This is not flamebait. It's just that vegans who consume a lot of soy products are getting way too much estrogen in their diets. I just heard an anecdote from a friend's roommate who, on his most recent trip to his doctor, said that while he still loved his girlfriend, he found himself increasingly attracted to men. They did some tests and found his estrogen levels were way out of whack, and that was causing his homosexual feelings. Being gay isn't a problem; being gay when you're straight and involved is.
I'm not criticizing the lifestyle, just putting the info out there--it's something vegans should be aware of. The gentleman in question switched to being a vegetarian and his issue went away with time. There are probably other ways for vegans to avoid too much soy as well. The "turning gay" thing is sensational, but having too much estrogen will be problematic in other ways for anybody, so gay and female vegans ought to keep an eye out as well.
So we need to dump a littler over 24 million metric tons of Fluoxetine into the gulf to see this concentration?
The drugs go into the gulf through cities' waste water, which is not evenly dispersed but concentrated around estuaries. So this should theoretically be an issue only around cities.
The shrimp aren't "out there." They're "right there," as in right where the wastewater hits the ocean, meaning that the chemicals haven't had any time to spread out.
I didn't RTFA because I read about it elsewhere. From that one:
The research is published in the journal Aquatic Toxicology. The study found that the shrimps' behaviour changes when they are exposed to the same levels of fluoxetine found in the waste water that flows to rivers and estuaries as a result of the drugs humans excrete in sewage.
Yes, this is also an implication, but it's a strong one. We can accurately detect the amounts of chemicals contained in wastewater, and we know that it has a measurable effect on shrimp. The effect may not be as drastic in the wild where there are thousands of other variables in play, but the lack of a study in the wild doesn't undermine the findings very much. Additionally, antidepressant use is on the increase, so whatever effect is present currently will probably do the same.
What are the effects of the numerous and various chemicals humans dump into the ocean? (My wild guess is that this antidepressant issue is the least of our worries.)
I tend to agree--this should be more of a wake-up call than anything else. Still, I've heard a lot about "the fragile marine ecosystem," and a vastly diminished shrimp population, a potential outcome here, could have some significant cascade effects.
Lots of shrimp are already being affected by this. People take the antidepressants which then get into the wastewater which gets into the ocean. That makes it a real environmental concern (albeit a minor one; other ones are justifiably topping the list at the moment) and not a joke.
IMO it just goes to show that the law of unintended consequences is damn near universally applicable.
Yeah, I just read a little bit more about the Foundation series, and it actually sounds pretty interesting, what with the backdrop being a civilization in decline among other things. I'm bumping it up the list a ways; thanks for refreshing my interest.
You've obviously thought more about this than I gave you credit for. I'm now wandering off-topic into a pet subject of mine, which is in general the viability of AI and specifically the viability of accurate brain simulation, but it seems like you're into that too and you have a different opinion than I do. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to elaborate on a few things you wrote that appear problematic to me.
(In fact, I'm also going to suggest that this is a requirement for "convergent evolution" - that you can't even have parallel implementations if the underlying engines are fundamentally different.)
Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by "underlying engines," but aren't analog meat and digital silicon more significantly different than two versions of analog meat? I realize you were still talking about convergent evolution here, but aren't the properties of brains and CPUs differentenough to make you wonder about the feasibility of emulating the former on the latter?
Again, if I an correct, then only a tiny subset of that brain will be... necessary for high-level intelligence to function...This is not the same as a "seat of intelligence/empathy" or a "seat of consciousness"...It's merely a device that provides the key primitives. The actual "program" lies elsewhere.
Yet the brain has no concept of a separate "program" and "data." Yes, we can stick inputs into one end of a neural network and get outputs on the other, but in a brain every "computation" is accompanied by a physical change. From the first article I linked:
Unfortunately, this appealing hardware/software distinction obscures an important fact: the mind emerges directly from the brain, and changes in the mind are always accompanied by changes in the brain. Any abstract information processing account of cognition will always need to specify how neuronal architecture can implement those processes - otherwise, cognitive modeling is grossly underconstrained. Some blame this misunderstanding for the infamous failure of "symbolic AI."
