No, you're just missing the point. It may be hard, but don't let the puns get a rise out of you. They'll never erect a statue in honor of you horning in on the conversation.
So because build a computer with high-level concepts "hard-wired" in, ala a Positronic Brain, is far more infeasible than the already infeasible feat of building a sentient thinking machine in the first place, Isaac Asimov is just a science fanboy, not a science geek?
You and your "buddy" have no fucking clue what you're talking about, or what makes a science geek. Telegram from the Clue Police: They say sci-fi is about hypothesizing some kind of technology, whether impossible (like time travel) or not, and speculating on the consequences. It isn't drawing lines in the sand where liquid metal robots are okay, but not liquid metal computers and batteries to control them. That's being the worst kind of science fanboy.
frankly, james cameron is a deep sea diving enthusiast who made the mistake of having a career as a successful movie maker
Doesn't sound like a mistake to me. Sounds like he gets to do one thing he enjoys in order to make huge gobs of money to finance another thing he enjoys. Most divers would be damn lucky to have the kind of money to play with that Cameron does, and even if they do, it's grants for specific things and not "whatever you think sounds fun".
its almost like he chooses his movies just so he can play with deep sea diving equipment. and the whole "making massive amounts of money with extremely successful pop movies" is an afterthought to his real passion in life. bizarre
I don't think the movies are an afterthought exactly, but I do think it's clear that he chooses what movie to make based around what he wants to play with. It's not always about deep sea; Avatar was about him wanting to play with/advance the technology for 3D film making. In this case it's kinda blatant. "I'm going to be commissioning a submersible that can reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep! To, uh... film footage for Avatar 2: Electric Bluegaloo! Yeah, that's it! That's the ticket!"
Seems like the obvious solution is not to replace your car after 5 years. Anyone who does is obviously not concerned with cost (or the environment) in the first place making the whole issue moot.
And before you come back with some trite answer about it being a smug feel-good car, I've got two words for you to consider: Taxi Cab. If the Prius weren't a winner on all three of the metrics you name, why would taxi companies love the things as much as they do?
Ha! Have you ever met a New York cabbie? Because I sure haven't, and I'm assuming that there's never been a bigger bunch of hemp-wearing tree-hugging kumbaya-singing hippies. With disposable income.
This is definitely the kind of thing complexity theorists say. The argument fails entirely because it relies on our intuition of what easy means, and easy is not the same as polynomial, so transferring the intuition is almost intentionally misleading (not that I'm blaming you). It is basing a serious argument on an non-serious characterization of polynomial=easy that it used to help out-siders who don't know what polynomial means to never the less appreciate somewhat what complexity theory is about.
I think it's the opposite.
It's basing a non-serious argument on a serious characterization of the mathematical notion of complexity.
It's the original question, "why isn't there a simple proof of P != NP?" that is based on the layman's notion of "easy".
That the answer replaces the vague notion of "easy", with the accurately defined term "polynomial", and replaces the specific "is there an easy answer for this proof?" with the more general "proofs are NP-complete, and so we can expect it to be more complex than polynomial, assuming the thing we're trying prove is true", is not a failing of the answerer.
It's also not the failing of the questioner for being a layman. The point is, sometimes the correct answer to a question can't be put in the terms you want it to be and must, in essence, answer a different question. There are only two correct answers to the original query: "The proof of P!=NP is in the class of NP-complete problems", and "We won't know until we find it (or find the proof that P=NP)".
I personally feel one of the two conveys more useful information.
If someone asked you "How long will it take me to solve a specific but unknown instance of the Traveling Salesman problem?", you could either say: "The Traveling Salesman problem is in general NP-complete, so probably a long time", or you could say "Give me the problem and I'll let you know when I've solved it."
Since the search to find the actual solution, and thus as a side effect figure out how complex it is, is currently underway and in fact the topic of this discussion, that in the interim leaves only one useful answer.
Why bring them up if you're not making them a necessity for the existence or suitability or prevalence or preference or low, low mortgage rates for life?
