Again, these creatures are not humans, nor chimpanzees, nor any other modern ape. The article mentions the Tuang child skull, which is thought to be an Australopithecus Afarensis. While it's not a tree swinging ape, is still pretty petite.
The article has an image of a modern raptor of the alleged raptor-pecked skull. The skull fits comfortably in one grown man's hand. My unscientific guess is that the owner of the skull weight probably 20-30 pounds at the time of death. Remember, if this is an immature mammal, the skull is going to be disproportionatly large in comparison to the body.
This article claims that "Height varied between about 107 cm (3'6") and 152 cm (5'0")." It also says that "The finger and toe bones are curved and proportionally longer than in humans, but the hands are similar to humans in most other details (Johanson and Edey 1981). Most scientists consider this evidence that afarensis was still partially adapted to climbing in trees, others consider it evolutionary baggage." If this animal did get around in trees, espcially to escape, it would have to be fairly slender and acrobatic in order for this to be a successful strategy.
So hopefully now we are talking about the actual predated animal, not modern humans or chimpanzees.
You may not be afraid of bigfoot because you didn't have an experience of 'encountering' a bigfoot in the woods. My theory currently states that you have some ambiguous sensory experience in the woods, and the paranoid hunter/gatherer part of your mind incorrectly interprets it as an ape-man. If you haven't had the experience and misinterpretation, you wouldn't be afraid. The same way you may not be afraid of the ghetto if you've never been mugged in the ghetto -- which happened to me recently. I live in Columbus, OH, which is a relatively safe place, and does have its share of ghettos. I never had any fear walking around in them, but a couple of weeks ago I was mugged in the ghetto. Nothing bad happened -- I just got hit and they took my wallet. However, now I am suspicious of every guy I see when I'm walking in a ghetto, and if someone gets close to me, the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
Why are you not a racist? One answer is that maybe you aren't a typical human being. My theory states that *groups* hate each other, not necessarily individuals hate other groups or other individuals. If you look at human group relationship around the world and across time, they always hate or at best think poorly of the other group. The theory does not predict or address individual behavior. Here in Columbus Ohiom there is an intense Ohio State / Michigan rivalry. This always results in fights between college age fans. Now, if those people weren't wearing Ohio State or Michigan jackets, nobody could tell them apart. But somehow being a Michigan fan during a home game in Columbus gets you a beating. It's the same for any other group identification, whether it's high schools, gangs, neighborhoods, religions, or ethnicities.
Also, have you ever been to a place where you were a minority? I'm guessing that you are a white male living in the US. That's my background -- I never had a problem with other people until I spent a couple summers in Ecuador, where I was very obviously a minority. I don't hate Ecuadorians or Hispanics or anything like that, but I definately felt a sense of "me against them" while walking down the main streets of Ecuador.
I guess my theory states that after a violent trauma, the human mind haphazardly groups recognizably 'other' people together in a danger category. If a member of your own group beats you up, you probably won't hate your own group as a whole, because you know too many individuals. But if can't differentitate any individuals of the other group, you mind will just err on the side of caution and fear all of them.
I happen to agree with this theory of evolutionary predation fears. I think this could be used to explain all these 'hairy men' creatures that appear all over the world.
Up until about 200,000 years ago there were about 5 or 6 different apes running around alongside our direct ancestors. These guys were smart, and they could use spears. My guess is they had a lot of body hair.
My personal pet theory is that about 100,000, human beings began systematically exterminating all other groups of hominids besides their own. The only hominids crafty enough to escape the slaughter were other homo sapiens.
You can see this continue today. Any group of human beings that give themselves some kind of group identity hate those other guys -- that group next door -- and will try to kill all of them, given the opportunity. They also think of other groups of people as savage animals.
So anways, rewind 100,000 years ago. A hairless human hunter venturing out into the woods to track down lunch stood a good chance of being killed by some hairy spear-wielding apeman.
Fast forward to today. People are still catching glimpses of hairy apemen in the woods (Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, whatever). Not that those hairy apemen are still alive, but that it's better to be paranoid and *suspect* that a creaking branch or other ambiguous sensory data is a hairy apeman, rather than foolishly walking into a hairy ape-mans' spear. To this day, human groups view their neighbor groups as savage animals who they are probably better off getting rid of.
"A behavior as simple as protecting your tribe's corpses from opportunistic predators quickly ensures you generally don't get attacked by eagles."
That is an extremely complex behavior. Very few animals do it, and those that do are very intelligent social animals. The only animals who do it that I can think of offhand are elephants and humans.