Doesn't that present some problems for creating an intelligence-complete system? Namely, (a) figuring out what form a "mental task performable by humans" would take, (b) making sense of the output, and (c) accounting for the fact that every "computation" changes the layout of the system, meaning that there is no universal problem-solving configuration, as the neural layout of every brain, or section of brain, is totally unique.
I think (c) represents the biggest challenge to your particular theory (with (a) and (b) being more problematic for AI in general). In the first article I linked, which lists 11 key differences between brains and computers, the relevant ones are #3 (the brain is parallel while computers are serial and modular), #6 (from which I quoted above), #7 (synapses are far more complex than electrical logic gates, into which the second article delves further), and #9 (the brain is a self-organizing system). I won't copypasta the content at you, but if you're interested that's where the distinctions are made; the headings are naturally simplistic.
Back on-topic, I suspect that empathy in particular is a learned behavior. There was a study done on baboons, I think, who had begun foraging in a hotel resort's garbage for their food instead of foraging elsewhere, and they had more than they could ever want. As the old ones died out, their social order began to change: no longer was there an alpha male who beat up on everyone under him and so on down the chain. Instead, the females gained more leverage and the hierarchy became more of an anarchy, and everybody got along better. I think they all got hit with some disease and died out, preventing long-term research, but such a dras
Nor [must you be] a reader of Asimov, cause there is a solution for that "worshiping problem" in the Foundation and Robots books.
True. I haven't read much Asimov; I couldn't get into his short stories. He's well-regarded enough that I want to try again with one of those series you mentioned, but it's not high on my list. Most of the Golden Age sci-fi that I have encountered is overly optimistic about the role of technology for my taste, and it is perhaps to my detriment that I let that get in the way of a good tale.
As for realistic... Which part of "Churchill ordering Turing to create an actual Artificial Intelligence" did you misunderstand as description of actual historical events or even marginally serious?
My original comment was meant to be taken in the same playful spirit, though I am sincere in picking at the belief in the viability of strong AI.
In this case, the article to which I was referring was the one about Joshua Bell in the subway, but that's my fault for not making that clear. I saw your other topical comment and you're right--your assessment of the wisdom of crowds is much more accurate than the Fark guy's. I probably didn't need to react so harshly, but taking the time to delve into something only to get a one-line stubborn response is slightly infuriating.
What we *thought* was extra skill was really better marketing. Classical music "experts" haven't found some truly great music that you Must Enjoy Or You're Not Really Human. They've just managed to dupe the right people, like the tailors did in the Emperor's New Clothes story.
You still don't seem to be picking up what I'm putting down. The Bell article had little to do with the particular music being played, and everything to do with the player and the instrument.
Anyone with a few years of playing under their belt can play a Bach piece, just as any guitarist can learn to play Blackbird by The Beatles. Playing either one well enough to stir emotion is more difficult, and doing that without making any mistakes is harder still. You're right; there is a law of diminishing returns in play in that an amateur will play tons better than a newbie, a skilled player moderately better than a novice, and a master slightly better than a skilled player--graphed, it would look like y = sqrt(x)
If little attention is being paid by listeners--as is the case on a busy subway platform--they probably can't discern much more than "oh this guy doesn't suck." In a concert hall where all attention is on the performance, an amateur player among the skilled will stick out like a sore thumb. The extra skill certainly exists, but it's not readily apparent unless you give it a sufficient amount of attention; in other words it matters more in the concert hall than on the subway.
An analogy can be found with graphics cards: the average user (on the subway) will neither know nor care about the difference between SuperHiChip and HumDrumChip unless and until he wants to play Crysis with all the graphical goodies turned on (visiting the concert hall), when the shortcomings of HumDrumChip may become painfully obvious. Or, give a starving man the choice between a plate fixed by the finest chef in LA and a plate full of takeout from the greasy spoon down the street. I bet he'll take whichever is closer to him because quality of food is quite low on his priority list, as long as it's edible.
And they've duped you, my naive friend.
They haven't. I'm an avid listener of all kinds of music, including some orchestral music, but I don't care for much classical--it's often too safe and too monotonous to my ears. I think most people nowadays recognize that musical tastes are quite varied and not everyone will react the same to a certain genre. Yeah, there are some people who think Beethoven is Best, but their number is vanishingly small. Classical (and earlier) music has worth, since most aspects of modern music are obviously derived from it, but claiming that everything's gone downhill since then is just dumb.
