Atheists themselves are to blame for that. What they need is a good platform. Something like an international organization, an Allied Atheist Allegiance, may be, with enough resources to throw behind a campaign. Then anything can happen, even an otter for president (as long as it is endemic to US).
That case was funny because, IMHO, it is reasonable to expect that fresh coffee is sold at 200 F, which happens to be the temperature of coffee that was just made. Why is it reasonable to expect anything lower? I do not presume that everyone here in US brews coffee by hand, but even anyone with a coffeemaker should guess something about about the temperature of coffee after having seen the steam. If you burn yourself with your coffee, you are just a dumbass, there is really not a lot of room for fudging here.
So, can you describe what the patterns are for "friendship"? You may say: not at the present state of knowledge, but one day we will. But I disagree. What are you going to describe? A pattern of electrical currents and chemical reactions which occurs as you smile at a sight of a friend, say? Perfectly reasonable, but how did you decide that he is your friend before you recorded the pattern? Clearly, "friendship" is not a pattern. A pattern is one of manifestations of friendship, just like a friendly smile:)
The fact that the theory of evolution does not apply in the
presence of the human factor?
This is not a fact as you claim, and merely betrays your own ignorance about theories of evolution. There is no difficulty in applying evolutionary concepts to the humans or any other animal.
Yes, there is a tremendous difficulty even when the next generation is under the influence of artificial selection, as opposed to natural selection, as was the case with humans for the last 10000 years at least; even more so when the next generation is designed from the ground up. Think dog breeding, and then designing a new virus molecule, and then AI. Where will a computer fit on a tree of life? (Not that it is quite ready, but it will be "alive" enough soon enough.)
Or that we will design human 2.0 in a
foreseeable future?
You might find it helpful to not take as fact the half baked ideas coming out of the entertainment industry. They specialize in turning molehills into mountains to sell cinema tickets and magazines, you know. It's a very long road from perturbing DNA to intelligently designing humans. See above. We are a product of artificial selection. I am sure that we will make terrible choices, but that is the whole freaking point: this would never have happened if the selection was natural.
Go to a university next to you and talk to an
evolutionary biologist.
Have you talked to one? I mean, not from Ohio or Kansas? Intelligent design is a religious idea, not a scientific one. Sorry, but this has to be repeated.
Ha ha very funny, that shot at Kansas. Professors there must be dumb because they talk with a funny accent. I, personally, wouldn't know, I only studied in SF Bay Area and Boston. But yeah, I talked to biologists and anthropologists, and they were ones who told me about the "human factor". Simply put, if we ourselves design the way a process happens, then it is not a natural process, i.e. it does not follow a "natural law". Examples include poetry, politics, and yes, human breeding (which inevitably will be replaced by more effective engineering).
Great post. More trivially, the proximity is what really makes it more likely. I bet we will see a fully developed human on Mars only a few hundred years from now:) I won't make any bets for Alpha Centauri.
Which part? The fact that the theory of evolution does not apply in the presence of the human factor? Or that we will design human 2.0 in a foreseeable future? Go to a university next to you and talk to an evolutionary biologist.
What if most evolve beyond physical forms? What if most lose themselves in virtual realities[sic].
The virtual reality would be actually something of a "probability barrier", according to him, but I still don't get it how it is bad news if there is life on Mars.
I like your comment about the physical forms though. Many people do not think about rather obvious possibilities only because they assume that aliens are "kind of like humans". Well, they are thinking of a family resemblance. We are a lot like apes because we are closely related to them. Not just in a figurative sense: some one had to have sex and give birth to Ham, Shem, and Japheth, and then one bore apes, the other humans, and the third one died out or something. This is not the case with aliens!! They could be so unlike us that NO meaningful communication will ever be possible. They could be so small (subatomic) that we will never, never have to be concerned about the same things. They could be galaxy-sized gas clouds. They could be so vastly ahead of us that talking to us is about as exciting as talking to a tree stump, and studying us is as enlightening as studying prime factors of 2.
P.S.: On a completely unrelated note, is period supposed to be italicized in an italic typeset?
Invented or discovered?
(I mostly agree with you, AC, and I would like to further stress that the philosophical truth about math is anything but black and white.)
First of all, "Mathematics" itself is neither invented nor discovered. Modern Mathematics is neither a language nor a law of nature; it is a science. As such, Mathematics is "studied". Within its domain, there are things like theorems, proofs, theories, concepts, and (mathematical) objects. We can say that some are invented, others are discovered, and yet others defy our attempts to pigeonhole them into neat categories.
Two major differences between an invention and a discovery are intention and credit. Discovered objects are not intended to be found. At best, something vaguely similar is being sought, but then a discovery is made, and it always comes as a surprise. Moreover, the making of discovered objects is not credited to anyone but nature or gods: they just sit there, waiting for someone to trip over them. Compare a modern mousetrap to Americas and you will see what I am talking about.
