Clarification - weak AI theorists think that access consciousness(intelligence, concepts, memory, etc) can be simulated but *not reproduced.* They just don't believe that phenomenal consciousness can.
It definitely entails(not implies) that we can simulate part of the world on a computer, as you say. It in no way implies that we can simulate the whole world. There are plenty of seemingly non-algorithmic processes going on - things that can't be reduced to a series of computational steps. Cognitivists and weak AI theorists, for instance, suggest that phenomenal consciousness and intelligence(the experience of what it's like to be X - X being you, for instance) are not algorithmic processes and thus cannot be simulated or reproduced by a computer. Unfortunately, the intuition of intelligent design "theorists" seems on its face compelling, given our day-to-day experience of ourselves. I mean this not with regard to evolution(about which, of course, they are wrong), but with regard to dualism involving more than one assumption about the predictablity and kind of substances that exist in the world.
Now, it's quite possible we just haven't found the algorithm(or the underlying physical process) to describe consciousness. And it all depends on your definition of the word "simulate" - that is, strong simulation vs. weak simulation.
I hope so. WebObjects is a great product that I don't feel is being marketed as well as it could be. I tried to get into it earlier this summer, but the documentation is sparse and there is no gold-standard beginner's book on the market(the most highly recommended one went out of print - is that the sign of a dying technology?).
WebObjects would be very competitive placed head to head with Atlas and ASP.net, especially with a more refined Linux/BSD deployment support. Right now deploying to Linux is a bit difficult. I just wish Apple would get on that more aggressively.
So you're going to forfeit your ability to use a pretty cool technology just because some users *might* have javascript disabled? What if you're in a corporate environment where you pretty much know none of your web application's users are going to modify their browser settings and you know what type of browsers they aer using? And while it is true that cross-browser compatibility is difficult and time-consuming to guarantee, other technologies like the Google Web Toolkit(which I am using right now to build an AJAX application entirely in Java for my university....well, while I'm not slacking off and reading slashdot, anyway) save a lot of that work.
Jobs already thought of this. Rumor has it the upcoming WWDC will see also the release of an iPlane. The plane is piloted by Jobs look-alikes, fitted with plush velvet seats with integrated cinema displays, and (most relevantly) a Reality Distortion Field generator powerful enough to keep the interference from iPhones from messing with the radar. It comes in translucent Tangerine and Blueberry.
He disclaimed his statement by saying he wasn't too familiar with it. If you act like that around people in the physical world...well, the word "socially retarded" comes to mind.
You can say that about most actors in Hollywood, but this is definitely a matter of opinion. Damon has played a lot of diverse roles - I challenge you to find the common intersection of Bourne Identity and Syriana and the Rainmaker in terms of the characters Damon played in those movies, for instance. He has good delivery and a physicality that works realistically in a wide variety of roles.
Personally, on the other hand, I don't think I can remember one good movie that Affleck has been in besides Good Will Hunting and Kevin Smith's various projects. He works well when he has a script that he would have to try really hard to ruin. I think his successes have more to do with the talent of the filmmaker than with him. Judging by his inability to pick roles from good screenplays, I doubt his broader artistic talents are at all commensurate with Damon's.
Both Affleck and Damon received an Oscar for writing Good Will Hunting, but I think it was originally Matt Damon's play. Ben Affleck seems to have gone along for the ride in a minimally colloborative sense.
I'm having trouble distinguishing between the two. How is a mandate supposed to be enforced if it isn't a statute that says, "If you don't do x and y, we will punish you?" Isn't that what a mandate is? Please clarify.
There's no point since he's right. I didn't really think about the math until just now - but the impulse that the vest has to deal with is larger with a bouncing bullet than wihout, while the total energy that the vest has to deal with is less.
In an election, there's only one poll that counts, and that poll is neither a random sampling, nor a scientifically conducted demographically chosen sampling. The poll that counts measures the entire dataset. everyone. It is not subject to statistical anomalies because it is not a stastical poll. It is THE COUNT.
