If you can't observe the phenomena in the real world, then how do you know the model has any correspondence?
The whole point is that many phenomena are observable, and predictions by the model have been verified again and again. Those that cannot currently be verified may be verified in the future, and if they are falsified, that tells us that one of the simplifications that was made in order to create the computer program was not warranted or that there is some factor that our program failed to incorporate that turned out to be important.
I would suggest you re-read my post and consider this phrase:
...cannot expand (or confirm) the frontiers of [scientific] research...
The more successful predictions about new kinds of phenomena, particle interactions, etc. that we have, the more confidence we have in the theory. Colloquially speaking, those successful predictions help confirm the theory.
I absolutely agree that you can use computer models in engineering. But the computer model showing a race car has less drag than a Hummer isn't expanding your knowledge of fluid dynamics. It's allowing you to apply what you already have established as the rules to different situations.
It's only engineering if we actually make the cars. When we run the model, it is just as much science as the experiment under consideration. The racecar/hummer example may not expand our knowledge, but you also said that it can't offer confirmation and has no relation to reality or truth. The important point is that modeling that makes new predictions about unseen phenomena that turn out to be correct is part of the process of moving from untested hypotheses to established science.
It will not allow you to prove or disprove new rules for fluid dynamics.
Now you're changing your story from "computer models cannot confirm..." and "models have no relation to reality or truth" to "cannot prove or disprove new rules", whatever that is supposed to mean.
I get the feeling that I'm being trolled, since you apparently believe that all computer programs/models relating to the standard model and presumably general relativity and anything else that is not totally-settled-forever-science are absolutely worthless and have no relation to reality.
The first two sentences from the physorg article give more information than the entire ScienceDaily article:
A new calculation, reported in the January 25, 2008 issue of Physical Review Letters, confirms the six-quark theory of particle-anti-particle asymmetry. This is the first complete calculation of this phenomenon to employ a highly accurate description of the quarks that adds a fifth dimension beyond those of space and time.
Thanks for the reference. Eurekalert does look much better than ScienceDaily.
I get most of my science news from Science News, which I'm really happy with, but they are a little slower (and more thorough), so a bit behind the quickest to publish.
I just wish Slashdot editors would exercise some judgment. A good first step would be never linking to ScienceDaily.
All this has done is said "We made a computer program that gives us the results we would expect from running this computer program."
No, it's not nothing more than a tautology as you're implying. You're ignoring the nature of the program, which aims to embody the standard model well enough to make predictions about reality for phenomena that it's not been possible to directly observe. It's a little more than just a program that spits out arbitrary but predictable results, since the results do in fact have some relation to reality. If the model is any good at all, the correspondence will be very good.
Nothing in computer modeling makes a connection to reality and truth.
You must also believe that computer models of aerodynamics that predict a racecar will experience less drag than a Hummer also have no connection to reality and truth. I'd argue that to the extent that a model makes accurate predictions again and again, there is some connection to reality and truth.
I wish people would stop posting crappy science articles from ScienceDaily and related sites.
From this article, we learn that computer modeling confirmed something "about the behavior of quarks". That's it. There is nothing of substance in the article other than this and that the computation took three years.
It seems to me that the gist of this study is that those characteristics of canoes which you can change however you like without destroying the function of the canoe and possibly killing people are changed much more than those that can't be changed without impairing the function of the canoe and possibly killing people. In short, fundamental characteristics change less so than periphery characteristics.
This does not seem newsworthy to me.
If we change to modern commercial airplanes for a moment, would anybody actually expect seat cover color and toilet paper braid patterns of the planes to change less than the basic winged structure?
Additionally, they do not seem to consider that the non-functional characteristics may be matters of aesthetics or subject to fads, while you just can't fundamentally change the design of a complex structure as frequently as you can objects of aesthetics that have no functional consequences. And you have little desire to do so either.
It's an interesting idea, but the article spends no time justifying the use of 'natural selection' as a framework for understanding the changes. It just assumes it is applicable because there is change. If that's the case, then anything with multiple characteristics, some of which change at different rates than the others, can be understood in this same way. But that makes 'natural selection' so vague as to be meaningless.
IANAAICS... But the fact that at the hardware level the computer is binary does not matter.