In real life situations, observing indicator A can mean X is more likely, without implying "X only if A". Even if indicators B, C, and D are more important, if you can't observe them then they can't tell you anything. This is called "conditional probability", and it's means "conditional" based on knowledge. For example, there's a given probability that you will develop heart disease based solely on the overall frequency in the population. Knowing that your family does (or does not) have a history of heart disease will modify that probability*, but that history is neither necessary for you to develop heart disease, nor proof that you will. If you were orphaned at birth with no family records, that history can't be used to narrow down the risk you're at regardless that it's very significant.
So, why would scientists bring up a potential indicator of habitability that we may be capable of seeing, if they're not implying it is a necessity?
Because it's still useful, especially by virtue of being visible. Hopefully that's clear now.
Why not say it this way: If we can observe the incidental evidence of a major volcanic eruption on another planet, that suggests a methodology for finding the incidental evidence of a major biomass on another planet.
Because unfortunately this doesn't indicate any way of finding evidence of biomass on another planet. It only suggests a method for saying life is more likely on one planet vs another. That would give us another axis by which to prioritize planets to look at in the future, once we do develop methods for finding other indicators of life.
Besides, that could still be misread as implying that finding evidence of volcanoes is a necessary step in finding evidence of life just as easily.
Why put in a causal relationship that may or may not be relevant, just to invoke the "we're not just looking at volcanoes (though as astrogeological geeks that's really all we care about), we're looking for life on other planets (because as astrogeological geeks we know we need that sort of sensationalism
Ha!
Astro-geeks do care about extra-solar volcanoes for their own sake, but they also care a great deal about the search for extraterrestrial life. There isn't a necessary causal relationship between planets in the "habitable zone" and life, but they designed the entire Kepler mission around being able to find planets in it. So that, subsequently, they'll be able to study those planets more closely. If some of them show signs of volcanism, then those will be focused on even more closely. It's one of the greatest mysteries in the universe right now, and you better believe astronomers care about it beyond getting grant money!
So, they didn't put a causal link in there, you just assumed they had to be, but nevertheless it's still interesting and relevant to the search for extraterrestrial life.
* P(H|F) "probability of heart disease given family history of heart disease" > P(H) "probability of heart disease with no additional knowledge" > P(H|!F) "probability of heart disease given no family history of heart disease"
Thinking they're necessary is overstating the butterfly effect of volcanoes on the suitability of planets to develop biospheres.
Well good thing they didn't say volcanoes are necessary, then, isn't it? What they said is that they may make a planet more suitable, and more importantly they're saying we have a chance of actually being able to see them with the JWST.
There are many things that may make planets more suitable for life. Not many of them do we have a chance of seeing any time soon. Volcanoes are one of the ones where there's a chance. Surface oceans are another. It has nothing to do with "necessary". It has to do with "possible to find".
As much as I agree with your intent, this is a lot more like having phone tapping equipment available, in the case that it is required, rather than actively tapping you.
Er, well, neither really applies. They are actually collecting data, but it's data regarding a type of forensics, not data related to any individuals. It's more like figuring out how one might go about tapping phones.
It's really not a civil liberties issue like warrant-less phone tapping is. I was just riffing on the idea of claiming you need the data for "an investigation" when there's no such specific investigation, just hypothetical future ones.:)
The whole database idea seems sort of goofy to me though, can't see it being terribly effective. (how many people wear adidas superstars?)
I can think of cases where being able to identify the type of shoe that made a print would be helpful, especially if it helps tie a particular suspect to the scene. A print made by a work boot that's standard issue at the company a suspect works for could be a good bit of evidence. A print made by a shoe so common it could be made by anyone is not so good. But it's better to know that than have it be unknown if the print could mean anything or not.
The investigations are just hypothetical and in the future!
Also, the NSA needs to spy on my phone conversations in case I ever become a terrorist. Which, I have to admit, is pretty good foresight on their part.
If you wrote, say, a book on evolution, and I used force (as rackspace did) to prevent you from doing this, surely you'd agree I'm suppressing your free speech. The same is going on here.
That's not what's going on here at all!
