"it's just something that comes to your mind and because of the noise ratio you only notice it later"
The human brain is very good at creating non-existant patterns in random noise. There is a classic phycological experiment (IIRC by Skinner), showing that pigeons do exactly same thing (ie: engage in superstisious behaviour).
In the experiment a feeder was set up so that it would drop a pellet of food randomly with a mean time between pellet drops of a few minutes. The feeder was placed in the pigeon cage for an hour or two at normal feeding times.
The hungry pigeon would just happen to make some random movement just before the pellet happened to drop. It then mentally connected that movement with food and would repeat it a few times in the hope another pellet would appear.
Occasionally it would make a different movement just before the pellet appaeared. It would then mentally connect this new movement with food and join the two movements together in the hope of getting more food. After a while the pigeon(s) had all created their own unique an complex dance that they would start endlessly performing whenever the dispenser was introduced to their cage.
The really interesting part is that the time it took to perform a fully developed pigeon dance was always equal to the mean time between random pellet drops, meaning the pidgeon was virtually garenteed to recieve the reward after one or two performances of it's dance. Connecting random dreams to future events after the fact is just one of the many human forms of the pigeon dance.
"Or maybe they have been in the real world long enough to know the truth from wishful thinking."
Agreed, as a teenager in the 70's I was a true believer in the woo-woo physics of Uri Geller, I had "undeniable proof", he wound my watch that had a broken winder simply by staring at the TV camera with a constipated look on his face. Many years later my dad admitted he had wound the watch with tweezers as a practical joke.
James Randi set me straight on Geller's unethical magic tricks and I remain eternally gratefull to him (and dad's practical joke), teaching me my first real life lesson in skeptical thinking.
I agree with Randi who's father was killed by his own wishfull thinking on medical treatments. People like Geller (and my current favorite Anthony Watts) are the scum of the Earth, they take people's natural curiosity about science and use it against them for their own profit.
Many moons ago I had a dream about a body wrapped in black plastic on top of a seaside cliff with people in overcoats stood around it. The next day I saw something almost identical on the news. Human brains are hard wired to remember extrodinary random hits. Do you recall how many innacurate dreams about future events you've had? - I know I don't.
Here's another example that does not involve prediction. I once dropped a cigarrete on the floor of a joinery (lots of sawdust, etc) to my utter amazement it landed vertically balanced on it's end, that was 30yrs ago and I still remeber that one random event as if it was yesterday. I cannot vividly recall any other time I've dropped a cigarrette on the floor but I know have done so many times and they all landed on their side as one would expect.
I strongly suspect that if you keep a diary of your dreams you will find that you are not as wierd as you think you are.
I don' think it's a mistake/seizure, I think it's your brain saying "WOW - this place fits my internal model of a classroom almost perfectly, I'm going to mark that internal model as a correct prediction and make sure I remeber it for future reference".
Personally I enjoy it when my mind plays tricks on me such as deja vu and hallucinations. The vanishing head illusion is an excellent example of how the brain can make realistic predictions ( for me the illusion works best in full screen mode at exactly one arms length from the screen ). The appearance of the solid bar demonstrates how real a visual halluciantion can be.
"You're assuming that people to whom this occurs have control over what they see and when."
And you're assuming they perform better than random chance. You don't need to make a prediction on demand to claim Randi's $1M prize, you just have to make a very specific prediction of a very specific event that cannot be deduced by logic, pop it in an envelope and send it to him before the fact. You can send more than one prediction but if you do then you must score significantly better than random chance.
Randi's father was killed by his own wishfull thinking. Needless to say I think that reading a good book on the art of skepticisim such as Sagan's Demon Haunted World would be much more profitable than sending random predictions to Randi, it's just that the profit cannot be measured in monetary terms.
Personally I learnt my first lesson in skepticisim over 30yrs ago from a book by Randi debunking Uri Geller whom I naively believed had wound my broken watch in one of his TV stunts. Turns out my Dad did it with a pair of tweesers when I left the room and didn't tell me until I stopped believing it myself several years later - pretty good life lesson if you ask me.
Anecdote: One night my ex-wife woke me at 3:00am and told me she'd had a nightmare where her aunt had died. She was accurate to within an hour.
