Alaska... 5 males for every 1 female. Why aren't there large groups of angry young Alaskans commiting acts of terrorism?
Porn aside, these guys can move to the mainland any time they want to have more access to females. The guys that stay there are self-selected for not wanting to be around so much chickage, or at least valuing it less than making money.
You can't dumb it down just because it would be nice to do so. And I'm sorry but mathematics is just the way in which meaning is expressed for machines.
Basic math is good, but do you really need things like calcuseless and differential equations to be good at Computer Science? I've certainly never used them. This is the only math they taught me as a CS undergrad. (Mind you, discrete structures, algorithm analysis, and boolean algebra were CS courses.)
And if you're going to claim that a thing does not exist, it's kind of important to pin down what people mean by that thing in the first place.
The semantic issue is in exactly what you mean by "exist" above. I'm not claiming that we don't experience consciousness. I'm only asserting there's no reason to believe that it's "magic".
Not necessarily. I remember talking to a strict materialist who felt that a thermostat was a simple form of awareness as it could detect and appropriately affect its environment.... Neither of these involve "magic".
I'm not so sure about that. A thermostat is a single analogue switch; there is no place to insert a program to fool it into believing it is conscious. So where would its consciousness come from? This requires "magic". Also, "Metaphysics" == "magic". Computational processes, however, are not magic.
For that sentence to have any meaning whatsoever there has to be a "witness" in the first place, meaning consciousness.
At this stage, we get bogged down in semantics.
Whether it all actually comes down to programming or not is completely irrelevant.
Irrelevant or not, this is the subject at issue in the entire thread. Most people seem to believe that their consciousness demonstrates that they are special and have a supernatural soul that will have an afterlife. However, there's no good reason to believe this.
The block diagram for the "it's an illusion" theory of consciousness doesn't have a big box in the middle of it labelled "Magic happens here". All other theories of consciousness do. This gives it more credibility than other theories of consciousness.
No matter how you slice it, that the tiny subset of nature that is us is able to comprehend nature itself is pretty remarkable.
Yes, it is pretty remarkable. Computers are pretty remarkable, too. They can do all sorts of cool things. Suppose that we could program a computer to believe that it was experiencing consciousness. This would be an especially remarkable thing. However, would its consciousness be something 'real', some new part of reality, or would it simply be a computational process in-flight like your web browser is now?
Descartes was a smart guy, but he didn't know what we know today. Would he have a different opinion today?
Not only is there a reason for me to believe that my own consciousness exists, but (according to Descartes) it is the only thing I can be certain exists.
However, you are a faulty witness to your own consciousness. Like Bender, you may simply be unable to escape from your own programming.
Much of philosophy is every bit as rigorous as hard science (though, I will admit, some is not); they (we, actually) are just working with different axioms and different data sets.
Even if you do come up with a thoroughly rigorous and internally consistent philosophy of things beyond observable reality, what of it? There is no way to know if it's right, because it can't be tested. There are conceptually an infinite number of such philosophies, so the probability of any one of them being the correct description of what is beyond reality is 1/infinity. Christianity or Flying Spaghetti Monsterism have the same probability of being correct. It is insulting if you attempt to pass of such a philosophy as being real.
My personal work revolves around uniting the three perspectives (computation, physics, and metaphysics) through a zero-player game model
I have to assume that you have come up with no concrete answers for what is beyond reality since if you did, it would be splashed all over the front page of every newspaper in the world. Good luck to you, sir. If you ever do produce concrete and verifiable answers, I will readily fold them into my model of reality.
And for you who believes that computational processes and computability are so solidly based
Logic, mathematics, and computation are intangible things, but they match and predict observable reality extremely well.
Myself, I'm a supervenient physicalist, meaning I think that consciousness supervenes on the physical, but cannot be explained by, reference to physical laws alone. Consciousness, and the study of it, inhabits its own scientific sphere that is not reducible to physics or biology or some other "basic" science.
Well, good for you. Of course, your explanation above is the exact equivalent of someone telling me that they believe in God and thumping "the good book", or that they believe in magic. You may believe what you wish and read as much as you like, but you are asking me to put faith into more than objective reality for no particularly good reason. Religious people will refer me to Bible passages and writings of philosophers, but it's all meaningless because it is all made up by people who have no greater means to objectively study these subjects than I do. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Myself, I'm an expert on computational processes (something actually real). I'll keep my faith in reality and avoid explanations that are more complicated than the subject they are describing, especially when there is an explanation that doesn't violate everything we objectively know about reality.
Going beyond the semantic issue, the GP seemed to be implying that consciousness is something special, some unknown part of nature.
However, suppose that you ask a person if they are sane. Should you believe their answer? The only means you have to evaluate the experience of your own consciousness is your own consciousness itself. If your consciousness wasn't some supernatural thing but instead was a little program in your brain to fool you into protecting your existence above all else by creating the illusion of being something special and supernatural, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Now consider everything that we know about reality. Does the universe work more like a precise machine or more like some transcendental mystical metaphysical drug hallucination? Consider everything we know about the mechanics of the brain. It is organized a lot like and its components are a lot like a computer. Is this a description of a ghost trap or of a computational device?
