On the contrary, you most definitely are. And not only that, but you have a unique and beautiful contribution to make to life, you just don't know what it is yet. Don't worry about that. It will come to you in time.
The only good advice I can give you is to follow your heart. That may sound trite, but it's true. The Universe is way too complex for even the best brain to control and predict. You never know what's going to happen to you. It's far more important that you do the right thing than it is that you do what is a "good career move" or whatever.
Don't save your soul-nourishing for anything, get it in everything you do. If what you're doing doesn't nourish your soul, do something else. Don't feel you have to do any particular thing just because it looks like an easy path to money. The most extraordainary things can happen in life, so keep your eyes and heart open.
"Don't worry if you don't know what to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 20 what they wanted to do with their lives either. Some of them most interesting 40 year olds still don't." -- Utah Phillips
illuminating the present is probably the most tenuous
Well, now, I would argue that. I agree completely that the historical record is massively distorted. Nonetheless, it's good for analyzing general patterns which might help us understand how we got here and what it all means. Furthermore, our knowledge of the present is, if anything, even more tenuous than our knowledge of the past. How do you know what's happening now? Are you everywhere at once. You read about it in the news and watch it on TV. But that's massively distorted too, obviously, and much of what is going on now doesn't become clear until much later, when we have a chance to review secret documents and compare a wide variety of accounts and so forth.
Basically, we have no real way of knowing what's going on, either in the present or in the past. However, trying to reconstruct what we can of the past sheds some light on what we can't accurately reconstruct about the present. One thing history tells us quite clearly is that what is going on is almost never what the general public thinks is going on at the time.
"Somebody once said to me, 'why are you always talking about the past, you can't live in the past you know.' I said, 'well, I can go outside and pick up a rock that hasn't moved for hundreds of years, and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot. The past didn't go anywhere, it's right here, right now.'" -- Utah Phillips
They say that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but I think those who learn from history are doomed to repeat it anyway.
"I think we can all agree, the past is over." --Dubya
Seriously, though, the past is interesting because it continues to have effects on the present and the future. Also, because we can learn from patterns that have occurred in the past and from past misakes, so stydy of the past helps us to understand what's going on right now. I think a lot of people who want us to forget the past have very specific things in mind from the past that they'd like us to forget.
a simple counterexample to the oft-cited assertion that one cannot prove an existential negative
Ah, now, this one I'm not confused about. What you can't prove is an ontological negative. That is, you can't prove the non-existence of something in the physical universe (at least, not without searching the whole thing, which is impossible due to the speed limit). Of course you can prove the non-existence of something in math, because math is a made-up logical system, not an external reality. Now, there's a pretty good argument that the universe isn't an external reality either, but if I made it up, I don't remember doing so!
Apparently so. It's been a while since I've taken a math class. I remembered something about this issue, but I wasn't sure what it was!;-)
That's a rather nice proof. But, just one question: doesn't this provide a means of searching for higher primes? I thought that was trickier than that. Of course, since your new number need not necessarily be prime, but may be divisible by other primes between it and P(n), this isn't a sure-fire algo to give you a higher prime, but at least it gives you a pretty good hint.
So maybe I have no clue what I'm talking about. This is probably the case. But now I'm really confused.
In the apology, he states that "the existence of an infinite number of primes was known" in antiquity, but he doesn't say specifically whether it was proven.
Now, for some reason I had the impression that we believe there are an infinite number of primes, but it has never been proven and may be impossible to prove, making it a possible example of Goedel's thm. But this seems to imply that I was completely wrong, and the existence of an infinite number of primes was proven by the Greeks. So what's up with all this?
OK, NS, you sound like you really know what you're talking about, so I'll ask you:
If true, does this proof also prove that the sequence of primes does not terminate? And if so, does this mean that the primes can't be used as an example of Goedel's thm any more?
I never said I'm having sex, I said I'm an outlaw. It's true, I am. Actually, I was just hoping that the criminalization of sex would actually increase the chances of me getting laid!
A business owner can ask you to leave for any reason, I believe
But, interestingly enough, she didn't ask me to leave, she just asked me not to take pictures. She said it was rude. I felt that it was her place so I should respect her wishes. But it struck me as odd, the idea that you own the photons reflected off your property.