Explaination: We had visited her dying aunt in hospital a few days before the dream. People remeber the random hits and ignore the overwhelming number of misses.
Anecdote: My current lady freind claimed angels appeared and saved her life when she momentarily fell asleep at the wheel.
Explaination: She was asleep and her subconcious was telling her she shouldn't be.
If you have never had a strong visual hallucination then angles floating alongside you car would appear to be very strong proof they exist.
Where the hell did you get that idea? Most of us ignore them as best we can. This is summed up by the popular saying "Don't vote, it only encourages the bastards." Those that aren't ignoring them are taking the piss out of them.
"I'm getting tired of endlessly debating the filter"
Indeed, it's been going on since the 90's, still no filter and IMHO there never will be. OTOH if I hear you laughing in the streets I will grab my picthfork and join you.
"Scientific consensus" is simply the modern term for what Popper called "The republic of science". It applies to all of science not just one particular corner of it.
"Think about the scary noises you sometimes hear in frozen lakes - those are the ice heaving as it melts."
I live in Australia you insesitive clod!
Seriously though, if it was pure water then there would be little chance of life. But Cassini has already "tasted" organics in the ice vents, implying there's more to it than just water.
That's correct his DNA told him what sounded good, not how to make what sounds good. To make the sounds Mozart had to use trial and error and compare it to what his DNA told him sounds good. Similarly the computers program told it what sounds good to humans (Mozart) and via trial and error found something that sounds like Mozart.
Of course it can invent new musical rules but it's not human so it's not likely to be seen as beutifull music by humans unless we give it constant feedback via our opinion of what is beutifull.
As an analogy, I know very little about musical rules, I could make up my own but it's unlikely to be appreciated by humans (including myself). However given enough time and feedback (from myself and others) I may stumble across a new style that is acceptable to the human ear.
Same deal with games, a computer would need feedback as to what humans consider enjoyable in a game. Humans don't have that constraint because they can apply their own subjective measures and be fairly confident at least some of the other humans will agree with their measure.
"Only one level more complex is hard-coding the tunes into the program itself so it really is a program producing Mozart."
That's just the point the tunes were not hard coded they emerged from the processing inside the box just as Mozart's tunes emerged from the processing inside his head. However the computer had to be "shown" what humans think a good tune sounds like before it could judge it's own efforts. Human's don't need to be shown what humans think good music sounds like, they are born with that "knowledge" because...well...they're human.
"I don't believe that are actually that many problems in that class."
Not trying to flame you but can you give a couple of examples of problems you think fall outside that class? Without an example it's impossible to critique your point.
We're unique but that doesn't make us sepcial. The universe doesn't give a rat's arse about us, it has many other unique life forms that can provide it with self awareness.
As expalianed in the video the source of heat is irrelevant, the convection currents that cycle the lipids through hot and cold are what counts. There is no evidence to suggest Enceladus is entirely made of pure water, it's likely to have a small rocky center where the friction of rocks moving under tidal forces produce enough heat to melt the interior ice and cause the observed eruptions on the surface.
Where ever we have looked for life living in "impossible" environments on earth we have found it. 2km into the earth's crust, sulphuric acid lakes, reactor cores, ect, ect. I'm not claiming there is life on Enceladus, simply that it's one of the best targets to look for it. I don't understand why you are going out of your way to rationalise your desire to ignore such an interesting target.
I'm unimpressed by your arguments and see no reason for your pessimisim. One of the best theories we have of abiogenisis is that it formed around undersea volcanic vents. Since the tidal forces of Staurn are heating the moon from the inside causing similar vents to appear on the surface it safe to say that Earth like vents are occuring in the rocky core of the moon. Abiogenisis in 10 minutes - "No rediculous improbability, no supernatural forces, no lightening striking a mud puddle. Just Chemistry!"
Slashdot Mirror
"it's just something that comes to your mind and because of the noise ratio you only notice it later"
The human brain is very good at creating non-existant patterns in random noise. There is a classic phycological experiment (IIRC by Skinner), showing that pigeons do exactly same thing (ie: engage in superstisious behaviour).
In the experiment a feeder was set up so that it would drop a pellet of food randomly with a mean time between pellet drops of a few minutes. The feeder was placed in the pigeon cage for an hour or two at normal feeding times.