Did you even read anything I wrote? How do you get from that to your premise?
You've made it abundantly clear that your reading comprehension is abysmal. You never even grasped the point of the original article, seeing how grossly you mischaracterized it in your post, and instead of any kind of informed reply to what I had to say, fearing to admit you were wrong or simply not comprehending anything that doesn't fit your prejudices, you have fallen to repeating your stupidity with no justification.
I'm glad rational discourse is still welcome on Slashdot. It's a shame that louts like you weaken the SNR.
No, I'm poking fun at the unbridled faith in a silicon messiah. That term means "someone who will improve humanity's lot." It has religious connotations, but you're a fool if you think such a machine, were it to exist, wouldn't be worshiped raised to the level of a demigod. Maybe not worshiped in the classical sing-hymns-at-it sense, but worshiped nonetheless.
There's also the fact that strong AI is about as realistic as FTL travel, and it takes a very shallow view of humanity to believe otherwise.
Yes, the moderation system is key, including metamod. There's also a certain amount of camaraderie that sort of glues things together, too./.ers have a pretty diverse set of opinions and experiences, but we're mostly self-identified geeks. That means, among other things, that we can type competently, we like it when we are understood, we are pretty good at written communication, and we are genuinely interested in discourse. Without those foundations, I think even the best moderation system in the world (which we may very well have) couldn't create the atmosphere that exists here.
What exactly is it supposed to prove about the quality of the music? Do you think anybody save for a few misguided academics really thinks there is a universal Best Piece of Music Ever Written?
What it was is an interesting study on the psychology of packaging. It wasn't people's recognition of and regard for the quality of the piece of music that was being tested; it was their recognition of and regard for the skill of the player (world-famous, apparently, though I've never heard of him) and the quality of the instrument. Put a Van Gogh up at a yard sale or substitute filet mignon for the regular (I hesitate to call them) burger patties at a McDonald's drive-thru and you'll get a similar reaction. The setting primes people for what to expect. Even if people who passed Joshua Bell recognized and liked the Bach he was playing, they'd never expect to encounter a master of the violin busking in a subway so they're not going to listen carefully enough to detect his mastery--not that most of us could anyway for what has become an esoteric genre and instrument.
Even someone like Jeff Beck, a virtuoso on the guitar, a much more popular instrument thus making it easier for most of us to recognize skilled playing, likely won't garner too much attention in that environment if disguised. And that is, I suppose, in a strained sense the stupidity of a crowd that is primed for a banal environment, but I'd bet money on that same crowd picking a disguised Jeff Beck as the most skilled player amidst a lineup of decent and skilled (but not virtuosic) guitarists.
The wisdom of crowds is not and was never believed to be a universal truth or an automatic process. The Wikipedia page about the book goes into detail both about what makes a crowd wise (diversity, independence, decentralization, and aggregation) and what makes a crowd stupid (opposites of the above plus imitation and emotionality).
Drew Curtis is right in that some instances, people can transmute stupid crowds into wise ones, but he fails to realize first, that often those people come from the crowd and should therefore be considered part of it; and second, that crowds can be wise upon their creation. One example of this seen time and again is how people form successful rescue operations after disasters. Yeah, things don't always work out, but he is basically saying that without some central authority success is impossible. That's simply not the case, and there's a huge gap between "not every crowd is wise" and his conclusion.
Maybe he should have crowd-sourced his hypothesis first =p
It means the underlying mechanisms for toolmaking, empathy, etc, were all present no later than the last common ancestor.
Not necessarily. Some or all of them could be cases of convergent evolution. You are also too optimistic about our computing power. From Wikipedia:
The Artificial Intelligence System project implemented non-real time simulations of a "brain" (with 10^11 neurons) in 2005. It took 50 days on a cluster of 27 processors to simulate 1 second of a model. The Blue Brain project used one of the fastest supercomputer architectures in the world, IBM's Blue Gene platform, to create a real time simulation of a single rat neocortical column consisting of approximately 10,000 neurons and 10^8 synapses in 2006.
