That's true, it was only a "turd" in the sense that I didn't have one.:)
I did later buy a IIci, which was almost the same thing, but in a smaller form factor.
I remember when the Power PC came out -- and suddenly the fastest 68000-based Mac was the emulation mode of the Power PC chip, so enormous was the RISC-based upgrade.
One IIfx reviewer did say, however, that "It's not wicked fast until I say it's wicked fast!"
>> Now how in god's name does the subjective perceptual conscious experience >> arise out of that? You didn't simulate that whatsoever. > > Why do you assume you have to?
This was Searle's position, which, as a hot-headed youngster, I didn't respect as much as I should have.
Consciousness exists -- therefore it arises out of physics somehow.
Pushing information around is not physics. It is based on physics, but it is not physics. What actually happens is this or that molecule or electron or atom moves around in such-and-such a way and bounces into other stuff.
Somehow out of that configuration of atoms and molecules and electrons flouncing around in activity as a "neuron", arises consciousness.
By changing it to a circuit, you have radically altered the physics of the situation.
Searle's position, which Hofstadter doesn't recognize, is that, whatever consciousness is, you cannot conclude it will arise out of a radically different configuration of different molecules and electrons and atoms.
This is not a speaker, which can construct sound waves that are more or less identical to those that come out of your grunting throat. "Consciousness" is this "sound", so to speak -- and, whatever an electronic circuit is doing pushing info, what it is not doing is constructing a physical phenomena we call consciousness.
Of course, I, and Searle, could be wrong. But I'm doubting it -- it all comes down to real physics "out there", and circuits emulating a brain are not a brain any more than circuits emulating a muscle are a muscle. But I mentioned that in the original post -- it seems like consciousness must be nothing other than information pushing; yet it cannot be as well, for reasons further detailed.
In old EQ, a buddy and I were mid teens ogres. We ran off to wherever it was to get the RTS -- the Runed Totem Staff (that was an awesome thing was how long ago this was.)
We fought our way down to the bottom, and there was a high level wizard who was camping for it -- he hadn't gotten one for 10 hours. After about 10 minutes he left. The first respawn we got one, then the next nothing. Then the third another, and thus after 3 spawns we both had our RTS.
Assuming he wasn't lying, this gave great evidence that they had placed a "no special drops" code if people hung around waiting for a respawn. What further gave me evidence was that I had myself and the other ogre leave the immediate area waiting for a respawn -- we hung out way down the hall where we could still see in.
Perhaps coincidence (though highly unlikely to get 2 of 3 after 10 hours of nothing), or perhaps the wizard was lying and had a sackful of RTSs, but I always doubted their denying there was a distance limiter on special drop spawns.
When the game started, you used to be able to tell your pet to "guard" you. It would attack anything that came into range that was an NPC and not something like a vendor.
This was pretty cool, too, as your pet could go off on a slaughter spree like the guards in the halfling woods.
They ended this when people found a few areas where there was a single spawn that the pet could handle AND was high enough to give xp AND was slow enough respawning the pet could heal back up between spawns. Just park the pet on guard and let 'er rip.
Then people "worked around that" by "feigning death" such that the pet protected them in the same spots, so they made the pet disintegrate after 2 minutes of feigned death so you couldn't go afk.
Although not the most outrageous nerf, the first one was the most irritating -- not because I didn't understand the problem, but that I hated a pet that would let a damned level 1 rat walk right in front of me without me having to tell it to kill the rat explicitely. Where's the Evil Overlord fun in that?
> , you are left with rising rates of species extinction as the only proven, predicted environmental disaster that we know of.
I presume this is due to growing human civilization clobbering local ecosystems as they pave it over, rather than deaths due to global warming. But in that case, is it a disaster?
Seriously. People get more business, more farms, whatever. Yes, I do agree that loss of some species might be bad insofar as they can no longer be studied for chemistry and whatnot. But outside of a variation on nostalgia, what is the problem? We are at the brink of technology to resurrect extinct species -- I expect to see a mastadon or mammoth before I die -- perhaps even some cave men or neanderthals. And when custom designing species by "programming DNA" becomes common-place, expect every single species that exists, or recently did (via samples preserved, which I support) to be catalogued and "in play".
