It seems to me that Kolmogorov Complexity Theory shows why Occams razor 'works' in mathematics, but once again, insofar as your explanation of it, it doesn't seem to address why we should assume that observation data collected from the universe would have such patterns. You've made your point for these mathematical constructs such as infinite strings, but I don't see where you bring that back to data collection.
In all the science classes I've been in that cover the scientific method, a repeatable, controlled, falsifiable *experiment* was considered to be the 'gold standard' of science. Other sciences, such as geology, had to go on without experiments for the most part (it's hard to form a mountain in an experiment), but for the most part the rest looks good, so it's called a 'historical science', since you can't run any experiments. I'm not saying it's not science, but even science textbooks point out that the evidence isn't as strong.
I think you misunderstood my point. I was wondering if someone had given some reason philosophically, mathematically, whatever, for why simpler theories should be preferred. As you explain it, Kolmogorov's Theory just seems to show how you can decide which theory is simpler. You seem perhaps to be leaving out a point that in these strings, data from observations of the universe would follow a pattern, and therefore a simpler theory would more likely correctly predict future sequences of data. What I'm wondering is why we can be certain that the universe follows a pattern, I guess, or why simpler theories should be preferred to explain those patterns.
You do make a philosophical argument for Occam's razor in your last paragraph, but it doesn't seem very rigorous;)
Well, I don't think it would be to hard to design an evolution experiment.
Imagine a terrarium with a stable fruitfly population. Say you have a really low ceiling, so there isn't much room to fly, but the place is really wide, so there's plenty of walking space. Also, all food is on the ground. Just keep adding food, and remove all the dead fruitflies, catalogue and freeze-dry or otherwise preserve them. You should notice some speciation after a few decades;)...
You might think about adding selective pressures (bug zapper on the ceiling), or creating alternative niches (body of water with food -- can fruitflies walk on water?). So, after 50 years, you should have some really funky bugs, and then you can go back through the catalogue of each dead fruitfly that came out of there, and show exactly the changes in the genome. To me, that seems like it would be a repeatable experiment that would demonstrate evolution.
Evolution has not been demonstrated in a controlled experiment. Currently, it is a historical science, like solar system geology. Once someone does a falsifyable, controlled experiment that is peer reviewed, we should not consider it as strong a fact, as, say, atmoic theory.
I always thought this was an interesting an odd part of modern science and cosmology. Why should we assume occam's razor, that simpler explanations are better? Why should the universe be simple and elegant?
The parent makes the point that it makes it easier to study. Certainly that's true, but that seems like a pragmatic social concern, where the scientific endeavour is supposed to be an objective search for knowledge.
Sure, one can argue that if two theories are functionally equivalent, there's no downside to taking the simpler one. But has anyone demontrated this logically or mathematically?
Actually it doesn't, unless you equate logic with mathematics, in the tradition of Bertrand Russell. One method involves counting (math), the other method involves some kind of social reasoning -- tracking sheep as individuals, and noticing their absence in a group.
The farmer who asks "how many sheep do I own?" already knows enough about math to ask the question "how many". Note that "how many" and "how much" are composed of two simpler words. All language have the universal question words Who What When Where Why and How. How Many/Much is not universal.
Sooner or later SCO will have its ass reamed publically in a law court. At that point investors will drop the stock, and the lawyers will stop working since they see that there is no case, no settlement money to take a percentage of, and no other money coming from SCO.
Of course, you might wonder when exactly this would happen. I tend to think sooner, like in the first round, rather than later, as you seem to think.
Usually the point of Zen koans are to break a student out of thinking about Zen to practicing Zen. Most philosophical discussions on Zen center around Zen being pre-logical, or unavailable to logical analysis. Of course, strictly speaking, those statements are non-sensical, since, well... Zen isn't available to logic. Hm.