On top of that hardware layer, you can implement, for example, reasoning based on non-monotonic logic, which allows for the very human phenomenon of coming to a tentative conclusion based on incomplete but best available evidence when necessary, and revising those conclusions when new information is available. The fact that it is implemented in something that compiles down to ones and zeros is irrelevant.
Anything that can be represented can be represented with ones and zeros.
The Russell anecdote reminds me of the following saying of John McCarthy:
An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question.
Evolution is not a fact. The 'facts' are the evidence we have, consisting of fossil records, genetic and morphological similarities and differences between organisms, the results of experiments that have been performed, and so forth.
Evolution is an explanation of why we observe the facts that we do, and natural selection is part of the most plausible and current best theory of evolution.
Yeah, me too. I tend to easily spot the alternate parses of corporate-droid-speak, but the parent of my post clearly didn't, since he objected that they weren't telling the truth, when of course, they are telling the truth -- just not the one he imagined.
It's curious that some people easily see these kinds of things and some people don't. I guess that's why marketers and related droids have no shortage of work.
It looks to me like Comcast is trying to mislead people into believing that they're saying:
We don't interfere with P2P activity at all, so these accusations are completely baseless!
But if you read the words carefully, you can see that following bullshit interpretation is a possible (albeit not the most likely) interpretation:
We don't completely prevent P2P activity altogether such that you cannot ever download anything (completely) via P2P
Which is fully compatible with the observed behavior of their tampering with it enough to cause problems and greatly reduce transfer speeds and increase transfer times for whole files, but it still being possible to use P2P apps for what they're intended for (albeit with much more hassle).
Yet another vote for the lapinator. I've used it with a thinkpad t-43 for a year or so. It's much more comfortable than something like a large hardback book (which I used to use). And it does indeed dissipate heat well, since the back of the laptop is propped up a half inch or so, which lets air circulate underneath the laptop.
Re:I'd say it depends on who you ask...
on
Is SETI Worth It?
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· Score: 1
The pragmatist in me says that SETI is a curious way for a few people to spend their time looking for signs of life 'somewhere out there' in the Universe, but it has no practical use.
I mean, honestly, let's assume that tomorrow, we capture a signal from an alien civilization. Finally, the answer to 'Are we alone in the Universe?' is answered, great. Then what?
What would be the practical impact if we had a time machine and could give present-day mathematics and scientific knowledge to Archimedes and friends. And if it actually took root then and flourished, where would we be today?
We have no idea what forms of knowledge such a communication might contain. It could compress the next million years of scientific discoveries into the span of a century.
I'd say there is at least the potential that the practical benefits could dwarf all prior practical benefits many times over.
Maybe public education should include classes in Critical Analysis of Ad Claims 101 and Weasel Word Composition.
There is such a class. It's called "Critical Thinking," and is usually in the philosophy department. When I took it many years ago, analysis of advertising and government propaganda was a large part of the course, as well as how to think critically and form informed opinions about all manner of political issues like abortion, free speech, etc.
It was the single most important class I ever took. It's too bad I had to wait until college to take it, when it is more fundamental and important than anything else but reading ability (and even that is arguable).
Many of the problems we have in this country (USA) are a result of people having so little critical thinking abilities -- problems like public ignorance and toleration for widespread political corruption -- that they are easily manipulated by politicians and corporate entities. It is said that true democracy requires an informed and educated citizenry. I think that the education that is required is not a Ph. D. or even a college education, but sound ability in how to think critically and analytically, which should be taught from the earliest ages.
Sadly, I hold little hope of that ever coming to be.
I didn't understand Pratt to be arguing that the 2-PDA system is directly analogous to the proof system in the way that you state. What I understood Pratt's point to be was that the proof does not prove that the 2,3 machine must be universal, since it is entirely possible that while the encoding mechanism itself is not universal, it nevertheless could be sufficiently complex that universality does not (and perhaps cannot) exist without it.
The author of the proof states on page 26 (counting the first PDF page as 0) the following:
Therefore, this algorithm for determining an initial condition, whilst somewhat complicated, is definitely not itself universal, and so the universality discovered above is a property of system 0, and not of the algorithm used to find its initial condition.
I took Pratt to be arguing that this is not a valid inference, that one can't just say that because the encoding and creation of initial condition mechanism is not universal, while the system as a whole is universal, that the 2,3 machine is therefore universal.
