Seee Wolfram, New Kind of Science. p. 1138. The whole idea of undecidibility is that all types of undecidability are equivilent. If you could figure out one, you'd have a solution of the halting problem.
Re:philosophy and science have always been linked
on
The Unknown Newton
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· Score: 1
You completely went off on a tangent that has nothing to do with what I said. The point is: physics, as math, is incomplete. You will never know everything, and you can never know if your foundations are secure because they have to be taken as axioms to get anywhere. As far as "are there limits to our theories"--yes, there obviously are. Or else we would be able to calculate everything to the nth decimal without any effort. These limits are as real as your knowledge because they're products of your 'knowledge', which must always have assumtions and axioms to get anywhere. You admit this when you mention "...but to understand and _predict_ where the electron can go. And within what margin of error."
The fact of the matter is that science _doesn't_ have all the answers. It _can't_ have all the answers because it's not possible to express all the answers in a formal theory (i.e., math). And without a formal theory, you can't do science, cause you can't measure and predict. And that's all there is to it. Go back and read Turing and Godel and Church and Chaitin and everyone--it's perfectly clear. Your physics is based on math, and there are fundamental limits of what can be expressed in mathematics.
Computer geeks take notice: the 3-body problem is equivilent to Turing's halting problem, Godels enteinscheidensproblem (sp?), determining Lambda normal forms, etc. Basically its a computer/logical/mathematics problem as much as it is a physics problem: if we could give an equation that could determine the 3 body problem we could solve any problem on earth in 0 seconds (well, n, at least), which is obviously impossible.
Actually thats not true. Our "rights" were given formally in a legal document, which also gave the "right" to judges and congress to change those "rights" at any time there were enough of them who agreed. You can dick around with semantics all you want, but these "rights" are just legal papers, as you show when u cite the constitution, a legal document, as the source for our "rights". If whatever it is you're talking about is inherent to Life, then it can't be identified by a legal document, and has nothing to do with a "right", and there are no words that can remove what is inherinet to Life. The constitution is just a law that is set up to limit any inherent freedom that might exist with Life.
I agree...the writing was in a rather hyped style. The only thing that makes me wonder if this is real is the reference in the article that the Amazing Patent Holder presented his findings to the NSF--I would imagine the NSF would have been able to find out if it was b.s. or not without inviting him to speak.
Re:philosophy and science have always been linked
on
The Unknown Newton
·
· Score: 1
"but I still consider myself a scientist because I think an important thing is that no matter how good your logic is and how nice your explanations are, it doesn't mean a thing if it's inconsistent with ***observations***."
But observations are relative. (Heisenberg principle) At the end of the day, obsrevations are all we have, but theres always more going on that can't be observed for fundamental reasons.
As far as Dean's campaign getting sabatoged, I agree. Those of you who read the news regularly might have noticed that the press loved the guy until about 2-3 months before the primaries, at which point they completely and utterly turned on Dean. The way you can tell is that the press didn't criticize Dean for anything substantial--they made fun of his neck, or that his face gets red when hes angry, or that he looks like a groundhog, or that he has too much energy. It was a fucking joke, but, well, it worked. All of a sudden Kerry "won" Iowa. I read the news constantly and this shocked me, as the last I had heard of Kerry was about 2 years previous when the media was criticising him and Daschale. Oh, and the media reported that Kerry was the "winner", except numerous votes from other states had already been cast for Dean, which put Dean CLEARLY still in the lead. But, at that point, the media had already declared the race over.
It was a fucking joke is what it was. Dean got fucking shafted.
And no, I wouldn't have voted for Dean either way, so I'm not overly biased.
Yeah, this reeks of fraud. 7 processors. touch display. color screen, backlight. runs on 1 AA battery. 1337 unknown OS. Deposit to confirm order, but no credit cards accepted, so no fraud protection. Don't let your ass get burned, people.
Computer industry has been driven by profits, and profits come from efficiency. It just happens to be that in the past hardware efficiency was the most important feature driving the market, while now efficiency in writing software is becomming the most important. So don't worry, LISP will come back. Or become stronger--there's a reason it's been around in successful use since the 1960s.
Re:Caught up with the speed, but still the ugliest
on
Java Faster Than C++?
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· Score: 1
I would like to add that, while already-loaded JAVA is just as fast as C or whatever, JAVA is an ugly, stupid language. Being forced to use pseudo-object-oriented style with libraries that are hopelesley disordered (both litterly and linguistically) is no fun, period. It takes way too much time to write code in JAVA and results in code forced to a particular methodology, one that isn't even that super to begin with. I don't udnerstand why people dick around with this language when they could use a purely functional one and get not only functional style, but OO and procedural and continuations and better debugging and better, quicker writing of code, as well. The only thing Java has accomplished is getting swarms of incompetent, corporate-whore programmers to work together on software without requiring the use of a brain. And yes, I am a corporate-whore programmer, so I know this is how it is.
We have a blank slate from which to construct ourselves.