This you call scorecard!? This is nothing but a bunch of fluff commentary, hedging, hawing and hemming. Very different from actually making a preditction. Here's my review of your scorecard:
" "all information that has been on the rumor sites for months."
So are you predicting that all these rumors will come true? Rumors aren't destiny you know.
And there are other rumors that he didn't predict, note you.
" mmmaybe....doubtful.."
Not a prediction nor a scoring of a prediction.
" old news. been beaten here and on other websites to death. "
Old news?! It hasn't even happened yet. Do you mean old rumor?
Belly up to the bar. Do you think this rumors will happen or not?
"bzzt! " Finally, you make a prediction."
"man. i hear a lot of fish in that barrel. "
Hey, another prediction! Maybe were are on a roll -- oops! I hope I didn't just jinx it...
"*shrug* "
Oh damn. We were doing so well a minute ago.
"ZzZZzzzZZ... oh sorry you were saying something?"
Ok, hopefully this time it will stick
" the groundswell from the PSP buys a lot of pelts and moccasins in these parts, kemo-sabe.
somehome the hate fest that has been laid to microsofts feet for the barf-tastic 360 isnt going to spill on sony's shoes."
Uh... so do you think Cringely will be right or not?
" my money is on a lot longer than that."
Oh good, another scoring/prediction.
" bzzt. " (crossing fingers)
" mmmmmmaybe... thus making that scenario unlikely."
Damn it! Just tell us, man, is he wrong or right?
" this makes sense... " OK, so you are thinking he will be correct with this?
" i'm pretty skeptical about this also. microsoft doesnt make PC's FYI, so how could they compete with making PC's?"
I don't know, how about you *score him and tell us*!
" they seem to have left their other child companies well enough alone, with enough autonomy to keep their original visions. this is a bad thing? skype is still making huge gains with overseas telecom.."
Hey, did you seriously intend to score Cringely's predictions?
" oooh sooo off the mark."
Well, at least you closed with a score. So, lets review: Six out of fifteen. Not bad, I guess. I don't know *shrug*.
Let me make an addendum. I don't think Cringely's predictions are vague. They are black-and-white -- either "Status Quo" or "Change". In the examples you listed, Cringely correctly predicted "Status Quo" for both Intel/AMD competition and the RIAA suing people. (Sure, you can make this predictions by flipping a coin, but if Cringely gave reasons for why he thought the status quo would continue, it shows he understands what's actually going on, instead of happening to be right by chance. )
If this predictions are so easy to make because they are based on common sense, I would like to see your predictions for the future. Pick out two or three issues or events going on today, and choose either "Status Quo" or "Change". Also give the reasons why you made your choice -- then next year we will know if you won or lost by chance or your understanding of the situation. If you are feeling extra common-sensical, you could predict exactly what the change would be in the case that you predict change.
Or, perhaps you are arguing that predicting "Status Quo" is a safe, common-sensical prediction, because people are creatures of habit and avoid change at all costs. That would be common-sensical;)
If that's the case, it's no big deal if Cringely correctly predicted "Status Quo". That's a common sense, safe bet. If we really want to see how good Cringely is, we should look at where he predicted change, and how close his prediction was to what the world actually changed to.
If you predict change for any human or group-driven project, such as a company, you are essentially saying that the decision makers will apprehend the future as being so bad that they will decide to change their paradigm for moving forward and take a risk on a new plan. It's a pretty bold prediction to make.
His predictions aren't as vague and common sense as you make them out to be:
"I was right when I said AMD would give Intel further fits.
Two huge companies in dead competition would give each other fits? Obviously that is bound to happen on some degree over the course of the year. Also, he never really defined "fits", just some kind of conflict that is bound to happen when two major corporations are competing in the same market."
How can you assume that they would continue to be competitive throughout the next year? What if one makes a huge blunder and the other pulls ahead? What if one comes out with a great new product and thoroughly trounces the other's sales? If you knew they were going to remain competetive into the next year, you have forsight into the future that many would envy.
"
I predicted the RIAA would continue to sue music lovers and they have, despite the fact that it doesn't help anyone and actually hurts everyone to do so.
What would the RIAA do, stop suing?"
Well, why wouldn't they? It's totally ineffective and is creating immense public hostility towards the RIAA. A lot of people are saying it's a bad-blood campaign of greedy music execs who have an outdated business model and can't adapt to the future. From a purely business perspective, it's a huge mistake.
"
I don't know of any other way to prosecute violators of copyright law besides offing them like the mafia. Again vague and full of common sense.