On top of that, in order to simulate these behaviors, we would first need to understand the "signal flow" that creates them within the brain. Brains are nothing like PCBs, and even our most advanced imaging tools don't give us the resolution we'd need to begin to understand at a more than rudimentary level what is going on. There are numerous other reasons why meaningful brain sims are very far in the future, if they are possible at all; some of them are detailed in the Wikipedia article.
"Under such circumstances, Chinese industry leaders have little incentive and less encouragement to resist government demands that often contradict even China's own laws and constitution."
You seem to be describing the difference between fact and truth. Until the later discovery of logic in the cause and the act, the fact that it exists is meaningless. Once it is discovered, it can be stated that the logic was there the whole time, but it didn't become a truth, making a difference, until the discovery.
For another example, the classic one used by William James, see Australia. The fact is that the continent has always existed in one form or another, but until it was discovered its existence was not a truth--nobody had any thoughts about it. Facts are universal, truths are individual: all of us except for those that live there knew nothing of Australia until we were told about it.
The same goes for your hypothetical situation concerning logic. To the best of our knowledge, logic does not underlie certain actions. If we find out later that it does, we will change our thoughts correspondingly. This, pragmatism, is the same concept that gave rise to scientific thinking (though neither was labeled as such when they became known).
Why would wanting to continue one's existance be illogical?
I wrote "non-logical" and not "illogical" for a reason, but my example was a poor one due to the connotations with which "existence" is fraught. The restaurant example is better, but seeing the direction you've taken it made me realize it wasn't fleshed-out enough.
Let's say that your possible choices are a Greek restaurant with a good atmosphere, good food, and good prices; and an Italian restaurant with all the same qualities. They are right next to each other. Let's also assume for the sake of argument that you enjoy both countries' cuisine. Now your choice boils down to which one you or your date feels like eating at the moment. It is logical to go with the choice you or she wants more, but the desire itself is in no way logical. Sometimes you want a gyro, other times you'd prefer spaghetti.
This happens all the time. Why listen to one radio station or album over another, or why choose silence? Why buy a certain set of new clothing instead of all the other styles and colors available? Why choose Sam Adams over Rolling Rock one day, but change preferences the next? These are not logical decisions; they are opinions, and rooted not in facts and calculations but in experiences and moods.
A good tattoo is one that makes a statement about its wearer or symbolizes something significant to the wearer himself. "Wanting to fit in" might be a reason for people to get tattoos in certain population segments (and I hypothesize that most of those are bad tattoos), but all the noise about it in here should demonstrate that for geeks this doesn't hold true. You can either demand his geek card, as you seem to be doing, or acknowledge possible reasons for getting a tattoo other than fitting in. Since there are very few (if any) things done for a single reason only, the latter makes more logical sense.;)
As I said less clearly before, like you I don't have the mentality that desires a tattoo, but by declaring that there are no good reasons for having them you do a disservice to a lot of people. You may not care, but it reflects poorly on you. You're a prolific/. presence, and having read a lot of your posts I have a fair amount of respect for you. Every now and then you come out with a stance like this (the tattoo thing, not the everything-is-logic thing--that's all too present here) that puzzles me. I wonder how someone with such an experienced, practical mind can draw such a narrow conclusion.
We're supposed to be logical and have superior reasoning abilities, and there's absolutely nothing logical or reasonable about getting ink permanently injected into your skin.
Being capable of logic and reason doesn't mean that everything we do is, should be, or can be logical. If you've decided to go out to dinner and your choices are between restaurants A and B, you're probably going to pick the one you are more "in the mood" for. It's logical to do that, but there's no logic in the mood itself. Hell, there's no reason to eat at all unless you accept the non-logical premise that you desire to continue your existence. Desire is very rarely related to logic.
Slashdot Mirror
Care to expand upon that?
Are you also gay? Because you might be soon.
This is not flamebait. It's just that vegans who consume a lot of soy products are getting way too much estrogen in their diets. I just heard an anecdote from a friend's roommate who, on his most recent trip to his doctor, said that while he still loved his girlfriend, he found himself increasingly attracted to men. They did some tests and found his estrogen levels were way out of whack, and that was causing his homosexual feelings. Being gay isn't a problem; being gay when you're straight and involved is.
