I don't know, but every time I drive out to West Texas on I-10, I see trucks carrying windmill parts, and I see more windmills on the plateaus visible from the highway. So somebody is finding places to put them. Or already owns suitable places and is occupying them over time. Maybe that's who the Chinese are selling to, and that's why that land isn't an available choice for your customer? I don't know.
Meanwhile, 36K acres to power 150K homes? Doesn't a nice nuclear plant only need 100 acres or so to provide power that same number?
Yes but there's a big difference in how those acres are occupied. One is sparsely occupied by the windmill towers, the other is a field of impermeable ground cover.
How do you figure, when it's the rich who control all the money and opportunity and even practically the government?
If the poor are all that matter, why is it okay to shaft them for greater executive compensation?
And under the system we've got, they have a better chance of yanking themselves up than under any other system.
Any system? Including the equally affluent western democracies which don't have such a ridiculous gap between top and bottom salaries? In fact there are plenty of countries where as far as upward mobility and income are concerned, concentration of wealth in the hands of the few at the top is the primary difference.
So why, again, do we need to "tolerate" such a gap when it is demonstrably unnecessary?
Why do you think people from third world countries will abandon everything to come and live here?
Because obviously any western democracy is going to be more of a meritocracy than the countries they are coming from, . But "better than 3rd world hellhole!" is a hell of a lot lower of a claim than "best system ever!"
They're not just going to the countries with ridiculous wealth gaps. So, obviously, that is not the defining characteristic of a country with opportunity for the poor. I think any rational person could see that, given the choice between two democracies, one where concentration of wealth has run amok and one where it hasn't, the one where it hasn't is better for the poor.
Focusing on the fact that both are better than Somalia is really missing the point.
Lord Brian Griffiths of Fforestfach, vice chairman at Goldman Sachs Intl., a life peer under England's nobility scheme, and Christian theorist of "biblically based wealth creation." recently said: "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all."
Barf.
Oh yes, I'm sure it's such burden for him to "tolerate" this inequality. But, it's for the benefit of us all, so he carries on, carries on...
The last expansion of World of Warcraft had many quests to torture people for information. They also added a quest chain to spread disinformation about a group of dissenters in Theramore, then assassinate their leader. It reminded me of the FBI operation known as COINTELPRO.
Yeah, and they also have a huge number of quests where you help the living dead create a plague that is capable of destroying all life. ZOMG the government is planning to begin biological warfare and is using WoW to trick us into accepting this in real life!
OOOOORRRRR WoW is a game where you play on one of two extremely war-like factions who have engaged in any number of morally questionable activities over the years, and these are just another.
The reason that quest reminded you of COINTELPRO is because that's the historical example that resonated with you, but it could have been any of a hundred attempts to discredit and then behead resistance movements throughout history. For example I bet if you were a Tamil then you'd have a different opinion of who was "pulling the strings" at Blizzard. The Sri Lankan government is well known for their psy-ops, aided by the Indian government. A quick google search will verify this!
No, I'm quite aware of those losses. Kinetic to electrical can be incredibly efficient, you lose energy to friction in the motor and resistive losses which are minimized due to it being AC. Electric to chemical depends on the battery and can be improved -- I'm wagering this is the biggest factor. Losses due to air resistance is proportional to the cube of velocity, and the amount of time. The time it takes to "brake" just from air resistance is much more than the average braking time and ergo wind resistance represents a small fraction of where energy goes when actively braking. The only limit here is comfort level of the driver.:)
None of which still speaks to the matter of -- how does it violate the laws of thermodynamics to have a highly efficient regenerative breaking system? It doesn't. The 2nd Law only says no conversion can be 100% efficient. Two conversions of close to 100% is also close to 100%. So it's not practical today to build one that is that good; I didn't say it was. I said there's no law of physics preventing it, and there isn't.
That's a fair statement of the practical results of a brake that combines regenerative breaking with traditional pads.
It has nothing to do with a thermodynamic limit like the GP was talking about. It is possible to make a regenerative system that is very close to 100% efficient.