I'm looking forward to learning more over the next few days, but that is what I meant by earlier post. I may have completely misinterpreted Prof. Pratt's criticism, but that's my take on it.
P.s. Prof. Davis stated on the FOM list that the committee has not actually ruled that the paper is acceptable yet. Apparently, people within Wolfram's organization were the ones who made the determination. Given that, I'm not sure that it's correct for you to state that "the machine is still universal", since the paper hasn't been peer-reviewed by even the expert peers on the committee, let alone the wider community, and so its universality is still far from established.
Indeed. A prior email in that thread -- by the same author, Pratt -- makes it very clear by giving the example of 2 pushdown automata (PDA). A single PDA by itself is not universal, but the system comprised of 2 PDAs is universal, since each stack can represent one side of the Turing machine tape.
As Pratt states, the fallacy is of the following form: a system comprised of 2 PDAs, PDA A and PDA B, is universal. PDA A alone is not universal. Therefore, PDA B must be universal (because the system as a whole is universal). QED.
Of course, in the actual proof, it was not 2 PDAs, but a 2,3 machine and an encoder (i.e.,"PDA A" == "encoder" and "PDA B" == "2,3 machine").
I absolutely agree on the swishing part. I vigorously stir the water and grounds with a spoon while I'm pouring the water, and there is a noticeable difference. It definitely extracts more flavor when I stir vigorously than when I don't.
Totally agreed. I've never actually owned any kind of a coffee making machine. My setup was modeled on what my favorite coffee shop had. They would grind 1 cup worth of coffee for you when you order, and then make 1 cup of coffee with a simple plastic filter, and the coffee was amazing.
I was pretty surprised too when I got my first burr grinder about 10 months ago. I didn't expect it to taste that much better.
Thanks. I agree. Good beans that are freshly ground already puts up you above anything like starbucks or non-gourmet coffee houses. Add in a burr grinder (some day I'd like a non-electric one), and that's already in a whole different category.
Mob justice is never appropriate, because mob justice is an oxymoron.
When you care more about punishing somebody immediately and can't be bothered with technicalities like learning all the facts and being quite certain of the party's guilt, you are not participating in a just process but a mob process.
For the record, I'm appalled by what I read in Ms. Sierra's post and my heart goes out to her, but that doesn't change my feelings about so-called mob justice.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the correct name for the theory is "Intelligent Falling":
If you can't observe the phenomena in the real world, then how do you know the model has any correspondence?
The whole point is that many phenomena are observable, and predictions by the model have been verified again and again. Those that cannot currently be verified may be verified in the future, and if they are falsified, that tells us that one of the simplifications that was made in order to create the computer program was not warranted or that there is some factor that our program failed to incorporate that turned out to be important.
I would suggest you re-read my post and consider this phrase:
The more successful predictions about new kinds of phenomena, particle interactions, etc. that we have, the more confidence we have in the theory. Colloquially speaking, those successful predictions help confirm the theory.
I absolutely agree that you can use computer models in engineering. But the computer model showing a race car has less drag than a Hummer isn't expanding your knowledge of fluid dynamics. It's allowing you to apply what you already have established as the rules to different situations.
It's only engineering if we actually make the cars. When we run the model, it is just as much science as the experiment under consideration. The racecar/hummer example may not expand our knowledge, but you also said that it can't offer confirmation and has no relation to reality or truth. The important point is that modeling that makes new predictions about unseen phenomena that turn out to be correct is part of the process of moving from untested hypotheses to established science.
It will not allow you to prove or disprove new rules for fluid dynamics.
Now you're changing your story from "computer models cannot confirm ..." and "models have no relation to reality or truth" to "cannot prove or disprove new rules", whatever that is supposed to mean.
I get the feeling that I'm being trolled, since you apparently believe that all computer programs/models relating to the standard model and presumably general relativity and anything else that is not totally-settled-forever-science are absolutely worthless and have no relation to reality.
The first two sentences from the physorg article give more information than the entire ScienceDaily article:
Which was my point exactly. Thanks for the link.
Thanks for the reference. Eurekalert does look much better than ScienceDaily.
I get most of my science news from Science News, which I'm really happy with, but they are a little slower (and more thorough), so a bit behind the quickest to publish.
I just wish Slashdot editors would exercise some judgment. A good first step would be never linking to ScienceDaily.
All this has done is said "We made a computer program that gives us the results we would expect from running this computer program."