"
Usually the idea of a business is to make money, not become some quasi-vigilante prosecuting organzation. How about they concentrate on increasing sales and adapting to new media instead of suing their customers? (I know the RIAA isn't a business itself, but it does claim to represent the indusry). Again, if you knew that the RIAA were going to continue to pursue this foolhardy strategy, you have a line to the Fates that few others have.
I would like to hear your vague, common-sense predictions for 2006.
The permafrost melts, and waters the seeds. They sprout into a variable jungle of biodiversity in what was formerly arctic wasteland but now is the sunny artic plantfest.
"The US driving licence face recognition system works on litteraly millions of people, and copes very well with eyeglasses, facial hair & different hairstyle and aging. It is used to prevent people from acquiring more than one driving license in different states."
How about from poor lighting and different angles?
These software systems aren't very robust. With the driver's license system, you can make assumptions about lighting and poses -- even the assumption that you are looking at a human face in the first place. However, computers suck at picking out a 3/4 profile of a terroist in a crowded airport terminal from a front-on source image.
I'm not saying that the ability to pick a face out of a crowd is solely face recognition -- there's some 3-D geomoetry and stuff going on in there.
All of these areas where computers are claimed to be on par with the average humans' everyday ability assume a tightly controlled environment with all other variables removed. These programs are highly specialized and brittle. It always strikes me as stacking the deck -- just take one of these programs out into the real world where they aren't fed properly formatted cherry-picked data, and they fail miserably.
The answer to that question is my interest exactly. For me, it's more of a personal interest. Some people are exicited by robots and artificial intelligence -- I know I am. But, I am also interested in the human mind. Thus, I care about advanced in both fields
"We probably won't ever be able to exactly duplicate the inner workings of a human brain. But, if our artificial brain behaves the same as a human brain in all significant aspects, why should we care?"
It depends on what your interests are. If you want a cheap machine that helps you do work, you probably don't care whether or not it has the same internal mechanisms as you or not. But say you are a doctor trying to treat or cure mental illness in a human patient. You would probably care how the human mind actually works, so you have a shot a fixing a broken one.
Well, if we come up with a device that passes the turing test, that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the human mind. It could be that there is only one implementation of an intelligence or consciousness or whatever, or the machine we invent could be completely different from the human mind, yet achieve the same results.
If you don't care about how the human mind specifically works, that's fine. But my point is that if a machine passes the Turing test, that doesn't *necessarily* mean anything about how the human mind works.
Side note: computers have been used for face recognition purposes for the past couple years."
That kind of is my point. Computers have been used for face recognition for years. And they suck at it. And we have no idea how the human mind does it, all we know is *where* in the brain it is taking place. Furthermore, we don't know whether or not our face-recognition programs are using the same techniques as the mind, so it's not (yet) safe to say that the mind is just a really big/fast/complex computer.
"Why have you made up your mind, and ignored due process?"
I am not a court. I don't have to back up every belief of mine with due process.
"I want the court to make up its mind. Why? Because that's what it does. "
You say you are in favor of due process. Yet you still have skirted the issue of whether or not you are calling for a Bush impeachment on this issue. Why can't you come out and say whether or not you want a Bush impeachment?
If you really do want the court to make up its mind, you must call for an impeachment, because the case will never go to a court unless he is impeached by congress.
So go ahead. Show us your hand. Do you want this to go to trial or not?
"' I'm no computer scientist or whatever, but I think the Turing test is dumb. "
You might have just said:
'I don't understand this, but I don't believe this thing that test what I don't know much about is stupid.'"
Non sequitor. I don't have a degree in computer science, but it doesn't follow that I'm speaking from ignorance, or don't understand a particular topic from computer science.
"You could make the argument that the human brain is nothing but a very complex calculator."
People have made that argument, but I don't think it holds up. I think it is a very myopic view of the human mind.
I think for a long time, western science and philosophy were hung up wrestling with what exactly logic and reational thought were, mainly because your everyday person is so bad at it. Their goal was to have a totally rational, logical human being. Well, now we have that, sort of, in the computer. Except, we come to find out that a lot of human behavior has escaped the computer -- things such as face recognition, balancing, emotions. Now we have a rain man -- a powerful, totally logical mind, which can calculate the birth of stars, but one who can't even accomplish the simplest everyday things like guessing someones mood or walking to the mailbox to get the mail. Or even read handwriting.
So in the field of AI, we are able to do complex things that people are very bad it, but we don't even have a theoretical model for a lot of simple, every day things that people excel at without even trying. For example, face recognition. We do have a few techniques that computers use, but we have absolutely no idea whether or not those are the techniques that the human mind uses. We know where in the brain the actibity is taking place, but we have absolutely no idea what method or technique it is using.