So, what was the problem again, aside from my pithy remark that tempts downmod?
> you have to concede that human damage to the environment can have > severe - and as in the example above, lethal - consequences to humans
You have to concede that human damage to human lives via government interventions is even more severe.
Imagine the problems as seas rise over the course of a few decades. Now compare that to the death and murder and starvation if a North Korean style government ruled the world.
That was the point of Julian Simon -- if there are detrimental effects, they must show up via degraded quality or length of life of actual humnans -- and this is brutally established as an effect with hundreds of millions of deaths last century as hundreds of "economic experiments" were run (the majority on unwilling participants, keep in mind.)
Regulation slowing the economy does have an exceedingly murderous effect as it slows technological development -- even if not one single death due to lesser technology ever shows up in front of the cameras with an outraged politician standing next to it.
> The game has a carefully chosen limit of 32 houses and 12 hotels
I had no idea this was a rule -- I thought if you ran out, you just started using the thimble and stuff as houses. I didn't know the total was limited.
> I introduced a variant to Monopoly that ensures the game will not take too long: I give > everyone six times the normal starting amount in cash. Every time someone passes Go, he > has to *pay* $200. This ensures that the total flow of money is negative for everyone.
That's not called "Monopoly". That's called "Socialism". AKA true, coercive Monopoly.
Cool! A Minnie Driver/Anne Hathaway love scene.
on
The Virtual Teacher
·
· Score: 1
It's all coming together finally. Soon, the "AI" movie scene of "take off your clothes" will become a reality! One may evolve one's traits out of society, but one'll have a hell of a fun time doing so.
Ya know, you can play any number of other games that are halfway decent. Pick up an old copy of Sacrifice or Total Annihilation. It'll look dated, but one thing you aren't doing at any time is grinding.
Do people realize how mathematically futile it is to gain that big piece of equipment that raises your damage by 1%? The inability to change what you are by more than a few percent is their lazy man's way to balance.
If you must have a MMORPG, try City of Heroes. In it, you get:
- Cheap (free) high speed travel powers at level 14. Not paying 10 million dollars at level 40 to get a horse (for christ's sake) that can run at a whopping 1.4x your run speed. Or sixty billion at level 60 to get a horse that can run at 2x your run speed. (Anyone selling you a horse that lame in the real world would have gotten a noose around their neck 200 years ago.)
- True 3D movement -- flight isn't just you running along the ground 10 feet in the air, or reserved to predefined griffen routes.
- More than double your damage output by doubling damage, halfing speed of your attacks, doubling accuracy, etc. by placing "enhancements", which are somewhat easy to come across, and good ones can be bought at the store.
My bastard sword may be plain looking, but I'd take out any 5 level 60's from WoW any day. At least.
Actually, that got so irritating with pawn shops that many states require pawn shops to record serial number and seller names of any items they take in.
So yes, playing too dumb can bring the law down on you whether you like it or not.
Soulbinding is for the purpose of keeping used items from degrading the economy -- when you loot a valuable item, you can either use it yourself, or sell it to other players, but not both. You can, of course, sell a used one to a merchant, who doesn't actually re-sell it, but you can imagine they do if it makes you feel better.
In any case, being able to un-soulbind something defeats the purpose of soulbinding. When you read "soulbound", read "rendered useless for trade to prevent valuable items from becoming too common".
It amazes me the "infield fly rules" these games create just to prevent them from being like reality. It's bad enough a guy with no fighting training and no armor can stand there waving his hands while a huge guy with a sword beats on him unopposed. But this is "balance", i.e. melee wimps, casters much tougher than they actually are (not damage they do, but that they take. You can't avoid flinching when someone waves a hand in your face, much less a sword, much less hits you with a sword -- yet you can't wear armor because it interferes with these "delicate hand movements". Sheesh.)
That is, of course, the million dollar question. The problem is that we can't currently rationalize it either way, because it seems consciousness must arise out of information processing (nothing special about a nerve vs. an electronic circuit) yet it must arise out of the physics of the situation (no true dualist position allowed) and thus who's to say a set of atoms in a circuit generates the same consciousness, whatever it really is, as a set of atoms in neuron formation.
