Yeah, but that middle-man is traceable, because he's cashing the checks mailed to his address. Then you can bust him for running an illegal copper operation. Would even be easy to do a sting.
Ultimately, there are some people who just won't work on the up-and-up, no matter what.
I used to work at a pawn shop. There was a time when I saw my boss talking with the police officer ( the police have special pawn shop units ). I asked him afterward what it was about, and it turns out a thief had pawned a bag of golf clubs, but the clubs were mixed from several different thefts, in an attempt to avoid getting pinned with the crime. I said out loud, "That's clever", and my boss said, "Yeah, that's a lot of work for a $10 pawn".
This guy could have worked a couple hours at McDonalds and made more money for less effort. But for some reason, he chose to spend his time on a hare-brained golf-club-mixing and pawning scheme.
I think the only solution to this is welfare. I don't like the idea of paying someone not to work, when they are perfectly capable of doing so, but in this case, it's more to keep the public order, and prevent petty crime, and as we see now infrastructure degradation.
But we really can't perceive most things directly . . only their effects. We do not see objects; we see light reflected off of them.
If you're going to argue that, then the logical conclusion is that we don't perceive *anything* directly -- that there is no such thing as direct perception. Or would you count touch as direct perception?
I think it's fair to go with a definition of direct perception as impinging upon any of the five senses -- sight, smell, touch, taste, or sound. In other words, if you sensed it directly, rather than concluding a presence or being told about it, we could call that direct perceptions. And for germs, we can't directly perceive them with our senses. We need a tool to do it, a tool that's too difficult to use in day-to-day life.
To me, it looks like the bursting of the Regan bubble -- go ahead and stretch that baby out to max. Thirty years of Reganomics: union busting, deficit spending, tax cuts for the rich. Productivity boomed, but wages flatlined. It did wonders for the stock market, but killed the middle class. Now we are reaping the rewards.
Oh, so where was the Dow before the Regan bubble? At about 1,000. That's funny, because I hear during the Great Depression, the dow lost about 90% of the value. If my analysis is correct, and the bursting of the Regan bubble causes the Dow to go from 14,000 to 1,000, that would be about a 93% loss of value.
Me? I'm starting an indoor garden, and looking into a rocket stove.
The idea that gold has significant intrinsic value is bullshit.
In theory you are right, but if you look at human history, gold has had steady significant value. Not that the price hasn't fluctuated, but it has never become worthless, like, say, paper, or tulip bulbs, or certain pieces of real estate. A question you should ask yourself is, "If gold doesn't have any intrinsic value, then why has it been so darn valuable for 10,000 years?"
I argue that gold *does* have an intrinsic value as a value-storage-and-transmission tool. Why is this? It's twofold: The color itself has a pleasurable effect on the human nervous system ( i.e. people like the color ), and because it's a malleable metal, it lasts, it doesn't tarnish, you can easily divide it, lump it together, and make things out of it. This makes it easy to transmit, divvy up, and store value with.
Anything that humans really need to live cannot reliably be used as currency. Food rots. Live animals die when they are divvied up. Tobacco leaves as currency can wear away. If your currency item really is a need, people will actually consume it when they have to -- not a problem with gold. It stays in the market.
All around the world, in every culture that had access to gold, people used it to represent value. They used all kinds of other minerals and metals. The problem with minerals is that they aren't malleable and break. Other metals just aren't pretty enough ( and most tarnish, if they aren't toxic, like lead). Lead is malleable, and would be useful for transmitting value, but its color just sucks ( plus its toxic, but people didn't know that for a long time, and it takes years to show up anyway) . Gold seems to reflect a particular frequency of light that human beings just find entrancing, like the color of sunset, or topaz. It tickles the human nervous system. Bronze and silver are good, but they tarnish.
I want to note, though, that probabilistic is not clockwork; but it is not arbitrary. A fair die's outcome cannot be predicted; but its behavior is precisely regular. The old Newtonian dream of a perfectly predictable billiards universe is nonsense; but the probabilistic phenomena around us seem overwhelmingly to be statistically predictable, rather than merely arbitrary.
Yes, but this belies the radical shift that Einsteinian physics and and quantum physics really was in the world of science. No one is claiming that it is arbitrary. It essentially changed the metaphysical foundation that science had been based on since about the time of Newton. Many scientists at the time refused to accept these theories; they still clung to luminiferous aether and clockwork universe theories, until they all died out and the new school took over completely, in about the 1950s.