A good example of a mathematical discovery is the Mandelbrot fractal, and here I am talking specifically about the picture. M. was not setting out to deliver a nice, aesthetically pleasing arrangement of bulbs and gradients. He expected to see some kind of a region in the plain, but what he finally saw with his eyes was beyond his wildest dreams. He boarded the simplest vessel he could find:
z = x^2 + c
and stirred it in a new direction. He thought that he was crossing a river, but then he saw what could only be described as Terra Nova.
And conversely, if you want an example of a mathematical invention, look at the proof of the Poincare conjecture. Perelman had an extremely good idea about the thing he was looking for. All the topologists I know agree that he would not be able to do what he did if not for the efforts of dozens of brilliant mathematicians who developed entire theories with a specific goal to make this problem easier. Consequently, he found pretty much what he was looking for, and won all of the credit, in spite of rather obvious efforts (by other teams) to claim a few pieces of that pie. This is the kind of proof that absolutely cannot be stumbled upon.
Well, you just solved the problem. While not practical for most people or situations, a one-time password would work. You don't need to change the server, you just have to have a custom server tailored to your needs. If, say, you need access to your own web-mail, a CGI script would probably suffice.
I don't mind that but it gets irritating when he's sitting in the middle or in the front - it's very distracting to see moving pictures right smack in your line of sight of either the board or the professor.
Have them kicked out of the classroom. They will hate you, but what do you care? If I was teaching this class, I'd be entirely on your side.
When lecture time is wasted because a professor has to repeat his question twice for all the students that aren't paying attention, [...]
During a lecture, a professor will only occasionally ask a rhetorical question. That's why it's called a "lecture". And if a student is surfing the web during a discussion session when he is expected to talk, he should be removed from the classroom. It's that easy.
And, of course, I've made a usual mistake: "the odds" are an odd term which I almost never use. I was referring to P("winning the prize"), or the expected value, if you think of a car as one and goat as zero. For E = 1/3, the corresponding odds are 1:2.
An excellent explanation of the player's situation. Indeed, it was safe to come to the show with the determination to toss a coin for the second choice (thereby keeping your EV at 1/3), and it was probably an even better strategy to keep your initial choice -- but one would have to hope that the host was "evil", as above.
You are absolutely correct. I think, that was the reason why people (especially mathematicians) wrote in: the actual game gave that freedom to the host.
No, your odds with flipping the coin to choose between two doors will always be exactly 1/2
When I said "host's strategy", I mean his strategy in regard to opening a goat door in the first place. If, for example, the host chooses to never open a door, then your odds will be at 1/3. Certainly, you cannot devise a strategy to improve above that, but deciding to toss a coin will let you remain at these odds.
The problem can be easily misunderstood.
If it is a known rule of the game that after we choose a door, a door with a goat is opened, then it always pays to change our choice: as TFA indicates, it raises our odds to 2/3.
If, however, opening a goat door is the host's choice, then we are entering a poker-like situation. For example, if the host only chooses to reveal a goat when we choose correctly, then changing our choice will cause us to loose every time! And in general, for each strategy that a host might employ, there is an optimal counter-strategy.
In the latter scenario, it may be our goal simply to preserve our initial odds. If so, it pays to toss a coin on the second choice. This way, quite regardless of the host's strategy, we will have our odds at 1/3 or above.
Dude, I know one old guy with a long history of
chronic pain (and his wife has terminal cancer, AND he is a statistician by trade, so I tend to trust his opinion on medical matters) and he basically told me that if I keep going to the doctor and complain about pain, I only need to go so many times before I get morphine. They'll just keep giving me stronger and stronger painkillers until, one day, here it is, the big M. Powerful drugs can be dangerous, of course, but the whole "illegal drag user = bad person" junk is just stupid.
Too many strings attached. I think the GP wanted
specifically threesomes with sluts. For that (I heard), nothing works as well as a few grams of cocaine.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point. .com will stand for "non-commercial" :)
Atheists themselves are to blame for that. What they need is a good platform. Something like an international organization, an Allied Atheist Allegiance, may be, with enough resources to throw behind a campaign. Then anything can happen, even an otter for president (as long as it is endemic to US).
God designed platypus right after he put the finishing touches on cannabis.
That case was funny because, IMHO, it is reasonable to expect that fresh coffee is sold at 200 F, which happens to be the temperature of coffee that was just made. Why is it reasonable to expect anything lower? I do not presume that everyone here in US brews coffee by hand, but even anyone with a coffeemaker should guess something about about the temperature of coffee after having seen the steam. If you burn yourself with your coffee, you are just a dumbass, there is really not a lot of room for fudging here.
So, can you describe what the patterns are for "friendship"? You may say: not at the present state of knowledge, but one day we will. But I disagree. What are you going to describe? A pattern of electrical currents and chemical reactions which occurs as you smile at a sight of a friend, say? Perfectly reasonable, but how did you decide that he is your friend before you recorded the pattern? Clearly, "friendship" is not a pattern. A pattern is one of manifestations of friendship, just like a friendly smile :)
Everything we know of has a basis in physical reality. Even ideas.
How thick is your understanding of "spiritual"?