Why thank you. The Constitution, while it is somewhat vague (though it definitely doesn't outlaw the universe), is a very broad, general document. Furthermore, it is intended to limit the powers of government, and to describe the general form of a government. As such, it's actually pretty specific, in terms of the exact powers the federal govt is granted and the form that govt is to take. Its language is very carefully chosen for those purposes, and despite the intervening centuries, its interpretation is usually fairly clear (notwithstanding the efforts of those to whom it is inconvenient).
This treaty, on the other hand, is just silly. It is a lot more vague than other similar treaties, and it will never fly. And I do have a problem with vagueness in the law in general, afaik that's a common reason for striking down a law is if it's found to be too vague. I especially have a problem with vagueness that grants broad and vaguely defined powers to the government, instead of placing broad and vague restrictions on it, which is not so bad.
I'm not necessarily saying I was in the right here. I apologized and erased the pictures. But it's an interesting issue. I think you hit the nail on the head with the question of expectation of privacy. The irony of it is that I was actually thinking of using the photos to promote her business.
you better make damn sure your law doesn't accidentally outlaw the universe.
I guess it's a good thing you can't have everything, otherwise you might be prosecuted for posession of the universe. "Damn it, officer, you planted the universe on me and you know it!"
I once had a store owner get all over my case for taking photos inside her store. Apparently, those were proprietary photons I was recording. What I wonder is, would she have had a leg to stand on if I had taken the same photos from right outside her doorway? At what point do you own a photon, and at what point do you not?
2. In particular, effective legal remedies shall be provided against those who: ...
(iii) participate in the manufacture, importation, sale, or any other act that makes available a device or system capable of decrypting or helping to decrypt an encrypted program-carrying signal.
This is obviously insanely vague. Now, they might argue that obviously they didn't mean to outlaw PCs and televisions with this wording, and of course it wouldn't be interpreted that way. But that's not the point.
The point is, such vague and overly inculsive laws set a dangerous precedent. Later on, when somebody wants to outlaw some new form of decryption technology, all they have to do is point to the language of this law and say, "see, this is exactly the sort of thing it's talking about." Never mind that this language is so broad it could be applied to almost anything with circuitry.
The freedom you give up now, assuming the goodwill of the powers that be, is the freedom you won't have later when that goodwill runs out.
Basically, Quantum Mechanics destroys the classical distinction between the observer and the system to be observed. In quantum mechanics, it is impossible to observe a system without affecting it.
For instance, if you measure the polarization of a photon, which was previously in a superposition of polarization states, in some sense you have created the new polarization of the photon, you have made it be what you measured it to be. So if I send you a diagonally polarized photon, and you measure it straight up and down, after it passes through your measuring device it will be purely straight up or straight down, whichever you measured it to be. So if somebody taps the line, we will be able to tell, because they will change the polarization of the photons I send you and you will get gibberish.
This is of course a bit simplistic, but that's the heart of the matter. Objectivity is dead. You are part of the system. If you observe it, you will inevitably have an effect on it. It's kind of cool.
The neat thing about this is that, assuming QM is correct, there is no way to circumvent it with new technology or more powerful computers or anything else. No matter how cool your tech is, you can't observe a system without changing it.
Sure, for just electricity, but you're not taking into account the massive amount of power consumption used by burning gasoline, which is a major problem. Don't get me wrong, I think all plausible options need to be explored, including nuclear power if it can be done safely, and people seem to think it can. I'm just saying the problem is large enough to be intractable.
Even if we're only talking about electricity, sure this is hardly an unsustainable number, but bringing that number of plants online will take time, and it's time that we don't have. All I'm saying is, we need to take a serious look at conservation, or no solution will have time to work.
