How can something have free will and be deterministic?
Indeed.
By way of example, one of the things that Slashdotters enjoy is reading about is when a turing machine is implemented in some system such as Conway's game of life. If a mind is a deterministic device, then there should be an equivalent representation of that mind in systems like these. However, there is clearly no place whatsoever for free will in such a system. Likewise for a computer, which is an equivalent system.
Similarly, if a brain were 'emulated' in a computer then it may indeed be produce human-like behaviour in response to stimulus. But does this make it the same as a human mind?
10 Print "I think, therefore I am"
is a declaration of self awareness based on a deterministic chain of events. But we know this is a phoney declaration. On what basis can one declare that any more complex, yet deterministic, system can authentically make the same claim?
These attributes of the mind: free will, self awareness, assigning meaning to symbols, and so on, cannot be assigned to a deterministic device. Even if there is some internal variable in a program that indicates a robot has identified itself in a mirror, this does not demonstrate self awareness in the same way that humans do. Further, that flag has only been assigned the 'meaning' of self-awareness by the eyes of the human observer.
Doug is right, this is a religious debate. But it is not religion intruding on science turf, rather, as it is a philosophical question, science entering religious turf.
He is also correct that no side will convince the other, because people from both sides enter with different assumptions about the reality we live in. A naturalist who believes that the physical world is all that is cannot accept the Christian position on intelligence because to do so would be in conflict with his assumptions about the world.
Issues such as self awareness, self meaning, free will, and so on fit readily into the Christian world-view (who also believe that such properties will never truely be found in a deterministic device such as a computer, even if behaviours are exhibited), but the naturalist will always struggle to precicely define these issues.
The naturalist wants people to have free will (or at least, Doug does), yet a deterministic system can't exhibit this. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either follow your belief system to its logical conclusion - that we are automaton, and have no more relevance than Conway's game of life, or that the mind is more than a deterministic device.
Peter Aylett
---- Believing something doesn't make it true. Not believing something doesn't make it false.
I could be wrong. But I suspect that if the MD5 tag had never been present then no one would have ever contested it.
However, because the designers went the extra mile and added some security - some goose can come along later and say "A ha! Your product is defective because it uses a security model that's not effective".
Other great examples:
Why don't more people send signed emails? Because it makes them easier to sue as they can't say "well, I didn't send it".
Wasn't there a Slashdot story some time ago saying that the fact you have encryption software installed on your machine can be admitted as evidence against you in certain cases?
Imho, this person should have to either proove that it's been tampered, or proove that there was at least motive from someone to tamper it. Evidence againt him: theres a photo of him speeding. Evidence for him: none - just the possibility that said photo was faked.
So I assume they don't expect the first leap-hour to be in their lifetimes. It'll make life easier for us - and everyone in the next few generations, and push the problem onto future programmers.
As if anyone is going to write leap-hour ready code except within 10 years to the first leap-hour.
---------- History repeating itself - one hour at a time
We had a once-off change to daylight savings for the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Everyone complained a lot about how inconveniect it was going to be, but everything went smoothly.
For my part, I was mainly working with Windows boxes. There was a hot-fix from Microsoft that came out some time before to let Windows know what was going on - and not much else needed to be done.
Indeed.
Kids will always do dumb stuff - really dumb stuff. Twenty years ago, really dumb stuff mainly included things like accidentally burning down the local park.
What kind of screwed up society has an infrastructure so weak that a kid can cause billions of dollars of damage - and then wants to blame the kid when they do? (Err.. ours apparently)
As analogy, it's as dumb as having a publically accessible "off switch" for the entire countries electricity grid, with a sign hang next to it saying "don't touch.. or you'll get in lots of trouble".
I recall as a child going to the World Expo at Brisbane, Australia in 1988, where they had a robot playing "House of the Rising Sun" on a guitar. Unfortunately I don't remember which pavilion it was.
... but that's well over 6000 numbered days so far.
Squint and say "Moore's Law" after a few beers
on
AMD Quad Cores, Oh My
·
· Score: 1
It sounds a like "More Cores" is trying to peep out.
So people want to be able to think/read/say anything they like? I s'pose they want to do anything they like as well. Right?
Except kill people. Err.. and rape people. No, wait, let's make it that they can do anything they like as long as it doesn't hurt other people.
What happens when the set of things that one person believes shouldn't be done (because it hurts others) is different to the same set for another person? Like abortion? Some people find it convenient. Other people think it's murder.