I'm not criticizing the lifestyle, just putting the info out there--it's something vegans should be aware of. The gentleman in question switched to being a vegetarian and his issue went away with time. There are probably other ways for vegans to avoid too much soy as well. The "turning gay" thing is sensational, but having too much estrogen will be problematic in other ways for anybody, so gay and female vegans ought to keep an eye out as well.
If this is already well-known, my bad.
So we need to dump a littler over 24 million metric tons of Fluoxetine into the gulf to see this concentration?
The drugs go into the gulf through cities' waste water, which is not evenly dispersed but concentrated around estuaries. So this should theoretically be an issue only around cities.
The shrimp aren't "out there." They're "right there," as in right where the wastewater hits the ocean, meaning that the chemicals haven't had any time to spread out.
I didn't RTFA because I read about it elsewhere. From that one:
The research is published in the journal Aquatic Toxicology. The study found that the shrimps' behaviour changes when they are exposed to the same levels of fluoxetine found in the waste water that flows to rivers and estuaries as a result of the drugs humans excrete in sewage.
Yes, this is also an implication, but it's a strong one. We can accurately detect the amounts of chemicals contained in wastewater, and we know that it has a measurable effect on shrimp. The effect may not be as drastic in the wild where there are thousands of other variables in play, but the lack of a study in the wild doesn't undermine the findings very much. Additionally, antidepressant use is on the increase, so whatever effect is present currently will probably do the same.
What are the effects of the numerous and various chemicals humans dump into the ocean? (My wild guess is that this antidepressant issue is the least of our worries.)
I tend to agree--this should be more of a wake-up call than anything else. Still, I've heard a lot about "the fragile marine ecosystem," and a vastly diminished shrimp population, a potential outcome here, could have some significant cascade effects.
Lots of shrimp are already being affected by this. People take the antidepressants which then get into the wastewater which gets into the ocean. That makes it a real environmental concern (albeit a minor one; other ones are justifiably topping the list at the moment) and not a joke.
IMO it just goes to show that the law of unintended consequences is damn near universally applicable.
Yeah, I just read a little bit more about the Foundation series, and it actually sounds pretty interesting, what with the backdrop being a civilization in decline among other things. I'm bumping it up the list a ways; thanks for refreshing my interest.
You've obviously thought more about this than I gave you credit for. I'm now wandering off-topic into a pet subject of mine, which is in general the viability of AI and specifically the viability of accurate brain simulation, but it seems like you're into that too and you have a different opinion than I do. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to elaborate on a few things you wrote that appear problematic to me.
(In fact, I'm also going to suggest that this is a requirement for "convergent evolution" - that you can't even have parallel implementations if the underlying engines are fundamentally different.)
Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by "underlying engines," but aren't analog meat and digital silicon more significantly different than two versions of analog meat? I realize you were still talking about convergent evolution here, but aren't the properties of brains and CPUs different enough to make you wonder about the feasibility of emulating the former on the latter?
Again, if I an correct, then only a tiny subset of that brain will be... necessary for high-level intelligence to function...This is not the same as a "seat of intelligence/empathy" or a "seat of consciousness"...It's merely a device that provides the key primitives. The actual "program" lies elsewhere.
Yet the brain has no concept of a separate "program" and "data." Yes, we can stick inputs into one end of a neural network and get outputs on the other, but in a brain every "computation" is accompanied by a physical change. From the first article I linked:
Unfortunately, this appealing hardware/software distinction obscures an important fact: the mind emerges directly from the brain, and changes in the mind are always accompanied by changes in the brain. Any abstract information processing account of cognition will always need to specify how neuronal architecture can implement those processes - otherwise, cognitive modeling is grossly underconstrained. Some blame this misunderstanding for the infamous failure of "symbolic AI."
Doesn't that present some problems for creating an intelligence-complete system? Namely, (a) figuring out what form a "mental task performable by humans" would take, (b) making sense of the output, and (c) accounting for the fact that every "computation" changes the layout of the system, meaning that there is no universal problem-solving configuration, as the neural layout of every brain, or section of brain, is totally unique.