Now if you come up with a calculation that if you completely covered the sunny state of Arizona with solar cells, it would still not be enough to replace just coal,
Yeah, that sounds about right. But have you done this calculation for nuclear fission? It would take a lot of reactors. Sad to say, but there's no easy solution to this problem.
the only reason that wind and solar plants exist is because the government (a) heavily subsidizes them
That may well be true, but what you're not addressing is that the government does also heavily subsidize the oil industry, with direct subsidies designed to lower the price of gas so we will all buy more. Perhaps we would not switch to other forms of energy without these subsidies, but we would definitely use less oil because we simply couldn't afford to drive as much. This would drive more alternative energy research.
I admire your optimism, dan. It's certainly worth a try. But to me, the prospects look pretty grim unless things change pretty radically, and pretty soon.
Too much energy? We're not even a Type 1 civilization yet.
OK, sure, we're not that advanced. What I'm saying is, we need to adjust our energy use to fit with our ability to reasonably produce energy. As we advance our tech level, we will find better ways to produce more energy, and then we can use more, but until that happens, we need to cut down.
I believe you that demand will increase exponentially, but the question is, can we afford to supply that demand?
atomic fission is the only replacement we know can take it's place.
Actually, the big problem with nuclear fission as a solution to the oil problem is simply one of scale. According to David Goldstein, prof at Cal Tech and author of Out of Gas: the End of the Age of Oil, we would have to bring something like one maximum-capacity nuclear fission plant online every day for the next thirty years to match our current consumption of energy from fossil fuels. This rate of production is somewhat unrealistic, so nukes (at least alone) cannot be the solution, not only because of the risk, but because of the sheer scale involved.
It's worth noting that solar energy, my personal favorite, is also subject to the same problem: in order to meet our current needs, we would have to cover half of the state of California with solar panels. That much land is available, scattered across the globe, of course, but the sheer production of solar panels involved is daunting.
Unfortunately, at some point we're just going to have to face it: we're using too much energy. There is no reasonable way to produce it at this rate. We're just going to have to cut down, and that won't be easy.
Terrorists, American citizens or not, give up their rights when they choose to enable or support terrorist activities against their own government
Your argument could equally well be applied to any sort of criminal, particularly murderers. Under the US legal system, criminals are still supposed to have rights. That's one thing which supposedly makes this a free country.
One problem with this whole war on terror trip is that it creates a special class of criminal, the "terrorist", which is a very losely defined term, who has no rights. The only real difference between a "terrorist" and any other kind of murderer is that the terrorist is politically motivated. This makes the whole thing even more problematic. If you start denying rights to politically motivated criminals, you can't help getting ever closer to criminalizing any form of dissent. That is what this sort of blacklisting represents: the criminalization of dissent. That is one of the classic characteristics of a totalitarian regime.
Terrorists who commit murder are murderers and should be treated as such. But if you take away their rights, you erode the very foundations of our society. This does violate the bill of rights, and it is a serious problem, not to be dismissed lightly.
Slashdot Mirror
On the contrary, you most definitely are. And not only that, but you have a unique and beautiful contribution to make to life, you just don't know what it is yet. Don't worry about that. It will come to you in time.
The only good advice I can give you is to follow your heart. That may sound trite, but it's true. The Universe is way too complex for even the best brain to control and predict. You never know what's going to happen to you. It's far more important that you do the right thing than it is that you do what is a "good career move" or whatever.
Don't save your soul-nourishing for anything, get it in everything you do. If what you're doing doesn't nourish your soul, do something else. Don't feel you have to do any particular thing just because it looks like an easy path to money. The most extraordainary things can happen in life, so keep your eyes and heart open.
"Don't worry if you don't know what to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 20 what they wanted to do with their lives either. Some of them most interesting 40 year olds still don't." -- Utah Phillips
Well, now, I would argue that. I agree completely that the historical record is massively distorted. Nonetheless, it's good for analyzing general patterns which might help us understand how we got here and what it all means. Furthermore, our knowledge of the present is, if anything, even more tenuous than our knowledge of the past. How do you know what's happening now? Are you everywhere at once. You read about it in the news and watch it on TV. But that's massively distorted too, obviously, and much of what is going on now doesn't become clear until much later, when we have a chance to review secret documents and compare a wide variety of accounts and so forth.