I'm not exagerating, we're in total ignorance here. We can't yet peer inside the black box. We know what the eyes do when they scan a face, and we know where the optic nerve sends the data, and we know where the result gets sent to, but we don't know at all how that bundle of nerves is manipulating those electrical signals to recognize a face.
We don't even have a good defintion of basic emotions like anger within the brain. We know what it does to the body and the peripheral nervous system, we know how other parts of the brain respond to anger, but we don't have any idea or definition of what is actually going on in that little anger part of the brain.
So the problem in the western tradition is that these basic brain functions, such as emotion, have been totally ignored for the past several thousand years, in trying to find out what a totally rational, logical mind would act like. Turns out we are missing essential components of a useful everyday mind.
"Ask the computer "what do you wonder about?", "what keeps you up at night?". Then ask it to try to answer the questions that "keep it up at night"."
No, no, no! You're missing the point.
"Furthermore, what the hell did Pablo Picasso know about computers?"
If you understand what he said, you would immediately know that he knew quite a bit. I know it's a popular stereotype to think that artists are new-age impractical kooks, but some are actually geniuses. If you read some of the things Picasso said, it becomes clear fairly quickly that the man was literally a genius, not just a good painter.
What did he know about computers? He was smart enough to see that they were nothing more than a complex calculator. They still are. Computers are only a tool. If a human being can apprehend a problem, frame it correctly, and input it into a computer, they will get an answer out of it faster than that person could calculate it on their own. But as it stands computers are solely a tool for the programmer. They aren't doing anything a human being hasn't already invented, albeit much faster.
A computer doesn't do anything on it's own. It requires a programmer -- that's the key.
"Often a computer can suggest new questions to ask..."
Only if it's been programmed to do so. And a human being has done the novel work in that case.
" and in a time when computers could pass the Turing Test, they could definitely make suggestions about significant new questions to ask."
If / when that time comes, that machine will be a qualitatively different machine from what we (and Picasso) are currently calling a computer.
"You might as well quote Donald Knuth about painting."
Go ahead and show me a quote of his about painting. Let's see if he actually understood it to any degree, or if you are just building a straw man.
"Why, because I rail against the rampant hypocrisy of the other posters here on Slashdot?"
No, because it's so startlingly and blatantly obvious that Bush broke the law when he ordered/authorized these wiretaps.
"
Find a pro-Bush post. Do it. I'm waiting."
Yours are a good example.
"You won't, because I'm not, so stop using that tired tactic."
What?
"Isn't it just possible that I DESPISE people who rely on overstatement to make their cases, especially when it's not necessary."
Sure it's possible. Why not?
"Or maybe I'm just Pro-due process. Did you ever think of that? ANd then of cours, if you check a bit, I've stated in another post that I believe the wiretaps are illegal. So no pass there, how did you come to that erroneous conclusion?"
You must know, then, that the only due process for an impeachment is for congress to get off their ass and impeach the president. Congress will only do what its constuency demands of them. If you are pro-impeachment, then you must say so, and also contact your congresspeople.
So, let's have it. Are you for congress investigating Bush's wiretaps, or not?
"
'Well, since we are at a disagreement, and there is no established case law, surely you are in support of an impeachment to decide whether or not the President broke the law?'
I'm in favor of whatever the law deems appropriate."
That says absolutely nothing.
" If that's impeachment, then fine, I don't want a criminal for a President."
That's not enough. There is nothing to trigger an impeachment other than congress doing its job. Congress will not impeach the president if they don't think their constiuents will support it.
"
But "innocent until proven guilty" applies to the President too, or at leats it's supposed to. Apparently the other's screaming "illegal wiretap" have decided it doesn't."
People can scream whatever they want. It has no legal bearing -- nobody gets imprisoned because of slashdot postings. Like I said, give Bush his day in court. If you agree with that, then you must be in favor of impeachment. If you are in favor of impeachment, you must contact your congresspeople, because it won't happen unless you do so.
I'm no computer scientist or whatever, but I think the Turing test is dumb.
My sig line says it all. Quoting Pablo Picasso: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers" (Translated from Portugese, I guess).
So what if a computer can hold up it end of a conversation? What would be useful is if we could get a computer that wonders. Why is the sky blue? Why does it get dark at night? Where did I come from? How can I prove to someone else that I am conscious? How I do know that I'm conscious?
We have pretty decent tools of getting answers. What would really be a jump in human development is if we could get a machine to ask useful quesions.
Slashdot Mirror
You could have a non-foiled outside flap or pocket for items you do want automatically read.
Yeah, dude, totally wicked...
