A system of values ("morality") that's grounded in reality and reason is fairly straightforward.
Nonsense. I've asserted that reality is what reality is, and it doesn't give a damn whether, or how well, or in what way I perceive it.
If you can't see the contradiction between these two claims then your sense of reason is not as powerful as you believe it to be. In your second reply you've argued quite convincingly that reality is devoid of any moral interpretation. Fair enough, I don't think anyone here would disagree with you. But your first claim above does not back that up, or you didn't write what you intended to say. Unless you are using "grounded" to mean something different to its normal usage, then there is no such thing as a morality that is grounded in reality and reason. I think that somebody has already replied and explained why reason is not a solid basis for morality. If you think that morality is naturally (and straightforwardly) defined from reality (as most people would take grounded to mean) then you can't also believe that reality is morally void.
So are you just backtracking quickly because people picked up the flaw in what you wrote and replied to it?
Well done you. You've described why your own view of reality is an objective fact that everyone could base their own morality on. You're in popular company there, with many dictatorships, religions and cults. But most people are capable of seeing that their own subjective view of objective reality differs from other peoples. Hence, morality being relative to the observer. Sure, for most of the big life and death questions most people's view of morality overlaps, but that doesn't make it an absolute.
How is that autism working out for ya?
PS The idea that morality is timeless and external to the human race pretty much died out with Kant.
The likely hood is that they don't ahve the resources to monitor traffic, so that's pretty much out.
Why not? You're assuming that the majority of p2p traffic is legitimate. If the vast, vast, vast majority is illegal and they are running a zero tolerance policy then it would be easy to police. Set up a packet fiter to report filenames being shared against user accounts. For everyone that looks even vaguely commerical throw the book at them. If it's a mistake they'll go through the complaints procedure and appeal. If not then your volume of p2p traffic to monitor has just collapsed and there isn't a resource issue.
I'm not saying this is the lo-evil way of doing it. But a university really wanted to cut out illegal (in the copyright sense p2p) traffic then they could.
To follow on from your point that this has been done many times before, it is also shipping in a commercial product and has been for many years. Via have a true random number generator built into their entire line of processors, and there is linux support for using it.
He is quite obviously joking. Read his message again, there are enough clues for you there. Of course everyone that has read your reply now suspects that you are autistic, and so worries about the quality of your code...
I'm surprised parent got modded down. There is an enormous amount of evidence to imply lack of extraterrestrial life. Lack of radio waves is the major one, for me, and no one has explained this so far.
Well the simplest explanation is that we have looked well enough. Ironically the post directly above you gives one satisfactory explanation of this, but I guess you didn't look hard enough before posting:
And, heck, then there's the sheer size of interstellar distances. If there was an exact copy of Earth sitting in a solar system just a measly 200 ly away, we still wouldn't be able to pick up any of their transmissions, because they started transmitting less than 200 years ago.
I've yet to see a single piece of evidence of a lack of extraterrestrial life. Could you name a single piece from this enormous amount that you are aware of. Of course remembering that absence of evidence is not evidence of an absence...
What is the meaning of "optimal" in the phase "optimal behaviour of an agent"? With respect to what criteria? Clearly it can't mean maximisation of reward as I can construct an infinite number of pathological environments that deliberately require complex models rather than simpe models. To prove optimiality of an agent would require that there are not more of these pathological constructions than environments ameniable to Occam's razor in the distribution of all possible environments. I doubt that is a decidable question.
The AIXI paper is very interesting, although somewhat verbose:) He does a good job of explaining his ideas / and his proof in a straightforward manner. What was he like in person?
Err no. I was serious that I've read his site before. He does claim that UBMs are a stronger class than UTMs. You'll also notice that he isn't responding to the claims that he is a crank - probably because he's had that argument many times before...
I have no idea what you just said, and I've been coding for years.
The book (which I haven't read, but have come across enough crank bullshit over the years to quote verbatim) is based on the idea that algorithms are the wrong model for program. It's a poor misguided idea based on a trivial technicality - an algorithm (by definition) takes an input, performs a computation, and produces an output. Program do not, and are generally called reactive as they maintain a dialogue with their environment of many inputs and output. It's a technical triviality because as the GP points out you can take a series of algorithms and substitute them as the "guts" between each of the I/O operations. Nothing much is lost in this modelling. If you really need to analyse the bits that are missing then just make an I/OP operation an atomic part of the model. Process calculi (used for concurrent and parallel) systems take this approach. If you really want to appease the anal fanatic cranks (like the book author) then just explain that all of their reactive components are parts of a large algorithm that encompasses their operation and their "environment".
But now to my point. I bet that you know more maths that you think that you do. It's just that the type of maths that you learnt is not the type they teach you in school. It has nothing to do with real numbers, or calculus. It's a branch called discrete maths that is the heart of computer science. You know how to use trees and graphs? They form a big part of discrete maths. How about changing state as your code executes? That's actually a branch called monad theory. Or do you know more than one language? You said you did CS in college so I'll guess that you're familiar with parsing / compiler writing / language design. A mathematician would probably call that abstract algebra (or at least it's a close fit).