It's interesting we're approaching the time when we can stop blowing hot air and put it to the test, at least in theory.
If they can produce this before the US can produce pleasure plug-ins (which, by the way, most Middle East "leaders" will buy before most US citizens) then we deserve to lose.
Actually, you've stumbled onto the primary problem and philosophical question about AI.
You've duplicated the information-crunching aspect of a neuron. Ok, fair enough.
Now how in god's name does the subjective perceptual conscious experience arise out of that? You didn't simulate that whatsoever.
Searle pointed out that, since consciousness is a physical phenomena, it must arise out in the real world somehow. But merely duplicating the information pushing (probably) isn't enough. It can't just arise out of the nothingess of information pushing per se.
> The system calculates the probability that various objects it has been > trained to recognize are present, and labels the images accordingly
"Ok, Joe. Let 'er rip on this new test database."
Cock Cock Cock Vagina Cock Cock Hairy armpit
"Oh, cool! The upgrade works and can distinguish it!" "Nah, wait until you see this!"
Cock Cock Cock Midget with banana split in hairy ass crack with guy eating the banana split without using his hands on the Howard Stern show Cock Vagina etc.
See also: even-odd license plate days at gas stations, which actually increases the line size instead of decreasing it
Mathematicians have actually testified against this to various state legislatures, who then vote for it anyway because you, the voter, like to see them doing something, even if it's 180 degrees the wrong thing.
> anything over 5GB of data usage in a one month period is considered > prima facie evidence that you must be downloading movies, and you > will be cut off.
Oh come on, Verizon! Some people are old fashioned and just download warez.
Slashdot Mirror
> You might remember HD209458b as a 'hot Jupiter' that boils under the glow of its very nearby star.
No, I don't remember th...wait. Did you say HD209458 b ?
Nevermind.
This universe where big fat ping pong balls of a woman with skin blemishes are "hot" intrigues me. Do you have a brochure or mailing list?
> You might remember HD209458b as a 'hot Jupiter' that boils under the glow of its very nearby star.
No, I don't remember th...wait. Did you say HD209458 b ?
Nevermind.
That's true, it was only a "turd" in the sense that I didn't have one. :)
I did later buy a IIci, which was almost the same thing, but in a smaller form factor.
I remember when the Power PC came out -- and suddenly the fastest 68000-based Mac was the emulation mode of the Power PC chip, so enormous was the RISC-based upgrade.
One IIfx reviewer did say, however, that "It's not wicked fast until I say it's wicked fast!"
>> Now how in god's name does the subjective perceptual conscious experience
>> arise out of that? You didn't simulate that whatsoever.
>
> Why do you assume you have to?
This was Searle's position, which, as a hot-headed youngster, I didn't respect as much as I should have.
Consciousness exists -- therefore it arises out of physics somehow.
Pushing information around is not physics. It is based on physics, but it is not physics. What actually happens is this or that molecule or electron or atom moves around in such-and-such a way and bounces into other stuff.
Somehow out of that configuration of atoms and molecules and electrons flouncing around in activity as a "neuron", arises consciousness.
By changing it to a circuit, you have radically altered the physics of the situation.
Searle's position, which Hofstadter doesn't recognize, is that, whatever consciousness is, you cannot conclude it will arise out of a radically different configuration of different molecules and electrons and atoms.
This is not a speaker, which can construct sound waves that are more or less identical to those that come out of your grunting throat. "Consciousness" is this "sound", so to speak -- and, whatever an electronic circuit is doing pushing info, what it is not doing is constructing a physical phenomena we call consciousness.
Of course, I, and Searle, could be wrong. But I'm doubting it -- it all comes down to real physics "out there", and circuits emulating a brain are not a brain any more than circuits emulating a muscle are a muscle. But I mentioned that in the original post -- it seems like consciousness must be nothing other than information pushing; yet it cannot be as well, for reasons further detailed.
In old EQ, a buddy and I were mid teens ogres. We ran off to wherever it was to get the RTS -- the Runed Totem Staff (that was an awesome thing was how long ago this was.)
