Not that I'm defending the practice but it used to be that such people regularly rose to high office, for example the architect of the blue mosque (arguably one of the most awe inspiring buildings ever constructed) started his career as a "dancing boy".
"A dictator invites revolution, and hence paves a way to a vastly better society."
They also lead revolutions. Mugabe initially came to power as a revolutionary hero. Violent revolutions rarely deliver on their promises of a vastly better society, they simply demonstrate that "might is right".
The recent interest in Zimbabwe was generated by the fact it was only the second time that Mugabe had allowed elections during his 30yr tenure, the last time being in 1990. It was a significant political event and your exagerated description of it's coverage mirrors Mugabe's own description.
"You see the choice is to get into a discussion of whether science is more true or objective than some other world view, or a discussion of whether science leads to a better more desirable world than some other world view. There is no agreement about either and I think the second discussion is much more fruitful."
Science irrefutably leads to a better understanding of the natural world, claims of absolute truth in our understanding of the universe is religious dogma, science itself rejects the notion of absolute truth. It's superiour utility is indesputible, what it is used for is not (From what you have said Feyerabend himself seems to be conflating those two discussions).
Wether science itself makes the world a better or worse place is a value judgement that has nothing to do with science. For example genetics is science, eugenics is not. Yet this does not stop some people blaming Darwin for the horrors of eugenics.
The whole thing boils down to the primative notion that eating the fruit of the knowledge tree is a sin in and of itself. Strangely the people who are sympathetic to that assertion often have bumper stickers that assert the opposite, ie: "Guns don't kill people..."
The halting problem is an example of an undecideable problem. All known search algorithims are examples of the halting problem since it takes the same or more time to compute when the algorithim will halt than it does to run the algorithim.
No it's not about the cache. As I said it's trivial to predict how long it will take to evaluate X answers and halt, yet it's still impossible to predict if or when during that period it will find a "good" one and press the buzzer. It could be the first, last, or none of the answers evaluated. If you do manage this impossible feat of prediction then what you have done is created a more efficient evaluation algorithim and are back to square one trying to predict how long the new algorithim will take to find a "good" answer.
"Nitpicking - I thought it is the parliament that passes the laws?"
Government is the majority of parliment, most laws only require a simple majority in both houses to pass (eg: income tax rules), certain classes of law requre more than a simple majority (eg: appointing a new GG), some require agreement from the states (eg: your GST example, since it replaced state sales taxes), and some require a referendum (constitutional changes).
"calculating that you can calculate or finish calculating the correct question in 5 secs or less"
Finding the right answer is a classical halting problem, trying to calculate when it will find the answer is futile. All you can say is that it will take X amount of time to evaluate Y potential answers wich is insuffcient information to decide when to press the buzzer.
You bring up an interesting point with autistic sevants, but "abstract visual images" are not a form of communication (which is what we're talking about). The language of math has something other languages do not, a universal rossetta stone called 'nature'. If Dolphins had a comunicable form of math (as opposed to mathematical ability), then they could easily comminicate it by simply verbalizing the prime numbers in a manner that could not reasonably be mistaken for random chance.
Trying to have a non-mathematical conversation with a Dolphin/Alien is much less likely to succeed, seeing the physical world via sonar and reacting to it with 6 degrees of freedom is an entirely different "real world" than what a human experiences.
"Nor does it alleviate the problem of their intelligences being so alien that their motives and actions have no meaning or pattern that we can discern."
Never said it does, maths as a language is likely to be pre-requsite for any technological species to get as far as stone henge, good intentions toward humans are not. But I figure that tecnological species are rare and if two of them meet, the curiosity that made them a technological species in the first place is going to motivate both sides to talk to the aliens, especially if they can't physically reach each other.
"advocated the wholesale elimination of what most people in this country consider an absolute core piece of that freedom"
Here in Australia most people think a potent symbol of our freedom is the fact that the Prime Minister can go for a jog in the morning whithout the protection of a small army. The cultures are different. The Australian people themselves demanded tighter gun laws and lierally boo'ed the NRA out of the country because they were seen as the marketing arm of the small arms industry. The murder rate hasn't changed much at all since the laws changed, but we haven't had a mass shooting for the last 20-odd years (and only one assination in over a 100yrs). Even when it was legal to own a handgun for self defense, very few actually did, it was never a social norm to own one unless your job required it.
Banning or not banning guns, it makes very little difference in the freedom-saftey see-saw. The difference in violence levels between US/AU can be explanied more convincingly by how they each deal with urban poverty and the level of blatant political/corporate propoganda on the idiot box.
Culturally the US is just not willing to give up the freedom to carry guns, whereas culturally Oz is just not willing to give up the freedom from guns. - Seems democratic and diverse to me.
"...except that you can't measure harmfulness by worldwide drops in deaths... measles, mumps and rubella can cause many non-lethal complications that you would not enjoy."
I can define "harm" anyway I like. Death is obviously "harm" and using it as an indicator does not exclude other forms of "harm".