Exactly. The number that is used to inaugurate a leader to our federal government is, of course, the vote count. So what exactly is the incentive to skew the results of the exit polls - especially if they don't match up with the count? If the exit polls are inaccurate then the pollsters get the shaft and are no longer respected, but the election still remains the same. Look for the motive. Can you tell me waht the incentive is to skew the exit polls?
Did you even read my post?
The polls that the news networks report are adjusted to reflect the count result later in the evening. The final result that the networks give is the result of the actual reports coming in from the districts. Therefore at the end of the night the exit polls are irrelevant, and as we can see they are shoved under the rug(most of the reports of discrepancies in exit polls are coming from people who were able to tape the news coverage and see how the exit polls were reported at various times in the evening). There is really no incentive for a pollster whose *entire* job it is to statistically predict the outcome of the election to be *wrong*. 99% of the time they are within very close proximity(0.5% to 1.0% to the right result). If they are wrong, then the supposedly "correct" election final count will undermine their data and they are discredited. Again, the polls are being conducted by people of *both* parties. Moreover the polls are also used presumably in combination with the voting reports to allow the news networks to project the winner of states.If the news anchors are wrong, as they were when they called Florida and the 2000 election for Al Gore, then Bush, th en Al Gore, then they look *REALLY* foolish and lose credibility. So there is no real motive or potential to skew the results anywhere in the process, since those numbers are both publicly monitored and rapidly become obsolete. Even if the pollsters have a bias they are cancellled out by pollsters of the other party.
On the other hand the people who administer the election often have obvious conflicts of interest(witness Ken Blackwell, Secretary of State of Ohio (charged with administering the election) and chairman to Ohio's campaign to re-elect George Bush)
And on the other hand, there is a powerful incentive to change the actual vote reports coming in from the polling places, since that is the number that the electors use to cast their state's vote one way or the other.
Hey, if the exit polls are being manipulated, we should investigate that too. But the more important question is BY FAR how we are obtaining the actual election results, since the exit polls don't actually result in any change in the composition of our government.
Hmm. I'm not sure what you're arguing against, as I didn't say that the person wearing the vest experienced no force or that the vest experienced no force, just that the fact that the bullet bounces off the vest means that the vast has exceptional elastic qualities that diminish the total impulse(and kinetic energy) absorbed by the person behind the vest. This is because the total energy transmitted to the person is proportional to the force (impulse) due to the collision. If some kinetic energy is reflected back into the bullet, that means that the total impulse the person(who is behind the vest) experiences due to the collision is also diminished. Therefore, you can make the assumption that a bullet bouncing off the vest signifies that the vest has better protection than a vest that would absorb the bullet, along with all of its momentum and kinetic energy.
In other words, F * dt = dp, or dp/dt = F(which is Newton's second law in terms of momentum) . In an elastic collision, the bullet will experience a reaction impulse causing it to bounce off the vest. Thanks to the fact that the vest is exceptional at redirecting the impulse of the bullet collision in the opposite direction, the remaining momentum that it has to absorb is also diminished, and therefore the task of protecting the person behind the vest from the collision is easier.
In the end it worked out quite well actually. Once Arnold killed off his adversaries and pressed the button that thawed out the huge frozen oxygen supply, Mars instantly grew a breathable atmosphere(apparently displacing all that toxic gas and without any lethal thermal ramifications) and people were able to walk the terrain freely, without the really annoying effect of toxic asphyxiation(which apparently looks like animatronic eyes bulging out of your head in a comically overdone fashion). It worked even better for Arnold himself: five minutes after creating the Martian atmosphere, he was able to make out with his love interest on top of a Martian mountain, without having to "come up for air." as they say. So once all threats were out of the way, the bubble had provided a perfect intermediary living solution before we instantly terraformed Mars!