For a GAY band! Ha, ha!
"It also amazes me how much Slashdot is against the dark matter model. Why is that?"
Selection bias.
Those with an axe to grind shout the loudest and post the most often. The silent majority just keep scrolling.
Again, these creatures are not humans, nor chimpanzees, nor any other modern ape. The article mentions the Tuang child skull, which is thought to be an Australopithecus Afarensis. While it's not a tree swinging ape, is still pretty petite.
The article has an image of a modern raptor of the alleged raptor-pecked skull. The skull fits comfortably in one grown man's hand. My unscientific guess is that the owner of the skull weight probably 20-30 pounds at the time of death. Remember, if this is an immature mammal, the skull is going to be disproportionatly large in comparison to the body.
This article claims that "Height varied between about 107 cm (3'6") and 152 cm (5'0")." It also says that "The finger and toe bones are curved and proportionally longer than in humans, but the hands are similar to humans in most other details (Johanson and Edey 1981). Most scientists consider this evidence that afarensis was still partially adapted to climbing in trees, others consider it evolutionary baggage." If this animal did get around in trees, espcially to escape, it would have to be fairly slender and acrobatic in order for this to be a successful strategy.
So hopefully now we are talking about the actual predated animal, not modern humans or chimpanzees.
Here is somewhat of a brainstorm to your answers:
You may not be afraid of bigfoot because you didn't have an experience of 'encountering' a bigfoot in the woods. My theory currently states that you have some ambiguous sensory experience in the woods, and the paranoid hunter/gatherer part of your mind incorrectly interprets it as an ape-man. If you haven't had the experience and misinterpretation, you wouldn't be afraid. The same way you may not be afraid of the ghetto if you've never been mugged in the ghetto -- which happened to me recently. I live in Columbus, OH, which is a relatively safe place, and does have its share of ghettos. I never had any fear walking around in them, but a couple of weeks ago I was mugged in the ghetto. Nothing bad happened -- I just got hit and they took my wallet. However, now I am suspicious of every guy I see when I'm walking in a ghetto, and if someone gets close to me, the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
Why are you not a racist? One answer is that maybe you aren't a typical human being. My theory states that *groups* hate each other, not necessarily individuals hate other groups or other individuals. If you look at human group relationship around the world and across time, they always hate or at best think poorly of the other group. The theory does not predict or address individual behavior. Here in Columbus Ohiom there is an intense Ohio State / Michigan rivalry. This always results in fights between college age fans. Now, if those people weren't wearing Ohio State or Michigan jackets, nobody could tell them apart. But somehow being a Michigan fan during a home game in Columbus gets you a beating. It's the same for any other group identification, whether it's high schools, gangs, neighborhoods, religions, or ethnicities.
Also, have you ever been to a place where you were a minority? I'm guessing that you are a white male living in the US. That's my background -- I never had a problem with other people until I spent a couple summers in Ecuador, where I was very obviously a minority. I don't hate Ecuadorians or Hispanics or anything like that, but I definately felt a sense of "me against them" while walking down the main streets of Ecuador.
I guess my theory states that after a violent trauma, the human mind haphazardly groups recognizably 'other' people together in a danger category. If a member of your own group beats you up, you probably won't hate your own group as a whole, because you know too many individuals. But if can't differentitate any individuals of the other group, you mind will just err on the side of caution and fear all of them.
"Certainly so, if it was big enough to carry the kid off -- we're talking about a 2-4 year old toddler -- it would have to be a LOTR-size eagle. "
The ancestor we are talking about was from two million years ago. It was a tree-swinging ape. The two year old probably weighed five pounds.
I happen to agree with this theory of evolutionary predation fears. I think this could be used to explain all these 'hairy men' creatures that appear all over the world.
Up until about 200,000 years ago there were about 5 or 6 different apes running around alongside our direct ancestors. These guys were smart, and they could use spears. My guess is they had a lot of body hair.
My personal pet theory is that about 100,000, human beings began systematically exterminating all other groups of hominids besides their own. The only hominids crafty enough to escape the slaughter were other homo sapiens.
You can see this continue today. Any group of human beings that give themselves some kind of group identity hate those other guys -- that group next door -- and will try to kill all of them, given the opportunity. They also think of other groups of people as savage animals.
So anways, rewind 100,000 years ago. A hairless human hunter venturing out into the woods to track down lunch stood a good chance of being killed by some hairy spear-wielding apeman.