The hungry pigeon would just happen to make some random movement just before the pellet happened to drop. It then mentally connected that movement with food and would repeat it a few times in the hope another pellet would appear.
Occasionally it would make a different movement just before the pellet appaeared. It would then mentally connect this new movement with food and join the two movements together in the hope of getting more food. After a while the pigeon(s) had all created their own unique an complex dance that they would start endlessly performing whenever the dispenser was introduced to their cage.
The really interesting part is that the time it took to perform a fully developed pigeon dance was always equal to the mean time between random pellet drops, meaning the pidgeon was virtually garenteed to recieve the reward after one or two performances of it's dance. Connecting random dreams to future events after the fact is just one of the many human forms of the pigeon dance.
"Or maybe they have been in the real world long enough to know the truth from wishful thinking."
Agreed, as a teenager in the 70's I was a true believer in the woo-woo physics of Uri Geller, I had "undeniable proof", he wound my watch that had a broken winder simply by staring at the TV camera with a constipated look on his face. Many years later my dad admitted he had wound the watch with tweezers as a practical joke.
James Randi set me straight on Geller's unethical magic tricks and I remain eternally gratefull to him (and dad's practical joke), teaching me my first real life lesson in skeptical thinking.
I agree with Randi who's father was killed by his own wishfull thinking on medical treatments. People like Geller (and my current favorite Anthony Watts) are the scum of the Earth, they take people's natural curiosity about science and use it against them for their own profit.
Many moons ago I had a dream about a body wrapped in black plastic on top of a seaside cliff with people in overcoats stood around it. The next day I saw something almost identical on the news. Human brains are hard wired to remember extrodinary random hits. Do you recall how many innacurate dreams about future events you've had? - I know I don't.
Here's another example that does not involve prediction. I once dropped a cigarrete on the floor of a joinery (lots of sawdust, etc) to my utter amazement it landed vertically balanced on it's end, that was 30yrs ago and I still remeber that one random event as if it was yesterday. I cannot vividly recall any other time I've dropped a cigarrette on the floor but I know have done so many times and they all landed on their side as one would expect.
I strongly suspect that if you keep a diary of your dreams you will find that you are not as wierd as you think you are.
I don' think it's a mistake/seizure, I think it's your brain saying "WOW - this place fits my internal model of a classroom almost perfectly, I'm going to mark that internal model as a correct prediction and make sure I remeber it for future reference".
Personally I enjoy it when my mind plays tricks on me such as deja vu and hallucinations. The vanishing head illusion is an excellent example of how the brain can make realistic predictions ( for me the illusion works best in full screen mode at exactly one arms length from the screen ). The appearance of the solid bar demonstrates how real a visual halluciantion can be.
"You're assuming that people to whom this occurs have control over what they see and when."
And you're assuming they perform better than random chance. You don't need to make a prediction on demand to claim Randi's $1M prize, you just have to make a very specific prediction of a very specific event that cannot be deduced by logic, pop it in an envelope and send it to him before the fact. You can send more than one prediction but if you do then you must score significantly better than random chance.
Randi's father was killed by his own wishfull thinking. Needless to say I think that reading a good book on the art of skepticisim such as Sagan's Demon Haunted World would be much more profitable than sending random predictions to Randi, it's just that the profit cannot be measured in monetary terms.
Personally I learnt my first lesson in skepticisim over 30yrs ago from a book by Randi debunking Uri Geller whom I naively believed had wound my broken watch in one of his TV stunts. Turns out my Dad did it with a pair of tweesers when I left the room and didn't tell me until I stopped believing it myself several years later - pretty good life lesson if you ask me.
Anecdote: One night my ex-wife woke me at 3:00am and told me she'd had a nightmare where her aunt had died. She was accurate to within an hour.
Explaination: We had visited her dying aunt in hospital a few days before the dream. People remeber the random hits and ignore the overwhelming number of misses.
Anecdote: My current lady freind claimed angels appeared and saved her life when she momentarily fell asleep at the wheel.
Explaination: She was asleep and her subconcious was telling her she shouldn't be. If you have never had a strong visual hallucination then angles floating alongside you car would appear to be very strong proof they exist.
"If your service depends on a single server, you're still doing it wrong."
666 666 -> Devilishly clever redundancy.