"He wants desperately to make an impact....he wanted to optimize the timing for the sake of maximum impact"
I've seen a few interviews/speeches of Assange where he says that he makes two promises to his sources. 1. Protect their identity. 2. Maximise the impact of their information.
The Vanity Fair article is political gossip at it's finest (get well soon Hitchens). I'm not against opinion/gossip just suspect of people who assign serious weight to it. I prefer watching interiews of contraversial people (horse's mouth principle).
Premtive 'citation' retort: No I won't link to the interviews. If I did then readers would miss the context you get from searching for yourself. Plenty of Assange interviews/talks/speeches on youtube.
Measles deaths worldwide fell by 74% between 2000 and 2007, from an estimated 750,000 to 197,000. Do you know anyone who died from malaria (1,000,000/yr), yellow fever (200,000/yr), aids (1,800,000/yr), lukemia (600,000/yr), flu (500,000), rabies (55,000)?
I threw away a few mod points to reply so I hope it sinks in that after a 74% drop in measles deaths it is now as harmless as yellow fever, if it drops by a further 74% it will be as harmless as rabies.
"but so far in the Chinese rise as a world powerhouse and major economy they have suffered very little in the way of hard times.....All governments/countries tend to get xenophobic and look for outside enemies when times are hard"
When I was in HS John Lennon sang the words "Their starving back in China", it was a phrase used by mother's all over the western world to get their kids to finish their dinner. Fourty years later China has dragged more people out of poverty and starvation than the rest of the world put together. True the gang of four put them there in the first place but to say they haven't suffered hard times is naive at best.
"Wish You Were Here (the song) has a really good line that I've seen in someone's sig ("And did you exchange a walk-on part in a war for a lead role in a cage?"). Funny how more people remember the silly (imho) line about souls in a fishbowl than that line... heh."
The fishbowl line will make sense to anyone who has been married for any length of time. The war line can be applied to all sorts of situations but personally I think the original intent was that the "war" is the war of the sexes and the "cage" is marriage.
Slashdot Mirror
Not that I'm defending the practice but it used to be that such people regularly rose to high office, for example the architect of the blue mosque (arguably one of the most awe inspiring buildings ever constructed) started his career as a "dancing boy".
"A dictator invites revolution, and hence paves a way to a vastly better society."
They also lead revolutions. Mugabe initially came to power as a revolutionary hero. Violent revolutions rarely deliver on their promises of a vastly better society, they simply demonstrate that "might is right".
The recent interest in Zimbabwe was generated by the fact it was only the second time that Mugabe had allowed elections during his 30yr tenure, the last time being in 1990. It was a significant political event and your exagerated description of it's coverage mirrors Mugabe's own description.
"That's less than 2 million miles, or .05 AU from the sun.
Pedant; 2 million miles is about 0.02AU, not 0.05AU. 1 AU is the average Earth-Sun distance which is about 93,000,000 miles.
"We need some sort of disciplined critical thinking to decide what questions about the universe we "ought" to explore..." - No we don't.
"...and what changes in the world we "ought" to make" - Yes we do.
"You see the choice is to get into a discussion of whether science is more true or objective than some other world view, or a discussion of whether science leads to a better more desirable world than some other world view. There is no agreement about either and I think the second discussion is much more fruitful."
Science irrefutably leads to a better understanding of the natural world, claims of absolute truth in our understanding of the universe is religious dogma, science itself rejects the notion of absolute truth. It's superiour utility is indesputible, what it is used for is not (From what you have said Feyerabend himself seems to be conflating those two discussions).
Wether science itself makes the world a better or worse place is a value judgement that has nothing to do with science. For example genetics is science, eugenics is not. Yet this does not stop some people blaming Darwin for the horrors of eugenics.
The whole thing boils down to the primative notion that eating the fruit of the knowledge tree is a sin in and of itself. Strangely the people who are sympathetic to that assertion often have bumper stickers that assert the opposite, ie: "Guns don't kill people..."
The halting problem is an example of an undecideable problem. All known search algorithims are examples of the halting problem since it takes the same or more time to compute when the algorithim will halt than it does to run the algorithim.
No it's not about the cache. As I said it's trivial to predict how long it will take to evaluate X answers and halt, yet it's still impossible to predict if or when during that period it will find a "good" one and press the buzzer. It could be the first, last, or none of the answers evaluated. If you do manage this impossible feat of prediction then what you have done is created a more efficient evaluation algorithim and are back to square one trying to predict how long the new algorithim will take to find a "good" answer.
"Nitpicking - I thought it is the parliament that passes the laws?"
Government is the majority of parliment, most laws only require a simple majority in both houses to pass (eg: income tax rules), certain classes of law requre more than a simple majority (eg: appointing a new GG), some require agreement from the states (eg: your GST example, since it replaced state sales taxes), and some require a referendum (constitutional changes).
"calculating that you can calculate or finish calculating the correct question in 5 secs or less"
Finding the right answer is a classical halting problem, trying to calculate when it will find the answer is futile. All you can say is that it will take X amount of time to evaluate Y potential answers wich is insuffcient information to decide when to press the buzzer.