Fast forward to today. People are still catching glimpses of hairy apemen in the woods (Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, whatever). Not that those hairy apemen are still alive, but that it's better to be paranoid and *suspect* that a creaking branch or other ambiguous sensory data is a hairy apeman, rather than foolishly walking into a hairy ape-mans' spear. To this day, human groups view their neighbor groups as savage animals who they are probably better off getting rid of.
"A behavior as simple as protecting your tribe's corpses from opportunistic predators quickly ensures you generally don't get attacked by eagles."
That is an extremely complex behavior. Very few animals do it, and those that do are very intelligent social animals. The only animals who do it that I can think of offhand are elephants and humans.
"The argument is that his status quo predictions are pointless and are only there to raise his score."
OK, but why are they pointless? Are they pointless because they are so easy to get right? If that's the case, why are they so easy to get right?
Here's my review of your scorecard:
So are you predicting that all these rumors will come true? Rumors aren't destiny you know. And there are other rumors that he didn't predict, note you.
Not a prediction nor a scoring of a prediction.
Old news?! It hasn't even happened yet. Do you mean old rumor?
Belly up to the bar. Do you think this rumors will happen or not?
Finally, you make a prediction."
Hey, another prediction! Maybe were are on a roll -- oops! I hope I didn't just jinx it...
Oh damn. We were doing so well a minute ago.
Ok, hopefully this time it will stick
Uh... so do you think Cringely will be right or not?
Oh good, another scoring/prediction.
(crossing fingers)
Damn it! Just tell us, man, is he wrong or right?
OK, so you are thinking he will be correct with this?
I don't know, how about you *score him and tell us*!
Hey, did you seriously intend to score Cringely's predictions?
Well, at least you closed with a score.
So, lets review:
Six out of fifteen. Not bad, I guess. I don't know *shrug*.
Let me make an addendum. I don't think Cringely's predictions are vague. They are black-and-white -- either "Status Quo" or "Change". In the examples you listed, Cringely correctly predicted "Status Quo" for both Intel/AMD competition and the RIAA suing people. (Sure, you can make this predictions by flipping a coin, but if Cringely gave reasons for why he thought the status quo would continue, it shows he understands what's actually going on, instead of happening to be right by chance. )
;)
If this predictions are so easy to make because they are based on common sense, I would like to see your predictions for the future. Pick out two or three issues or events going on today, and choose either "Status Quo" or "Change". Also give the reasons why you made your choice -- then next year we will know if you won or lost by chance or your understanding of the situation. If you are feeling extra common-sensical, you could predict exactly what the change would be in the case that you predict change.
Or, perhaps you are arguing that predicting "Status Quo" is a safe, common-sensical prediction, because people are creatures of habit and avoid change at all costs. That would be common-sensical
If that's the case, it's no big deal if Cringely correctly predicted "Status Quo". That's a common sense, safe bet. If we really want to see how good Cringely is, we should look at where he predicted change, and how close his prediction was to what the world actually changed to.
If you predict change for any human or group-driven project, such as a company, you are essentially saying that the decision makers will apprehend the future as being so bad that they will decide to change their paradigm for moving forward and take a risk on a new plan. It's a pretty bold prediction to make.
His predictions aren't as vague and common sense as you make them out to be:
"I was right when I said AMD would give Intel further fits.
Two huge companies in dead competition would give each other fits? Obviously that is bound to happen on some degree over the course of the year. Also, he never really defined "fits", just some kind of conflict that is bound to happen when two major corporations are competing in the same market."
How can you assume that they would continue to be competitive throughout the next year? What if one makes a huge blunder and the other pulls ahead? What if one comes out with a great new product and thoroughly trounces the other's sales? If you knew they were going to remain competetive into the next year, you have forsight into the future that many would envy.
" I predicted the RIAA would continue to sue music lovers and they have, despite the fact that it doesn't help anyone and actually hurts everyone to do so.
What would the RIAA do, stop suing?"
Well, why wouldn't they? It's totally ineffective and is creating immense public hostility towards the RIAA. A lot of people are saying it's a bad-blood campaign of greedy music execs who have an outdated business model and can't adapt to the future. From a purely business perspective, it's a huge mistake.
" I don't know of any other way to prosecute violators of copyright law besides offing them like the mafia. Again vague and full of common sense. "
Usually the idea of a business is to make money, not become some quasi-vigilante prosecuting organzation. How about they concentrate on increasing sales and adapting to new media instead of suing their customers? (I know the RIAA isn't a business itself, but it does claim to represent the indusry). Again, if you knew that the RIAA were going to continue to pursue this foolhardy strategy, you have a line to the Fates that few others have.
I would like to hear your vague, common-sense predictions for 2006.
