait that all humans share as a result of evolution.
On the other hand, if people waited to be paid for their "innovation" we would not still be waiting for invention of the wheel, we would also be waiting for invention of the money, and nothing would ever be invented.
but costs relatively few religious bigots (who, for whatever reason are not as common in software engineering as they are in the general populace, possibly because the rest of us make them feel sufficiently unwelcome that they give up on the industry).
No, that's because they are stupid, and expect that God Almighty will keep them from writing buggy code because he loves them, even if they have no idea what they are doing.
So now again my example of why it should be allowed to repeat the last word of the acronym expanded, is relevant: "ATM machine is running DSL Linux, and is connected over ATM mode DSL line".
In reality, technology is developed by people who can convince companies to pay them for developing technologies for those companies first. However it never ever happened in the history of mankind that worthwhile technology stayed exclusive to companies where it was developed first.
This shit, of course, is not even a worthwhile technology, it's a way to waste massive amount of energy and space to game a system that should not be allowed to exist in the first place.
This is absolutely disgusting, and any society where such a thing is a feasible way of extracting profit, is completely morally bankrupt.
And we thought, nuclear war is the worst thing that can come from fundamental Physics research. Now nuclear war seeme to be a valid solution to the society that is run by financial companies who run DoS and man in the midle attack on all trade and production, to extract money from everyone.
How are things in the 1950's? You know, back when that was still tenable.
Just because there was an invasion of religious pseudo-philosophers into universities, it does not mean things that were certainly known then ceased to be known now. However a lot of shit was written pretending that superstitions reflect reality, before and after the middle of last century.
You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.
"Emergent property" is in a non-hand-wavy language is known as "information processing". It's what computers do.
That is a bit like assuming what is shown on a TV screen is generated in there.
No, it's not. TV receives images using a well-known mechanism that is based on well-known properties of electromagnetic waves. TV is not special in being able to receive electromagnetic waves, and TV station produces known and observable electromagnetic radiation that is processed by TVs. Even a person who knows nothing about TVs, TV standards and protocols, can easily discover that there is a big tower on a hill that produces electromagnetic waves with wavelengths between tens of centimeters to meters, and all TVs with antennas display pictures carried by changes in parameters of those electromagnetic waves -- it can be studied by blocking those waves, passing them through a filter, adding noise, etc.
With more sophisticated tools, a person may learn about details of how the images are encoded and how signal is modulated, but the most fundamental piece of knowledge -- that TV receives radio waves that contain encoded pictures -- is immediately evident to any person who is willing to perform research using basic knowledge of Physics, even if such person knows nothing about TVs.
With the brain, there is no BIG TV TRANSMITTER IN THE SKY that has all matter completely unaffected, except for EXTRA-SPECIAL HUMAN BRAINS BECAUSE THEY ARE SO SPECIAL. Things don't work that way.
So, no, we do not understand that "the brain is a biological computer".
Not only we do understand that as a result of rigorous scientific research, it's such an important piece of knowledge that a person who "disagrees" with it, should be considered to be unqualified for any kind of discussion related to science or brains, in the same way as a person who believes that Earth is flat is unqualified for any kind of discussion related to geography or astrophysics.
Nobody knows how strong/true AI could be built
I do! There are over 7 billions of examples of it currently in use! They even occasionally assemble new instances! The only question is, how it can be built USING SOMETHING OTHER THAN EXISTING BRAIN CELLS. And obviously, it's important to understand how it works. However fundamental processes are known very well -- neurons, electric pulses carried by changes in relative concentration of ions, various chemicals involved in the process either directly or indirectly regulating the speed and intensity. On top of that, there is plenty of math, however the same can be said about any computer.
Can you produce a Nintendo 64 starting from sand crystals and ending with playing a Mario game? Will I have to do it personally on my desk over this weekend, for you to believe that there is nothing magical about it? And if no, then what the hell do you want from scientists to do about a much more complex and much more weird computer, so you will shut up about your religious nonsense?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, until they work out how to generate their own TV signal, they would not be able to prove how the picture was generated.
And this is completely unnecessary for the purpose of understanding of basic nature of TV transmission. I can not generate a DRM'ed to Hell Blu-Ray disk, either, however this does not mean, I should accept the hypothesis that movie studios produce those disks by praying to the deity to digital media distribution.
We have complete knowledge of the foundations of Chemistry, and we have already excluded all non-electrochemical mechanisms from having any role in brain functions. We also know very well that simple foundations are sufficient for extremely complex systems, so there is absolutely no reason to look for hidden divine mechanisms that somehow manage to only manifest themselves in human brains, and are completely undetectable in each and every experiment that happens not to include specifically brains specifically of living humans.