How about we make it that everyone can do what they believe can be done without hurting others. That'll work well. Until some nut goes around and kills everyone because he believes its for their spiritual benefit. Or something bizzare like that. Or until someone rapes someone else because he doesn't thinks she'll enjoy it - rather than it stuffing up her life.
Ok, it looks like that we're all going to be running more or less under the same set of 'rules' of what we can/can't do (lest it hurt someone else). Who's going to set those limits? Well.. this (and many other post) seem to clearly state that we don't want the goverment to do it. Sounds reasonable. Afterall, it's just made of people and that just means putting up with their beliefs instead of living out your own.
But who then? And why? Well I know what I'd prefer.
I'd never used the graphing program before, but the layout algo's seemed to be pretty cool.
Something I should note is that the node names encode the position at that point. The encoding is as follows: Each character represents a block ('2'=2x2, '1'=1x1, 'H'=2x1, 'V'=1x2, 'E'=empty). For any given puzzle orientation, scan from top to bottom, and left to right within each row. The character for any new block is recorded. (ie only record the top-left of each block).
I hope that makes sense. If not, email me at the addr on the website.
Hey, don't know if anyone's still reading comments for this article now but..
We've put together a graph linking all the positions you can get to with the Quzzle.
Starting point shown in red. Top/right Ending point(s) shown in blue. And the (incorrect) bottom right solution in pink. The path from start to solution is shown in green.
Notes: Used aiSee to draw the graph. The circuits that seem to appear in the solution are just due to the graph being drawn with crossovers.
Ok.. time to go and find something less geeky to do with the rest of the evening.
Ok, it's off topic. While looking though other project by the author of this site, I found a well thought through essay on what he personally believes:
Abstract: I've often been asked why an intellectual type guy such as myself would believe in Jesus - a figure most Americans equate to a good bedtime story, or a religious symbol for people who need that sort of thing.Read essay
So if the empirical data suggests that file sharing increases sales, then the record industry needs to decide what it thinks is more important: making money or saving face.
Should get very interesting if we have a few more years of high correlation between sharing and sales.
If some search engine is going to try and pull up every single record stored on some website's database - and do this every month or however often, then surely this is going to generate a heck of a lot more traffic than is necessary.
(Or even better, what happens when deep search engine #A starts crawling deep search engine/diretory #B:)
If you think buying expensive textbooks is bad, in Accounting 1001/1002 in '98 at Sydney University we had to buy our assignments.
The lecturer had made all the assignments as a suite of programs (ie Excel spreadsheets) and we were required to pay for a license (ie piece of paper) that said we were allowed to do our assignments.
(Not only was it an absolute ripoff, the spreadsheets were riddled with bugs).
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed.
By way of example, one of the things that Slashdotters enjoy is reading about is when a turing machine is implemented in some system such as Conway's game of life. If a mind is a deterministic device, then there should be an equivalent representation of that mind in systems like these. However, there is clearly no place whatsoever for free will in such a system. Likewise for a computer, which is an equivalent system.
Similarly, if a brain were 'emulated' in a computer then it may indeed be produce human-like behaviour in response to stimulus. But does this make it the same as a human mind?
10 Print "I think, therefore I am"
is a declaration of self awareness based on a deterministic chain of events. But we know this is a phoney declaration. On what basis can one declare that any more complex, yet deterministic, system can authentically make the same claim?
These attributes of the mind: free will, self awareness, assigning meaning to symbols, and so on, cannot be assigned to a deterministic device. Even if there is some internal variable in a program that indicates a robot has identified itself in a mirror, this does not demonstrate self awareness in the same way that humans do. Further, that flag has only been assigned the 'meaning' of self-awareness by the eyes of the human observer.
Doug is right, this is a religious debate. But it is not religion intruding on science turf, rather, as it is a philosophical question, science entering religious turf.
He is also correct that no side will convince the other, because people from both sides enter with different assumptions about the reality we live in. A naturalist who believes that the physical world is all that is cannot accept the Christian position on intelligence because to do so would be in conflict with his assumptions about the world.
Issues such as self awareness, self meaning, free will, and so on fit readily into the Christian world-view (who also believe that such properties will never truely be found in a deterministic device such as a computer, even if behaviours are exhibited), but the naturalist will always struggle to precicely define these issues.
The naturalist wants people to have free will (or at least, Doug does), yet a deterministic system can't exhibit this. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either follow your belief system to its logical conclusion - that we are automaton, and have no more relevance than Conway's game of life, or that the mind is more than a deterministic device.
Peter Aylett
----
Believing something doesn't make it true. Not believing something doesn't make it false.
Energy can be neither created nor destroyed - but it can be converted from gas to traffic lights lighting.
