Based on both what I've read about cognitive science and what you say in the "nephew posts," I don't know if you can really call it philosophy. There are philosophical elements to Cog Sci, but as you mention, there's also Computer Science, Psychology, Neurology, and whatever else people can cram in that has anything to do with the mind. Cognitive Science does sound really fucking cool, but I don't know if you can call it a "branch of Philosophy" per se. Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy, but philosophy of mind is only a subset of Cognitive Science.
But I suppose you know better, and maybe you disagree. I suppose just as some people might say "Science is just a specialized form of philosophy," you could say that Cognitive Science is just a specialized form of Philosophy of Mind. I suppose I could phrase the concept as an analogy along the lines of, "Cognitive science is to philosophy and neurology as Sandwich-making is to baking and butchering."
Except no. There's tons of evidence for natural selection. Natural selection does not need to explain absolutely everything any more than gravity does, that's not how science works. However, the theory of natural selection has made various claims which have followed testability. (I'm lazy, so I'll just point at Talk Origins.) That's how science works. Furthermore, the theory of natural selection does not say that intelligent design could not have played a role in the origin of species. The theory merely states that the forces of natural selection have played a role on the evolution of life on earth.
The problem with intelligent design is not that it is implausible, but that it is completely untestable. An intelligent entity could have done anything it wanted to, so you can't apply tests to the theory. As a result, intelligent design becomes a "theory of the gaps," such that wherever we find something unexplainable you can say, "Well, maybe an intelligent being created it."
Another thing about irreducable complexity is that it's rather hard to actually prove something is irreducably complex. Darwin himself had trouble thinking of how the eye could have originated, but now I believe scientists have discovered a pretty good understanding of what sort of pathways it might take to get to the eye. Similarly, just checking Wikipedia shows that the evolution of the flagella is a well studied concept. (Huge page of cites was moved onto the talk page.)
Technichally, remembering is an action which occurs in the present that merely gives the impression that there exists a "past" and that in this past there existed an entity which is essentially the same as "you," and that in this past you percieved something which gave you the impression of "things" happening in an external "world."
Of course, calling it an "action" assumes that you are actively doing it. All you know is that you have the afforementioned sensation of remembering and that you also have a sensation of having the impression that "you" are initiating it. This impression is not neccesarily accurate.
Eastern philosophy is for geeks, western philosophy is for nerds.:)
I like the rationalization the Jargon File gives to the tendency of "hackers" to anthropomorphize computers. Although I imagine it might be one of ESR's charming contributions, the argument is that it's not that we're elevating computers to the levels of humans, but rather that we lower humans to the level of computers. Humans after all, are ultimately just organic mechanisms made of meat.
Since when did thousands of people across the globe, most of them perfect strangers and a handful of people you'd probably evade if you did know them, not qualify as friends? Some of my best friends are perfect strangers!
Yeah, but they're gay. The BBC is the only network brave enough to show to the world that bisexuals exist. If it were up to NBC, it'd be all ass-sex, all the time. Waves and waves of boy-on-boy action the likes of which the world has never seen. An eternal downpour of cock! A bacchanalian manfest of epic proportions! A continous flow of impassionate virile machismo! In a word, it would be a mess. Semen all over the place.
But the BBC is able to set aside all that and say that no, some people are attracted to women.
Because it doesn't confuse the language, it enriches it. The new version of "beg the question" is a more-or-less literal intepretation of the words, thus it is not confusing at all. If anything, the old version is the confusing part. Nobody uses "beg" that way anymore. If you want to have English simple, you should tell people to use the phrase "circular reasoning" instead of "begging the question."
Words can have multiple meanings and language evolves. A slippery slope can refer to a logical fallacy where you assume that a small change will inevitably lead to a big change, but it also can mean an inclined surface with an unusually small amount of friction.
Similarly, begging the question can mean implicitly assuming the conclusion to an argument, but it can also mean to urgently request that a question be asked.
I said that there there would never be a system that would work for everyone. There are too many variables such that there would inevitably be some serious randomness in the system. But it's trivial to just collect data and analyze it.
Take a group of people. Randomly assign people to a number of potential dating systems as well as a "placebo" group which matches people using a random number generator. Collect information on how well their relationships work out. Run the data through some statistical models and see if any of the non-placebo groups did signifigantly better than the placebo group. If a dating system scores exceptionally well, huzzah, you've got a dating system.
Not really. Human relationships react in such-and-such a way. This can be analyzed by the scientific method and we can then use this information to see how we should date. Of course, it might possible that the answer is "No, it's totally random, it's a crapshoot," but even in that situation, statistics has something to teach us. Break relationships into different catagories and see which relationships are more successful. But yes, there's always going to be some element of randomness in the system, because there are just too many fucking variables in human relationships for things to be even close to deterministic.