I think (c) represents the biggest challenge to your particular theory (with (a) and (b) being more problematic for AI in general). In the first article I linked, which lists 11 key differences between brains and computers, the relevant ones are #3 (the brain is parallel while computers are serial and modular), #6 (from which I quoted above), #7 (synapses are far more complex than electrical logic gates, into which the second article delves further), and #9 (the brain is a self-organizing system). I won't copypasta the content at you, but if you're interested that's where the distinctions are made; the headings are naturally simplistic.
Back on-topic, I suspect that empathy in particular is a learned behavior. There was a study done on baboons, I think, who had begun foraging in a hotel resort's garbage for their food instead of foraging elsewhere, and they had more than they could ever want. As the old ones died out, their social order began to change: no longer was there an alpha male who beat up on everyone under him and so on down the chain. Instead, the females gained more leverage and the hierarchy became more of an anarchy, and everybody got along better. I think they all got hit with some disease and died out, preventing long-term research, but such a dras
Nor [must you be] a reader of Asimov, cause there is a solution for that "worshiping problem" in the Foundation and Robots books.
True. I haven't read much Asimov; I couldn't get into his short stories. He's well-regarded enough that I want to try again with one of those series you mentioned, but it's not high on my list. Most of the Golden Age sci-fi that I have encountered is overly optimistic about the role of technology for my taste, and it is perhaps to my detriment that I let that get in the way of a good tale.
As for realistic...
Which part of "Churchill ordering Turing to create an actual Artificial Intelligence" did you misunderstand as description of actual historical events or even marginally serious?
My original comment was meant to be taken in the same playful spirit, though I am sincere in picking at the belief in the viability of strong AI.
In this case, the article to which I was referring was the one about Joshua Bell in the subway, but that's my fault for not making that clear. I saw your other topical comment and you're right--your assessment of the wisdom of crowds is much more accurate than the Fark guy's. I probably didn't need to react so harshly, but taking the time to delve into something only to get a one-line stubborn response is slightly infuriating.
What we *thought* was extra skill was really better marketing. Classical music "experts" haven't found some truly great music that you Must Enjoy Or You're Not Really Human. They've just managed to dupe the right people, like the tailors did in the Emperor's New Clothes story.
You still don't seem to be picking up what I'm putting down. The Bell article had little to do with the particular music being played, and everything to do with the player and the instrument.
Anyone with a few years of playing under their belt can play a Bach piece, just as any guitarist can learn to play Blackbird by The Beatles. Playing either one well enough to stir emotion is more difficult, and doing that without making any mistakes is harder still. You're right; there is a law of diminishing returns in play in that an amateur will play tons better than a newbie, a skilled player moderately better than a novice, and a master slightly better than a skilled player--graphed, it would look like
y = sqrt(x)
If little attention is being paid by listeners--as is the case on a busy subway platform--they probably can't discern much more than "oh this guy doesn't suck." In a concert hall where all attention is on the performance, an amateur player among the skilled will stick out like a sore thumb. The extra skill certainly exists, but it's not readily apparent unless you give it a sufficient amount of attention; in other words it matters more in the concert hall than on the subway.
An analogy can be found with graphics cards: the average user (on the subway) will neither know nor care about the difference between SuperHiChip and HumDrumChip unless and until he wants to play Crysis with all the graphical goodies turned on (visiting the concert hall), when the shortcomings of HumDrumChip may become painfully obvious. Or, give a starving man the choice between a plate fixed by the finest chef in LA and a plate full of takeout from the greasy spoon down the street. I bet he'll take whichever is closer to him because quality of food is quite low on his priority list, as long as it's edible.
And they've duped you, my naive friend.
They haven't. I'm an avid listener of all kinds of music, including some orchestral music, but I don't care for much classical--it's often too safe and too monotonous to my ears. I think most people nowadays recognize that musical tastes are quite varied and not everyone will react the same to a certain genre. Yeah, there are some people who think Beethoven is Best, but their number is vanishingly small. Classical (and earlier) music has worth, since most aspects of modern music are obviously derived from it, but claiming that everything's gone downhill since then is just dumb.
Did you even read anything I wrote? How do you get from that to your premise?