Actually, you can. The bullet carries a momentum and kinetic energy, as you said. If the bullet bounces off the vest, that means (if momentum and energy are conserved, which they are) the vest *reflected* much more of the kinetic energy of the oncoming bullet back into the bullet elastically, and that a higher portion of kinetic energy stayed in a state of kinetic energy rather than being absorbed by the target body. That kinetic energy is energy that didn't end up being dissipated as heat or internal energy by the vest, and didn't get absorbed through a force applied over an area to the person wearing the vest. Thus, the overall impact is less than if the bullet had been "absorbed"(via bullet wound) by the person wearing the vest.
I never quite understood how that photo-magnification/voice-recognition machine that Deckard uses could reveal an object that's behind ANOTHER object in the original (apparently 2-dimensional) photo. Did photos grow a 3rd dimension and cameras the ability to see around objects? Does Deckard have a giant fiber-optic periscope?
Also, actually, I was talking about 12 MIDNIGHT, not 12 noon. I saw CNN's polls around midnight of Novembe 2 2004, they showed Kerry with more respondents than Bush, if I recall correctly and my information is correct. Wikipedia has this data from 12:21AM:
CNN screenshot #1: 12.21 am, 1963 respondents so far Total vote: Male 47%, Female 53% of which:
Male - Bush 47% x 49% x 1963 452
Male - Kerry 47% x 51% x 1963 471
Female - Bush 53% x 47% x 1963 489
Female - Kerry 53% x 53% x 1963 551
TOTAL - Bush 941
TOTAL - Kerry 1022
It's admitteedly from a biased source, but on election night I remember exit polls favoring Kerry before midnight and waking up to find that Bush had one the election.
How would rigging the exit polls do anything but give the wrong result to the news networks who are covering the election? The tallies are what is used to certify the election, not the exit polls. Also, statisticians and pollsters work for *both* parties, not just one, so any bias cancels itself out. They also have a vested interest in giving the right result - otherwise their polling business would be well...out of business.
I don't suppose you read the entire blog post that you linked to( are you sure you linked to the right one? Am I missing something here?). It seems to support my side rather than your side. Unless you are referring to some of the comments.
The author says this:
For example, one early explanation of the exit poll errors was that (more Democratic) women tend to vote early, while (more Republican) men vote later. Such an explanation could be supported by finding trends in the biases during election day (E/M reported poll results in three waves). But no such pattern is found, and E/M do not propose that explanation. They analyze data from the end of the polling day, and it is those data that show the biases they are trying to explain.
So what do they propose? E/M's explanation is simply that Bush voters were substantially more likely than Kerry voters to decline to be interviewed. (Specifically that 56% of Bush voters but only 50% of Kerry voters declined.) E/M offer no evidence of this other than the obvious fact that the polls don't match the recorded vote and the unstated fact that they can find no other explanation. But there are no underlying patterns to support their explanation. For example, E/M look for patterns in refusals and find none. In fact, as the US Count Votes report points out, the response rate of voters willing to be polled is actually a bit larger (although probably not significantly so) in states that voted more strongly for Bush--the opposite of the pattern that would support E/M's hypothesis.
So, actually, that's in direct contradiction to what you just said, and the author you linked to support your argument is actually refuting the exact claims that you make.
I don't have any smoking gun evidence that 2004 was fraud - that wouldn't be very well executed election fraud if I did, either. As the author of article you linked to points out, there are only a couple of explanations for the discprancy between exit polling and the tallies, and one of them is malfeasance. The bottom line is that we need transparent elections so that these things don't happen and are not suspected to happen *ever* - it is not just absurd to protest any effort to make our elections more accurate, accountable, and open. It is downright anti-democratic, and yet the people who we ask to protect our right to be heard in our government seem reluctant to reform the system at all. These controversies shouldn't happen to the degree that they do - the fact that there is any doubt whatsoever is an indication that something is terribly wrong. The result should be clear. Fundamentally, this is essentially *counting*, something we all learn when we're basically toddlers. We've built nuclear bombs and gone to the moon - why the hell can't we *count?*
If the exit polls, which are taken AS PEOPLE LEAVE THE POLLING PLACES and which have a margin of error LOWER than the margin of defeat by the election, show something at 12 o'clock that is directly contradicted by the election result then yes, something funny IS going on. IF the election process is being rigged, then nothing we do in our campaigns is going to help. This is NOT just a liberal problem. It is in EVERYONE's interest, NOT JUST LIBERALS, to establish a free, fair, transparent election process available to EVERYONE who is allowed and who wants to vote. It is just absurd that we aren't more vigilant about this, in this day and age.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps, but I think the more likely possibility is that it was an intentional use of mental retardation.