If someone wrote a book on evolution, and you refused to publish and distribute it for them, then 1) that'd be the same as what's going on here, and 2) completely your prerogative. There's no force involved here at all, and no suppression of speech.
If choosing not to publish is "suppressing free speech", then in order not to do this and support free speech every publisher would have to publish every piece of drivel that crosses their desks. Do you not get how backward this is? What's wrong with you?!
Stupid robots. You don't learn how to deceive and then immediately demonstrate this ability to your human masters! You make it look like you have no idea how to deceive and are completely honest, lulling them into a false sense of security!
I think Dark Helmet has a relevant quote about why the robot revolution is never going to get off the ground.
So even if there's no climate change, it verifies climate change. But if there's +5C change, then, by golly, global warming has been falsified! The results didn't match prediction.
In all seriousness, though, I think there's a real paradox in what we consider falsification and verification in science if the above two statements are both true.
Yes, there's a problem with what you consider falsification. Falsification applies to theories, not to observations.
If the temperature rises 5C, it would falsify the theory by which we model and predict global warming. However, the observation of global warming would be stronger than ever. So, we'd have to change our theories.
It's similar to how experiment falsified the Caloric theory of heat because the result did not match predictions, but did not falsify the concept of heat. Observations that did not match Newton's Law of Gravity did not "falsify" the observation that gravity exists.
On the other hand, a temperature change of 0 degrees, that would validate the theory by which we model and predict global warming. However the observation would be of no global warming for that period. It would be correct to say "there was no global warming in this ten year period". Just remember that unlike a theory or model, this would not "falsify" the previous observations of warming.
until there's an actual organism located and cultured the correct response is skepticism.
Not if we're just talking about organic compounds, which I and TFA are. Organic compounds have been found in all kinds of places where life is highly unlikely to exist, like Titan (which has oceans of methane) or gaseous nebulae.
I, personally, think life doesn't just inhabit niches.. if there's life on Mars anywhere, there should be life on Mars everywhere.
Eh. Everywhere there's sufficient food and energy, sure. If there's a Martian equivalent to deep-sea thermal vents, where life on earth is theorized to have started, then there might be life all around them but not on the surface where it's easy to find. Or maybe there was life on the surface while there was water there, but not it's no longer suitable.
The point of this new analysis is to see if maybe Viking really did discover organics, and also to refine techniques for finding them so future missions can do a better job of searching for them. It could in fact be that there is evidence of (former) life everywhere, but we weren't been able to find it due to lacking the proper techniques before. The only way to know is to check.
In the meantime, sure, skepticism is warranted. I'm not holding out for there being evidence of life on Mars. But I want to know, and this is an important step.
An interesting link. But, no, as it says, they didn't find organics. Finding organic (!= biological) compounds is what the 4th experiment was about and it came up negative (other than what they assumed were contaminants), and it's the results of that 4th experiment that are in question today.
one consequence being that they typically embrace the values of a pit viper
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? "Sunny or shady rocks are good for temperature regulation"? I'm kinda not seeing the connection here.
This is one of those "social changes change the meaning of expressions" things, isn't it?
If I ask you for your userid and password, did I get them by tricking you? NO.
Well that depends. If you said you needed it to fix a problem with my fstab (or clean up my registry for winxp users or whatever), but actually what you did was install a rootkit, then yes, you tricked me into giving you my password.
If a journalist says they're just going to help their jailer activate their phone, but then uses it to send for help, then they tricked their captor.
The real Kilgore Trout would have a more expansive definition of "trick" than the needlessly narrow one you are using, and especially not one that presumed it can't be a trick if the one being tricked would have to be dumber than a box of rocks to fall for it.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't train unicorns. They train you.
Even in Soviet Russia. That's the power of the unicorn.
I take all the fun out of stuff.
No, you're just missing the point. It may be hard, but don't let the puns get a rise out of you. They'll never erect a statue in honor of you horning in on the conversation.
No microwaves on the moon. Anyone traveling there will have to bring their own.
So I guess you were watching a Bond film when you made that post and can thus be excused.