No, it's not nothing more than a tautology as you're implying. You're ignoring the nature of the program, which aims to embody the standard model well enough to make predictions about reality for phenomena that it's not been possible to directly observe. It's a little more than just a program that spits out arbitrary but predictable results, since the results do in fact have some relation to reality. If the model is any good at all, the correspondence will be very good.
Nothing in computer modeling makes a connection to reality and truth.
You must also believe that computer models of aerodynamics that predict a racecar will experience less drag than a Hummer also have no connection to reality and truth. I'd argue that to the extent that a model makes accurate predictions again and again, there is some connection to reality and truth.
I wish people would stop posting crappy science articles from ScienceDaily and related sites.
From this article, we learn that computer modeling confirmed something "about the behavior of quarks". That's it. There is nothing of substance in the article other than this and that the computation took three years.
Yeah, I would hope so, too. I was just venting because the article is so poorly written, and there is no non-paywalled version of the paper available.
It seems to me that the gist of this study is that those characteristics of canoes which you can change however you like without destroying the function of the canoe and possibly killing people are changed much more than those that can't be changed without impairing the function of the canoe and possibly killing people. In short, fundamental characteristics change less so than periphery characteristics.
This does not seem newsworthy to me.
If we change to modern commercial airplanes for a moment, would anybody actually expect seat cover color and toilet paper braid patterns of the planes to change less than the basic winged structure?
Additionally, they do not seem to consider that the non-functional characteristics may be matters of aesthetics or subject to fads, while you just can't fundamentally change the design of a complex structure as frequently as you can objects of aesthetics that have no functional consequences. And you have little desire to do so either.
It's an interesting idea, but the article spends no time justifying the use of 'natural selection' as a framework for understanding the changes. It just assumes it is applicable because there is change. If that's the case, then anything with multiple characteristics, some of which change at different rates than the others, can be understood in this same way. But that makes 'natural selection' so vague as to be meaningless.
IANAAICS... But the fact that at the hardware level the computer is binary does not matter.
On top of that hardware layer, you can implement, for example, reasoning based on non-monotonic logic, which allows for the very human phenomenon of coming to a tentative conclusion based on incomplete but best available evidence when necessary, and revising those conclusions when new information is available. The fact that it is implemented in something that compiles down to ones and zeros is irrelevant.
Anything that can be represented can be represented with ones and zeros.
The Russell anecdote reminds me of the following saying of John McCarthy:
Evolution is not a fact. The 'facts' are the evidence we have, consisting of fossil records, genetic and morphological similarities and differences between organisms, the results of experiments that have been performed, and so forth.
Evolution is an explanation of why we observe the facts that we do, and natural selection is part of the most plausible and current best theory of evolution.
Yeah, me too. I tend to easily spot the alternate parses of corporate-droid-speak, but the parent of my post clearly didn't, since he objected that they weren't telling the truth, when of course, they are telling the truth -- just not the one he imagined.
It's curious that some people easily see these kinds of things and some people don't. I guess that's why marketers and related droids have no shortage of work.
It looks to me like Comcast is trying to mislead people into believing that they're saying:
But if you read the words carefully, you can see that following bullshit interpretation is a possible (albeit not the most likely) interpretation:
Which is fully compatible with the observed behavior of their tampering with it enough to cause problems and greatly reduce transfer speeds and increase transfer times for whole files, but it still being possible to use P2P apps for what they're intended for (albeit with much more hassle).
Yet another vote for the lapinator. I've used it with a thinkpad t-43 for a year or so. It's much more comfortable than something like a large hardback book (which I used to use). And it does indeed dissipate heat well, since the back of the laptop is propped up a half inch or so, which lets air circulate underneath the laptop.
The pragmatist in me says that SETI is a curious way for a few people to spend their time looking for signs of life 'somewhere out there' in the Universe, but it has no practical use.
I mean, honestly, let's assume that tomorrow, we capture a signal from an alien civilization. Finally, the answer to 'Are we alone in the Universe?' is answered, great. Then what?
What would be the practical impact if we had a time machine and could give present-day mathematics and scientific knowledge to Archimedes and friends. And if it actually took root then and flourished, where would we be today?
We have no idea what forms of knowledge such a communication might contain. It could compress the next million years of scientific discoveries into the span of a century.