Or buy a lotus elise and have the same car with more performance
Except not. The Roadster beats the Elise 0-60 by over a second. Hell it beats sports cars that are twice the cost. It's top speed is lower, but it has a limiter.
and can be refueled at any gas station
Definitely a big disadvantage for the Roadster, in those situations where it matters. As in not a lot of people are driving their sports cars cross country. If you do, the Roadster won't work. If that's not a problem, then the Roadster has the advantage that you never have to visit the gas station.
for 1/2 the money.
True on initial cost, but one of the big things that keeps me from wanting a sports car (aside from lack of pretension, ask me again when mid-life crisis kicks in) is the ongoing maintenance costs. Especially for a foreign sports car. Electric cars are win for maintenance costs.
Whether I use the phrase "laughable pile of dog shit" or not is largely irrelevant.
It may not matter to the people you are describing. However it is quite relevant to the issue of whether your post would correctly be modded flamebait by an objective moderator.
My main point - the underlying concept itself - is (quite literally) heretical. Regardless of the words I choose to express it.
It all depends on the audience.
I think you'll find other posts under this story that compare Scientology to mainstream religions which are not moderated flamebait. So either the "audience" changed halfway down the page, or your theory doesn't hold water and your post was in fact flamebait in a way other posts were not. Though that's not actually an exclusive 'or'... even if an uptight religious person with modpoints modded you for content rather than form, your post was flamebait.
Obviously Scientology is a laughable pile of dog shit, but how is it any worse than any of the other superstitious cults out there, like Christianity or Islam?
Fuck you. Go worship your stupid fucking alien/zombie magic savior. News flash: He's not coming back for you. Fucktards.
There's very little substantive difference between those two lines as far as being flamebait. Do you really think "fuck" is the difference between being flamebait and not? Or do you not understand the difference between a flame and flamebait?
You were modded appropriately. Sorry if you really didn't understand you were posting flamebait, though it'd be better if you just understood that and accepted the inevitable mods without caring. Either way whining about it is pathetic.
Indeed! And it's exactly that kind of unspoken assumption that can make/break an algorithm. Who knows -- maybe the only problem with Skynet was that somebody forgot to write a rule that wiping out humanity was not an acceptable solution to human conflict.
The History Channel, which had already degenerated into the Hitler Channel, is now more like the "Conspiracies about Hitler and the Occult" channel.
I will not let you talk that way about the channel that brought us "The History of the Machine Gun" (the history of which can be described in one word: awesome).
But seriously, I see a lot better documentaries on PBS. Including on the topic of war and Hitler.
I see your point about the usefulness and prevalence of these analogies.
Yeah, they are essentially analogies -- how could they be otherwise, when comparing robots to life forms? They're just pretty good ones.:)
I just still question how well they fit the biological model.
It's a fair question.
One thing that may help is to remember that these robots are evolving behaviors comparable to those of very stupid bugs. "Deceive" may seem to imply some intentional act of subterfuge, but for many animals the concept of "intent" isn't very useful. E.g. the harmless king snake almost certainly doesn't "know" that it is kept safe from predators by looking a lot like the deadly coral snake, but nevertheless we call that an example of deceptive markings. It just evolved that way. And for creatures as simple as insects (or these robots), they "learn" new behaviors in much the same way, over generations of evolution, not as a direct response to stimuli.
As for the evolutionary mechanism itself -- well, the same principles apply here*, which is why it's so effective. But as far as actually fitting biology, that's an open question. Aside from obviously differing in the specifics (binary vs base pairs etc), the main way in which I'd say it differs is that the simulated evolution is too restrictive. They probably have chosen a fixed algorithm for how to combine genomes from successful robots, and a fixed mutation rate, and quite possibly even a fixed neural network size, and the genome just maps directly to the neural net structure. Whereas in nature, evolutionary mechanisms compete and evolve just the same as any other aspect of the organisms. For example there are both RNA- and DNA-based organisms, and the sizes and structures of these respective encodings can change. Many plants have evolved mechanisms for undoing mutations and copy errors in "important" sections of their genome. In nature, everything is subject to evolutionary pressure, while these robots have only a small subset (organization of their brain) open to modification.
On the other hand, 500 generations of a small population isn't that long, so while not universally true you could make an assumption that none of those other things would change in that time.