The Earth sure does look flat, though, doesn't it?
which would include the vast majority of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and the majority of so-called polytheists, such as Hindus and ancient believers in the Greek and Egyptian gods) is necessarily a better reflection of reality
Do you have any particular reason for saying this other than that it doesn't match anything that we can observe about reality? Show me this "overwhelming evidence" of the existence of God that you spoke of earlier. Clearly, this overwhelming evidence is simply what you believe, whereas the overwhelming evidence that God is superfluous and extraneous is all of observable reality. There's quite a bit of that.
How do respond to the allegation that all religious canon was simply made up?
Indeed, you go to their site and download their movies, you are entrapping the MPAA into paying you millions of dollars for breaking into your computer. I recall SONY getting into trouble for this. There need to be more perp walks for the executives who approve this criminal behaviour.
God is intrinsic and inherent in everything a theist understands about reality.
Um, I was talking about actual reality. "Reality is that which does not go away when you stop believing."
The Theistic "reality" is identical in structure whether you believe in the Abrahamic God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Greek Gods, or Santa Claus. These cannot all be true simultaneously without more superfluous and extraneous contortions of the concept of reality. Are all individual Theistic realities absolute reality or only yours?
The trouble is, that does not sway the Theist - who has faith - because my arguments are powerless to strike at that faith - it is the faith that motivates his belief, and faith cannot be argued. Faith isn't true or false, it just is. Not being something which exists in the universe of logic, it is impervious to it
One angle of enlightenment for such people is to point out that every assertion that they can make about their God can also be made about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They cannot disprove the FSM, so according to their logic on such things, they are Pastafarians. The assertions can also be made about Santa Claus, so they are grown-ups who still believe in Santa Claus.
There's some really strong evidence that God isn't real.
There is none. However, there is overwhelming evidence that God is both superfluous and extraneous to everything that we understand about reality. There is also good evidence that all religious canon is simple made up out of thin air. (People seem to forget that this latter item can be studied scientifically.)
Wrong. Atheism is the lack of theism. A-theist. Non-theist.
Perhaps the word the GP was looking for is Antitheist: A disbeliever in the existence of God. (Of course, the term "disbeliever" needs to be nailed down, as I 'disbelieve' in the existence of God in the common sense, but not in the absolute sense.) Of course, Atheism is really a spectrum, in opposition to the GGGP's assertion that Atheists are just as nutty as he is. But then, Theism is really quite a spectrum, where probably the majority of Westerners who claim to be Christians are really Agnostics.
just good enough, just open enough, just documented enough, to meet the ISO and ECMA requirements (and really, it is pretty borderline on that, and could still go either way)
This seems quite doubtful. If anyone else submitted such a poorly crafted specification and didn't move heaven and earth to ram it through with massive political power, both organizations would throw it out in the initial phase for being too flawed.
If you look at the standards that ECMA has passed, you will see that it is little more than a rubber stamp for Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm waiting for one that reads "Psychic advises clients to stop buying lottery tickets." This will be a Psychic who can truly see the future!
But that would imply that these organisms evolve. That's impossible!
&parent;
Why should I believe this opinion? It's not expressed in figures.
Even without religion, which of the following scenarios seems more likely in a savage totalitarian dictatorship:
(a) "You're going on a suicide mission." "No thanks." "Okay, we'll find someone else."
(b) "You're going on a suicide mission." "No thanks." **BLAM**! (mission accomplished)
Porn aside, these guys can move to the mainland any time they want to have more access to females. The guys that stay there are self-selected for not wanting to be around so much chickage, or at least valuing it less than making money.
Basic math is good, but do you really need things like calcuseless and differential equations to be good at Computer Science? I've certainly never used them. This is the only math they taught me as a CS undergrad. (Mind you, discrete structures, algorithm analysis, and boolean algebra were CS courses.)
The semantic issue is in exactly what you mean by "exist" above. I'm not claiming that we don't experience consciousness. I'm only asserting there's no reason to believe that it's "magic".
I'm not so sure about that. A thermostat is a single analogue switch; there is no place to insert a program to fool it into believing it is conscious. So where would its consciousness come from? This requires "magic". Also, "Metaphysics" == "magic". Computational processes, however, are not magic.
At this stage, we get bogged down in semantics.
Irrelevant or not, this is the subject at issue in the entire thread. Most people seem to believe that their consciousness demonstrates that they are special and have a supernatural soul that will have an afterlife. However, there's no good reason to believe this.
The block diagram for the "it's an illusion" theory of consciousness doesn't have a big box in the middle of it labelled "Magic happens here". All other theories of consciousness do. This gives it more credibility than other theories of consciousness.
Yes, it is pretty remarkable. Computers are pretty remarkable, too. They can do all sorts of cool things. Suppose that we could program a computer to believe that it was experiencing consciousness. This would be an especially remarkable thing. However, would its consciousness be something 'real', some new part of reality, or would it simply be a computational process in-flight like your web browser is now?