The fastest and most responsive markets exist at the moment when a massive financial crisis starts. Everything productive depends on markets being as slow and stable as possible, as long as they aren's slower than the production itself, and we have crossed that boundary in 19th century.
What a fertile imagination you have. I wonder whether you think this list you imagine is stored digitally somewhere or carved in stone.
There is a thing called scientific method. It works [, bitches]. In fact, all currently available knowledge was obtained through it. And according to it, when ignorant idiots repeatedly assault the researcher with their outlandish fantasies that have no foundation in reality, and no way to verify or falsify, the proper response is "Enough with this bullshit!".
(and server OEMs do exactly the same)
I am talking about hardware manufacturers. Desktop OEMs never make their own software, they just take whatever comes with distributions, and may post packages maintained by the real components manufacturers if distributions aren't sufficient.
And if Valve manages to get even 10% of windows users to switch to Valvebrand Linux, what do you suspect will happen then? I suspect exactly what I said: dropping of support for any other distro by hardware manufacturers.
That's OK because hardware manufacturers don't support any distributions now, sometimes with rare exception for RHEL that no one really uses. All proprietary software support you see in distributions that people actually use, is ported by distributions maintainers.
Outlaws what, manipulation of trade that places financial companies in position of control over productive part of society? A society that minimizes rent-seeking behavior gains advantage over others, not disadvantage.
It also was cute that you tried to use my other comment as a template. Too bad, you are stupid and you ended up writing nonsense.
Your rhetorical bluster merely suggests you don't understand of how science works. There is no such thing as "unqualified for any kind of discussion" -- when you submit a paper for review you will never be asked your qualifications or whether you agree with a prescribed set of opinions. Certainly I am yet to contact the author of any paper I have ever reviewed to say "Before I read your paper, I just want to check you're fundamentally opposed to dualism..."
There are things that were clearly rejected, never to be considered again unless something truly world-shaking will happen. Superstitions about brain and soul is firmly in that list.
Moreover the way we choose to define science (necessarily third party observational) makes this question inaccessible as it is necessarily first party observational. The philosophical question has always been "I am" not "my neurons fire in a particular way", nor even "you are" or "he is".
The philosophical question that has no defense other than "But truly how anyone can know anything?", is by definition, superstitious idiocy.
No, "emergent property" is a term co-opted from complex systems research that if you have enough agents with fairly simple rules (say, termites laying down pheromones) you can get some astonishingly complex macroscopic behaviours (say, termite nests).
That's what information processing is. It's not Computer Science / Information Theory people's fault that people from other areas of science created their own names for it.
You are aware of what the "A" stands for in AI, aren't you?
I was born in a hospital, that for some count as artificial.
Nope, we've found out since the '60s that things work remarkably differently than a computer, and AI is no longer slavishly attempting to replicate theories of human cognition in algorithmic form.
Just because modern "AI research" is enamoured with engineering quick hacks based on things easily implemented on modern computers, does not mean that the whole area of study is somehow reduced to inventing new ways of building Kinects and looking for nonexistent chemical weapons labs in the photos of deserts.
The reason it's a 'well known mechanism' is we know how to build the thing.
No. As I have demonstrated, knowledge of electromagnetic waves and their role in TV is easily available to a person who knows nothing about specifics of TV, leave alone being capable of building one.
Bring somebody from the 18th century to our time and have him work it out and... nope, he's not going to get it. Which... actually that was the point of that analogy.
A scientist from 18th century is perfectly capable of determining that TV depends on some form of radiation coming from a TV transmitter, as he would be able to observe shielding the antenna causing loss of reception. However your example is bullshit because people in 18th century had an incomplete knowledge about forms of radiation (and they knew about it, and researched those things for the whole next century). We, on the other hand, have complete knowledge about fundamentals of electrochemistry that is the only mechanism involved in our brain functioning -- all questions are about things below that layer (Physics, and it's irrelevant for the purpose of brain functionality) or above (structure of the brain, and it's the only thing that is worth studying in this matter). We are absolutely certain that brains are not invisibly remotely controlled by divine beings.
Well, there is no arguing with your beliefs. Beliefs they are and your augmentation is at best sloppy.
Those are facts, not beliefs.
Just one comment: "Emergent property" as used by me here means "unexpected behavior that cannot readily be explained" with a slightly ironic connotation.
That's because you are ignorant and stupid, so you don't know that words have meaning.