I'd say there is at least the potential that the practical benefits could dwarf all prior practical benefits many times over.
Maybe public education should include classes in Critical Analysis of Ad Claims 101 and Weasel Word Composition.
There is such a class. It's called "Critical Thinking," and is usually in the philosophy department. When I took it many years ago, analysis of advertising and government propaganda was a large part of the course, as well as how to think critically and form informed opinions about all manner of political issues like abortion, free speech, etc.
It was the single most important class I ever took. It's too bad I had to wait until college to take it, when it is more fundamental and important than anything else but reading ability (and even that is arguable).
Many of the problems we have in this country (USA) are a result of people having so little critical thinking abilities -- problems like public ignorance and toleration for widespread political corruption -- that they are easily manipulated by politicians and corporate entities. It is said that true democracy requires an informed and educated citizenry. I think that the education that is required is not a Ph. D. or even a college education, but sound ability in how to think critically and analytically, which should be taught from the earliest ages.
Sadly, I hold little hope of that ever coming to be.
I didn't understand Pratt to be arguing that the 2-PDA system is directly analogous to the proof system in the way that you state. What I understood Pratt's point to be was that the proof does not prove that the 2,3 machine must be universal, since it is entirely possible that while the encoding mechanism itself is not universal, it nevertheless could be sufficiently complex that universality does not (and perhaps cannot) exist without it.
The author of the proof states on page 26 (counting the first PDF page as 0) the following:
I took Pratt to be arguing that this is not a valid inference, that one can't just say that because the encoding and creation of initial condition mechanism is not universal, while the system as a whole is universal, that the 2,3 machine is therefore universal.
I'm looking forward to learning more over the next few days, but that is what I meant by earlier post. I may have completely misinterpreted Prof. Pratt's criticism, but that's my take on it.
P.s. Prof. Davis stated on the FOM list that the committee has not actually ruled that the paper is acceptable yet. Apparently, people within Wolfram's organization were the ones who made the determination. Given that, I'm not sure that it's correct for you to state that "the machine is still universal", since the paper hasn't been peer-reviewed by even the expert peers on the committee, let alone the wider community, and so its universality is still far from established.
Indeed. A prior email in that thread -- by the same author, Pratt -- makes it very clear by giving the example of 2 pushdown automata (PDA). A single PDA by itself is not universal, but the system comprised of 2 PDAs is universal, since each stack can represent one side of the Turing machine tape.
As Pratt states, the fallacy is of the following form: a system comprised of 2 PDAs, PDA A and PDA B, is universal. PDA A alone is not universal. Therefore, PDA B must be universal (because the system as a whole is universal). QED.
Of course, in the actual proof, it was not 2 PDAs, but a 2,3 machine and an encoder (i.e.,"PDA A" == "encoder" and "PDA B" == "2,3 machine").
You hit the "print is a statement" design flaw. If you were thinking p3k, then it requires parentheses.
xmonad is a tiling window manager in about 500 lines of Haskell code.
Features:
It's minimalistic, has everything I need with dmenu.
Oh, and it's very actively developed.
I absolutely agree on the swishing part. I vigorously stir the water and grounds with a spoon while I'm pouring the water, and there is a noticeable difference. It definitely extracts more flavor when I stir vigorously than when I don't.
Totally agreed. I've never actually owned any kind of a coffee making machine. My setup was modeled on what my favorite coffee shop had. They would grind 1 cup worth of coffee for you when you order, and then make 1 cup of coffee with a simple plastic filter, and the coffee was amazing.
I was pretty surprised too when I got my first burr grinder about 10 months ago. I didn't expect it to taste that much better.
Thanks. I agree. Good beans that are freshly ground already puts up you above anything like starbucks or non-gourmet coffee houses. Add in a burr grinder (some day I'd like a non-electric one), and that's already in a whole different category.
My setup:
In detail:
Grind the beans, boil the water then wait a few minutes for it to cool a few degrees, pour and enjoy fresh.
Mob justice is never appropriate, because mob justice is an oxymoron.
When you care more about punishing somebody immediately and can't be bothered with technicalities like learning all the facts and being quite certain of the party's guilt, you are not participating in a just process but a mob process.
For the record, I'm appalled by what I read in Ms. Sierra's post and my heart goes out to her, but that doesn't change my feelings about so-called mob justice.