To say that it was a radical change is not to claim that there is metaphysical anarchy, or complete and utter chaos. But it the change does throw a monkey wrench into the linear progress model that Frazier and other thinkers of his time bought into. It was their cosmology -- slow, steady, incremental progress. Suddenly, Einstein and Bohrs turned that all on its head -- we hadn't made slow and steady progress for centuries. It turned out we were wrong, radically wrong, in our basic assumptions about the nature of the universe and reality, and for a long time, to boot. And the intelligensia didn't accept it until decades had passed.
In this sense, the idea of linear, incremental progress ( and don't kid yourself, they really believed this ) went hand in hand with the clockwork universe. Time marched always forward, just as did human knowledge and understanding, always increasing steadily, never going backwards or having to throw it all out.
You misconstrue my logic. Nowhere have I said that imperceptible phenomena does not exist.
What I am saying is that anybody who interacts with something they cannot perceive, be they germs or spirits, is essentially practicing ritual. They have no way of knowing whether or not their actions will bring about the intended results, because they have no way to perceive the phenomenon they purport to influence. How can this be different from a magic ritual?
Now, some rationalist might jump in at this point and say, "But we *can* see germs!" That misses the point. Yes, it is possible to look at germs with a microscope ( though some, like the HIV virus, are still too small to perceive ), but in practicality, that never happens. 99.99% of the time or greater, people perform their germ avoidance ritual without ever perceiving the germs they think they are avoiding. They have no way to judge or measure the efficacy of the actions -- or even if there were any germs in the first place! It's ritual, in the anthropological sense.
But as time goes on this explanation in its turn proves to be unsatisfactory. For it assumes that the succession of natural events is not determined by immutable laws, but is to some extent variable and irregular, and this assumption is not borne out by closer observation. On the contrary, the more we scrutinise that succession the more we are struck by the rigid uniformity, the punctual precision with which, wherever we can follow them, the operations of nature are carried on.
The universe runs on some punctual precision? Sort of like predicting the weather -- oh wait, no. More like quantum mech-- hm. No, not there, either.
In fact, if there's one thing we've learned about the nature of reality through science in the past 100 years, it's that we *don't* live in Newton's clock-work universe. There is no "punctual precision". We live in space-time relativity and quantum uncertainty. Frazier's description of the linear evolution of human thought turns out to be wrong.
Most anthropologists these days consider Frazier's magnum opus to be a product of his time. Everybody uses "magic" alongside mechanical understanding of their world. There is no linear progress. The remotest tribes of the world have extensive natural science knowledge of the life-cycles of the plants and animals they rely on to live. The first thing that a biologist or botanist will do is hook up with a local shaman or hunter ( called a "guide" ) to show him all the plants and animals they know -- this is in addition to their mythical understandings and interactions. ( Check out "Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice" or "Throwim Way Leg" ) Scientifically educated people wash their hands and flush the toilet to avoid invisible germs, but they have no problems handling germ-laden paper money or dish-cloths.
I think that any time you follow rules to interact with forces that aren't directly apparent to the senses, you are essentially practicing magic. Sure, at some point a scientist can go in with an instrument to measure germs or radiation, but the average person "interacting" with those has no way to perceive germs or radiation in an everyday situation. S/He therefore must rely on ritual.
The problem really goes to our bias of our science as superior to any other way of knowing and interacting with the world, and calling anything else irrational or superstitious. It's sort of a circular argument: If it's not science, it's religion. Therefore anything that people did before the advent of science is, by definition, religious.
A person from 5,000 years ago who dressed up in animal skins to communicate with weather spirits probably felt they were using the best, time-tested techniques to ensure the stability and well-being of the group. You certainly *are* able to have an experience of 'entities' -- see Strassman's "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" -- while under the influence of entheogenic drugs. So, no faith or dogma needed. Just drink a vine potion, and you can talk to the Gods yourself.
So would this person have said they were practicing 'religion'? Probably not. The category of religion is a relatively recent conception. He probably would have categorized what he was doing more like diplomacy -- negotiating with the gods or spirits on behalf of the tribe.
Of course, we know that spirits don't really exist -- we can't measure them scientifically -- so if you happen to talk to a giant Mantid after taking a herioc dose of Salvinorin A, you were either hallucinating or insane. Spirits can't be measured, therefore any interaction with spirits is religious activity.