Which, now that I think about it, reminds me of the true biggest difference between this and natural evolution -- humans defining all of the parameters, and all the assumptions. Not just the algorithm for how the robots evolve, but even the criterion by which they are judged. In nature anything that survives to reproduce passes on its genes and that's all that matters. A natural organisms that failed to find its previously defined food source, but which adapted to exploit some other source of food, would be successful. But here, it's a hard-coded fact that the robots survive via "food" and die from "poison". None of the robots could ever evolve to 'eat' the poison and gain a tremendous advantage over the others.
Defining success ends up being the biggest challenge in practical applications of genetic algorithms. You don't want to define "success" too narrowly, or you inadvertently shut out novel solutions to problems. On the other hand, you can't define it too broadly or you'll get something that solved the problem you specified, but not the one you wanted. See above in the discussion about using GAs to write programmable logic chips and ending up with analog circuits which is not desirable for mass production.
Robots, AI, and artificial evolution are all nascent fields. It could be that as we progress all of these artificial limitations may be slowly blurred away until it resembles natural evolution by more than just analogy. Though the obvious question (and fodder for sci-fi) is whether we even want machines to evolve like natural organisms. I'm thinking no.:)
but i do appreciate your efforts to help me see.
I appreciate open-minded critical thinking.
* Principles largely established before the specific mechanisms were even known.
Slashdot Mirror
One was 100 acres of farmland, amd the other was 36K of farmland. Now it's Chinese vegetables for dinner.
Uh-huh, and now one cannot possibly be used for farmland, while the other can. Miss the point much?
I don't know, but every time I drive out to West Texas on I-10, I see trucks carrying windmill parts, and I see more windmills on the plateaus visible from the highway. So somebody is finding places to put them. Or already owns suitable places and is occupying them over time. Maybe that's who the Chinese are selling to, and that's why that land isn't an available choice for your customer? I don't know.
Meanwhile, 36K acres to power 150K homes? Doesn't a nice nuclear plant only need 100 acres or so to provide power that same number?
Yes but there's a big difference in how those acres are occupied. One is sparsely occupied by the windmill towers, the other is a field of impermeable ground cover.
Just saying. More nuke plants too please.
But in the words of William Shatner, playing himself on Saturday Night Live, "It was just a TV show!" Also in the same skit, "Get a life!"
But... but... that was his rendition of Evil Kirk! He said so!
Linux isnt magic.
That's because you forgot to sudo apt-get install magic.
To paraphrase Office Space, if everybody did what they loved, there would be a severe shortage of janitors.
Only Stanley Spedowski would remain, wielding his mop with pride!
Not really he just forgot to mention the additional restriction on the value of x. That's not the same as being uneducated.
The rich don't matter, the poor do.
How do you figure, when it's the rich who control all the money and opportunity and even practically the government?
If the poor are all that matter, why is it okay to shaft them for greater executive compensation?
And under the system we've got, they have a better chance of yanking themselves up than under any other system.
Any system? Including the equally affluent western democracies which don't have such a ridiculous gap between top and bottom salaries? In fact there are plenty of countries where as far as upward mobility and income are concerned, concentration of wealth in the hands of the few at the top is the primary difference.
So why, again, do we need to "tolerate" such a gap when it is demonstrably unnecessary?
Why do you think people from third world countries will abandon everything to come and live here?
Because obviously any western democracy is going to be more of a meritocracy than the countries they are coming from, . But "better than 3rd world hellhole!" is a hell of a lot lower of a claim than "best system ever!"
They're not just going to the countries with ridiculous wealth gaps. So, obviously, that is not the defining characteristic of a country with opportunity for the poor. I think any rational person could see that, given the choice between two democracies, one where concentration of wealth has run amok and one where it hasn't, the one where it hasn't is better for the poor.
Focusing on the fact that both are better than Somalia is really missing the point.
Lord Brian Griffiths of Fforestfach, vice chairman at Goldman Sachs Intl., a life peer under England's nobility scheme, and Christian theorist of "biblically based wealth creation." recently said: "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all."
Barf.
Oh yes, I'm sure it's such burden for him to "tolerate" this inequality. But, it's for the benefit of us all, so he carries on, carries on...
The last expansion of World of Warcraft had many quests to torture people for information. They also added a quest chain to spread disinformation about a group of dissenters in Theramore, then assassinate their leader. It reminded me of the FBI operation known as COINTELPRO.