You've made it abundantly clear that your reading comprehension is abysmal. You never even grasped the point of the original article, seeing how grossly you mischaracterized it in your post, and instead of any kind of informed reply to what I had to say, fearing to admit you were wrong or simply not comprehending anything that doesn't fit your prejudices, you have fallen to repeating your stupidity with no justification.
I'm glad rational discourse is still welcome on Slashdot. It's a shame that louts like you weaken the SNR.
You are confusing a calculator with magic
No, I'm poking fun at the unbridled faith in a silicon messiah. That term means "someone who will improve humanity's lot." It has religious connotations, but you're a fool if you think such a machine, were it to exist, wouldn't be worshiped raised to the level of a demigod. Maybe not worshiped in the classical sing-hymns-at-it sense, but worshiped nonetheless.
There's also the fact that strong AI is about as realistic as FTL travel, and it takes a very shallow view of humanity to believe otherwise.
That's how your brain works. No single neuron makes a decision; it's all about thresholds and quorums.
Yes, the moderation system is key, including metamod. There's also a certain amount of camaraderie that sort of glues things together, too. /.ers have a pretty diverse set of opinions and experiences, but we're mostly self-identified geeks. That means, among other things, that we can type competently, we like it when we are understood, we are pretty good at written communication, and we are genuinely interested in discourse. Without those foundations, I think even the best moderation system in the world (which we may very well have) couldn't create the atmosphere that exists here.
We know for a fact that when crowds have significant enough motivation (like money), they do an excellent job of predicting things
*looks at Wall Street*
*scratches head*
You don't have to go AC, man. They can't get to you here. You're safe now. Everything will be all right.
*hugs*
Until we create the artificial intelligence apparatus that will be capable of guiding us while having our best intention as a species in mind...
Huh. I had always pegged him as an atheist.
What exactly is it supposed to prove about the quality of the music? Do you think anybody save for a few misguided academics really thinks there is a universal Best Piece of Music Ever Written?
What it was is an interesting study on the psychology of packaging. It wasn't people's recognition of and regard for the quality of the piece of music that was being tested; it was their recognition of and regard for the skill of the player (world-famous, apparently, though I've never heard of him) and the quality of the instrument. Put a Van Gogh up at a yard sale or substitute filet mignon for the regular (I hesitate to call them) burger patties at a McDonald's drive-thru and you'll get a similar reaction. The setting primes people for what to expect. Even if people who passed Joshua Bell recognized and liked the Bach he was playing, they'd never expect to encounter a master of the violin busking in a subway so they're not going to listen carefully enough to detect his mastery--not that most of us could anyway for what has become an esoteric genre and instrument.
Even someone like Jeff Beck, a virtuoso on the guitar, a much more popular instrument thus making it easier for most of us to recognize skilled playing, likely won't garner too much attention in that environment if disguised. And that is, I suppose, in a strained sense the stupidity of a crowd that is primed for a banal environment, but I'd bet money on that same crowd picking a disguised Jeff Beck as the most skilled player amidst a lineup of decent and skilled (but not virtuosic) guitarists.
The wisdom of crowds is not and was never believed to be a universal truth or an automatic process. The Wikipedia page about the book goes into detail both about what makes a crowd wise (diversity, independence, decentralization, and aggregation) and what makes a crowd stupid (opposites of the above plus imitation and emotionality).
Drew Curtis is right in that some instances, people can transmute stupid crowds into wise ones, but he fails to realize first, that often those people come from the crowd and should therefore be considered part of it; and second, that crowds can be wise upon their creation. One example of this seen time and again is how people form successful rescue operations after disasters. Yeah, things don't always work out, but he is basically saying that without some central authority success is impossible. That's simply not the case, and there's a huge gap between "not every crowd is wise" and his conclusion.
Maybe he should have crowd-sourced his hypothesis first =p
It means the underlying mechanisms for toolmaking, empathy, etc, were all present no later than the last common ancestor.