That said, this website sounds like total bullshit, merely a slightly more sensible version of those "What kind of vampire are you?" polls you see smattered around in LiveJournals. All the talk about brain chemisty is clearly just an excuse to sound intellectual without having much meat to it. If I was going to create a dating website using a sort of scientific proccess, I'd consider a feeback mechanism such that the system can learn from the results of its dating suggestions to be incredibly important. This just seems to throw together random crap from the world of psychology and biochemistry and hope it sticks. Which isn't an especially scientific way to do things, frankly.
Not really. The kind of ePaper they're talking about in the article is the kind of ePaper that looks like paper. I'm not even sure why they'd want DRM in such a situation, because after all... where do you plug into a piece of paper?
More to the point, ePaper wouldn't have any new restrictions built into it that regular paper doesn't already have. Wanna copy it? Photocopy it. This isn't new restrictions being put into media, this is having the same exact restrictions we have always had.
Are you suggesting that Australia is a land where the streets are red with rotten tomatoes? Well I assure you that you are MISINFORMED! I've been to Australia, and the number of rotten tomatoes I found was RELATIVELY SMALL. I will not allow you to promote this VICIOUS SLANDER when in actuality a MAJORITY of tomatoes I saw in Australia were NOT VERY ROTTEN AT ALL!
The ACLU is a civil liberties organization. Their whole raison d'etre is getting the government out of certain areas. I suppose they support affirmative action, which one could argue is an act of nose-sticking, but that's not enough to be "pretty much entirely devoted."
Compare this to an unhampered market, where no consumer has any say over any other consumer.
Bullshit. In most industries, there exists a certain price that needs to be paid in order to exist as a business, which is typically more than the income made by one person. Thus, your options are still retsricted by other people, because you can only shop at a business if there are enough other customers to keep the business afloat.
Thus, the free market is no escape from the tyranny of other idiots.
Re:IP will give these no advantage at all.
on
TCP/IP Speakers
·
· Score: 1
Well, you could store the energy in some kind of battery. (Under the asumption that people don't use their speakers at full potential all day long.)
Slashdot Mirror
Based on both what I've read about cognitive science and what you say in the "nephew posts," I don't know if you can really call it philosophy. There are philosophical elements to Cog Sci, but as you mention, there's also Computer Science, Psychology, Neurology, and whatever else people can cram in that has anything to do with the mind. Cognitive Science does sound really fucking cool, but I don't know if you can call it a "branch of Philosophy" per se. Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy, but philosophy of mind is only a subset of Cognitive Science.
But I suppose you know better, and maybe you disagree. I suppose just as some people might say "Science is just a specialized form of philosophy," you could say that Cognitive Science is just a specialized form of Philosophy of Mind. I suppose I could phrase the concept as an analogy along the lines of, "Cognitive science is to philosophy and neurology as Sandwich-making is to baking and butchering."
They're not stoners, they're slackers. There's a difference.
Except no. There's tons of evidence for natural selection. Natural selection does not need to explain absolutely everything any more than gravity does, that's not how science works. However, the theory of natural selection has made various claims which have followed testability. (I'm lazy, so I'll just point at Talk Origins.) That's how science works. Furthermore, the theory of natural selection does not say that intelligent design could not have played a role in the origin of species. The theory merely states that the forces of natural selection have played a role on the evolution of life on earth.
The problem with intelligent design is not that it is implausible, but that it is completely untestable. An intelligent entity could have done anything it wanted to, so you can't apply tests to the theory. As a result, intelligent design becomes a "theory of the gaps," such that wherever we find something unexplainable you can say, "Well, maybe an intelligent being created it."
Another thing about irreducable complexity is that it's rather hard to actually prove something is irreducably complex. Darwin himself had trouble thinking of how the eye could have originated, but now I believe scientists have discovered a pretty good understanding of what sort of pathways it might take to get to the eye. Similarly, just checking Wikipedia shows that the evolution of the flagella is a well studied concept. (Huge page of cites was moved onto the talk page.)
Technichally, remembering is an action which occurs in the present that merely gives the impression that there exists a "past" and that in this past there existed an entity which is essentially the same as "you," and that in this past you percieved something which gave you the impression of "things" happening in an external "world."
:)
Of course, calling it an "action" assumes that you are actively doing it. All you know is that you have the afforementioned sensation of remembering and that you also have a sensation of having the impression that "you" are initiating it. This impression is not neccesarily accurate.
Eastern philosophy is for geeks, western philosophy is for nerds.