This isn't true. If you were a blank slate, you wouldn't be connected to anything and wouldn't be influenced by any of the laws of physics. As it stands, you're gravity's bitch, you're roughly connected to everything in the universe, so...
There's alot more out there than you, assuming that you could even define precisely what is you, which you can't, as is clear from quantum mechanics and a billion religions. You can't seperate yourself from the world, buddy, so you can't distinguish entirely what is _your_ fault or triumph, even though you may be able to make some good approximations to the effect.
Whoops, you're assuming that you can define 'intelligence' within the system in question;)
Personally I fluctuate between thinking i'm a genius and a stupid dumb fuck who thinks about sex way too much. But, you know, it all works out in the long run.
Because usefulness and pointlessness are concepts that only mean something inside of the system in question. Once you go outside and start introducing thing, you can do whatever you want. You could define a scale in terms of 'sex' or 'jungle gyms' and come to the same conclusions. The problem is that you can't break out of the system while maintaining any link to it, so, again, what's the point? There is no point, so any point is a point, so.... do what you _feeel_, just realize you can't justify any of it with logic or reason or your brain or whatever u wanna call it.
"My idea of a random number is that it, say, no deterministic process known or unknown created that number. There's no way a truly random number can be intentially recreated."
That's the point. There are a countable number of deterministic processes, but an uncountable number of real numbers. Thus, there are an uncountable number of real numbers that CANNOT be generated with a deterministic process, thus they can only be "given" to someone in a literal fashion. But, these numbers you see, are all infinite in length. Therefore they can't actually be given to anyone, thus they are both unknowable and random. They are not deterministic.
In short, if you can't describe (or predict or calculate or....) the number in advance of seeing the number, it's random.
*shrug* Well supposedly they both discovered it independently at about the same time, along with Solmonoff. So some call it Chaitin-Kolmogorov-Solomonoff complexity. Either way it's retarded to call it by someone's name, as it doesn't tell you jack-shit about what the field is about, and your postdoc guy shoulda known better (though the book _is_ excellent, I admit).
*shrug* Well supposedly they both discovered it independently at about the same time, along with Solmonoff. So some call it Chaitin-Kolmogorov-Solomonoff complexity.
I would say, there is no point, but "no point" is still a point (or: if there's "no point", then every point is a point...). Then probably start babbling about Godel and self-referrential nonsense about how something can't come from nothing...
Damn I wish more people realized that there's no fucking point...and yes, true, connections and luck account for some 90% or whatever of all success (well, whether others think you're successful).
People, there is no such thing as the Fountain of Youth. Have any of you believers taken Thermodynamics clcasses? Ever heard of Entropy?! You can't beat it, ever. Aging is a direct product of entropy, people, and cannot be stopped. Give it up already.
If I understand it correctly, this problem only occurs when installing from scratch/cd? In other words, if I have Fedora Core 1 installed, and use the yum upgrade method to upgrade to Core 2, I won't have this problem because it won't need to mess with partition tables and such?
Slashdot Mirror
Seee Wolfram, New Kind of Science. p. 1138. The whole idea of undecidibility is that all types of undecidability are equivilent. If you could figure out one, you'd have a solution of the halting problem.
The fact of the matter is that science _doesn't_ have all the answers. It _can't_ have all the answers because it's not possible to express all the answers in a formal theory (i.e., math). And without a formal theory, you can't do science, cause you can't measure and predict. And that's all there is to it. Go back and read Turing and Godel and Church and Chaitin and everyone--it's perfectly clear. Your physics is based on math, and there are fundamental limits of what can be expressed in mathematics.
Computer geeks take notice: the 3-body problem is equivilent to Turing's halting problem, Godels enteinscheidensproblem (sp?), determining Lambda normal forms, etc. Basically its a computer/logical/mathematics problem as much as it is a physics problem: if we could give an equation that could determine the 3 body problem we could solve any problem on earth in 0 seconds (well, n, at least), which is obviously impossible.
Actually thats not true. Our "rights" were given formally in a legal document, which also gave the "right" to judges and congress to change those "rights" at any time there were enough of them who agreed. You can dick around with semantics all you want, but these "rights" are just legal papers, as you show when u cite the constitution, a legal document, as the source for our "rights". If whatever it is you're talking about is inherent to Life, then it can't be identified by a legal document, and has nothing to do with a "right", and there are no words that can remove what is inherinet to Life. The constitution is just a law that is set up to limit any inherent freedom that might exist with Life.
I agree...the writing was in a rather hyped style. The only thing that makes me wonder if this is real is the reference in the article that the Amazing Patent Holder presented his findings to the NSF--I would imagine the NSF would have been able to find out if it was b.s. or not without inviting him to speak.
But observations are relative. (Heisenberg principle) At the end of the day, obsrevations are all we have, but theres always more going on that can't be observed for fundamental reasons.
So it has (2^100)! bits of info?
