If they were right enough to prevent their own predictions from coming true, a sort of anti-crying-wolf, then I'd quite happily build a statue to them and think of them as right and remembered. Nice corner case.
Why would you need to measure it against another device? The actual ground truth is quite simple. Take a group of volunteers who have abstained from alcohol for a few days. Weight them. Then get them drunk and use the device. If you record their alcohol intake over time against the measurements seen then testing is easy.
History will likely judge people like Orwell and Stallman as prophets of sorts.
Doesn't really seem possible. If they are wrong then that is the last thing that history will judge them as. If they are right then history won't remember them at all.
I wouldn't argue that Wine is a good alternative - but only because I've been down that route with a Cedega subscription and it sucked.
But I wonder how many machines are sold as Web'n'Email boxes. Is there a market for a machine that just claims to do that? Not least because the casual gaming market is served pretty well by flash sites like BubbleBox.
So you're not arguing that Joe would be better served with Anything-But-Windows-OS just that the current market makes it hard for him to get?
Almost as if there is a hole in the marketplace for selling a pre-installed linux system to the average Joe. One that would handle web browsing and email out of the box, but $100 cheaper...
Given the abysmal quality of RTE and the advert breaks I had assumed it was a commercial station until we got a demand for â160 drop through our letter box. At the current exchange rate we are paying more here for a couple of channels of shite that nobody watches, than we paid for the Beeb back in the UK with all of its output.
And I still have to jump onto a UK proxy to watch Doctor Who...
Nice response. But don't misinterpret what I'm saying - I'm not claiming that a Singlarity is impossible, I've not even claiming that it is not going to happen. I'm just pointing out that the arguments Kurzweil uses for why it *will* happen are completely flawed.
As for the distinguished but elderly scientist, ask me again in 40 years:)
I would bet on deflation now. In the future that may change. Right now holding onto cash is a much better investment strategy than a house - cash is not devaluing by 20% a year at the moment.
Right now people still want to believe that housing is a great investment - your post is a symptom of that. It will be a while before the majority of people stay away from it and it becomes a good investment again.
Yes but his argument is still flawed even if you refine it slightly. There are many problems with his assumption, but even one is enough to derail it:
Assume that each previous advance multiplies the amount of result for a given effort. You only get accelerating returns when the growth in required effort is below a critical threshold. For certain previous advances, and certain successive problems this has been true.
It does not imply that it always holds, or that it will continue to hold in the future, or even that it holds for any particular problem. "OMG ponies!" doesn't refer to any amount of progress - it refers to a lack of understanding of what a given problem is, and how much effort is required. Perhaps Arthur C. Clarke phrased it better when he called it magic.
That really doesn't mean anything. When you can perform an infinite number number of operations in any arbitrary amount of time then a trivial algorithm can produce optimal results. I suspect that you either mis-typed what you meant or you don't understand what infinity is.
Don't worry, if it's anything like any other Virgin product then the throttle to 1Mb/s will kick in after 5 minutes. And as for BitTorrent, yeah right...
That is not strictly true. There was a period of sustained deflation between 1870 and 1890 called the Great Sag. Buying a house at the wrong point in time is a mistake that would not have corrected within a lifetime. There was a sustained period of house price deflation in the UK in the 18th century that lasted for fifty years - this was long enough that the common perception of property became that of a money sink, rather than the free ride that we expect today.
In general house price inflation does work in our favour, but there are exceptions...
It's strange that you can the US and UK financial systems excellent. There was a time when banks were conservative, the excellence that they sought was to maximise their returns by being very, very picky about who they lent money to. It was quite a good system.
What we are looking at now is the after-effect of a huge credit binge caused by those "excellent financial systems" throwing away risk assessment and throwing money hand over fist at anyone who walked past.
This is not a result of the system being left along (although loose regulation has clearly not helped). This was direct intervention. If interest rates are held artificially low to "stimulate" the economy then the binge on credit will commence. Perhaps one day economics will put the idea in the same bin as printing money to ease public spending.
Well.... I haven't seen a 160 character limit in Europe for years because *every* handset automatically splits/reassembles arbitrary length messages. And the cost hasn't been a factor as I haven't seen a call-plan that charges for text messages in years either...
Very true. I find it bizarre that a treatment that has been in use for decades in its current form, and hundreds of years before that is still such a mystery to science. But then I suppose that bipolar touches on the very question of how the fabric of the brain makes us who we are. So it could remain a pressing question for some time. Any science directed at the action and effects of the drugs is a good cause IMO.
The normal incidence of bipolar is 1-2% within the population at the whole. I wonder what sort of level it is at on slashdot? It doesn't directly correlate to geekyness but from threads over the years I would suspect that it is much higher. Perhaps 5-10%?