Oh, it's rational. Usually nuclear war is a bad thing, but if the choice is between killing a significant fraction of mankind on one side, and the whole mankind going through new Dark Ages over the next tens of thousands of years, possibly even permanently, it's perfectly rational to choose the former.
Many people pay assassins, mercenaries and robbers, too.
Not only development of technology is moral, a drive toward it and appreciation of it is a trait that all humans share as a result of evolution.
On the other hand, if people waited to be paid for their "innovation" we would not still be waiting for invention of the wheel, we would also be waiting for invention of the money, and nothing would ever be invented.
You are an idiot and a true American patriot. Kill all your friends, then yourself.
Nokia.
but costs relatively few religious bigots (who, for whatever reason are not as common in software engineering as they are in the general populace, possibly because the rest of us make them feel sufficiently unwelcome that they give up on the industry).
No, that's because they are stupid, and expect that God Almighty will keep them from writing buggy code because he loves them, even if they have no idea what they are doing.
So now again my example of why it should be allowed to repeat the last word of the acronym expanded, is relevant: "ATM machine is running DSL Linux, and is connected over ATM mode DSL line".
No, indeed...
THIS IS WHAT AMERICAN PATRIOTS REALLY BELIEVE.
In reality, technology is developed by people who can convince companies to pay them for developing technologies for those companies first. However it never ever happened in the history of mankind that worthwhile technology stayed exclusive to companies where it was developed first.
This shit, of course, is not even a worthwhile technology, it's a way to waste massive amount of energy and space to game a system that should not be allowed to exist in the first place.
This is absolutely disgusting, and any society where such a thing is a feasible way of extracting profit, is completely morally bankrupt.
And we thought, nuclear war is the worst thing that can come from fundamental Physics research. Now nuclear war seeme to be a valid solution to the society that is run by financial companies who run DoS and man in the midle attack on all trade and production, to extract money from everyone.
How are things in the 1950's? You know, back when that was still tenable.
Just because there was an invasion of religious pseudo-philosophers into universities, it does not mean things that were certainly known then ceased to be known now. However a lot of shit was written pretending that superstitions reflect reality, before and after the middle of last century.
OS desktop software
What?
You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.
"Emergent property" is in a non-hand-wavy language is known as "information processing". It's what computers do.
That is a bit like assuming what is shown on a TV screen is generated in there.
No, it's not. TV receives images using a well-known mechanism that is based on well-known properties of electromagnetic waves. TV is not special in being able to receive electromagnetic waves, and TV station produces known and observable electromagnetic radiation that is processed by TVs. Even a person who knows nothing about TVs, TV standards and protocols, can easily discover that there is a big tower on a hill that produces electromagnetic waves with wavelengths between tens of centimeters to meters, and all TVs with antennas display pictures carried by changes in parameters of those electromagnetic waves -- it can be studied by blocking those waves, passing them through a filter, adding noise, etc.
With more sophisticated tools, a person may learn about details of how the images are encoded and how signal is modulated, but the most fundamental piece of knowledge -- that TV receives radio waves that contain encoded pictures -- is immediately evident to any person who is willing to perform research using basic knowledge of Physics, even if such person knows nothing about TVs.
With the brain, there is no BIG TV TRANSMITTER IN THE SKY that has all matter completely unaffected, except for EXTRA-SPECIAL HUMAN BRAINS BECAUSE THEY ARE SO SPECIAL. Things don't work that way.
So, no, we do not understand that "the brain is a biological computer".
Not only we do understand that as a result of rigorous scientific research, it's such an important piece of knowledge that a person who "disagrees" with it, should be considered to be unqualified for any kind of discussion related to science or brains, in the same way as a person who believes that Earth is flat is unqualified for any kind of discussion related to geography or astrophysics.
Nobody knows how strong/true AI could be built
I do! There are over 7 billions of examples of it currently in use! They even occasionally assemble new instances! The only question is, how it can be built USING SOMETHING OTHER THAN EXISTING BRAIN CELLS. And obviously, it's important to understand how it works. However fundamental processes are known very well -- neurons, electric pulses carried by changes in relative concentration of ions, various chemicals involved in the process either directly or indirectly regulating the speed and intensity. On top of that, there is plenty of math, however the same can be said about any computer.
Can you produce a Nintendo 64 starting from sand crystals and ending with playing a Mario game? Will I have to do it personally on my desk over this weekend, for you to believe that there is nothing magical about it? And if no, then what the hell do you want from scientists to do about a much more complex and much more weird computer, so you will shut up about your religious nonsense?