I like the rationalization the Jargon File gives to the tendency of "hackers" to anthropomorphize computers. Although I imagine it might be one of ESR's charming contributions, the argument is that it's not that we're elevating computers to the levels of humans, but rather that we lower humans to the level of computers. Humans after all, are ultimately just organic mechanisms made of meat.
Breasts
Since when did thousands of people across the globe, most of them perfect strangers and a handful of people you'd probably evade if you did know them, not qualify as friends? Some of my best friends are perfect strangers!
There is a difference between the deaf community and the Deaf community.
Natural selection has had its turn. Now it's time for intelligent design to give it a shot.
That's nothing. My cat once brought home a human head.
Yes, but a Velociraptor armed with a GOTO? Nothing more dangerous, my lad.
10 STAB
20 GOTO 10
I believe the accepted term on Wikipedia is Wikipedian.
Yeah, but they're gay. The BBC is the only network brave enough to show to the world that bisexuals exist. If it were up to NBC, it'd be all ass-sex, all the time. Waves and waves of boy-on-boy action the likes of which the world has never seen. An eternal downpour of cock! A bacchanalian manfest of epic proportions! A continous flow of impassionate virile machismo! In a word, it would be a mess. Semen all over the place.
But the BBC is able to set aside all that and say that no, some people are attracted to women.
Because it doesn't confuse the language, it enriches it. The new version of "beg the question" is a more-or-less literal intepretation of the words, thus it is not confusing at all. If anything, the old version is the confusing part. Nobody uses "beg" that way anymore. If you want to have English simple, you should tell people to use the phrase "circular reasoning" instead of "begging the question."
Words can have multiple meanings and language evolves. A slippery slope can refer to a logical fallacy where you assume that a small change will inevitably lead to a big change, but it also can mean an inclined surface with an unusually small amount of friction.
Similarly, begging the question can mean implicitly assuming the conclusion to an argument, but it can also mean to urgently request that a question be asked.
I said that there there would never be a system that would work for everyone. There are too many variables such that there would inevitably be some serious randomness in the system. But it's trivial to just collect data and analyze it.
Take a group of people. Randomly assign people to a number of potential dating systems as well as a "placebo" group which matches people using a random number generator. Collect information on how well their relationships work out. Run the data through some statistical models and see if any of the non-placebo groups did signifigantly better than the placebo group. If a dating system scores exceptionally well, huzzah, you've got a dating system.
Not really. Human relationships react in such-and-such a way. This can be analyzed by the scientific method and we can then use this information to see how we should date. Of course, it might possible that the answer is "No, it's totally random, it's a crapshoot," but even in that situation, statistics has something to teach us. Break relationships into different catagories and see which relationships are more successful. But yes, there's always going to be some element of randomness in the system, because there are just too many fucking variables in human relationships for things to be even close to deterministic.
That said, this website sounds like total bullshit, merely a slightly more sensible version of those "What kind of vampire are you?" polls you see smattered around in LiveJournals. All the talk about brain chemisty is clearly just an excuse to sound intellectual without having much meat to it. If I was going to create a dating website using a sort of scientific proccess, I'd consider a feeback mechanism such that the system can learn from the results of its dating suggestions to be incredibly important. This just seems to throw together random crap from the world of psychology and biochemistry and hope it sticks. Which isn't an especially scientific way to do things, frankly.
Not really. The kind of ePaper they're talking about in the article is the kind of ePaper that looks like paper. I'm not even sure why they'd want DRM in such a situation, because after all... where do you plug into a piece of paper?
More to the point, ePaper wouldn't have any new restrictions built into it that regular paper doesn't already have. Wanna copy it? Photocopy it. This isn't new restrictions being put into media, this is having the same exact restrictions we have always had.
Actually, they were all female.
Are you suggesting that Australia is a land where the streets are red with rotten tomatoes? Well I assure you that you are MISINFORMED! I've been to Australia, and the number of rotten tomatoes I found was RELATIVELY SMALL. I will not allow you to promote this VICIOUS SLANDER when in actuality a MAJORITY of tomatoes I saw in Australia were NOT VERY ROTTEN AT ALL!
I don't think they exist.
o_O
The ACLU is a civil liberties organization. Their whole raison d'etre is getting the government out of certain areas. I suppose they support affirmative action, which one could argue is an act of nose-sticking, but that's not enough to be "pretty much entirely devoted."
Bullshit. In most industries, there exists a certain price that needs to be paid in order to exist as a business, which is typically more than the income made by one person. Thus, your options are still retsricted by other people, because you can only shop at a business if there are enough other customers to keep the business afloat.
Thus, the free market is no escape from the tyranny of other idiots.
Well, you could store the energy in some kind of battery. (Under the asumption that people don't use their speakers at full potential all day long.)
Still not neccesarily a good idea, of course.