Why this guy got thrown in with shamans, don't ask me.
This microchip stuff is really frightening. It reminds me of the tattoos that the Nazis used to track their prison camp inmates. I fear that we are moving to a society where to participate you must be microchipped, and the government will have complete knowledge of your whereabouts and activities.
I'm not a end-times Christian or a conspiracy theorist ( okay, a *sometimes* conspiracy theorist ), but I see this as a stepping stone to a path of complete control over the individual. If you can be electronically identified against your will at a distance, you lose a basic freedom not to be surveilled. You lose a fundamental right to privacy and anonymity.
If the power were in the hands of the individual -- say, I could remove the chip any time I wanted, I could identify anyone I wanted, I could know where the president was and who he was with at any time, then it would be a different story. But of course you can't remove the microchip -- that goes against the whole idea of the thing. To be monitored without your consent. It's power-over. If everyone were microchipped, we would live in a pan-opticon society, where our invisible overlords know our every move.
First it was pets, now it's dangerous disease-spreaders, next criminals and predators, after that children and elderly, in case they get lost, finally everybody, just to walk down the street and buy a drink at the corner store.
The mathematician Paul Erdos used Amphetamines every day to improve his creative productivity. He was challenged by a friend to quit cold turkey for a month. This friend thought he was addicted. Paul did, and then after the month was over, immediately resumed, because of all the work he lost.
His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems", and Erds drank copious quantities. (This quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erds.)[5] After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[6] Erds won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit.
Now, let me be very clear. Consumption of tobacco in any form, be it smoking, chewing, or snuffing, will give you cancer. There are lots of crazy chemicals in that old tobacco leaf, and many more are synthesized during curing processing, and burning.
But the drug by itself is not carcinogenic. It's one of those drugs that are shaped like neurotransmitters. As for why it's addictive, I think it's because it casus relaxation, focus, and concentration, and for those people who are constantly stressed out and unable to relax themselves, rely on a drug to do it for them.
So, you might take it as a prophylactic as you age. I plan on chewing the gum when I enter my 60s.
Just as an anecdotal story, my grandma died last year at age ninety. She was losing her marbles, but she was never officially diagnosed with anything. She would mix up dates, still think I was seeing a girl from 5 years ago ( you could see how excited she was that she was able to recall the name of this girlfriend.) After she died, my parents found a scrap of paper on her make-up table where she had written her name.
My grandpa is 91 now, and he's still a cogent storyteller. He has strident opinions about current politics and sports, and also an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Toledo, Ohio, a lot of which he personally lived through. He smokes a pipe.
I'm not sure if you noticed, but I was actually advocating the switch to either a socialist or libertarian mindset in this country.
Sorry, your fairness and balance threw me;)
Wow...hypocritical much? I actually lived in South America for a couple of years and I've been all over the continent and your blanket generalization is completely unfair. Yes, people are poor...but in what 3rd world country is that not the case? And stuff sucks everywhere, but that's a pretty universal condition as well, especially in the 3rd world. But calling it a shithole is completely unfair.
You're right. Calling South America a shithole was out of line. I was wrong.
People are poor in the third world, and my question is, "Why?" The US was poor once. Japan was poor once. Europe has been poor many times over. Why is there a first world and a third world? What lifts countries out of poverty and provides for the common person? I argue that it's because of social democracy and the labor movement bringing people out of poverty.
These days I think libertarianism is like communism. It sounds good in theory, but it never works in practice -- it simply turns into fuedalism, which is more or less what you mostly have in South America -- corruption, cronyism, etc. I think that libertarians are misguided in thinking that free markets will provide for the people.
It's easy for an American to visit South America, live and travel amongst the upper 10%, and think that it's more or less like the US. But the thing is, what we consider middle-class in the US is wealthy. We have a hard time realizing how wealthy we really are.
So for all those people who want less government in the US, and want to be more like South America, I hope they never experience that slide into poverty, because chances are, they'll end up in the poor 90%, not the rich 10%.
Funnily enough, I've had the opposite experience: people who are younger, in terms of experience or age, are a lot more positive in their opinions and close-minded than older or more experienced people. I don't have a lot of theory around this, except that a more experienced person has had a lot more opportunity to be proven wrong about their preconceptions.