A monk is training under a master for three years. But he never goes to the master for instruction, so the master asks him why. The monk explains that when he was with his former master he had a realization. The master asks about the circumstances, and the monk explains that he had asked his former master what is the self of a Zen practitioner. The former master replied: "The fire god seeks fire." The present master declares it is a good statement, indeed, but that the monk does not yet really know it. The monk replies that it is like fire seeking fire, or the self looking for itself. The master then declares that indeed the monk has not got it at all. The monk gets agitated and leaves the monastery. But on the way, genuine doubt sets in, so he returns and begs the master, now in all sincerity, "What is the self of a Zen practitioner?" The master replies: "The fire god seeks fire!" -- And the monk immediately awakens.
That's a good point. Is that because they're counting, or are they doing a mental "roll-call" and noticing that someone is missing?
I.E., "Hey, where's curly jack? He's usually with stompy" vs. "Hey, an hour ago there were 45, now there's only 44?".
And actually, those cultures without numbers, AFAIK, are hunter/gatherers, or more commonly called foragers, not any kind of farmer/herders. Farmer/herders usually have counting systems.
Wolves are very intelligent. They have a strict hierarchy lead by the alpha male. They use this in co-operative hunting. No single wolf can run down any prey animal larger than itself, but they take turns, and trade off running down an animal and wearing it out. This requires:
1. Knowledge of the terrain : a map.
2. Knowledge of the animal and where it is likely to flee on the map.
3. Co-ordination of ambush points on the escape route, where one wolf drops off another wolf will pick up the chase.
And they do this without language. They do howl and have other verbal communications, but as far as we know, they don't communcate huting plans symbolically.
My logic professor told us that dogs use one of those logical operators (I forget which one).
Dog chases rabbit. Rabbit dissapears in a fork in the roud, and the dog didn't see which one. Dog sniffs one fork and smells no rabbit. So, he runs down the other fork without bothering to sniff.
Some langauges don't have couting systems. Those usually have just have simple amount gages, specifically "more" and "less". They might also have what's sometimes translated as "one", "two" and "many", but some have argued that "one" and "two" aren't correct, because you can't do mathematical operations with them. One alternative translation is "wholeness/singularity/unity", "duality/pair", and "many". I buy this argument because the cases where "two" is used are for pairs of objects that have some non-numerical relationship, such as "sun & moon", "husband and wife", "right hand and left hand".
Remember, counting an addition is something that you were *taught* in school, and probably sucked at in the beginning. The vast majority of humans beings who've lived had no use for couting and addition.
So, if something so obvious and universal is shown to be wrong by our fellow human beings, where do we get the hubris to assume that all of math is universal? If you want to look at first contact scenarios, you should read up what happened when explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists encoutered other human beings. It will blow your mind.
While knocking, you could also try other ports to confound anyone how might be trying to sniff the sequence. If the sequence is 2347 92347 239 234098 , then throw in a few 43588, 2394, 2349. If the 'doorman' is looking for 2347 - $junk_data - 92347 - $junk_data - 239 - $junk_data - 234098,m you can even repeat some of the ports that it's looking for in other parts of the string.
This whole licensing scheme has gotten out of hand? Please note that propreitary software has more licensing schemes than does any open-source software. Hell, each proprietary app has its own cockamamey convoluted license, while most of the open-source apps you run are covered by a few common licenses (GPL, BSD, Apache, etc.).
So, if you don't like open-source because there are 'too many licensing schemes', you had better stay away from propreitary software! Who knows what kind of violations you can wander into with that mess.
The chart on the first page says that 2.6 supports read and write for NTFS. Is this really the case? Does anyone trust NTFS writing if it's in the kernel?
A buddy and me had an argument about the head count of the armies. Although the 'proclaimed' values were true to Tolkien ("An army of 10,00- Uruk-hai!"), my buddy thinks that they actually greatly increased the numbers in the armies for dramatic visual effect.