OK, so check this out --
The permafrost melts, and waters the seeds. They sprout into a variable jungle of biodiversity in what was formerly arctic wasteland but now is the sunny artic plantfest.
Those Norwegians are very clever.
"The US driving licence face recognition system works on litteraly millions of people, and copes very well with eyeglasses, facial hair & different hairstyle and aging. It is used to prevent people from acquiring more than one driving license in different states."
How about from poor lighting and different angles?
These software systems aren't very robust. With the driver's license system, you can make assumptions about lighting and poses -- even the assumption that you are looking at a human face in the first place. However, computers suck at picking out a 3/4 profile of a terroist in a crowded airport terminal from a front-on source image.
I'm not saying that the ability to pick a face out of a crowd is solely face recognition -- there's some 3-D geomoetry and stuff going on in there.
All of these areas where computers are claimed to be on par with the average humans' everyday ability assume a tightly controlled environment with all other variables removed. These programs are highly specialized and brittle. It always strikes me as stacking the deck -- just take one of these programs out into the real world where they aren't fed properly formatted cherry-picked data, and they fail miserably.
"Using your newfound knowledge in high precision engineering, duct tape the iPod Nano to your cell phone."
How do I do this without covering over the manual-mechanical/electronic interface?
"So? What are the consequences of this? "
The answer to that question is my interest exactly. For me, it's more of a personal interest. Some people are exicited by robots and artificial intelligence -- I know I am. But, I am also interested in the human mind. Thus, I care about advanced in both fields
"We probably won't ever be able to exactly duplicate the inner workings of a human brain. But, if our artificial brain behaves the same as a human brain in all significant aspects, why should we care?"
It depends on what your interests are. If you want a cheap machine that helps you do work, you probably don't care whether or not it has the same internal mechanisms as you or not. But say you are a doctor trying to treat or cure mental illness in a human patient. You would probably care how the human mind actually works, so you have a shot a fixing a broken one.
Hey mods,
Parent is a *really* lame joke. Really lame.
At first I thought it was an anti-MySQL troll, but it's not. Read the subject line.
I guess I have another side to my point.
Well, if we come up with a device that passes the turing test, that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the human mind. It could be that there is only one implementation of an intelligence or consciousness or whatever, or the machine we invent could be completely different from the human mind, yet achieve the same results.
If you don't care about how the human mind specifically works, that's fine. But my point is that if a machine passes the Turing test, that doesn't *necessarily* mean anything about how the human mind works.
"I have no idea what your point is, sorry.
Side note: computers have been used for face recognition purposes for the past couple years."
That kind of is my point. Computers have been used for face recognition for years. And they suck at it. And we have no idea how the human mind does it, all we know is *where* in the brain it is taking place. Furthermore, we don't know whether or not our face-recognition programs are using the same techniques as the mind, so it's not (yet) safe to say that the mind is just a really big/fast/complex computer.
"Why have you made up your mind, and ignored due process?"
I am not a court. I don't have to back up every belief of mine with due process.
"I want the court to make up its mind. Why? Because that's what it does. "
You say you are in favor of due process. Yet you still have skirted the issue of whether or not you are calling for a Bush impeachment on this issue. Why can't you come out and say whether or not you want a Bush impeachment?
If you really do want the court to make up its mind, you must call for an impeachment, because the case will never go to a court unless he is impeached by congress.
So go ahead. Show us your hand. Do you want this to go to trial or not?
"' I'm no computer scientist or whatever, but I think the Turing test is dumb. "
You might have just said:
'I don't understand this, but I don't believe this thing that test what I don't know much about is stupid.'"
Non sequitor. I don't have a degree in computer science, but it doesn't follow that I'm speaking from ignorance, or don't understand a particular topic from computer science.
"You could make the argument that the human brain is nothing but a very complex calculator."
People have made that argument, but I don't think it holds up. I think it is a very myopic view of the human mind.
I think for a long time, western science and philosophy were hung up wrestling with what exactly logic and reational thought were, mainly because your everyday person is so bad at it. Their goal was to have a totally rational, logical human being. Well, now we have that, sort of, in the computer. Except, we come to find out that a lot of human behavior has escaped the computer -- things such as face recognition, balancing, emotions. Now we have a rain man -- a powerful, totally logical mind, which can calculate the birth of stars, but one who can't even accomplish the simplest everyday things like guessing someones mood or walking to the mailbox to get the mail. Or even read handwriting.
So in the field of AI, we are able to do complex things that people are very bad it, but we don't even have a theoretical model for a lot of simple, every day things that people excel at without even trying. For example, face recognition. We do have a few techniques that computers use, but we have absolutely no idea whether or not those are the techniques that the human mind uses. We know where in the brain the actibity is taking place, but we have absolutely no idea what method or technique it is using.