I have to agree with you here. I think that the younger you are, the more likely you are to want to do things your way, to think that your ideas are the greatest in the world, and that your the first person to ever think such a wonderful thing, and that everything would be so much better if people would just listen to you. In fact, if you ruled the planet, things would be perfect. And then, because of your blind, unfailing belief in yourself and You Ideas, you are willing to put in countless hours working on them, in spite of all reality.
As I get older, I have to learn time and time again that 1. I am an idiot, 2. so is everyone else, and 3. if we put our heads together and talk about things long enough, the non-stupid way will emerge.
This seems such a trivial question as to be laughable. In my sixth form computing course (high school level) we were taught not to use integers for things like phone numbers. Anyone who's spent five minutes with a database would know this.
Yes, if you've taken classes on normalized forms, it's laughable. But have you ever worked with programmers who have no experience with relational databases? There are a lot out there, IMHO.
We should be looking at ways to run Socialism (the OS X of governments...very user-centric, less gets done but people are generally happier, though it's hard to figure out exactly why that is considering how much they're paying for it)
I love these memes that have run rampant in the American psyche. In 1996, I was an exchange student in Finland for a year. Made a couple life-long friends. Now I'm thirty, have a job with no benefits. I pay my own health insurance, pay off my student loan, and invest in my own IRA. My car is older, it needs some repairs, and I am trying to decide if I should repair it, buy a younger used car. I'm worried about how I'm going to care for my parents when they get old. Nevermind me and a family !
Meanwhile my Finnish buddies had school paid for, have health insurance, retirement, public transportation, and 6 weeks of vacation. They complain about their life, for sure, but things don't look as bleak for them as they do for me and my peers.
Nothing gets done in a socialist country? Why, turn off Fox News and visit a socialist country. You'll have a wonderful experience in a modern, state-of-the-art civilization. Is it expensive? Yes. Like anything, if you want quality, you have to pay for it. I've been to several socialist countries in Europe, they're all wonderful, clean, and safe. I've been to South American countries, which I regard to be libertarian paradises. There are no rules, nobody pays their taxes. Politicians siphon of all the money anyways. The streets are unpaved, with raw sewers in them. Whole families, mom, dad, and kids, live on the streets. You can buy anything you want in the market -- anything. The whole place is a shithole, but the people really are free. No cop or anybody is going to tell you what to do. You might get beat up by a gang over $10, but you are free. It's kind of cool in a Mad-max way.
Did the internships help you in any way ( technical skills, dealing with non-technical peers, interpersonal skills, office politics ) once you landed a real job?
Certainly there are people who voted for McCain because of his race, considering who he was up against. Also, they thought that he would make them a millionaire, like Joe the Plumber, who was planning on somehow buying a business that would probably be valued at 2 million dollars, while he was only making $40k a year.
Yes, because the world is uniform and the same everywhere, and is composed of black-white dualities.
If a Bi-racial Chicago politician can be elected by appealing to the black vote, the rust belt, and urban populations, then surely any poor black person growing up in rural Alabama will never suffer the stifling limitations of a racial society.
We have the right to bare arms. PERIOD. That means if I want a magazine that holds 50+ rounds, I can have it. If I want a machine gun, so be it. Handgun -you bet - and NO license if I want to carry
Are you allowed to bear your own bombs, tanks, and fighter planes? Missile launchers? RPG launchers? Fertilizer truck bombs? IEDs?
Your website link claims that Obama is " Most Liberal Senator In 2007 " when he serves with Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, who openly declares himself to be a socialist?
Seriously, the changes would never be accepted by the devs, so there's no point in doing it for NetHack. I would just be making a version for myself, or Yet Another NH Clone. Why just just start over in that case?
Those are great points. I thought that the games of the future, MMORPGs, would have only emergent gameplay and player-created content. To have a designer create a level that isn't 'hackable' by emergent play takes tremendous effort, and, as you point out, is error-prone. Furthermore, to have engaging stories in a MMORPG is also difficult to program.
So yes, it is difficult, but we're sort of bursting at the seams trying to develop games in a traditional manner for MMORPGs. I think what will happen in the future is that human players will learn the emergent behavior of the game, and the "storylines" will be generated by the players, as they try to use the game against each other -- all of the Avatar King's horsemen versus the Avartar Wizard's Dungeons and Dragons, so to speak:) Great stories will emerge out of that.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but that middle-man is traceable, because he's cashing the checks mailed to his address. Then you can bust him for running an illegal copper operation. Would even be easy to do a sting.
