I'm not sure about the country you live in but in most of the world the amount of money someone gets paid isn't a measure of the worth of their contribution to society, and nor is it meant to be.
...the incredibly stupid way they do then of course people will Bit Torrent just the stuff they need. If I like a TV series, say Deadwood, I also have to pay for The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ali G, Carnivale, Six Feet Under and a whole lot of other stuff. This is like going to the supermarket to buy some cheese and finding I have to buy everything else the supermarket sells too. It's even more stupid. These people are selling information which is easier to slice and dice than white bread. When the people making this stuff are using a technology so incredibly backwards to peddle their technology it's hardly surprising the market is going to find new channels to distribute stuff. In fact fans are actually willing to pay a fair price for the product in isolation judging from DVD sales.
...from a conscious decision to make modifications are hardly 'evolution', certainly not evolution by natural selection. This article is pretty bogus, even if it makes correct predictions. You might as well say that anything that happens in the future is a product of evolution.
If I predict that the outcome of an experiment is A then the experiment can work regardless of whether I get the expected outcome. If the experiment doesn't work it means that you didn't do it correctly. Maybe you didn't rule out interfering factors, or the power dropped out at a vital moment or you knocked the apparatus.
Yup. There are quite a few physical systems one can devise theoretically that are supersymmetric but that don't imply that the universe itself has supersymmetric equations of motion.
Re:OT, but closely related question
on
BBC Launches APIs
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· Score: 1
I don't argue with religious people over creation, there's nothing that can be proved either way (and we might be living in a simulation anyway...). It's more interesting, IMHO, to go along with the assumption that God created the universe and argue from there. It's fundamental to most religions that the creator of the universe is necessarily good. That seems like a good place to attack.
Just reviewing the abstract and the beginning of the paper quickly it doesn't seem to be quibbling with the claim that the cost of erasing a bit is kTlog(2) but rather with the question of whether this is derived from the 2nd Law or vice versa.
Anyway, looks like a great paper and I hope I get the time to read it properly. Thanks for the link.
And this paper is, in effect, even more optimistic than I was about the possibility of cheating Maxwell's demon to make even more efficient computers.
A 10GHz computer for 10 years. Let's see. Assume a single instruction demolishes 64 bits of data. That's 2x10^18 bits of data in total and hence you can place a lower bound of 2x10^18 bits of entropy being generated. Use E=kT*bits we find that at room temperature the lower bound on energy is 10^-2 Joules. I see no essential conflict with thermodynamics there. There may be some practical issues, but nothing that follows directly from the laws of thermodynamics.
Re:OT, but closely related question
on
BBC Launches APIs
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· Score: 1
Wow! I even recognise one of those clips. "Let's go to Birmingham" I think we were forced to watch it in primary school. But now I live in the US I suppose I'm not really allowed to download it...
This has been standard practice in the computing world for decades. Back in the 60s or 70s IBM used to charge a large sum of money to upgrade mainframes by sending in an engineer to remove a part. (Maybe that's an apocryphal story but it's symptomatic of what was considered standard practice.)
Not quite 100%. Abstinence failed for Mary. (And her child probably caused as much trouble as Darth Vader).
Re:OT, but closely related question
on
BBC Launches APIs
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Weird! I don't think it looks even slightly like an argument that God exists. Read it again!
IMHO These propositions are in decreasing order of plasuibility:
The universe is uncreated
The universe has a creator and just for the hell of it he writes $book to test how gullible his creations are (maybe he hasn't quite perfected his design for intelligence yet and needs to experiment further...)
The universe has a creator who is just as described in $book
I.e. I'm completely with you. I might be flexible about where (1) goes in that list, but to my mind (2) is obviously more likely than (3) and (4).
There have been stories for a while that the BBC are putting all of their stuff online for download (for a price of course). Anyone heard any news on how that is progressing?
...the tech we see on Slashdot. Fully functioning prosthetic arms, self-rep robots, quantum computers, nanomachines, spintronics. Sometimes the tech on Star Wars seems more plausible than the stuff I read here.
The future of cellphones has already arrived, just not in the US. It certainly doesn't need Windows to make it work.
As far as I could see the PDA has disappeared in Japan. I saw two or three people using them on the subway and that was it. I couldn't find any Palms or PocketPCs on sale, even in Akibahara. I did find a few 4Gb Sharp Zauruses and lots of ebook/edictionary things. But otherwise no PDAs.
Phone use in Japan is unbelievable. Walking down the street you are faced with hordes of people all texting as they walk. Cellphones in use everywhere. Old people, young people, anyone. I have no idea what some of these people were doing. I assume they were all texting but when I looked over people's shoulders I often saw funky looking animations. It's clear that the convergence with the cellphone has already happened, at least in Japan.
For example if Annakin and Padme had had access to contraceptive technology Annakin might never have turned to the dark side and billions of lives would have been saved.
I always find it fascinating how much is known about 'god
And I'm always amazed that people seem to limit their inquiry to a handful of books: The Bible, The Koran and a few others. If people actually thought about the creator of the universe seriously for a moment things might get entertaining. But no, if you talk about deities you always have to go back to some book or other.
It's amazing the way these robots are able...
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Self-Replicating Robots
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· Score: 4, Funny
...to synthesize the required parts in just the right place out of midair. I'm sure this technology could have uses beyond self-reproducing robots though I haven't thought of one yet.
If you've studied calculus and number theory drop the lightweight fluff and pick up a book on analytic number theory. You could even read some lecture notes. These don't seem too advanced. By the end of dirichlet.ps you'll have seen the power of calculus to solve difficult problems about prime numbers and integers. (In particular, the proof that any arithmetic progression has infinitely many primes is a thing of wonder.)