So you know much more dry dusty old math than you suspect - but for the past fifty years these parts of maths have been called CS. Something that is lost on the book author....
What you have written is 100% nonsense and puts you in exactly the same crank camp as Fant. It is always interesting to hear people that don't understand computer science describe what is wrong with it. The model of interaction that you (and he) describe is normally called Reactive software, and it is true to say that it cannot be modelled by a Turing Machine as it performs interaction continuously rather than at the beginning and end of the computation.
From here you've both made a giant leap to assume that programs can't be described by an algorithm. You haven't understood that the difference between a "computation" and "reactive software" is actually a technical triviality that is easily overcome. Indeed it is so trivial that most languages simply ignore it and have stateful operations for input/output. Reactive programs are normally modelled as a sequence of algorithmic steps, everything that the program does apart from sending / receiving data is modelled by an algorithm. So we can either consider this "non-algorithm" to be a sequence of algorithms or consider the program as an algorithm operating over a larger state that includes the environment. The input/output actions become alrgorithmic state transitions over the program/environment state. Look at the way programs in CSP/CCS or other process algebra are written to how this works. To see how the theory of algorithms can be applied to reactive systems take a look at multi-headed Turing Machines.
Finally, if you're going to lob a technical term into a discussion then you should understand what it means. Automaton is a well defined term in CS, and it doesn't mean what you think. In particular what you are describing is not a decision problem and so there is not a problem of language recognition to be solved. I vaguely remembering reading the crank research that you are pointing before, and would like to ask you a simple question. Name one problem that you believe can be computed by a UBM, but not by a UTM?
It all depends on the definition of "meant". There is some evidence that homosexuality is an advantage - the basic idea is that homosexual aunties or uncles improve the odds of offspring surviving. Even though there is not a direct transfer of genes, increasing the survival odds of people who carry some of your genes improves the survival odds from the gene's point of view.
It could be argued (as the original post did) that homosexuality is a kill-switch in some sense. From a biological programming point of view - it is, as it encodes for a behaviour that stops the genes from reproducing directly. Of course, many people would be arguing about "meant" as an ethical or moral judgment. And there, all bets are off, a rational person could argue that if we start designing our own life that its time for us to define morality ourselves rather than $BOOK of $DIETY. But this being slashdot that is what most of the discussion will follow...
The average parallism factor for most programs tends to hover around four. I think Intel might have figured out that this is a decent stopping point for hardware parallelism as well.
That's not really true anymore. The type of programs that we run has changed, and so the average has moved. Any of the media applications that I run regularly, or games has a much higher potential for parallism.
Slashdot Mirror
If you can't see the contradiction between these two claims then your sense of reason is not as powerful as you believe it to be. In your second reply you've argued quite convincingly that reality is devoid of any moral interpretation. Fair enough, I don't think anyone here would disagree with you. But your first claim above does not back that up, or you didn't write what you intended to say. Unless you are using "grounded" to mean something different to its normal usage, then there is no such thing as a morality that is grounded in reality and reason. I think that somebody has already replied and explained why reason is not a solid basis for morality. If you think that morality is naturally (and straightforwardly) defined from reality (as most people would take grounded to mean) then you can't also believe that reality is morally void.
So are you just backtracking quickly because people picked up the flaw in what you wrote and replied to it?
Well done you. You've described why your own view of reality is an objective fact that everyone could base their own morality on. You're in popular company there, with many dictatorships, religions and cults. But most people are capable of seeing that their own subjective view of objective reality differs from other peoples. Hence, morality being relative to the observer. Sure, for most of the big life and death questions most people's view of morality overlaps, but that doesn't make it an absolute.
How is that autism working out for ya?
PS The idea that morality is timeless and external to the human race pretty much died out with Kant.
Why not? You're assuming that the majority of p2p traffic is legitimate. If the vast, vast, vast majority is illegal and they are running a zero tolerance policy then it would be easy to police. Set up a packet fiter to report filenames being shared against user accounts. For everyone that looks even vaguely commerical throw the book at them. If it's a mistake they'll go through the complaints procedure and appeal. If not then your volume of p2p traffic to monitor has just collapsed and there isn't a resource issue.
I'm not saying this is the lo-evil way of doing it. But a university really wanted to cut out illegal (in the copyright sense p2p) traffic then they could.
Yeah, like the guy that modded you insightful. That would show him...
To follow on from your point that this has been done many times before, it is also shipping in a commercial product and has been for many years. Via have a true random number generator built into their entire line of processors, and there is linux support for using it.
He is quite obviously joking. Read his message again, there are enough clues for you there. Of course everyone that has read your reply now suspects that you are autistic, and so worries about the quality of your code...
What is the meaning of "optimal" in the phase "optimal behaviour of an agent"? With respect to what criteria? Clearly it can't mean maximisation of reward as I can construct an infinite number of pathological environments that deliberately require complex models rather than simpe models. To prove optimiality of an agent would require that there are not more of these pathological constructions than environments ameniable to Occam's razor in the distribution of all possible environments. I doubt that is a decidable question.