Ultimately, there are some people who just won't work on the up-and-up, no matter what.
I used to work at a pawn shop. There was a time when I saw my boss talking with the police officer ( the police have special pawn shop units ). I asked him afterward what it was about, and it turns out a thief had pawned a bag of golf clubs, but the clubs were mixed from several different thefts, in an attempt to avoid getting pinned with the crime. I said out loud, "That's clever", and my boss said, "Yeah, that's a lot of work for a $10 pawn".
This guy could have worked a couple hours at McDonalds and made more money for less effort. But for some reason, he chose to spend his time on a hare-brained golf-club-mixing and pawning scheme.
I think the only solution to this is welfare. I don't like the idea of paying someone not to work, when they are perfectly capable of doing so, but in this case, it's more to keep the public order, and prevent petty crime, and as we see now infrastructure degradation.
But we really can't perceive most things directly . . only their effects. We do not see objects; we see light reflected off of them.
If you're going to argue that, then the logical conclusion is that we don't perceive *anything* directly -- that there is no such thing as direct perception. Or would you count touch as direct perception?
I think it's fair to go with a definition of direct perception as impinging upon any of the five senses -- sight, smell, touch, taste, or sound. In other words, if you sensed it directly, rather than concluding a presence or being told about it, we could call that direct perceptions. And for germs, we can't directly perceive them with our senses. We need a tool to do it, a tool that's too difficult to use in day-to-day life.
To me, it looks like the bursting of the Regan bubble -- go ahead and stretch that baby out to max. Thirty years of Reganomics: union busting, deficit spending, tax cuts for the rich. Productivity boomed, but wages flatlined. It did wonders for the stock market, but killed the middle class. Now we are reaping the rewards.
Oh, so where was the Dow before the Regan bubble? At about 1,000. That's funny, because I hear during the Great Depression, the dow lost about 90% of the value. If my analysis is correct, and the bursting of the Regan bubble causes the Dow to go from 14,000 to 1,000, that would be about a 93% loss of value.
Me? I'm starting an indoor garden, and looking into a rocket stove.
The idea that gold has significant intrinsic value is bullshit.
In theory you are right, but if you look at human history, gold has had steady significant value. Not that the price hasn't fluctuated, but it has never become worthless, like, say, paper, or tulip bulbs, or certain pieces of real estate. A question you should ask yourself is, "If gold doesn't have any intrinsic value, then why has it been so darn valuable for 10,000 years?"
I argue that gold *does* have an intrinsic value as a value-storage-and-transmission tool. Why is this? It's twofold: The color itself has a pleasurable effect on the human nervous system ( i.e. people like the color ), and because it's a malleable metal, it lasts, it doesn't tarnish, you can easily divide it, lump it together, and make things out of it. This makes it easy to transmit, divvy up, and store value with.
Anything that humans really need to live cannot reliably be used as currency. Food rots. Live animals die when they are divvied up. Tobacco leaves as currency can wear away. If your currency item really is a need, people will actually consume it when they have to -- not a problem with gold. It stays in the market.
All around the world, in every culture that had access to gold, people used it to represent value. They used all kinds of other minerals and metals. The problem with minerals is that they aren't malleable and break. Other metals just aren't pretty enough ( and most tarnish, if they aren't toxic, like lead). Lead is malleable, and would be useful for transmitting value, but its color just sucks ( plus its toxic, but people didn't know that for a long time, and it takes years to show up anyway) . Gold seems to reflect a particular frequency of light that human beings just find entrancing, like the color of sunset, or topaz. It tickles the human nervous system. Bronze and silver are good, but they tarnish.
I want to note, though, that probabilistic is not clockwork; but it is not arbitrary. A fair die's outcome cannot be predicted; but its behavior is precisely regular. The old Newtonian dream of a perfectly predictable billiards universe is nonsense; but the probabilistic phenomena around us seem overwhelmingly to be statistically predictable, rather than merely arbitrary.
Yes, but this belies the radical shift that Einsteinian physics and and quantum physics really was in the world of science. No one is claiming that it is arbitrary. It essentially changed the metaphysical foundation that science had been based on since about the time of Newton. Many scientists at the time refused to accept these theories; they still clung to luminiferous aether and clockwork universe theories, until they all died out and the new school took over completely, in about the 1950s.