You bring up an interesting point with autistic sevants, but "abstract visual images" are not a form of communication (which is what we're talking about). The language of math has something other languages do not, a universal rossetta stone called 'nature'. If Dolphins had a comunicable form of math (as opposed to mathematical ability), then they could easily comminicate it by simply verbalizing the prime numbers in a manner that could not reasonably be mistaken for random chance.
Trying to have a non-mathematical conversation with a Dolphin/Alien is much less likely to succeed, seeing the physical world via sonar and reacting to it with 6 degrees of freedom is an entirely different "real world" than what a human experiences.
"Nor does it alleviate the problem of their intelligences being so alien that their motives and actions have no meaning or pattern that we can discern."
Never said it does, maths as a language is likely to be pre-requsite for any technological species to get as far as stone henge, good intentions toward humans are not. But I figure that tecnological species are rare and if two of them meet, the curiosity that made them a technological species in the first place is going to motivate both sides to talk to the aliens, especially if they can't physically reach each other.
"advocated the wholesale elimination of what most people in this country consider an absolute core piece of that freedom"
Here in Australia most people think a potent symbol of our freedom is the fact that the Prime Minister can go for a jog in the morning whithout the protection of a small army. The cultures are different. The Australian people themselves demanded tighter gun laws and lierally boo'ed the NRA out of the country because they were seen as the marketing arm of the small arms industry. The murder rate hasn't changed much at all since the laws changed, but we haven't had a mass shooting for the last 20-odd years (and only one assination in over a 100yrs). Even when it was legal to own a handgun for self defense, very few actually did, it was never a social norm to own one unless your job required it.
Banning or not banning guns, it makes very little difference in the freedom-saftey see-saw. The difference in violence levels between US/AU can be explanied more convincingly by how they each deal with urban poverty and the level of blatant political/corporate propoganda on the idiot box.
Culturally the US is just not willing to give up the freedom to carry guns, whereas culturally Oz is just not willing to give up the freedom from guns. - Seems democratic and diverse to me.
"I'm sure it happens in Britain as well."
It happens in Australia, it's rare enough to make national news and the invaders are usually not carrying firearms.
"Likely any alien would be so alien communication would be an even bigger issue than with dolphins.)"
If Dolphins had developed technology then it would be likely they would understand the language of maths.
"Are there some animals in captivity that show signs of collective rebellions ?"
Yes
"...except that you can't measure harmfulness by worldwide drops in deaths... measles, mumps and rubella can cause many non-lethal complications that you would not enjoy."
I can define "harm" anyway I like. Death is obviously "harm" and using it as an indicator does not exclude other forms of "harm".
"He wants desperately to make an impact....he wanted to optimize the timing for the sake of maximum impact"
I've seen a few interviews/speeches of Assange where he says that he makes two promises to his sources. 1. Protect their identity. 2. Maximise the impact of their information.
The Vanity Fair article is political gossip at it's finest (get well soon Hitchens). I'm not against opinion/gossip just suspect of people who assign serious weight to it. I prefer watching interiews of contraversial people (horse's mouth principle).
Premtive 'citation' retort: No I won't link to the interviews. If I did then readers would miss the context you get from searching for yourself. Plenty of Assange interviews/talks/speeches on youtube.
Measles deaths worldwide fell by 74% between 2000 and 2007, from an estimated 750,000 to 197,000. Do you know anyone who died from malaria (1,000,000/yr), yellow fever (200,000/yr), aids (1,800,000/yr), lukemia (600,000/yr), flu (500,000), rabies (55,000)?
I threw away a few mod points to reply so I hope it sinks in that after a 74% drop in measles deaths it is now as harmless as yellow fever, if it drops by a further 74% it will be as harmless as rabies.
In the US, we put a high value on individual legal rights. In China, it's much lower. - FTFY.
"but so far in the Chinese rise as a world powerhouse and major economy they have suffered very little in the way of hard times.....All governments/countries tend to get xenophobic and look for outside enemies when times are hard"
When I was in HS John Lennon sang the words "Their starving back in China", it was a phrase used by mother's all over the western world to get their kids to finish their dinner. Fourty years later China has dragged more people out of poverty and starvation than the rest of the world put together. True the gang of four put them there in the first place but to say they haven't suffered hard times is naive at best.
"I don't think anything really compares to the type of albums they did, or how tightly interwoven the songs typically were."
Vivaldi's Four seasons, although technically they are not songs.
"My Sharona, the knack. That song s good but that album is hardly 'a work' in and of itself."
I bought that one, most dissapointing album ever!
"Wish You Were Here (the song) has a really good line that I've seen in someone's sig ("And did you exchange a walk-on part in a war for a lead role in a cage?"). Funny how more people remember the silly (imho) line about souls in a fishbowl than that line... heh."
The fishbowl line will make sense to anyone who has been married for any length of time. The war line can be applied to all sorts of situations but personally I think the original intent was that the "war" is the war of the sexes and the "cage" is marriage.
Yep, the Aussie system is also far from perfect but it's a hell of a lot closer than the US.
"government will 'need' to regulate"
Regulation is not the problem, corruption is.