:) He does a good job of explaining his ideas / and his proof in a straightforward manner. What was he like in person?
The AIXI paper is very interesting, although somewhat verbose
Congratulations AC, you completely failed to understand my post. Well done you.
Err no. I was serious that I've read his site before. He does claim that UBMs are a stronger class than UTMs. You'll also notice that he isn't responding to the claims that he is a crank - probably because he's had that argument many times before...
The book (which I haven't read, but have come across enough crank bullshit over the years to quote verbatim) is based on the idea that algorithms are the wrong model for program. It's a poor misguided idea based on a trivial technicality - an algorithm (by definition) takes an input, performs a computation, and produces an output. Program do not, and are generally called reactive as they maintain a dialogue with their environment of many inputs and output. It's a technical triviality because as the GP points out you can take a series of algorithms and substitute them as the "guts" between each of the I/O operations. Nothing much is lost in this modelling. If you really need to analyse the bits that are missing then just make an I/OP operation an atomic part of the model. Process calculi (used for concurrent and parallel) systems take this approach. If you really want to appease the anal fanatic cranks (like the book author) then just explain that all of their reactive components are parts of a large algorithm that encompasses their operation and their "environment".
But now to my point. I bet that you know more maths that you think that you do. It's just that the type of maths that you learnt is not the type they teach you in school. It has nothing to do with real numbers, or calculus. It's a branch called discrete maths that is the heart of computer science. You know how to use trees and graphs? They form a big part of discrete maths. How about changing state as your code executes? That's actually a branch called monad theory. Or do you know more than one language? You said you did CS in college so I'll guess that you're familiar with parsing / compiler writing / language design. A mathematician would probably call that abstract algebra (or at least it's a close fit).
So you know much more dry dusty old math than you suspect - but for the past fifty years these parts of maths have been called CS. Something that is lost on the book author....
What you have written is 100% nonsense and puts you in exactly the same crank camp as Fant. It is always interesting to hear people that don't understand computer science describe what is wrong with it. The model of interaction that you (and he) describe is normally called Reactive software, and it is true to say that it cannot be modelled by a Turing Machine as it performs interaction continuously rather than at the beginning and end of the computation.
From here you've both made a giant leap to assume that programs can't be described by an algorithm. You haven't understood that the difference between a "computation" and "reactive software" is actually a technical triviality that is easily overcome. Indeed it is so trivial that most languages simply ignore it and have stateful operations for input/output. Reactive programs are normally modelled as a sequence of algorithmic steps, everything that the program does apart from sending / receiving data is modelled by an algorithm. So we can either consider this "non-algorithm" to be a sequence of algorithms or consider the program as an algorithm operating over a larger state that includes the environment. The input/output actions become alrgorithmic state transitions over the program/environment state. Look at the way programs in CSP/CCS or other process algebra are written to how this works. To see how the theory of algorithms can be applied to reactive systems take a look at multi-headed Turing Machines.
Finally, if you're going to lob a technical term into a discussion then you should understand what it means. Automaton is a well defined term in CS, and it doesn't mean what you think. In particular what you are describing is not a decision problem and so there is not a problem of language recognition to be solved. I vaguely remembering reading the crank research that you are pointing before, and would like to ask you a simple question. Name one problem that you believe can be computed by a UBM, but not by a UTM?
Dirty lagging cheats like you should get kicked from servers... :)
It all depends on the definition of "meant". There is some evidence that homosexuality is an advantage - the basic idea is that homosexual aunties or uncles improve the odds of offspring surviving. Even though there is not a direct transfer of genes, increasing the survival odds of people who carry some of your genes improves the survival odds from the gene's point of view.
It could be argued (as the original post did) that homosexuality is a kill-switch in some sense. From a biological programming point of view - it is, as it encodes for a behaviour that stops the genes from reproducing directly. Of course, many people would be arguing about "meant" as an ethical or moral judgment. And there, all bets are off, a rational person could argue that if we start designing our own life that its time for us to define morality ourselves rather than $BOOK of $DIETY. But this being slashdot that is what most of the discussion will follow...
Nubby eraser mouse? I see that you're sitting on the fence a wee bit there.
Very true, I hadn't thought of it that way round actually.
:)
Yes, it gave me faith that he can write a decent ending when he can be arsed. Makes a nice change from some of his other books...
Out of interest, did you not finish that book or are you being nice and not giving out plot spoilers to the slashdot crowds?
The 8800GTX is going this way with lockable cachelines and control over how jobs are split between core.
Use of the phrase "paradigm shift" - check
Use of "envision" - check
Incoherent rambling loaded with buzzwords and cliches - check
You sir, are a tool.
That's not really true anymore. The type of programs that we run has changed, and so the average has moved. Any of the media applications that I run regularly, or games has a much higher potential for parallism.
Is that you Theodore?
If anyone else read this thread all the way down to here then heed the warning. *Do not* open any post from nurb432...
Well, the one billion figure is just marketing inflation anyway. The real barrier is of course 1024*1024*1024 as everyone here knows....