I'm not exagerating, we're in total ignorance here. We can't yet peer inside the black box. We know what the eyes do when they scan a face, and we know where the optic nerve sends the data, and we know where the result gets sent to, but we don't know at all how that bundle of nerves is manipulating those electrical signals to recognize a face.
We don't even have a good defintion of basic emotions like anger within the brain. We know what it does to the body and the peripheral nervous system, we know how other parts of the brain respond to anger, but we don't have any idea or definition of what is actually going on in that little anger part of the brain.
So the problem in the western tradition is that these basic brain functions, such as emotion, have been totally ignored for the past several thousand years, in trying to find out what a totally rational, logical mind would act like. Turns out we are missing essential components of a useful everyday mind.
"Ask the computer "what do you wonder about?", "what keeps you up at night?". Then ask it to try to answer the questions that "keep it up at night"."
No, no, no! You're missing the point.
"Furthermore, what the hell did Pablo Picasso know about computers?"
If you understand what he said, you would immediately know that he knew quite a bit. I know it's a popular stereotype to think that artists are new-age impractical kooks, but some are actually geniuses. If you read some of the things Picasso said, it becomes clear fairly quickly that the man was literally a genius, not just a good painter.
What did he know about computers? He was smart enough to see that they were nothing more than a complex calculator. They still are. Computers are only a tool. If a human being can apprehend a problem, frame it correctly, and input it into a computer, they will get an answer out of it faster than that person could calculate it on their own. But as it stands computers are solely a tool for the programmer. They aren't doing anything a human being hasn't already invented, albeit much faster.
A computer doesn't do anything on it's own. It requires a programmer -- that's the key.
"Often a computer can suggest new questions to ask..."
Only if it's been programmed to do so. And a human being has done the novel work in that case.
" and in a time when computers could pass the Turing Test, they could definitely make suggestions about significant new questions to ask."
If / when that time comes, that machine will be a qualitatively different machine from what we (and Picasso) are currently calling a computer.
"You might as well quote Donald Knuth about painting."
Go ahead and show me a quote of his about painting. Let's see if he actually understood it to any degree, or if you are just building a straw man.
"Why, because I rail against the rampant hypocrisy of the other posters here on Slashdot?"
No, because it's so startlingly and blatantly obvious that Bush broke the law when he ordered/authorized these wiretaps.
" Find a pro-Bush post. Do it. I'm waiting."
Yours are a good example.
"You won't, because I'm not, so stop using that tired tactic."
What?
"Isn't it just possible that I DESPISE people who rely on overstatement to make their cases, especially when it's not necessary."
Sure it's possible. Why not?
"Or maybe I'm just Pro-due process. Did you ever think of that? ANd then of cours, if you check a bit, I've stated in another post that I believe the wiretaps are illegal. So no pass there, how did you come to that erroneous conclusion?"
You must know, then, that the only due process for an impeachment is for congress to get off their ass and impeach the president. Congress will only do what its constuency demands of them. If you are pro-impeachment, then you must say so, and also contact your congresspeople.
So, let's have it. Are you for congress investigating Bush's wiretaps, or not?
" 'Well, since we are at a disagreement, and there is no established case law, surely you are in support of an impeachment to decide whether or not the President broke the law?'
I'm in favor of whatever the law deems appropriate."
That says absolutely nothing.
" If that's impeachment, then fine, I don't want a criminal for a President."
That's not enough. There is nothing to trigger an impeachment other than congress doing its job. Congress will not impeach the president if they don't think their constiuents will support it.
" But "innocent until proven guilty" applies to the President too, or at leats it's supposed to. Apparently the other's screaming "illegal wiretap" have decided it doesn't."
People can scream whatever they want. It has no legal bearing -- nobody gets imprisoned because of slashdot postings. Like I said, give Bush his day in court. If you agree with that, then you must be in favor of impeachment. If you are in favor of impeachment, you must contact your congresspeople, because it won't happen unless you do so.
I'm no computer scientist or whatever, but I think the Turing test is dumb.
My sig line says it all. Quoting Pablo Picasso: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers" (Translated from Portugese, I guess).
So what if a computer can hold up it end of a conversation? What would be useful is if we could get a computer that wonders. Why is the sky blue? Why does it get dark at night? Where did I come from? How can I prove to someone else that I am conscious? How I do know that I'm conscious?
We have pretty decent tools of getting answers. What would really be a jump in human development is if we could get a machine to ask useful quesions.