To say that it was a radical change is not to claim that there is metaphysical anarchy, or complete and utter chaos. But it the change does throw a monkey wrench into the linear progress model that Frazier and other thinkers of his time bought into. It was their cosmology -- slow, steady, incremental progress. Suddenly, Einstein and Bohrs turned that all on its head -- we hadn't made slow and steady progress for centuries. It turned out we were wrong, radically wrong, in our basic assumptions about the nature of the universe and reality, and for a long time, to boot. And the intelligensia didn't accept it until decades had passed.
In this sense, the idea of linear, incremental progress ( and don't kid yourself, they really believed this ) went hand in hand with the clockwork universe. Time marched always forward, just as did human knowledge and understanding, always increasing steadily, never going backwards or having to throw it all out.
He is referring to repeatability. i.e. falsifiable tests.
Are you sure? Could you provide a reference, please?
You misconstrue my logic. Nowhere have I said that imperceptible phenomena does not exist.
What I am saying is that anybody who interacts with something they cannot perceive, be they germs or spirits, is essentially practicing ritual. They have no way of knowing whether or not their actions will bring about the intended results, because they have no way to perceive the phenomenon they purport to influence. How can this be different from a magic ritual?
Now, some rationalist might jump in at this point and say, "But we *can* see germs!" That misses the point. Yes, it is possible to look at germs with a microscope ( though some, like the HIV virus, are still too small to perceive ), but in practicality, that never happens. 99.99% of the time or greater, people perform their germ avoidance ritual without ever perceiving the germs they think they are avoiding. They have no way to judge or measure the efficacy of the actions -- or even if there were any germs in the first place! It's ritual, in the anthropological sense.
But as time goes on this explanation in its turn proves to be unsatisfactory. For it assumes that the succession of natural events is not determined by immutable laws, but is to some extent variable and irregular, and this assumption is not borne out by closer observation. On the contrary, the more we scrutinise that succession the more we are struck by the rigid uniformity, the punctual precision with which, wherever we can follow them, the operations of nature are carried on.
The universe runs on some punctual precision? Sort of like predicting the weather -- oh wait, no. More like quantum mech-- hm. No, not there, either.
In fact, if there's one thing we've learned about the nature of reality through science in the past 100 years, it's that we *don't* live in Newton's clock-work universe. There is no "punctual precision". We live in space-time relativity and quantum uncertainty. Frazier's description of the linear evolution of human thought turns out to be wrong.
Most anthropologists these days consider Frazier's magnum opus to be a product of his time. Everybody uses "magic" alongside mechanical understanding of their world. There is no linear progress. The remotest tribes of the world have extensive natural science knowledge of the life-cycles of the plants and animals they rely on to live. The first thing that a biologist or botanist will do is hook up with a local shaman or hunter ( called a "guide" ) to show him all the plants and animals they know -- this is in addition to their mythical understandings and interactions. ( Check out "Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice" or "Throwim Way Leg" ) Scientifically educated people wash their hands and flush the toilet to avoid invisible germs, but they have no problems handling germ-laden paper money or dish-cloths.
I think that any time you follow rules to interact with forces that aren't directly apparent to the senses, you are essentially practicing magic. Sure, at some point a scientist can go in with an instrument to measure germs or radiation, but the average person "interacting" with those has no way to perceive germs or radiation in an everyday situation. S/He therefore must rely on ritual.
The problem really goes to our bias of our science as superior to any other way of knowing and interacting with the world, and calling anything else irrational or superstitious. It's sort of a circular argument: If it's not science, it's religion. Therefore anything that people did before the advent of science is, by definition, religious.
A person from 5,000 years ago who dressed up in animal skins to communicate with weather spirits probably felt they were using the best, time-tested techniques to ensure the stability and well-being of the group. You certainly *are* able to have an experience of 'entities' -- see Strassman's "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" -- while under the influence of entheogenic drugs. So, no faith or dogma needed. Just drink a vine potion, and you can talk to the Gods yourself.
So would this person have said they were practicing 'religion'? Probably not. The category of religion is a relatively recent conception. He probably would have categorized what he was doing more like diplomacy -- negotiating with the gods or spirits on behalf of the tribe.
Of course, we know that spirits don't really exist -- we can't measure them scientifically -- so if you happen to talk to a giant Mantid after taking a herioc dose of Salvinorin A, you were either hallucinating or insane. Spirits can't be measured, therefore any interaction with spirits is religious activity.