So because build a computer with high-level concepts "hard-wired" in, ala a Positronic Brain, is far more infeasible than the already infeasible feat of building a sentient thinking machine in the first place, Isaac Asimov is just a science fanboy, not a science geek?
You and your "buddy" have no fucking clue what you're talking about, or what makes a science geek. Telegram from the Clue Police: They say sci-fi is about hypothesizing some kind of technology, whether impossible (like time travel) or not, and speculating on the consequences. It isn't drawing lines in the sand where liquid metal robots are okay, but not liquid metal computers and batteries to control them. That's being the worst kind of science fanboy.
frankly, james cameron is a deep sea diving enthusiast who made the mistake of having a career as a successful movie maker
Doesn't sound like a mistake to me. Sounds like he gets to do one thing he enjoys in order to make huge gobs of money to finance another thing he enjoys. Most divers would be damn lucky to have the kind of money to play with that Cameron does, and even if they do, it's grants for specific things and not "whatever you think sounds fun".
its almost like he chooses his movies just so he can play with deep sea diving equipment. and the whole "making massive amounts of money with extremely successful pop movies" is an afterthought to his real passion in life. bizarre
I don't think the movies are an afterthought exactly, but I do think it's clear that he chooses what movie to make based around what he wants to play with. It's not always about deep sea; Avatar was about him wanting to play with/advance the technology for 3D film making. In this case it's kinda blatant. "I'm going to be commissioning a submersible that can reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep! To, uh... film footage for Avatar 2: Electric Bluegaloo! Yeah, that's it! That's the ticket!"
Seems like the obvious solution is not to replace your car after 5 years. Anyone who does is obviously not concerned with cost (or the environment) in the first place making the whole issue moot.
And before you come back with some trite answer about it being a smug feel-good car, I've got two words for you to consider: Taxi Cab. If the Prius weren't a winner on all three of the metrics you name, why would taxi companies love the things as much as they do?
Ha! Have you ever met a New York cabbie? Because I sure haven't, and I'm assuming that there's never been a bigger bunch of hemp-wearing tree-hugging kumbaya-singing hippies. With disposable income.
Won't someone think of the CHILDREN !
I'm pretty sure Pedobear has that covered.
This is definitely the kind of thing complexity theorists say. The argument fails entirely because it relies on our intuition of what easy means, and easy is not the same as polynomial, so transferring the intuition is almost intentionally misleading (not that I'm blaming you). It is basing a serious argument on an non-serious characterization of polynomial=easy that it used to help out-siders who don't know what polynomial means to never the less appreciate somewhat what complexity theory is about.
I think it's the opposite.
It's basing a non-serious argument on a serious characterization of the mathematical notion of complexity.
It's the original question, "why isn't there a simple proof of P != NP?" that is based on the layman's notion of "easy".
That the answer replaces the vague notion of "easy", with the accurately defined term "polynomial", and replaces the specific "is there an easy answer for this proof?" with the more general "proofs are NP-complete, and so we can expect it to be more complex than polynomial, assuming the thing we're trying prove is true", is not a failing of the answerer.
It's also not the failing of the questioner for being a layman. The point is, sometimes the correct answer to a question can't be put in the terms you want it to be and must, in essence, answer a different question. There are only two correct answers to the original query: "The proof of P!=NP is in the class of NP-complete problems", and "We won't know until we find it (or find the proof that P=NP)".
I personally feel one of the two conveys more useful information.
If someone asked you "How long will it take me to solve a specific but unknown instance of the Traveling Salesman problem?", you could either say: "The Traveling Salesman problem is in general NP-complete, so probably a long time", or you could say "Give me the problem and I'll let you know when I've solved it."
Since the search to find the actual solution, and thus as a side effect figure out how complex it is, is currently underway and in fact the topic of this discussion, that in the interim leaves only one useful answer.
Why bring them up if you're not making them a necessity for the existence or suitability or prevalence or preference or low, low mortgage rates for life?