Yeah, and they also have a huge number of quests where you help the living dead create a plague that is capable of destroying all life. ZOMG the government is planning to begin biological warfare and is using WoW to trick us into accepting this in real life!
OOOOORRRRR WoW is a game where you play on one of two extremely war-like factions who have engaged in any number of morally questionable activities over the years, and these are just another.
The reason that quest reminded you of COINTELPRO is because that's the historical example that resonated with you, but it could have been any of a hundred attempts to discredit and then behead resistance movements throughout history. For example I bet if you were a Tamil then you'd have a different opinion of who was "pulling the strings" at Blizzard. The Sri Lankan government is well known for their psy-ops, aided by the Indian government. A quick google search will verify this!
No, I'm quite aware of those losses. Kinetic to electrical can be incredibly efficient, you lose energy to friction in the motor and resistive losses which are minimized due to it being AC. Electric to chemical depends on the battery and can be improved -- I'm wagering this is the biggest factor. Losses due to air resistance is proportional to the cube of velocity, and the amount of time. The time it takes to "brake" just from air resistance is much more than the average braking time and ergo wind resistance represents a small fraction of where energy goes when actively braking. The only limit here is comfort level of the driver. :)
None of which still speaks to the matter of -- how does it violate the laws of thermodynamics to have a highly efficient regenerative breaking system? It doesn't. The 2nd Law only says no conversion can be 100% efficient. Two conversions of close to 100% is also close to 100%. So it's not practical today to build one that is that good; I didn't say it was. I said there's no law of physics preventing it, and there isn't.
That's a fair statement of the practical results of a brake that combines regenerative breaking with traditional pads.
It has nothing to do with a thermodynamic limit like the GP was talking about. It is possible to make a regenerative system that is very close to 100% efficient.
Our power grid is incapable of producing enough antimatter for even a single warp engine, much less an entire Star Fleet of them!
Wrong. Just because thermodynamics has "thermo" in it doesn't mean the laws only apply to heat.
And what part of "arbitrarily close to 100%" (subtle implication: but not equal to 100%) appears to violate the laws of thermodynamics to you?
Or buy a lotus elise and have the same car with more performance
Except not. The Roadster beats the Elise 0-60 by over a second. Hell it beats sports cars that are twice the cost. It's top speed is lower, but it has a limiter.
and can be refueled at any gas station
Definitely a big disadvantage for the Roadster, in those situations where it matters. As in not a lot of people are driving their sports cars cross country. If you do, the Roadster won't work. If that's not a problem, then the Roadster has the advantage that you never have to visit the gas station.
for 1/2 the money.
True on initial cost, but one of the big things that keeps me from wanting a sports car (aside from lack of pretension, ask me again when mid-life crisis kicks in) is the ongoing maintenance costs. Especially for a foreign sports car. Electric cars are win for maintenance costs.
Thanks. I'll hold that nugget of hope close to my heart.
P.S. I vote blow up the sun.
Whether I use the phrase "laughable pile of dog shit" or not is largely irrelevant.
It may not matter to the people you are describing. However it is quite relevant to the issue of whether your post would correctly be modded flamebait by an objective moderator.
My main point - the underlying concept itself - is (quite literally) heretical.
Regardless of the words I choose to express it.
It all depends on the audience.
I think you'll find other posts under this story that compare Scientology to mainstream religions which are not moderated flamebait. So either the "audience" changed halfway down the page, or your theory doesn't hold water and your post was in fact flamebait in a way other posts were not. Though that's not actually an exclusive 'or'... even if an uptight religious person with modpoints modded you for content rather than form, your post was flamebait.
Obviously Scientology is a laughable pile of dog shit, but how is it any worse than any of the other superstitious cults out there, like Christianity or Islam?
Fuck you. Go worship your stupid fucking alien/zombie magic savior. News flash: He's not coming back for you. Fucktards.
There's very little substantive difference between those two lines as far as being flamebait. Do you really think "fuck" is the difference between being flamebait and not? Or do you not understand the difference between a flame and flamebait?
You were modded appropriately. Sorry if you really didn't understand you were posting flamebait, though it'd be better if you just understood that and accepted the inevitable mods without caring. Either way whining about it is pathetic.