We fought our way down to the bottom, and there was a high level wizard who was camping for it -- he hadn't gotten one for 10 hours. After about 10 minutes he left. The first respawn we got one, then the next nothing. Then the third another, and thus after 3 spawns we both had our RTS.
Assuming he wasn't lying, this gave great evidence that they had placed a "no special drops" code if people hung around waiting for a respawn. What further gave me evidence was that I had myself and the other ogre leave the immediate area waiting for a respawn -- we hung out way down the hall where we could still see in.
Perhaps coincidence (though highly unlikely to get 2 of 3 after 10 hours of nothing), or perhaps the wizard was lying and had a sackful of RTSs, but I always doubted their denying there was a distance limiter on special drop spawns.
Ahh good old EverQuest.
When the game started, you used to be able to tell your pet to "guard" you. It would attack anything that came into range that was an NPC and not something like a vendor.
This was pretty cool, too, as your pet could go off on a slaughter spree like the guards in the halfling woods.
They ended this when people found a few areas where there was a single spawn that the pet could handle AND was high enough to give xp AND was slow enough respawning the pet could heal back up between spawns. Just park the pet on guard and let 'er rip.
Then people "worked around that" by "feigning death" such that the pet protected them in the same spots, so they made the pet disintegrate after 2 minutes of feigned death so you couldn't go afk.
Although not the most outrageous nerf, the first one was the most irritating -- not because I didn't understand the problem, but that I hated a pet that would let a damned level 1 rat walk right in front of me without me having to tell it to kill the rat explicitely. Where's the Evil Overlord fun in that?
> , you are left with rising rates of species extinction as the only proven, predicted environmental disaster that we know of.
I presume this is due to growing human civilization clobbering local ecosystems as they pave it over, rather than deaths due to global warming. But in that case, is it a disaster?
Seriously. People get more business, more farms, whatever. Yes, I do agree that loss of some species might be bad insofar as they can no longer be studied for chemistry and whatnot. But outside of a variation on nostalgia, what is the problem? We are at the brink of technology to resurrect extinct species -- I expect to see a mastadon or mammoth before I die -- perhaps even some cave men or neanderthals. And when custom designing species by "programming DNA" becomes common-place, expect every single species that exists, or recently did (via samples preserved, which I support) to be catalogued and "in play".
So, what was the problem again, aside from my pithy remark that tempts downmod?
> you have to concede that human damage to the environment can have
> severe - and as in the example above, lethal - consequences to humans
You have to concede that human damage to human lives via government interventions is even more severe.
Imagine the problems as seas rise over the course of a few decades. Now compare that to the death and murder and starvation if a North Korean style government ruled the world.
That was the point of Julian Simon -- if there are detrimental effects, they must show up via degraded quality or length of life of actual humnans -- and this is brutally established as an effect with hundreds of millions of deaths last century as hundreds of "economic experiments" were run (the majority on unwilling participants, keep in mind.)
Regulation slowing the economy does have an exceedingly murderous effect as it slows technological development -- even if not one single death due to lesser technology ever shows up in front of the cameras with an outraged politician standing next to it.
You've obviously never been married.
> The game has a carefully chosen limit of 32 houses and 12 hotels
I had no idea this was a rule -- I thought if you ran out, you just started using the thimble and stuff as houses. I didn't know the total was limited.
> I introduced a variant to Monopoly that ensures the game will not take too long: I give
> everyone six times the normal starting amount in cash. Every time someone passes Go, he
> has to *pay* $200. This ensures that the total flow of money is negative for everyone.
That's not called "Monopoly". That's called "Socialism". AKA true, coercive Monopoly.
Lessee now...
- Fleshlike rubber, check
- Realistic, load-balanced, dynamic walking, check
- Natural language parsing, check
- Language understanding and response, check
It's all coming together finally. Soon, the "AI" movie scene of "take off your clothes" will become a reality! One may evolve one's traits out of society, but one'll have a hell of a fun time doing so.
Ya know, you can play any number of other games that are halfway decent. Pick up an old copy of Sacrifice or Total Annihilation. It'll look dated, but one thing you aren't doing at any time is grinding.
Do people realize how mathematically futile it is to gain that big piece of equipment that raises your damage by 1%? The inability to change what you are by more than a few percent is their lazy man's way to balance.