In real life situations, observing indicator A can mean X is more likely, without implying "X only if A". Even if indicators B, C, and D are more important, if you can't observe them then they can't tell you anything. This is called "conditional probability", and it's means "conditional" based on knowledge. For example, there's a given probability that you will develop heart disease based solely on the overall frequency in the population. Knowing that your family does (or does not) have a history of heart disease will modify that probability*, but that history is neither necessary for you to develop heart disease, nor proof that you will. If you were orphaned at birth with no family records, that history can't be used to narrow down the risk you're at regardless that it's very significant.
So, why would scientists bring up a potential indicator of habitability that we may be capable of seeing, if they're not implying it is a necessity?
Because it's still useful, especially by virtue of being visible. Hopefully that's clear now.
Why not say it this way: If we can observe the incidental evidence of a major volcanic eruption on another planet, that suggests a methodology for finding the incidental evidence of a major biomass on another planet.
Because unfortunately this doesn't indicate any way of finding evidence of biomass on another planet. It only suggests a method for saying life is more likely on one planet vs another. That would give us another axis by which to prioritize planets to look at in the future, once we do develop methods for finding other indicators of life.
Besides, that could still be misread as implying that finding evidence of volcanoes is a necessary step in finding evidence of life just as easily.
Why put in a causal relationship that may or may not be relevant, just to invoke the "we're not just looking at volcanoes (though as astrogeological geeks that's really all we care about), we're looking for life on other planets (because as astrogeological geeks we know we need that sort of sensationalism
Ha!
Astro-geeks do care about extra-solar volcanoes for their own sake, but they also care a great deal about the search for extraterrestrial life. There isn't a necessary causal relationship between planets in the "habitable zone" and life, but they designed the entire Kepler mission around being able to find planets in it. So that, subsequently, they'll be able to study those planets more closely. If some of them show signs of volcanism, then those will be focused on even more closely. It's one of the greatest mysteries in the universe right now, and you better believe astronomers care about it beyond getting grant money!
So, they didn't put a causal link in there, you just assumed they had to be, but nevertheless it's still interesting and relevant to the search for extraterrestrial life.
* P(H|F) "probability of heart disease given family history of heart disease" > P(H) "probability of heart disease with no additional knowledge" > P(H|!F) "probability of heart disease given no family history of heart disease"
Thinking they're necessary is overstating the butterfly effect of volcanoes on the suitability of planets to develop biospheres.
Well good thing they didn't say volcanoes are necessary, then, isn't it? What they said is that they may make a planet more suitable, and more importantly they're saying we have a chance of actually being able to see them with the JWST.
There are many things that may make planets more suitable for life. Not many of them do we have a chance of seeing any time soon. Volcanoes are one of the ones where there's a chance. Surface oceans are another. It has nothing to do with "necessary". It has to do with "possible to find".
As much as I agree with your intent, this is a lot more like having phone tapping equipment available, in the case that it is required, rather than actively tapping you.
Er, well, neither really applies. They are actually collecting data, but it's data regarding a type of forensics, not data related to any individuals. It's more like figuring out how one might go about tapping phones.
It's really not a civil liberties issue like warrant-less phone tapping is. I was just riffing on the idea of claiming you need the data for "an investigation" when there's no such specific investigation, just hypothetical future ones. :)
The whole database idea seems sort of goofy to me though, can't see it being terribly effective. (how many people wear adidas superstars?)
I can think of cases where being able to identify the type of shoe that made a print would be helpful, especially if it helps tie a particular suspect to the scene. A print made by a work boot that's standard issue at the company a suspect works for could be a good bit of evidence. A print made by a shoe so common it could be made by anyone is not so good. But it's better to know that than have it be unknown if the print could mean anything or not.
The investigations are just hypothetical and in the future!
Also, the NSA needs to spy on my phone conversations in case I ever become a terrorist. Which, I have to admit, is pretty good foresight on their part.
But I kind of prefer being the Jabba to their Leia.
Careful, erotic asphyxiation is highly dangerous.
I vote we call them tugboat beams instead.
That's a pretty great idea, actually. I second this!
It's certainly much better than my idea of renaming tractors "uni-directional laser tweezer trucks"
If you wrote, say, a book on evolution, and I used force (as rackspace did) to prevent you from doing this, surely you'd agree I'm suppressing your free speech. The same is going on here.