Clarification - weak AI theorists think that access consciousness(intelligence, concepts, memory, etc) can be simulated but *not reproduced.* They just don't believe that phenomenal consciousness can.
It definitely entails(not implies) that we can simulate part of the world on a computer, as you say. It in no way implies that we can simulate the whole world. There are plenty of seemingly non-algorithmic processes going on - things that can't be reduced to a series of computational steps. Cognitivists and weak AI theorists, for instance, suggest that phenomenal consciousness and intelligence(the experience of what it's like to be X - X being you, for instance) are not algorithmic processes and thus cannot be simulated or reproduced by a computer. Unfortunately, the intuition of intelligent design "theorists" seems on its face compelling, given our day-to-day experience of ourselves. I mean this not with regard to evolution(about which, of course, they are wrong), but with regard to dualism involving more than one assumption about the predictablity and kind of substances that exist in the world.
Now, it's quite possible we just haven't found the algorithm(or the underlying physical process) to describe consciousness. And it all depends on your definition of the word "simulate" - that is, strong simulation vs. weak simulation.
I hope so. WebObjects is a great product that I don't feel is being marketed as well as it could be. I tried to get into it earlier this summer, but the documentation is sparse and there is no gold-standard beginner's book on the market(the most highly recommended one went out of print - is that the sign of a dying technology?).
WebObjects would be very competitive placed head to head with Atlas and ASP.net, especially with a more refined Linux/BSD deployment support. Right now deploying to Linux is a bit difficult. I just wish Apple would get on that more aggressively.
So you're going to forfeit your ability to use a pretty cool technology just because some users *might* have javascript disabled? What if you're in a corporate environment where you pretty much know none of your web application's users are going to modify their browser settings and you know what type of browsers they aer using? And while it is true that cross-browser compatibility is difficult and time-consuming to guarantee, other technologies like the Google Web Toolkit(which I am using right now to build an AJAX application entirely in Java for my university....well, while I'm not slacking off and reading slashdot, anyway) save a lot of that work.
PlanemO's are actually God's cereal.
Jobs already thought of this. Rumor has it the upcoming WWDC will see also the release of an iPlane. The plane is piloted by Jobs look-alikes, fitted with plush velvet seats with integrated cinema displays, and (most relevantly) a Reality Distortion Field generator powerful enough to keep the interference from iPhones from messing with the radar. It comes in translucent Tangerine and Blueberry.
words.
Fucktard? What is wrong with you?
He disclaimed his statement by saying he wasn't too familiar with it. If you act like that around people in the physical world...well, the word "socially retarded" comes to mind.
Because he gets to feed and clothe himself and perhaps his family with the money he makes there, I'm guessing.
or proof that he's just more forgettable?
You can say that about most actors in Hollywood, but this is definitely a matter of opinion. Damon has played a lot of diverse roles - I challenge you to find the common intersection of Bourne Identity and Syriana and the Rainmaker in terms of the characters Damon played in those movies, for instance. He has good delivery and a physicality that works realistically in a wide variety of roles.
Personally, on the other hand, I don't think I can remember one good movie that Affleck has been in besides Good Will Hunting and Kevin Smith's various projects. He works well when he has a script that he would have to try really hard to ruin. I think his successes have more to do with the talent of the filmmaker than with him. Judging by his inability to pick roles from good screenplays, I doubt his broader artistic talents are at all commensurate with Damon's.
Both Affleck and Damon received an Oscar for writing Good Will Hunting, but I think it was originally Matt Damon's play. Ben Affleck seems to have gone along for the ride in a minimally colloborative sense.