Like a future with humans in it, you mean?
Indeed! And it's exactly that kind of unspoken assumption that can make/break an algorithm. Who knows -- maybe the only problem with Skynet was that somebody forgot to write a rule that wiping out humanity was not an acceptable solution to human conflict.
Wouldn't it make more sense to display subtitles as someone talks to you?
Indeed it would. And even better, it could then make that scene from Austin Powers an every-day reality. I love technology!
Look, I don't know about any apocalypse or anything. I just know 2220 is a long time to wait for the LHC to come online!
The History Channel, which had already degenerated into the Hitler Channel, is now more like the "Conspiracies about Hitler and the Occult" channel.
I will not let you talk that way about the channel that brought us "The History of the Machine Gun" (the history of which can be described in one word: awesome).
But seriously, I see a lot better documentaries on PBS. Including on the topic of war and Hitler.
Why would you think 2217 would be different than any other year?
Well I was hoping the world would have ended by then. But now I know it's not. Thanks a lot, science!
I am not a number! I am- Oh wait, I'm number 6130. Ha! In your face number 6131!
I see your point about the usefulness and prevalence of these analogies.
Yeah, they are essentially analogies -- how could they be otherwise, when comparing robots to life forms? They're just pretty good ones. :)
I just still question how well they fit the biological model.
It's a fair question.
One thing that may help is to remember that these robots are evolving behaviors comparable to those of very stupid bugs. "Deceive" may seem to imply some intentional act of subterfuge, but for many animals the concept of "intent" isn't very useful. E.g. the harmless king snake almost certainly doesn't "know" that it is kept safe from predators by looking a lot like the deadly coral snake, but nevertheless we call that an example of deceptive markings. It just evolved that way. And for creatures as simple as insects (or these robots), they "learn" new behaviors in much the same way, over generations of evolution, not as a direct response to stimuli.
As for the evolutionary mechanism itself -- well, the same principles apply here*, which is why it's so effective. But as far as actually fitting biology, that's an open question. Aside from obviously differing in the specifics (binary vs base pairs etc), the main way in which I'd say it differs is that the simulated evolution is too restrictive. They probably have chosen a fixed algorithm for how to combine genomes from successful robots, and a fixed mutation rate, and quite possibly even a fixed neural network size, and the genome just maps directly to the neural net structure. Whereas in nature, evolutionary mechanisms compete and evolve just the same as any other aspect of the organisms. For example there are both RNA- and DNA-based organisms, and the sizes and structures of these respective encodings can change. Many plants have evolved mechanisms for undoing mutations and copy errors in "important" sections of their genome. In nature, everything is subject to evolutionary pressure, while these robots have only a small subset (organization of their brain) open to modification.
On the other hand, 500 generations of a small population isn't that long, so while not universally true you could make an assumption that none of those other things would change in that time.
Which, now that I think about it, reminds me of the true biggest difference between this and natural evolution -- humans defining all of the parameters, and all the assumptions. Not just the algorithm for how the robots evolve, but even the criterion by which they are judged. In nature anything that survives to reproduce passes on its genes and that's all that matters. A natural organisms that failed to find its previously defined food source, but which adapted to exploit some other source of food, would be successful. But here, it's a hard-coded fact that the robots survive via "food" and die from "poison". None of the robots could ever evolve to 'eat' the poison and gain a tremendous advantage over the others.
Defining success ends up being the biggest challenge in practical applications of genetic algorithms. You don't want to define "success" too narrowly, or you inadvertently shut out novel solutions to problems. On the other hand, you can't define it too broadly or you'll get something that solved the problem you specified, but not the one you wanted. See above in the discussion about using GAs to write programmable logic chips and ending up with analog circuits which is not desirable for mass production.
Robots, AI, and artificial evolution are all nascent fields. It could be that as we progress all of these artificial limitations may be slowly blurred away until it resembles natural evolution by more than just analogy. Though the obvious question (and fodder for sci-fi) is whether we even want machines to evolve like natural organisms. I'm thinking no. :)
but i do appreciate your efforts to help me see.
I appreciate open-minded critical thinking.
* Principles largely established before the specific mechanisms were even known.