Why this guy got thrown in with shamans, don't ask me.
This microchip stuff is really frightening. It reminds me of the tattoos that the Nazis used to track their prison camp inmates. I fear that we are moving to a society where to participate you must be microchipped, and the government will have complete knowledge of your whereabouts and activities.
I'm not a end-times Christian or a conspiracy theorist ( okay, a *sometimes* conspiracy theorist ), but I see this as a stepping stone to a path of complete control over the individual. If you can be electronically identified against your will at a distance, you lose a basic freedom not to be surveilled. You lose a fundamental right to privacy and anonymity.
If the power were in the hands of the individual -- say, I could remove the chip any time I wanted, I could identify anyone I wanted, I could know where the president was and who he was with at any time, then it would be a different story. But of course you can't remove the microchip -- that goes against the whole idea of the thing. To be monitored without your consent. It's power-over. If everyone were microchipped, we would live in a pan-opticon society, where our invisible overlords know our every move.
First it was pets, now it's dangerous disease-spreaders, next criminals and predators, after that children and elderly, in case they get lost, finally everybody, just to walk down the street and buy a drink at the corner store.
Wikipedia says this:
His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems", and Erds drank copious quantities. (This quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erds.)[5] After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[6] Erds won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit.
He took the drugs daily until he died.
Have you read any of the latest research about nicotine? It seems to promote neuron growth.
Now, let me be very clear. Consumption of tobacco in any form, be it smoking, chewing, or snuffing, will give you cancer. There are lots of crazy chemicals in that old tobacco leaf, and many more are synthesized during curing processing, and burning.
But the drug by itself is not carcinogenic. It's one of those drugs that are shaped like neurotransmitters. As for why it's addictive, I think it's because it casus relaxation, focus, and concentration, and for those people who are constantly stressed out and unable to relax themselves, rely on a drug to do it for them.
So, you might take it as a prophylactic as you age. I plan on chewing the gum when I enter my 60s.
Just as an anecdotal story, my grandma died last year at age ninety. She was losing her marbles, but she was never officially diagnosed with anything. She would mix up dates, still think I was seeing a girl from 5 years ago ( you could see how excited she was that she was able to recall the name of this girlfriend.) After she died, my parents found a scrap of paper on her make-up table where she had written her name.
My grandpa is 91 now, and he's still a cogent storyteller. He has strident opinions about current politics and sports, and also an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Toledo, Ohio, a lot of which he personally lived through. He smokes a pipe.
I'm not sure if you noticed, but I was actually advocating the switch to either a socialist or libertarian mindset in this country.
Sorry, your fairness and balance threw me ;)
Wow...hypocritical much? I actually lived in South America for a couple of years and I've been all over the continent and your blanket generalization is completely unfair. Yes, people are poor...but in what 3rd world country is that not the case? And stuff sucks everywhere, but that's a pretty universal condition as well, especially in the 3rd world. But calling it a shithole is completely unfair.
You're right. Calling South America a shithole was out of line. I was wrong.
People are poor in the third world, and my question is, "Why?" The US was poor once. Japan was poor once. Europe has been poor many times over. Why is there a first world and a third world? What lifts countries out of poverty and provides for the common person? I argue that it's because of social democracy and the labor movement bringing people out of poverty.
These days I think libertarianism is like communism. It sounds good in theory, but it never works in practice -- it simply turns into fuedalism, which is more or less what you mostly have in South America -- corruption, cronyism, etc. I think that libertarians are misguided in thinking that free markets will provide for the people.
It's easy for an American to visit South America, live and travel amongst the upper 10%, and think that it's more or less like the US. But the thing is, what we consider middle-class in the US is wealthy. We have a hard time realizing how wealthy we really are. So for all those people who want less government in the US, and want to be more like South America, I hope they never experience that slide into poverty, because chances are, they'll end up in the poor 90%, not the rich 10%.
Funnily enough, I've had the opposite experience: people who are younger, in terms of experience or age, are a lot more positive in their opinions and close-minded than older or more experienced people. I don't have a lot of theory around this, except that a more experienced person has had a lot more opportunity to be proven wrong about their preconceptions.