Basically, we have no real way of knowing what's going on, either in the present or in the past. However, trying to reconstruct what we can of the past sheds some light on what we can't accurately reconstruct about the present. One thing history tells us quite clearly is that what is going on is almost never what the general public thinks is going on at the time.
They say that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but I think those who learn from history are doomed to repeat it anyway.
"I think we can all agree, the past is over." --Dubya
Seriously, though, the past is interesting because it continues to have effects on the present and the future. Also, because we can learn from patterns that have occurred in the past and from past misakes, so stydy of the past helps us to understand what's going on right now. I think a lot of people who want us to forget the past have very specific things in mind from the past that they'd like us to forget.
Wow, thanks for the rundown, ces, that's quite informative (hint hint, mods!)
Ah, now, this one I'm not confused about. What you can't prove is an ontological negative. That is, you can't prove the non-existence of something in the physical universe (at least, not without searching the whole thing, which is impossible due to the speed limit). Of course you can prove the non-existence of something in math, because math is a made-up logical system, not an external reality. Now, there's a pretty good argument that the universe isn't an external reality either, but if I made it up, I don't remember doing so!
Apparently so. It's been a while since I've taken a math class. I remembered something about this issue, but I wasn't sure what it was! ;-)
That's a rather nice proof. But, just one question: doesn't this provide a means of searching for higher primes? I thought that was trickier than that. Of course, since your new number need not necessarily be prime, but may be divisible by other primes between it and P(n), this isn't a sure-fire algo to give you a higher prime, but at least it gives you a pretty good hint.
In the apology, he states that "the existence of an infinite number of primes was known" in antiquity, but he doesn't say specifically whether it was proven.
Now, for some reason I had the impression that we believe there are an infinite number of primes, but it has never been proven and may be impossible to prove, making it a possible example of Goedel's thm. But this seems to imply that I was completely wrong, and the existence of an infinite number of primes was proven by the Greeks. So what's up with all this?
If true, does this proof also prove that the sequence of primes does not terminate? And if so, does this mean that the primes can't be used as an example of Goedel's thm any more?
I never said I'm having sex, I said I'm an outlaw. It's true, I am. Actually, I was just hoping that the criminalization of sex would actually increase the chances of me getting laid!
But, interestingly enough, she didn't ask me to leave, she just asked me not to take pictures. She said it was rude. I felt that it was her place so I should respect her wishes. But it struck me as odd, the idea that you own the photons reflected off your property.
Why thank you. The Constitution, while it is somewhat vague (though it definitely doesn't outlaw the universe), is a very broad, general document. Furthermore, it is intended to limit the powers of government, and to describe the general form of a government. As such, it's actually pretty specific, in terms of the exact powers the federal govt is granted and the form that govt is to take. Its language is very carefully chosen for those purposes, and despite the intervening centuries, its interpretation is usually fairly clear (notwithstanding the efforts of those to whom it is inconvenient).
This treaty, on the other hand, is just silly. It is a lot more vague than other similar treaties, and it will never fly. And I do have a problem with vagueness in the law in general, afaik that's a common reason for striking down a law is if it's found to be too vague. I especially have a problem with vagueness that grants broad and vaguely defined powers to the government, instead of placing broad and vague restrictions on it, which is not so bad.
I'm not necessarily saying I was in the right here. I apologized and erased the pictures. But it's an interesting issue. I think you hit the nail on the head with the question of expectation of privacy. The irony of it is that I was actually thinking of using the photos to promote her business.
I guess it's a good thing you can't have everything, otherwise you might be prosecuted for posession of the universe. "Damn it, officer, you planted the universe on me and you know it!"
They can have my penis when they pry it from my cold dead fingers!
because if sex is outlawed, ony outlaws will have sex!
I once had a store owner get all over my case for taking photos inside her store. Apparently, those were proprietary photons I was recording. What I wonder is, would she have had a leg to stand on if I had taken the same photos from right outside her doorway? At what point do you own a photon, and at what point do you not?
2. In particular, effective legal remedies shall be provided against those who:
...
(iii) participate in the manufacture, importation, sale, or any other act that makes available a device or system capable of decrypting or helping to decrypt an encrypted program-carrying signal.