God uses a Mac.
If a bumper sticker says, it must be true!
I'm having trouble distinguishing between the two. How is a mandate supposed to be enforced if it isn't a statute that says, "If you don't do x and y, we will punish you?" Isn't that what a mandate is? Please clarify.
sarcasm And hilarious definitely has a set definition and is definitely NOT a matter of opinion. /sarcasm
There's no point since he's right. I didn't really think about the math until just now - but the impulse that the vest has to deal with is larger with a bouncing bullet than wihout, while the total energy that the vest has to deal with is less.
Sigh. Brain fart.
Exactly. The number that is used to inaugurate a leader to our federal government is, of course, the vote count. So what exactly is the incentive to skew the results of the exit polls - especially if they don't match up with the count? If the exit polls are inaccurate then the pollsters get the shaft and are no longer respected, but the election still remains the same. Look for the motive. Can you tell me waht the incentive is to skew the exit polls?
Did you even read my post?
The polls that the news networks report are adjusted to reflect the count result later in the evening. The final result that the networks give is the result of the actual reports coming in from the districts. Therefore at the end of the night the exit polls are irrelevant, and as we can see they are shoved under the rug(most of the reports of discrepancies in exit polls are coming from people who were able to tape the news coverage and see how the exit polls were reported at various times in the evening). There is really no incentive for a pollster whose *entire* job it is to statistically predict the outcome of the election to be *wrong*. 99% of the time they are within very close proximity(0.5% to 1.0% to the right result). If they are wrong, then the supposedly "correct" election final count will undermine their data and they are discredited. Again, the polls are being conducted by people of *both* parties. Moreover the polls are also used presumably in combination with the voting reports to allow the news networks to project the winner of states.If the news anchors are wrong, as they were when they called Florida and the 2000 election for Al Gore, then Bush, th en Al Gore, then they look *REALLY* foolish and lose credibility. So there is no real motive or potential to skew the results anywhere in the process, since those numbers are both publicly monitored and rapidly become obsolete. Even if the pollsters have a bias they are cancellled out by pollsters of the other party.
On the other hand the people who administer the election often have obvious conflicts of interest(witness Ken Blackwell, Secretary of State of Ohio (charged with administering the election) and chairman to Ohio's campaign to re-elect George Bush)
And on the other hand, there is a powerful incentive to change the actual vote reports coming in from the polling places, since that is the number that the electors use to cast their state's vote one way or the other.
Hey, if the exit polls are being manipulated, we should investigate that too. But the more important question is BY FAR how we are obtaining the actual election results, since the exit polls don't actually result in any change in the composition of our government.
Hmm. I'm not sure what you're arguing against, as I didn't say that the person wearing the vest experienced no force or that the vest experienced no force, just that the fact that the bullet bounces off the vest means that the vast has exceptional elastic qualities that diminish the total impulse(and kinetic energy) absorbed by the person behind the vest. This is because the total energy transmitted to the person is proportional to the force (impulse) due to the collision. If some kinetic energy is reflected back into the bullet, that means that the total impulse the person(who is behind the vest) experiences due to the collision is also diminished. Therefore, you can make the assumption that a bullet bouncing off the vest signifies that the vest has better protection than a vest that would absorb the bullet, along with all of its momentum and kinetic energy.
In other words, F * dt = dp, or dp/dt = F(which is Newton's second law in terms of momentum) . In an elastic collision, the bullet will experience a reaction impulse causing it to bounce off the vest. Thanks to the fact that the vest is exceptional at redirecting the impulse of the bullet collision in the opposite direction, the remaining momentum that it has to absorb is also diminished, and therefore the task of protecting the person behind the vest from the collision is easier.
In the end it worked out quite well actually. Once Arnold killed off his adversaries and pressed the button that thawed out the huge frozen oxygen supply, Mars instantly grew a breathable atmosphere(apparently displacing all that toxic gas and without any lethal thermal ramifications) and people were able to walk the terrain freely, without the really annoying effect of toxic asphyxiation(which apparently looks like animatronic eyes bulging out of your head in a comically overdone fashion). It worked even better for Arnold himself: five minutes after creating the Martian atmosphere, he was able to make out with his love interest on top of a Martian mountain, without having to "come up for air." as they say. So once all threats were out of the way, the bubble had provided a perfect intermediary living solution before we instantly terraformed Mars!