After hearing back-and-forth about the numbers involving the million man march, finding out that there is currently no scientific method for crowd estimation, I told him he has no basis for judging how many humanoids were in any army, and his untrained eye is probably way off.
Eastern "Cultures" can't think for themselves? Don't you mean "individuals"?
I think the point of the article is that in Eastern work-groups , individuals who are not decision makers think that it's not their place to think for themself, in the context of the group. However, when those individuals get promoted, they do what the position requires of them, namely thinking and making decisions.
Have you ever sat in on a western business meeting? It's remarkably similar...
Does it strike anyone else as strange that everyone keeps dreaming up more stuff to throw into the kernel? What happened to the unix philosophy of small, independent programs that do one thing well?
I'm aware of projects such as The Hurd -- this seems to follow closely the unix philosophy, but it's a ways off from general usability. Others have noted that it's usually easier to debug a monolithic program than to debug communication problems between small unixy programs. (Maybe there is some way to make a communications chart of said small programs, so that it looks like monolithic code? )
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Which totally disproves evolution. Therefore, we should teach the Bhagavad-Gita in public school science classes.
It seems to me that Kolmogorov Complexity Theory shows why Occams razor 'works' in mathematics, but once again, insofar as your explanation of it, it doesn't seem to address why we should assume that observation data collected from the universe would have such patterns. You've made your point for these mathematical constructs such as infinite strings, but I don't see where you bring that back to data collection.
In all the science classes I've been in that cover the scientific method, a repeatable, controlled, falsifiable *experiment* was considered to be the 'gold standard' of science. Other sciences, such as geology, had to go on without experiments for the most part (it's hard to form a mountain in an experiment), but for the most part the rest looks good, so it's called a 'historical science', since you can't run any experiments. I'm not saying it's not science, but even science textbooks point out that the evidence isn't as strong.
You do make a philosophical argument for Occam's razor in your last paragraph, but it doesn't seem very rigorous ;)
Imagine a terrarium with a stable fruitfly population. Say you have a really low ceiling, so there isn't much room to fly, but the place is really wide, so there's plenty of walking space. Also, all food is on the ground. Just keep adding food, and remove all the dead fruitflies, catalogue and freeze-dry or otherwise preserve them. You should notice some speciation after a few decades ;)...
You might think about adding selective pressures (bug zapper on the ceiling), or creating alternative niches (body of water with food -- can fruitflies walk on water?). So, after 50 years, you should have some really funky bugs, and then you can go back through the catalogue of each dead fruitfly that came out of there, and show exactly the changes in the genome. To me, that seems like it would be a repeatable experiment that would demonstrate evolution.
Yes, it's falsifiable. But we still have no "classic experiment" that demonstrates it. It is still at this time a historical science.
All species are intermediary species.
Evolution has not been demonstrated in a controlled experiment. Currently, it is a historical science, like solar system geology. Once someone does a falsifyable, controlled experiment that is peer reviewed, we should not consider it as strong a fact, as, say, atmoic theory.
The parent makes the point that it makes it easier to study. Certainly that's true, but that seems like a pragmatic social concern, where the scientific endeavour is supposed to be an objective search for knowledge.
Sure, one can argue that if two theories are functionally equivalent, there's no downside to taking the simpler one. But has anyone demontrated this logically or mathematically?
Seriously, just go ahead and do it. If no one uses it, take it down.
The farmer who asks "how many sheep do I own?" already knows enough about math to ask the question "how many". Note that "how many" and "how much" are composed of two simpler words. All language have the universal question words Who What When Where Why and How. How Many/Much is not universal.
Of course, you might wonder when exactly this would happen. I tend to think sooner, like in the first round, rather than later, as you seem to think.
Usually the point of Zen koans are to break a student out of thinking about Zen to practicing Zen. Most philosophical discussions on Zen center around Zen being pre-logical, or unavailable to logical analysis. Of course, strictly speaking, those statements are non-sensical, since, well... Zen isn't available to logic. Hm.