As far as Dean's campaign getting sabatoged, I agree. Those of you who read the news regularly might have noticed that the press loved the guy until about 2-3 months before the primaries, at which point they completely and utterly turned on Dean. The way you can tell is that the press didn't criticize Dean for anything substantial--they made fun of his neck, or that his face gets red when hes angry, or that he looks like a groundhog, or that he has too much energy. It was a fucking joke, but, well, it worked. All of a sudden Kerry "won" Iowa. I read the news constantly and this shocked me, as the last I had heard of Kerry was about 2 years previous when the media was criticising him and Daschale. Oh, and the media reported that Kerry was the "winner", except numerous votes from other states had already been cast for Dean, which put Dean CLEARLY still in the lead. But, at that point, the media had already declared the race over.
It was a fucking joke is what it was. Dean got fucking shafted.
And no, I wouldn't have voted for Dean either way, so I'm not overly biased.
Either way this isn't a story. It's someone trying to sell something. Except they're not selling anything: its a damned scam. Now THATS news.
Yeah. Slashdot is fucking dead. What a joke.
Yeah, this reeks of fraud. 7 processors. touch display. color screen, backlight. runs on 1 AA battery. 1337 unknown OS. Deposit to confirm order, but no credit cards accepted, so no fraud protection. Don't let your ass get burned, people.
U want a political game, check
http://www.emogame.com/bushgame.html
(its all Flash, btw)
Computer industry has been driven by profits, and profits come from efficiency. It just happens to be that in the past hardware efficiency was the most important feature driving the market, while now efficiency in writing software is becomming the most important. So don't worry, LISP will come back. Or become stronger--there's a reason it's been around in successful use since the 1960s.
I would like to add that, while already-loaded JAVA is just as fast as C or whatever, JAVA is an ugly, stupid language. Being forced to use pseudo-object-oriented style with libraries that are hopelesley disordered (both litterly and linguistically) is no fun, period. It takes way too much time to write code in JAVA and results in code forced to a particular methodology, one that isn't even that super to begin with. I don't udnerstand why people dick around with this language when they could use a purely functional one and get not only functional style, but OO and procedural and continuations and better debugging and better, quicker writing of code, as well. The only thing Java has accomplished is getting swarms of incompetent, corporate-whore programmers to work together on software without requiring the use of a brain. And yes, I am a corporate-whore programmer, so I know this is how it is.
Hahah yeah. If there's any point, it's gotta be either God or Sex, though some say they're the same thing...
This isn't true. If you were a blank slate, you wouldn't be connected to anything and wouldn't be influenced by any of the laws of physics. As it stands, you're gravity's bitch, you're roughly connected to everything in the universe, so...
There's alot more out there than you, assuming that you could even define precisely what is you, which you can't, as is clear from quantum mechanics and a billion religions. You can't seperate yourself from the world, buddy, so you can't distinguish entirely what is _your_ fault or triumph, even though you may be able to make some good approximations to the effect.
Personally I fluctuate between thinking i'm a genius and a stupid dumb fuck who thinks about sex way too much. But, you know, it all works out in the long run.
Because usefulness and pointlessness are concepts that only mean something inside of the system in question. Once you go outside and start introducing thing, you can do whatever you want. You could define a scale in terms of 'sex' or 'jungle gyms' and come to the same conclusions. The problem is that you can't break out of the system while maintaining any link to it, so, again, what's the point? There is no point, so any point is a point, so.... do what you _feeel_, just realize you can't justify any of it with logic or reason or your brain or whatever u wanna call it.
That's the point. There are a countable number of deterministic processes, but an uncountable number of real numbers. Thus, there are an uncountable number of real numbers that CANNOT be generated with a deterministic process, thus they can only be "given" to someone in a literal fashion. But, these numbers you see, are all infinite in length. Therefore they can't actually be given to anyone, thus they are both unknowable and random. They are not deterministic.
In short, if you can't describe (or predict or calculate or....) the number in advance of seeing the number, it's random.
*shrug* Well supposedly they both discovered it independently at about the same time, along with Solmonoff. So some call it Chaitin-Kolmogorov-Solomonoff complexity. Either way it's retarded to call it by someone's name, as it doesn't tell you jack-shit about what the field is about, and your postdoc guy shoulda known better (though the book _is_ excellent, I admit).
*shrug* Well supposedly they both discovered it independently at about the same time, along with Solmonoff. So some call it Chaitin-Kolmogorov-Solomonoff complexity.
I would say, there is no point, but "no point" is still a point (or: if there's "no point", then every point is a point...). Then probably start babbling about Godel and self-referrential nonsense about how something can't come from nothing...
Damn I wish more people realized that there's no fucking point...and yes, true, connections and luck account for some 90% or whatever of all success (well, whether others think you're successful).
People, there is no such thing as the Fountain of Youth. Have any of you believers taken Thermodynamics clcasses? Ever heard of Entropy?! You can't beat it, ever. Aging is a direct product of entropy, people, and cannot be stopped. Give it up already.
If I understand it correctly, this problem only occurs when installing from scratch/cd? In other words, if I have Fedora Core 1 installed, and use the yum upgrade method to upgrade to Core 2, I won't have this problem because it won't need to mess with partition tables and such?
Except that most people will press the button just for kicks or the novelty of it, giving Coke plenty of data.