If you must have a MMORPG, try City of Heroes. In it, you get:
- Cheap (free) high speed travel powers at level 14. Not paying 10 million dollars at level 40 to get a horse (for christ's sake) that can run at a whopping 1.4x your run speed. Or sixty billion at level 60 to get a horse that can run at 2x your run speed. (Anyone selling you a horse that lame in the real world would have gotten a noose around their neck 200 years ago.)
- True 3D movement -- flight isn't just you running along the ground 10 feet in the air, or reserved to predefined griffen routes.
- More than double your damage output by doubling damage, halfing speed of your attacks, doubling accuracy, etc. by placing "enhancements", which are somewhat easy to come across, and good ones can be bought at the store.
My bastard sword may be plain looking, but I'd take out any 5 level 60's from WoW any day. At least.
Actually, that got so irritating with pawn shops that many states require pawn shops to record serial number and seller names of any items they take in.
So yes, playing too dumb can bring the law down on you whether you like it or not.
Soulbinding is for the purpose of keeping used items from degrading the economy -- when you loot a valuable item, you can either use it yourself, or sell it to other players, but not both. You can, of course, sell a used one to a merchant, who doesn't actually re-sell it, but you can imagine they do if it makes you feel better.
In any case, being able to un-soulbind something defeats the purpose of soulbinding. When you read "soulbound", read "rendered useless for trade to prevent valuable items from becoming too common".
It amazes me the "infield fly rules" these games create just to prevent them from being like reality. It's bad enough a guy with no fighting training and no armor can stand there waving his hands while a huge guy with a sword beats on him unopposed. But this is "balance", i.e. melee wimps, casters much tougher than they actually are (not damage they do, but that they take. You can't avoid flinching when someone waves a hand in your face, much less a sword, much less hits you with a sword -- yet you can't wear armor because it interferes with these "delicate hand movements". Sheesh.)
That is, of course, the million dollar question. The problem is that we can't currently rationalize it either way, because it seems consciousness must arise out of information processing (nothing special about a nerve vs. an electronic circuit) yet it must arise out of the physics of the situation (no true dualist position allowed) and thus who's to say a set of atoms in a circuit generates the same consciousness, whatever it really is, as a set of atoms in neuron formation.
It's interesting we're approaching the time when we can stop blowing hot air and put it to the test, at least in theory.
If they can produce this before the US can produce pleasure plug-ins (which, by the way, most Middle East "leaders" will buy before most US citizens) then we deserve to lose.
Actually, you've stumbled onto the primary problem and philosophical question about AI.
You've duplicated the information-crunching aspect of a neuron. Ok, fair enough.
Now how in god's name does the subjective perceptual conscious experience arise out of that? You didn't simulate that whatsoever.
Searle pointed out that, since consciousness is a physical phenomena, it must arise out in the real world somehow. But merely duplicating the information pushing (probably) isn't enough. It can't just arise out of the nothingess of information pushing per se.
That's fine, but it doesn't have to be such a godawful experience -- and you should be able to shut it off mentally.
> The system calculates the probability that various objects it has been
> trained to recognize are present, and labels the images accordingly
"Ok, Joe. Let 'er rip on this new test database."
Cock
Cock
Cock
Vagina
Cock
Cock
Hairy armpit
"Oh, cool! The upgrade works and can distinguish it!"
"Nah, wait until you see this!"
Cock
Cock
Cock
Midget with banana split in hairy ass crack with guy eating the banana split without using his hands on the Howard Stern show
Cock
Vagina
etc.
See also: even-odd license plate days at gas stations, which actually increases the line size instead of decreasing it
Mathematicians have actually testified against this to various state legislatures, who then vote for it anyway because you, the voter, like to see them doing something, even if it's 180 degrees the wrong thing.
Chimps people? Chimps, I advise you to decline this "honor".
Alls I have to say is, "Sir, in twenty years, you'll be taxing them."
> anything over 5GB of data usage in a one month period is considered
> prima facie evidence that you must be downloading movies, and you
> will be cut off.
Oh come on, Verizon! Some people are old fashioned and just download warez.
Ok, now it's officially "wicked fast"* .
* Points to who remembers the turd this was originally applied to.