"Can you show me on this doll where he said that he was touching your avatar?
No I can't, that would be virtual molestation.
Where the hell did you get that idea? Most of us ignore them as best we can. This is summed up by the popular saying "Don't vote, it only encourages the bastards." Those that aren't ignoring them are taking the piss out of them.
"I'm getting tired of endlessly debating the filter"
Indeed, it's been going on since the 90's, still no filter and IMHO there never will be. OTOH if I hear you laughing in the streets I will grab my picthfork and join you.
"Scientific consensus" is simply the modern term for what Popper called "The republic of science". It applies to all of science not just one particular corner of it.
"Cry me a river"
Or as we Aussies would say - Suffer in your jocks AFACT.
If politics was that simple we could just tune into Fox and find out everything we need to know.
Those quotes are the closest I've seen but still no cigar. As I said Conroy knows the legislation will not pass the senate.
"Think about the scary noises you sometimes hear in frozen lakes - those are the ice heaving as it melts."
I live in Australia you insesitive clod!
Seriously though, if it was pure water then there would be little chance of life. But Cassini has already "tasted" organics in the ice vents, implying there's more to it than just water.
"the music itself was not encoded in his DNA"
That's correct his DNA told him what sounded good, not how to make what sounds good. To make the sounds Mozart had to use trial and error and compare it to what his DNA told him sounds good. Similarly the computers program told it what sounds good to humans (Mozart) and via trial and error found something that sounds like Mozart.
Of course it can invent new musical rules but it's not human so it's not likely to be seen as beutifull music by humans unless we give it constant feedback via our opinion of what is beutifull.
As an analogy, I know very little about musical rules, I could make up my own but it's unlikely to be appreciated by humans (including myself). However given enough time and feedback (from myself and others) I may stumble across a new style that is acceptable to the human ear.
Same deal with games, a computer would need feedback as to what humans consider enjoyable in a game. Humans don't have that constraint because they can apply their own subjective measures and be fairly confident at least some of the other humans will agree with their measure.
"Only one level more complex is hard-coding the tunes into the program itself so it really is a program producing Mozart."
That's just the point the tunes were not hard coded they emerged from the processing inside the box just as Mozart's tunes emerged from the processing inside his head. However the computer had to be "shown" what humans think a good tune sounds like before it could judge it's own efforts. Human's don't need to be shown what humans think good music sounds like, they are born with that "knowledge" because...well...they're human.
"who was upset because they felt that deep blue had demeaned mankind?
The people who said a computer would never beat the world champion?
"I don't believe that are actually that many problems in that class."
Not trying to flame you but can you give a couple of examples of problems you think fall outside that class? Without an example it's impossible to critique your point.
"what makes us special?"
We're unique but that doesn't make us sepcial. The universe doesn't give a rat's arse about us, it has many other unique life forms that can provide it with self awareness.
I'm dating your mum.
"Sure. I could just have "faith" that the cardinal with the white coat did everything right. Although that would probably be a mistake."
Yes it would be a mistake because it's arguing from authority, ie: not science.
Science does not ask for trust, nor does it ask for BLIND faith, it asks YOU to use critical thinking.
As expalianed in the video the source of heat is irrelevant, the convection currents that cycle the lipids through hot and cold are what counts. There is no evidence to suggest Enceladus is entirely made of pure water, it's likely to have a small rocky center where the friction of rocks moving under tidal forces produce enough heat to melt the interior ice and cause the observed eruptions on the surface.
Where ever we have looked for life living in "impossible" environments on earth we have found it. 2km into the earth's crust, sulphuric acid lakes, reactor cores, ect, ect. I'm not claiming there is life on Enceladus, simply that it's one of the best targets to look for it. I don't understand why you are going out of your way to rationalise your desire to ignore such an interesting target.
The fringes of any *ism are dogmatic, that's why they're on the fringes.
I'm unimpressed by your arguments and see no reason for your pessimisim. One of the best theories we have of abiogenisis is that it formed around undersea volcanic vents. Since the tidal forces of Staurn are heating the moon from the inside causing similar vents to appear on the surface it safe to say that Earth like vents are occuring in the rocky core of the moon. Abiogenisis in 10 minutes - "No rediculous improbability, no supernatural forces, no lightening striking a mud puddle. Just Chemistry!"