However, because the designers went the extra mile and added some security - some goose can come along later and say "A ha! Your product is defective because it uses a security model that's not effective".
Other great examples:
Imho, this person should have to either proove that it's been tampered, or proove that there was at least motive from someone to tamper it. Evidence againt him: theres a photo of him speeding. Evidence for him: none - just the possibility that said photo was faked.
what a load of bollocks
So I assume they don't expect the first leap-hour to be in their lifetimes. It'll make life easier for us - and everyone in the next few generations, and push the problem onto future programmers.
As if anyone is going to write leap-hour ready code except within 10 years to the first leap-hour.
----------
History repeating itself - one hour at a time
Everyone complained a lot about how inconveniect it was going to be, but everything went smoothly.
For my part, I was mainly working with Windows boxes. There was a hot-fix from Microsoft that came out some time before to let Windows know what was going on - and not much else needed to be done.
Indeed. Kids will always do dumb stuff - really dumb stuff. Twenty years ago, really dumb stuff mainly included things like accidentally burning down the local park. What kind of screwed up society has an infrastructure so weak that a kid can cause billions of dollars of damage - and then wants to blame the kid when they do? (Err.. ours apparently) As analogy, it's as dumb as having a publically accessible "off switch" for the entire countries electricity grid, with a sign hang next to it saying "don't touch.. or you'll get in lots of trouble".
OK.. I'll be quiet now.
(why do these things always sound less funny once you press preview?)
In other news, it was later ruled that "possession of envelopes" could be admitted as evidence of criminal intent to conceal communications.
I'm impressed that they even conducted this experiment. Twice! At least someone is taking the problem seriously.
You need a PhD to actually decypher the rules, but the game play is actually fairly simple once you get the hang of it.
Similar to settlers, you don't directly smash your opponent, but rather have to build stuff faster and get in their way.
Except kill people. Err.. and rape people. No, wait, let's make it that they can do anything they like as long as it doesn't hurt other people.
What happens when the set of things that one person believes shouldn't be done (because it hurts others) is different to the same set for another person? Like abortion? Some people find it convenient. Other people think it's murder.
How about we make it that everyone can do what they believe can be done without hurting others. That'll work well. Until some nut goes around and kills everyone because he believes its for their spiritual benefit. Or something bizzare like that. Or until someone rapes someone else because he doesn't thinks she'll enjoy it - rather than it stuffing up her life.
Ok, it looks like that we're all going to be running more or less under the same set of 'rules' of what we can/can't do (lest it hurt someone else). Who's going to set those limits? Well.. this (and many other post) seem to clearly state that we don't want the goverment to do it. Sounds reasonable. Afterall, it's just made of people and that just means putting up with their beliefs instead of living out your own.
But who then? And why? Well I know what I'd prefer.
That calculation has a 1 in 1 chance of being wrong.
I'd never used the graphing program before, but the layout algo's seemed to be pretty cool.
Something I should note is that the node names encode the position at that point. The encoding is as follows: Each character represents a block ('2'=2x2, '1'=1x1, 'H'=2x1, 'V'=1x2, 'E'=empty). For any given puzzle orientation, scan from top to bottom, and left to right within each row. The character for any new block is recorded. (ie only record the top-left of each block).
I hope that makes sense. If not, email me at the addr on the website.
We've put together a graph linking all the positions you can get to with the Quzzle.
Starting point shown in red. Top/right Ending point(s) shown in blue. And the (incorrect) bottom right solution in pink. The path from start to solution is shown in green.
Notes: Used aiSee to draw the graph. The circuits that seem to appear in the solution are just due to the graph being drawn with crossovers.
Ok.. time to go and find something less geeky to do with the rest of the evening.
Abstract: I've often been asked why an intellectual type guy such as myself would believe in Jesus - a figure most Americans equate to a good bedtime story, or a religious symbol for people who need that sort of thing. Read essay
Should get very interesting if we have a few more years of high correlation between sharing and sales.
(Or even better, what happens when deep search engine #A starts crawling deep search engine/diretory #B :)
The lecturer had made all the assignments as a suite of programs (ie Excel spreadsheets) and we were required to pay for a license (ie piece of paper) that said we were allowed to do our assignments.
(Not only was it an absolute ripoff, the spreadsheets were riddled with bugs).
I wish the specifications I get were that detailed :)
Me suspects not. (not that I bothered reading the report though)
C'mon it's been several hours since he's been arrested, and I still haven't received an email with a cool Flash cartoon in it yet!!
Who's slacking off here?
And God said, "Let there be light"
Genesis 1:3