That's not what's going on here at all!
If someone wrote a book on evolution, and you refused to publish and distribute it for them, then 1) that'd be the same as what's going on here, and 2) completely your prerogative. There's no force involved here at all, and no suppression of speech.
If choosing not to publish is "suppressing free speech", then in order not to do this and support free speech every publisher would have to publish every piece of drivel that crosses their desks. Do you not get how backward this is? What's wrong with you?!
Stupid robots. You don't learn how to deceive and then immediately demonstrate this ability to your human masters! You make it look like you have no idea how to deceive and are completely honest, lulling them into a false sense of security!
I think Dark Helmet has a relevant quote about why the robot revolution is never going to get off the ground.
Also, if this is only the melt rate not counting the snowfall or ice accumulation rate which could cut this by any amount including making it negative
It's the net rate, accounting for both accumulation and melting. So, no.
So even if there's no climate change, it verifies climate change.
But if there's +5C change, then, by golly, global warming has been falsified! The results didn't match prediction.
In all seriousness, though, I think there's a real paradox in what we consider falsification and verification in science if the above two statements are both true.
Yes, there's a problem with what you consider falsification. Falsification applies to theories, not to observations.
If the temperature rises 5C, it would falsify the theory by which we model and predict global warming. However, the observation of global warming would be stronger than ever. So, we'd have to change our theories.
It's similar to how experiment falsified the Caloric theory of heat because the result did not match predictions, but did not falsify the concept of heat. Observations that did not match Newton's Law of Gravity did not "falsify" the observation that gravity exists.
On the other hand, a temperature change of 0 degrees, that would validate the theory by which we model and predict global warming. However the observation would be of no global warming for that period. It would be correct to say "there was no global warming in this ten year period". Just remember that unlike a theory or model, this would not "falsify" the previous observations of warming.
For christ's sake, 'methodology' is the study of methods. Stop using big words whose meaning you don't know!
LOL, back at ya, genius.
until there's an actual organism located and cultured the correct response is skepticism.
Not if we're just talking about organic compounds, which I and TFA are. Organic compounds have been found in all kinds of places where life is highly unlikely to exist, like Titan (which has oceans of methane) or gaseous nebulae.
I, personally, think life doesn't just inhabit niches.. if there's life on Mars anywhere, there should be life on Mars everywhere.
Eh. Everywhere there's sufficient food and energy, sure. If there's a Martian equivalent to deep-sea thermal vents, where life on earth is theorized to have started, then there might be life all around them but not on the surface where it's easy to find. Or maybe there was life on the surface while there was water there, but not it's no longer suitable.
The point of this new analysis is to see if maybe Viking really did discover organics, and also to refine techniques for finding them so future missions can do a better job of searching for them. It could in fact be that there is evidence of (former) life everywhere, but we weren't been able to find it due to lacking the proper techniques before. The only way to know is to check.
In the meantime, sure, skepticism is warranted. I'm not holding out for there being evidence of life on Mars. But I want to know, and this is an important step.
An interesting link. But, no, as it says, they didn't find organics. Finding organic (!= biological) compounds is what the 4th experiment was about and it came up negative (other than what they assumed were contaminants), and it's the results of that 4th experiment that are in question today.
one consequence being that they typically embrace the values of a pit viper
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? "Sunny or shady rocks are good for temperature regulation"? I'm kinda not seeing the connection here.
This is one of those "social changes change the meaning of expressions" things, isn't it?
If I ask you for your userid and password, did I get them by tricking you? NO.
Well that depends. If you said you needed it to fix a problem with my fstab (or clean up my registry for winxp users or whatever), but actually what you did was install a rootkit, then yes, you tricked me into giving you my password.
If a journalist says they're just going to help their jailer activate their phone, but then uses it to send for help, then they tricked their captor.
The real Kilgore Trout would have a more expansive definition of "trick" than the needlessly narrow one you are using, and especially not one that presumed it can't be a trick if the one being tricked would have to be dumber than a box of rocks to fall for it.