Descartes was a smart guy, but he didn't know what we know today. Would he have a different opinion today?
However, you are a faulty witness to your own consciousness. Like Bender, you may simply be unable to escape from your own programming.
I was using the term in an informal sense.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Even if you do come up with a thoroughly rigorous and internally consistent philosophy of things beyond observable reality, what of it? There is no way to know if it's right, because it can't be tested. There are conceptually an infinite number of such philosophies, so the probability of any one of them being the correct description of what is beyond reality is 1/infinity. Christianity or Flying Spaghetti Monsterism have the same probability of being correct. It is insulting if you attempt to pass of such a philosophy as being real.
I have to assume that you have come up with no concrete answers for what is beyond reality since if you did, it would be splashed all over the front page of every newspaper in the world. Good luck to you, sir. If you ever do produce concrete and verifiable answers, I will readily fold them into my model of reality.
Logic, mathematics, and computation are intangible things, but they match and predict observable reality extremely well.
Well, good for you. Of course, your explanation above is the exact equivalent of someone telling me that they believe in God and thumping "the good book", or that they believe in magic. You may believe what you wish and read as much as you like, but you are asking me to put faith into more than objective reality for no particularly good reason. Religious people will refer me to Bible passages and writings of philosophers, but it's all meaningless because it is all made up by people who have no greater means to objectively study these subjects than I do. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Myself, I'm an expert on computational processes (something actually real). I'll keep my faith in reality and avoid explanations that are more complicated than the subject they are describing, especially when there is an explanation that doesn't violate everything we objectively know about reality.
Fry: You're a bender, right? We can get outta here if you just bend the bars!
Bender: Dream on, skin tube. I'm only programmed to bend for constructive purposes. What do I look like, a de-bender?
Fry: Who cares what you're programmed for! If someone programmed you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?
Bender: I'll have to check my program. (short pause) Yep.
Going beyond the semantic issue, the GP seemed to be implying that consciousness is something special, some unknown part of nature.
However, suppose that you ask a person if they are sane. Should you believe their answer? The only means you have to evaluate the experience of your own consciousness is your own consciousness itself. If your consciousness wasn't some supernatural thing but instead was a little program in your brain to fool you into protecting your existence above all else by creating the illusion of being something special and supernatural, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Now consider everything that we know about reality. Does the universe work more like a precise machine or more like some transcendental mystical metaphysical drug hallucination? Consider everything we know about the mechanics of the brain. It is organized a lot like and its components are a lot like a computer. Is this a description of a ghost trap or of a computational device?
The Earth sure does look flat, though, doesn't it?
There is no good reason to believe that such a thing exists.
In other news, I invested $20 in the Canadian Cancer Society.
Do you have any particular reason for saying this other than that it doesn't match anything that we can observe about reality? Show me this "overwhelming evidence" of the existence of God that you spoke of earlier. Clearly, this overwhelming evidence is simply what you believe, whereas the overwhelming evidence that God is superfluous and extraneous is all of observable reality. There's quite a bit of that.
How do respond to the allegation that all religious canon was simply made up?
Indeed, you go to their site and download their movies, you are entrapping the MPAA into paying you millions of dollars for breaking into your computer. I recall SONY getting into trouble for this. There need to be more perp walks for the executives who approve this criminal behaviour.
Um, I was talking about actual reality. "Reality is that which does not go away when you stop believing."
The Theistic "reality" is identical in structure whether you believe in the Abrahamic God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Greek Gods, or Santa Claus. These cannot all be true simultaneously without more superfluous and extraneous contortions of the concept of reality. Are all individual Theistic realities absolute reality or only yours?
...we would not be hearing about it.
One angle of enlightenment for such people is to point out that every assertion that they can make about their God can also be made about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They cannot disprove the FSM, so according to their logic on such things, they are Pastafarians. The assertions can also be made about Santa Claus, so they are grown-ups who still believe in Santa Claus.
There is none. However, there is overwhelming evidence that God is both superfluous and extraneous to everything that we understand about reality. There is also good evidence that all religious canon is simple made up out of thin air. (People seem to forget that this latter item can be studied scientifically.)
Perhaps the word the GP was looking for is Antitheist: A disbeliever in the existence of God. (Of course, the term "disbeliever" needs to be nailed down, as I 'disbelieve' in the existence of God in the common sense, but not in the absolute sense.) Of course, Atheism is really a spectrum, in opposition to the GGGP's assertion that Atheists are just as nutty as he is. But then, Theism is really quite a spectrum, where probably the majority of Westerners who claim to be Christians are really Agnostics.
This seems quite doubtful. If anyone else submitted such a poorly crafted specification and didn't move heaven and earth to ram it through with massive political power, both organizations would throw it out in the initial phase for being too flawed.
If you look at the standards that ECMA has passed, you will see that it is little more than a rubber stamp for Microsoft.