You should not assume that there is a constant scale. We know something of the mechanisms in the brain that correlate to bipolar disorder - e.g lesions in the frontal lobes, changes in bio-chemistry etc. But this is a long way from understanding the condition, let along the causes. One unanswered question in psychology is whether there is a single underlying physical cause for bipolar symptoms, or whether there is a range of physical causes that all present the same symptoms.
So although 700-750 may be the bottom of the therapeutic range for you on lithium it doesn't follow that other people don't have an effect at lower doses. I am aware of people for whom 200mg is effective. Then there is the issue that there doesn't appear to be an ordering between the effectiveness of different mood stabilisers that holds across different people.
It is possible for a more severe case to be treatable at a lower dose. The (poorly understood) effects of lithium vary greatly from person to person, and not strictly in line with the severity of their condition.
Ahh so you went in off-peak. I wonder what it's like in there around midnight? Assuming they're like any other software house I'm guessing you saw their "nightshift"
Sounds like he was over-medicated. How serious was his condition before he started taking it? I know several people who have taken lithium, err, as I said in the post you replied to.
What you say used to be true a couple of decades ago when lithium was mainly used in the treatment of "full-blown" type I bipolar disorder. This is what used to be called manic depression before the bipolar disorders were re-classified. In that case a therapeutic does is 1-1.5g lithium per day and toxicity is a major concern, especially over the decades that the drug may be administered for.
Medicine has come up with lots of different replacements drugs that work well in those chronic cases and so the prescription rates for lithium have fallen. But it has found a new niche in the milder forms of bipolar disorder, such as cyclothemia where the therapeutic dose is much smaller, perhaps as low as 200mg per day. In these cases there is a large effect on symptoms at a level far below that which would be toxic.
Long-term build-up is still an issue, and rapid changes in lifestyle (taking up a new sport, flying to a different climate) can alter the re-uptake levels and cause problems.
It's still very widely prescribed for bipolar disorder. In mild cases, such as cyclothemia, the therapeutic doses are way below the toxicity level, unlike full-blown cases. There has been great success in recent years with low doses (200-600mg per day) in sub-clinic bipolar cases. I know several people who were either prescribed it immediately, or switched to it from more modern drugs.
Slashdot Mirror
If they were right enough to prevent their own predictions from coming true, a sort of anti-crying-wolf, then I'd quite happily build a statue to them and think of them as right and remembered. Nice corner case.
Why would you need to measure it against another device? The actual ground truth is quite simple. Take a group of volunteers who have abstained from alcohol for a few days. Weight them. Then get them drunk and use the device. If you record their alcohol intake over time against the measurements seen then testing is easy.
Doesn't really seem possible. If they are wrong then that is the last thing that history will judge them as. If they are right then history won't remember them at all.
Yes but that's easy to do when you live in a blimp, blogging away high at the top of the piratsphere.
I'm reading it at work. People actually read slashdot at home, on their time? For the love of god...
I wouldn't argue that Wine is a good alternative - but only because I've been down that route with a Cedega subscription and it sucked.
But I wonder how many machines are sold as Web'n'Email boxes. Is there a market for a machine that just claims to do that? Not least because the casual gaming market is served pretty well by flash sites like BubbleBox.
So you're not arguing that Joe would be better served with Anything-But-Windows-OS just that the current market makes it hard for him to get?
Almost as if there is a hole in the marketplace for selling a pre-installed linux system to the average Joe. One that would handle web browsing and email out of the box, but $100 cheaper...
Given the abysmal quality of RTE and the advert breaks I had assumed it was a commercial station until we got a demand for â160 drop through our letter box. At the current exchange rate we are paying more here for a couple of channels of shite that nobody watches, than we paid for the Beeb back in the UK with all of its output.
And I still have to jump onto a UK proxy to watch Doctor Who...
Nice response. But don't misinterpret what I'm saying - I'm not claiming that a Singlarity is impossible, I've not even claiming that it is not going to happen. I'm just pointing out that the arguments Kurzweil uses for why it *will* happen are completely flawed.
As for the distinguished but elderly scientist, ask me again in 40 years :)
I would bet on deflation now. In the future that may change. Right now holding onto cash is a much better investment strategy than a house - cash is not devaluing by 20% a year at the moment.
Right now people still want to believe that housing is a great investment - your post is a symptom of that. It will be a while before the majority of people stay away from it and it becomes a good investment again.
Yes but his argument is still flawed even if you refine it slightly. There are many problems with his assumption, but even one is enough to derail it:
Assume that each previous advance multiplies the amount of result for a given effort. You only get accelerating returns when the growth in required effort is below a critical threshold. For certain previous advances, and certain successive problems this has been true.