I have to agree with you here. I think that the younger you are, the more likely you are to want to do things your way, to think that your ideas are the greatest in the world, and that your the first person to ever think such a wonderful thing, and that everything would be so much better if people would just listen to you. In fact, if you ruled the planet, things would be perfect. And then, because of your blind, unfailing belief in yourself and You Ideas, you are willing to put in countless hours working on them, in spite of all reality.
As I get older, I have to learn time and time again that 1. I am an idiot, 2. so is everyone else, and 3. if we put our heads together and talk about things long enough, the non-stupid way will emerge.
This seems such a trivial question as to be laughable. In my sixth form computing course (high school level) we were taught not to use integers for things like phone numbers. Anyone who's spent five minutes with a database would know this.
Yes, if you've taken classes on normalized forms, it's laughable. But have you ever worked with programmers who have no experience with relational databases? There are a lot out there, IMHO.
We should be looking at ways to run Socialism (the OS X of governments...very user-centric, less gets done but people are generally happier, though it's hard to figure out exactly why that is considering how much they're paying for it)
I love these memes that have run rampant in the American psyche. In 1996, I was an exchange student in Finland for a year. Made a couple life-long friends. Now I'm thirty, have a job with no benefits. I pay my own health insurance, pay off my student loan, and invest in my own IRA. My car is older, it needs some repairs, and I am trying to decide if I should repair it, buy a younger used car. I'm worried about how I'm going to care for my parents when they get old. Nevermind me and a family !
Meanwhile my Finnish buddies had school paid for, have health insurance, retirement, public transportation, and 6 weeks of vacation. They complain about their life, for sure, but things don't look as bleak for them as they do for me and my peers.
Nothing gets done in a socialist country? Why, turn off Fox News and visit a socialist country. You'll have a wonderful experience in a modern, state-of-the-art civilization. Is it expensive? Yes. Like anything, if you want quality, you have to pay for it. I've been to several socialist countries in Europe, they're all wonderful, clean, and safe. I've been to South American countries, which I regard to be libertarian paradises. There are no rules, nobody pays their taxes. Politicians siphon of all the money anyways. The streets are unpaved, with raw sewers in them. Whole families, mom, dad, and kids, live on the streets. You can buy anything you want in the market -- anything. The whole place is a shithole, but the people really are free. No cop or anybody is going to tell you what to do. You might get beat up by a gang over $10, but you are free. It's kind of cool in a Mad-max way.
Did the internships help you in any way ( technical skills, dealing with non-technical peers, interpersonal skills, office politics ) once you landed a real job?
But then, wouldn't that expose much of the inner workings of windows, and accelerate the advance of projects such as WINE?
Certainly there are people who voted for McCain because of his race, considering who he was up against. Also, they thought that he would make them a millionaire, like Joe the Plumber, who was planning on somehow buying a business that would probably be valued at 2 million dollars, while he was only making $40k a year.
Yes, because the world is uniform and the same everywhere, and is composed of black-white dualities.
If a Bi-racial Chicago politician can be elected by appealing to the black vote, the rust belt, and urban populations, then surely any poor black person growing up in rural Alabama will never suffer the stifling limitations of a racial society.
We have the right to bare arms. PERIOD. That means if I want a magazine that holds 50+ rounds, I can have it. If I want a machine gun, so be it. Handgun -you bet - and NO license if I want to carry
Are you allowed to bear your own bombs, tanks, and fighter planes? Missile launchers? RPG launchers? Fertilizer truck bombs? IEDs?
Are you insane?
Your website link claims that Obama is " Most Liberal Senator In 2007 " when he serves with Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, who openly declares himself to be a socialist ?
The C syntax. :P
Seriously, the changes would never be accepted by the devs, so there's no point in doing it for NetHack. I would just be making a version for myself, or Yet Another NH Clone. Why just just start over in that case?
Those are great points. I thought that the games of the future, MMORPGs, would have only emergent gameplay and player-created content. To have a designer create a level that isn't 'hackable' by emergent play takes tremendous effort, and, as you point out, is error-prone. Furthermore, to have engaging stories in a MMORPG is also difficult to program.
:) Great stories will emerge out of that.
So yes, it is difficult, but we're sort of bursting at the seams trying to develop games in a traditional manner for MMORPGs. I think what will happen in the future is that human players will learn the emergent behavior of the game, and the "storylines" will be generated by the players, as they try to use the game against each other -- all of the Avatar King's horsemen versus the Avartar Wizard's Dungeons and Dragons, so to speak