This is obviously insanely vague. Now, they might argue that obviously they didn't mean to outlaw PCs and televisions with this wording, and of course it wouldn't be interpreted that way. But that's not the point.
The point is, such vague and overly inculsive laws set a dangerous precedent. Later on, when somebody wants to outlaw some new form of decryption technology, all they have to do is point to the language of this law and say, "see, this is exactly the sort of thing it's talking about." Never mind that this language is so broad it could be applied to almost anything with circuitry.
The freedom you give up now, assuming the goodwill of the powers that be, is the freedom you won't have later when that goodwill runs out.
For instance, if you measure the polarization of a photon, which was previously in a superposition of polarization states, in some sense you have created the new polarization of the photon, you have made it be what you measured it to be. So if I send you a diagonally polarized photon, and you measure it straight up and down, after it passes through your measuring device it will be purely straight up or straight down, whichever you measured it to be. So if somebody taps the line, we will be able to tell, because they will change the polarization of the photons I send you and you will get gibberish.
This is of course a bit simplistic, but that's the heart of the matter. Objectivity is dead. You are part of the system. If you observe it, you will inevitably have an effect on it. It's kind of cool.
The neat thing about this is that, assuming QM is correct, there is no way to circumvent it with new technology or more powerful computers or anything else. No matter how cool your tech is, you can't observe a system without changing it.
Even if we're only talking about electricity, sure this is hardly an unsustainable number, but bringing that number of plants online will take time, and it's time that we don't have. All I'm saying is, we need to take a serious look at conservation, or no solution will have time to work.
Yeah, that sounds about right. But have you done this calculation for nuclear fission? It would take a lot of reactors. Sad to say, but there's no easy solution to this problem.
That may well be true, but what you're not addressing is that the government does also heavily subsidize the oil industry, with direct subsidies designed to lower the price of gas so we will all buy more. Perhaps we would not switch to other forms of energy without these subsidies, but we would definitely use less oil because we simply couldn't afford to drive as much. This would drive more alternative energy research.
I admire your optimism, dan. It's certainly worth a try. But to me, the prospects look pretty grim unless things change pretty radically, and pretty soon.
OK, sure, we're not that advanced. What I'm saying is, we need to adjust our energy use to fit with our ability to reasonably produce energy. As we advance our tech level, we will find better ways to produce more energy, and then we can use more, but until that happens, we need to cut down.
I believe you that demand will increase exponentially, but the question is, can we afford to supply that demand?
Actually, the big problem with nuclear fission as a solution to the oil problem is simply one of scale. According to David Goldstein, prof at Cal Tech and author of Out of Gas: the End of the Age of Oil, we would have to bring something like one maximum-capacity nuclear fission plant online every day for the next thirty years to match our current consumption of energy from fossil fuels. This rate of production is somewhat unrealistic, so nukes (at least alone) cannot be the solution, not only because of the risk, but because of the sheer scale involved.
It's worth noting that solar energy, my personal favorite, is also subject to the same problem: in order to meet our current needs, we would have to cover half of the state of California with solar panels. That much land is available, scattered across the globe, of course, but the sheer production of solar panels involved is daunting.
Unfortunately, at some point we're just going to have to face it: we're using too much energy. There is no reasonable way to produce it at this rate. We're just going to have to cut down, and that won't be easy.
Your argument could equally well be applied to any sort of criminal, particularly murderers. Under the US legal system, criminals are still supposed to have rights. That's one thing which supposedly makes this a free country.
One problem with this whole war on terror trip is that it creates a special class of criminal, the "terrorist", which is a very losely defined term, who has no rights. The only real difference between a "terrorist" and any other kind of murderer is that the terrorist is politically motivated. This makes the whole thing even more problematic. If you start denying rights to politically motivated criminals, you can't help getting ever closer to criminalizing any form of dissent. That is what this sort of blacklisting represents: the criminalization of dissent. That is one of the classic characteristics of a totalitarian regime.
Terrorists who commit murder are murderers and should be treated as such. But if you take away their rights, you erode the very foundations of our society. This does violate the bill of rights, and it is a serious problem, not to be dismissed lightly.