Fine, then consider ants in a simulation I've programmed. And anyway, I'm not giving an exact analogy. If I had the ability to create them at will I still might want to deceive them. Even if I had designed and created real ants it still might be interesting to see what they might do if I deceived them. I simply don't see how someone can deduce that a deity would have no need of 'deception' when a deity could have all sorts of weird and wonderful motivations that we can't begin to understand.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure about the country you live in but in most of the world the amount of money someone gets paid isn't a measure of the worth of their contribution to society, and nor is it meant to be.
...the incredibly stupid way they do then of course people will Bit Torrent just the stuff they need. If I like a TV series, say Deadwood, I also have to pay for The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ali G, Carnivale, Six Feet Under and a whole lot of other stuff. This is like going to the supermarket to buy some cheese and finding I have to buy everything else the supermarket sells too. It's even more stupid. These people are selling information which is easier to slice and dice than white bread. When the people making this stuff are using a technology so incredibly backwards to peddle their technology it's hardly surprising the market is going to find new channels to distribute stuff. In fact fans are actually willing to pay a fair price for the product in isolation judging from DVD sales.
...from a conscious decision to make modifications are hardly 'evolution', certainly not evolution by natural selection. This article is pretty bogus, even if it makes correct predictions. You might as well say that anything that happens in the future is a product of evolution.
If I predict that the outcome of an experiment is A then the experiment can work regardless of whether I get the expected outcome. If the experiment doesn't work it means that you didn't do it correctly. Maybe you didn't rule out interfering factors, or the power dropped out at a vital moment or you knocked the apparatus.
Yup. There are quite a few physical systems one can devise theoretically that are supersymmetric but that don't imply that the universe itself has supersymmetric equations of motion.
I'd rather the users were informed what their options were rather than given informed opinions about each browser.
What's wrong stories about huge insect aliens that want to destroy the Earth?
Anyway, looks like a great paper and I hope I get the time to read it properly. Thanks for the link.
And this paper is, in effect, even more optimistic than I was about the possibility of cheating Maxwell's demon to make even more efficient computers.
A 10GHz computer for 10 years. Let's see. Assume a single instruction demolishes 64 bits of data. That's 2x10^18 bits of data in total and hence you can place a lower bound of 2x10^18 bits of entropy being generated. Use E=kT*bits we find that at room temperature the lower bound on energy is 10^-2 Joules. I see no essential conflict with thermodynamics there. There may be some practical issues, but nothing that follows directly from the laws of thermodynamics.
Wow! I even recognise one of those clips. "Let's go to Birmingham" I think we were forced to watch it in primary school. But now I live in the US I suppose I'm not really allowed to download it...
This has been standard practice in the computing world for decades. Back in the 60s or 70s IBM used to charge a large sum of money to upgrade mainframes by sending in an engineer to remove a part. (Maybe that's an apocryphal story but it's symptomatic of what was considered standard practice.)
Not quite 100%. Abstinence failed for Mary. (And her child probably caused as much trouble as Darth Vader).
IMHO These propositions are in decreasing order of plasuibility:
- The universe is uncreated
- The universe has a creator and just for the hell of it he writes $book to test how gullible his creations are (maybe he hasn't quite perfected his design for intelligence yet and needs to experiment further...)
- The universe has a creator who is just as described in $book
I.e. I'm completely with you. I might be flexible about where (1) goes in that list, but to my mind (2) is obviously more likely than (3) and (4).There have been stories for a while that the BBC are putting all of their stuff online for download (for a price of course). Anyone heard any news on how that is progressing?
...the tech we see on Slashdot. Fully functioning prosthetic arms, self-rep robots, quantum computers, nanomachines, spintronics. Sometimes the tech on Star Wars seems more plausible than the stuff I read here.
As far as I could see the PDA has disappeared in Japan. I saw two or three people using them on the subway and that was it. I couldn't find any Palms or PocketPCs on sale, even in Akibahara. I did find a few 4Gb Sharp Zauruses and lots of ebook/edictionary things. But otherwise no PDAs.
Phone use in Japan is unbelievable. Walking down the street you are faced with hordes of people all texting as they walk. Cellphones in use everywhere. Old people, young people, anyone. I have no idea what some of these people were doing. I assume they were all texting but when I looked over people's shoulders I often saw funky looking animations. It's clear that the convergence with the cellphone has already happened, at least in Japan.
For example if Annakin and Padme had had access to contraceptive technology Annakin might never have turned to the dark side and billions of lives would have been saved.
You'll only get it over my dead body.
...to synthesize the required parts in just the right place out of midair. I'm sure this technology could have uses beyond self-reproducing robots though I haven't thought of one yet.
If you've studied calculus and number theory drop the lightweight fluff and pick up a book on analytic number theory. You could even read some lecture notes. These don't seem too advanced. By the end of dirichlet.ps you'll have seen the power of calculus to solve difficult problems about prime numbers and integers. (In particular, the proof that any arithmetic progression has infinitely many primes is a thing of wonder.)
OMFG! You could have given a warning before posting a link to the robot goatse. My optical sensors will be scarred for life.
Fine, then consider ants in a simulation I've programmed. And anyway, I'm not giving an exact analogy. If I had the ability to create them at will I still might want to deceive them. Even if I had designed and created real ants it still might be interesting to see what they might do if I deceived them. I simply don't see how someone can deduce that a deity would have no need of 'deception' when a deity could have all sorts of weird and wonderful motivations that we can't begin to understand.