It's prophetic. Face it.
Actually, you can. The bullet carries a momentum and kinetic energy, as you said. If the bullet bounces off the vest, that means (if momentum and energy are conserved, which they are) the vest *reflected* much more of the kinetic energy of the oncoming bullet back into the bullet elastically, and that a higher portion of kinetic energy stayed in a state of kinetic energy rather than being absorbed by the target body. That kinetic energy is energy that didn't end up being dissipated as heat or internal energy by the vest, and didn't get absorbed through a force applied over an area to the person wearing the vest. Thus, the overall impact is less than if the bullet had been "absorbed"(via bullet wound) by the person wearing the vest.
I never quite understood how that photo-magnification/voice-recognition machine that Deckard uses could reveal an object that's behind ANOTHER object in the original (apparently 2-dimensional) photo. Did photos grow a 3rd dimension and cameras the ability to see around objects? Does Deckard have a giant fiber-optic periscope?
Also, actually, I was talking about 12 MIDNIGHT, not 12 noon. I saw CNN's polls around midnight of Novembe 2 2004, they showed Kerry with more respondents than Bush, if I recall correctly and my information is correct. Wikipedia has this data from 12:21AM:
CNN screenshot #1:
12.21 am, 1963 respondents so far
Total vote: Male 47%, Female 53% of which:
Male - Bush 47% x 49% x 1963 452
Male - Kerry 47% x 51% x 1963 471
Female - Bush 53% x 47% x 1963 489
Female - Kerry 53% x 53% x 1963 551
TOTAL - Bush 941
TOTAL - Kerry 1022
It's admitteedly from a biased source, but on election night I remember exit polls favoring Kerry before midnight and waking up to find that Bush had one the election.
How would rigging the exit polls do anything but give the wrong result to the news networks who are covering the election? The tallies are what is used to certify the election, not the exit polls. Also, statisticians and pollsters work for *both* parties, not just one, so any bias cancels itself out. They also have a vested interest in giving the right result - otherwise their polling business would be well...out of business.
I don't suppose you read the entire blog post that you linked to( are you sure you linked to the right one? Am I missing something here?). It seems to support my side rather than your side. Unless you are referring to some of the comments.
The author says this:
So, actually, that's in direct contradiction to what you just said, and the author you linked to support your argument is actually refuting the exact claims that you make.
I don't have any smoking gun evidence that 2004 was fraud - that wouldn't be very well executed election fraud if I did, either. As the author of article you linked to points out, there are only a couple of explanations for the discprancy between exit polling and the tallies, and one of them is malfeasance. The bottom line is that we need transparent elections so that these things don't happen and are not suspected to happen *ever* - it is not just absurd to protest any effort to make our elections more accurate, accountable, and open. It is downright anti-democratic, and yet the people who we ask to protect our right to be heard in our government seem reluctant to reform the system at all. These controversies shouldn't happen to the degree that they do - the fact that there is any doubt whatsoever is an indication that something is terribly wrong. The result should be clear. Fundamentally, this is essentially *counting*, something we all learn when we're basically toddlers. We've built nuclear bombs and gone to the moon - why the hell can't we *count?*
If the exit polls, which are taken AS PEOPLE LEAVE THE POLLING PLACES and which have a margin of error LOWER than the margin of defeat by the election, show something at 12 o'clock that is directly contradicted by the election result then yes, something funny IS going on. IF the election process is being rigged, then nothing we do in our campaigns is going to help. This is NOT just a liberal problem. It is in EVERYONE's interest, NOT JUST LIBERALS, to establish a free, fair, transparent election process available to EVERYONE who is allowed and who wants to vote. It is just absurd that we aren't more vigilant about this, in this day and age.