Not necessarily. Some or all of them could be cases of convergent evolution. You are also too optimistic about our computing power. From Wikipedia:
The Artificial Intelligence System project implemented non-real time simulations of a "brain" (with 10^11 neurons) in 2005. It took 50 days on a cluster of 27 processors to simulate 1 second of a model. The Blue Brain project used one of the fastest supercomputer architectures in the world, IBM's Blue Gene platform, to create a real time simulation of a single rat neocortical column consisting of approximately 10,000 neurons and 10^8 synapses in 2006.
On top of that, in order to simulate these behaviors, we would first need to understand the "signal flow" that creates them within the brain. Brains are nothing like PCBs, and even our most advanced imaging tools don't give us the resolution we'd need to begin to understand at a more than rudimentary level what is going on. There are numerous other reasons why meaningful brain sims are very far in the future, if they are possible at all; some of them are detailed in the Wikipedia article.
"Under such circumstances, Chinese industry leaders have little incentive and less encouragement to resist government demands that often contradict even China's own laws and constitution."
Look in your own backyard, lady.
You seem to be describing the difference between fact and truth. Until the later discovery of logic in the cause and the act, the fact that it exists is meaningless. Once it is discovered, it can be stated that the logic was there the whole time, but it didn't become a truth, making a difference, until the discovery.
For another example, the classic one used by William James, see Australia. The fact is that the continent has always existed in one form or another, but until it was discovered its existence was not a truth--nobody had any thoughts about it. Facts are universal, truths are individual: all of us except for those that live there knew nothing of Australia until we were told about it.
The same goes for your hypothetical situation concerning logic. To the best of our knowledge, logic does not underlie certain actions. If we find out later that it does, we will change our thoughts correspondingly. This, pragmatism, is the same concept that gave rise to scientific thinking (though neither was labeled as such when they became known).
Looks like R'lyeh lies beneath the Indian ocean...
Why would wanting to continue one's existance be illogical?
I wrote "non-logical" and not "illogical" for a reason, but my example was a poor one due to the connotations with which "existence" is fraught. The restaurant example is better, but seeing the direction you've taken it made me realize it wasn't fleshed-out enough.
Let's say that your possible choices are a Greek restaurant with a good atmosphere, good food, and good prices; and an Italian restaurant with all the same qualities. They are right next to each other. Let's also assume for the sake of argument that you enjoy both countries' cuisine. Now your choice boils down to which one you or your date feels like eating at the moment. It is logical to go with the choice you or she wants more, but the desire itself is in no way logical. Sometimes you want a gyro, other times you'd prefer spaghetti.
This happens all the time. Why listen to one radio station or album over another, or why choose silence? Why buy a certain set of new clothing instead of all the other styles and colors available? Why choose Sam Adams over Rolling Rock one day, but change preferences the next? These are not logical decisions; they are opinions, and rooted not in facts and calculations but in experiences and moods.
A good tattoo is one that makes a statement about its wearer or symbolizes something significant to the wearer himself. "Wanting to fit in" might be a reason for people to get tattoos in certain population segments (and I hypothesize that most of those are bad tattoos), but all the noise about it in here should demonstrate that for geeks this doesn't hold true. You can either demand his geek card, as you seem to be doing, or acknowledge possible reasons for getting a tattoo other than fitting in. Since there are very few (if any) things done for a single reason only, the latter makes more logical sense. ;)
As I said less clearly before, like you I don't have the mentality that desires a tattoo, but by declaring that there are no good reasons for having them you do a disservice to a lot of people. You may not care, but it reflects poorly on you. You're a prolific /. presence, and having read a lot of your posts I have a fair amount of respect for you. Every now and then you come out with a stance like this (the tattoo thing, not the everything-is-logic thing--that's all too present here) that puzzles me. I wonder how someone with such an experienced, practical mind can draw such a narrow conclusion.
We're supposed to be logical and have superior reasoning abilities, and there's absolutely nothing logical or reasonable about getting ink permanently injected into your skin.
Being capable of logic and reason doesn't mean that everything we do is, should be, or can be logical. If you've decided to go out to dinner and your choices are between restaurants A and B, you're probably going to pick the one you are more "in the mood" for. It's logical to do that, but there's no logic in the mood itself. Hell, there's no reason to eat at all unless you accept the non-logical premise that you desire to continue your existence. Desire is very rarely related to logic.
(I also don't get the tattoo thing.)