A monk is training under a master for three years. But he never goes to the master for instruction, so the master asks him why. The monk explains that when he was with his former master he had a realization. The master asks about the circumstances, and the monk explains that he had asked his former master what is the self of a Zen practitioner. The former master replied: "The fire god seeks fire." The present master declares it is a good statement, indeed, but that the monk does not yet really know it. The monk replies that it is like fire seeking fire, or the self looking for itself. The master then declares that indeed the monk has not got it at all. The monk gets agitated and leaves the monastery. But on the way, genuine doubt sets in, so he returns and begs the master, now in all sincerity, "What is the self of a Zen practitioner?" The master replies: "The fire god seeks fire!" -- And the monk immediately awakens.
I.E., "Hey, where's curly jack? He's usually with stompy" vs. "Hey, an hour ago there were 45, now there's only 44?".
And actually, those cultures without numbers, AFAIK, are hunter/gatherers, or more commonly called foragers, not any kind of farmer/herders. Farmer/herders usually have counting systems.
1. Knowledge of the terrain : a map. 2. Knowledge of the animal and where it is likely to flee on the map. 3. Co-ordination of ambush points on the escape route, where one wolf drops off another wolf will pick up the chase.
And they do this without language. They do howl and have other verbal communications, but as far as we know, they don't communcate huting plans symbolically.
My logic professor told us that dogs use one of those logical operators (I forget which one).
Dog chases rabbit. Rabbit dissapears in a fork in the roud, and the dog didn't see which one. Dog sniffs one fork and smells no rabbit. So, he runs down the other fork without bothering to sniff.
Remember, counting an addition is something that you were *taught* in school, and probably sucked at in the beginning. The vast majority of humans beings who've lived had no use for couting and addition.
So, if something so obvious and universal is shown to be wrong by our fellow human beings, where do we get the hubris to assume that all of math is universal? If you want to look at first contact scenarios, you should read up what happened when explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists encoutered other human beings. It will blow your mind.
Student: Is it true that Zen cannot be explained in words?
Master: No, it is not true that Zen cannot be explained in words.
Student: Then, can you explain Zen to me?
Master: No, I cannot.
Student: Why not?
Master: Remember, Zen cannot be explained in words.
Couldn't the author have made a little more recent comparison to database technologies? AFAIK, SQL server is at version 2k, and Access at version 2k3.
While knocking, you could also try other ports to confound anyone how might be trying to sniff the sequence. If the sequence is 2347 92347 239 234098 , then throw in a few 43588, 2394, 2349. If the 'doorman' is looking for 2347 - $junk_data - 92347 - $junk_data - 239 - $junk_data - 234098 ,m you can even repeat some of the ports that it's looking for in other parts of the string.
So, if you don't like open-source because there are 'too many licensing schemes', you had better stay away from propreitary software! Who knows what kind of violations you can wander into with that mess.
The chart on the first page says that 2.6 supports read and write for NTFS. Is this really the case? Does anyone trust NTFS writing if it's in the kernel?
After hearing back-and-forth about the numbers involving the million man march, finding out that there is currently no scientific method for crowd estimation, I told him he has no basis for judging how many humanoids were in any army, and his untrained eye is probably way off.
Can anyone shed light on this conversation?
Yes. There are also silos where they put the corn.
I think the point of the article is that in Eastern work-groups , individuals who are not decision makers think that it's not their place to think for themself, in the context of the group. However, when those individuals get promoted, they do what the position requires of them, namely thinking and making decisions.
Have you ever sat in on a western business meeting? It's remarkably similar...
I'm aware of projects such as The Hurd -- this seems to follow closely the unix philosophy, but it's a ways off from general usability. Others have noted that it's usually easier to debug a monolithic program than to debug communication problems between small unixy programs. (Maybe there is some way to make a communications chart of said small programs, so that it looks like monolithic code? )
Discuss.