It does not imply that it always holds, or that it will continue to hold in the future, or even that it holds for any particular problem. "OMG ponies!" doesn't refer to any amount of progress - it refers to a lack of understanding of what a given problem is, and how much effort is required. Perhaps Arthur C. Clarke phrased it better when he called it magic.
That really doesn't mean anything. When you can perform an infinite number number of operations in any arbitrary amount of time then a trivial algorithm can produce optimal results. I suspect that you either mis-typed what you meant or you don't understand what infinity is.
So his argument boils down to: "Lots of cool stuff has happened in the past. If we extrapolate, then OMG ponies!!!!!"
Don't worry, if it's anything like any other Virgin product then the throttle to 1Mb/s will kick in after 5 minutes. And as for BitTorrent, yeah right...
That is not strictly true. There was a period of sustained deflation between 1870 and 1890 called the Great Sag. Buying a house at the wrong point in time is a mistake that would not have corrected within a lifetime. There was a sustained period of house price deflation in the UK in the 18th century that lasted for fifty years - this was long enough that the common perception of property became that of a money sink, rather than the free ride that we expect today.
In general house price inflation does work in our favour, but there are exceptions...
It's strange that you can the US and UK financial systems excellent. There was a time when banks were conservative, the excellence that they sought was to maximise their returns by being very, very picky about who they lent money to. It was quite a good system.
What we are looking at now is the after-effect of a huge credit binge caused by those "excellent financial systems" throwing away risk assessment and throwing money hand over fist at anyone who walked past.
This is not a result of the system being left along (although loose regulation has clearly not helped). This was direct intervention. If interest rates are held artificially low to "stimulate" the economy then the binge on credit will commence. Perhaps one day economics will put the idea in the same bin as printing money to ease public spending.
Well.... I haven't seen a 160 character limit in Europe for years because *every* handset automatically splits/reassembles arbitrary length messages. And the cost hasn't been a factor as I haven't seen a call-plan that charges for text messages in years either...
Very true. I find it bizarre that a treatment that has been in use for decades in its current form, and hundreds of years before that is still such a mystery to science. But then I suppose that bipolar touches on the very question of how the fabric of the brain makes us who we are. So it could remain a pressing question for some time. Any science directed at the action and effects of the drugs is a good cause IMO.
The normal incidence of bipolar is 1-2% within the population at the whole. I wonder what sort of level it is at on slashdot? It doesn't directly correlate to geekyness but from threads over the years I would suspect that it is much higher. Perhaps 5-10%?
You should not assume that there is a constant scale. We know something of the mechanisms in the brain that correlate to bipolar disorder - e.g lesions in the frontal lobes, changes in bio-chemistry etc. But this is a long way from understanding the condition, let along the causes. One unanswered question in psychology is whether there is a single underlying physical cause for bipolar symptoms, or whether there is a range of physical causes that all present the same symptoms.
So although 700-750 may be the bottom of the therapeutic range for you on lithium it doesn't follow that other people don't have an effect at lower doses. I am aware of people for whom 200mg is effective. Then there is the issue that there doesn't appear to be an ordering between the effectiveness of different mood stabilisers that holds across different people.
It is possible for a more severe case to be treatable at a lower dose. The (poorly understood) effects of lithium vary greatly from person to person, and not strictly in line with the severity of their condition.
Ahh so you went in off-peak. I wonder what it's like in there around midnight? Assuming they're like any other software house I'm guessing you saw their "nightshift"
So is only putting one programmer on the job a priority?
Sounds like he was over-medicated. How serious was his condition before he started taking it? I know several people who have taken lithium, err, as I said in the post you replied to.
What you say used to be true a couple of decades ago when lithium was mainly used in the treatment of "full-blown" type I bipolar disorder. This is what used to be called manic depression before the bipolar disorders were re-classified. In that case a therapeutic does is 1-1.5g lithium per day and toxicity is a major concern, especially over the decades that the drug may be administered for.
Medicine has come up with lots of different replacements drugs that work well in those chronic cases and so the prescription rates for lithium have fallen. But it has found a new niche in the milder forms of bipolar disorder, such as cyclothemia where the therapeutic dose is much smaller, perhaps as low as 200mg per day. In these cases there is a large effect on symptoms at a level far below that which would be toxic.
Long-term build-up is still an issue, and rapid changes in lifestyle (taking up a new sport, flying to a different climate) can alter the re-uptake levels and cause problems.
Yeah, they would be all at sea with that salty water
It's still very widely prescribed for bipolar disorder. In mild cases, such as cyclothemia, the therapeutic doses are way below the toxicity level, unlike full-blown cases. There has been great success in recent years with low doses (200-600mg per day) in sub-clinic bipolar cases. I know several people who were either prescribed it immediately, or switched to it from more modern drugs.