I mean literally, how many centimeters is it?
When you say "friendship", while talking about your old pal, what physical object are you referring to?
Yes, there is a tremendous difficulty even when the next generation is under the influence of artificial selection, as opposed to natural selection, as was the case with humans for the last 10000 years at least; even more so when the next generation is designed from the ground up. Think dog breeding, and then designing a new virus molecule, and then AI. Where will a computer fit on a tree of life? (Not that it is quite ready, but it will be "alive" enough soon enough.)
You might find it helpful to not take as fact the half baked ideas coming out of the entertainment industry. They specialize in turning molehills into mountains to sell cinema tickets and magazines, you know. It's a very long road from perturbing DNA to intelligently designing humans. See above. We are a product of artificial selection. I am sure that we will make terrible choices, but that is the whole freaking point: this would never have happened if the selection was natural. Have you talked to one? I mean, not from Ohio or Kansas? Intelligent design is a religious idea, not a scientific one. Sorry, but this has to be repeated.Ha ha very funny, that shot at Kansas. Professors there must be dumb because they talk with a funny accent. I, personally, wouldn't know, I only studied in SF Bay Area and Boston. But yeah, I talked to biologists and anthropologists, and they were ones who told me about the "human factor". Simply put, if we ourselves design the way a process happens, then it is not a natural process, i.e. it does not follow a "natural law". Examples include poetry, politics, and yes, human breeding (which inevitably will be replaced by more effective engineering).
Great post. More trivially, the proximity is what really makes it more likely. I bet we will see a fully developed human on Mars only a few hundred years from now :) I won't make any bets for Alpha Centauri.
Which part? The fact that the theory of evolution does not apply in the presence of the human factor? Or that we will design human 2.0 in a foreseeable future? Go to a university next to you and talk to an evolutionary biologist.
What if most evolve beyond physical forms? What if most lose themselves in virtual realities[sic].
The virtual reality would be actually something of a "probability barrier", according to him, but I still don't get it how it is bad news if there is life on Mars.
I like your comment about the physical forms though. Many people do not think about rather obvious possibilities only because they assume that aliens are "kind of like humans". Well, they are thinking of a family resemblance. We are a lot like apes because we are closely related to them. Not just in a figurative sense: some one had to have sex and give birth to Ham, Shem, and Japheth, and then one bore apes, the other humans, and the third one died out or something. This is not the case with aliens!! They could be so unlike us that NO meaningful communication will ever be possible. They could be so small (subatomic) that we will never, never have to be concerned about the same things. They could be galaxy-sized gas clouds. They could be so vastly ahead of us that talking to us is about as exciting as talking to a tree stump, and studying us is as enlightening as studying prime factors of 2.
P.S.: On a completely unrelated note, is period supposed to be italicized in an italic typeset?
Maintaining your own girlfriend is such a bother. When I need one, I just borrow it for a day or two from one of my colleagues.
Invented or discovered? (I mostly agree with you, AC, and I would like to further stress that the philosophical truth about math is anything but black and white.)
First of all, "Mathematics" itself is neither invented nor discovered. Modern Mathematics is neither a language nor a law of nature; it is a science. As such, Mathematics is "studied". Within its domain, there are things like theorems, proofs, theories, concepts, and (mathematical) objects. We can say that some are invented, others are discovered, and yet others defy our attempts to pigeonhole them into neat categories.
Two major differences between an invention and a discovery are intention and credit. Discovered objects are not intended to be found. At best, something vaguely similar is being sought, but then a discovery is made, and it always comes as a surprise. Moreover, the making of discovered objects is not credited to anyone but nature or gods: they just sit there, waiting for someone to trip over them. Compare a modern mousetrap to Americas and you will see what I am talking about.
A good example of a mathematical discovery is the Mandelbrot fractal, and here I am talking specifically about the picture. M. was not setting out to deliver a nice, aesthetically pleasing arrangement of bulbs and gradients. He expected to see some kind of a region in the plain, but what he finally saw with his eyes was beyond his wildest dreams. He boarded the simplest vessel he could find:
z = x^2 + c
and stirred it in a new direction. He thought that he was crossing a river, but then he saw what could only be described as Terra Nova.
And conversely, if you want an example of a mathematical invention, look at the proof of the Poincare conjecture. Perelman had an extremely good idea about the thing he was looking for. All the topologists I know agree that he would not be able to do what he did if not for the efforts of dozens of brilliant mathematicians who developed entire theories with a specific goal to make this problem easier. Consequently, he found pretty much what he was looking for, and won all of the credit, in spite of rather obvious efforts (by other teams) to claim a few pieces of that pie. This is the kind of proof that absolutely cannot be stumbled upon.
Well, you just solved the problem. While not practical for most people or situations, a one-time password would work. You don't need to change the server, you just have to have a custom server tailored to your needs. If, say, you need access to your own web-mail, a CGI script would probably suffice.
I don't mind that but it gets irritating when he's sitting in the middle or in the front - it's very distracting to see moving pictures right smack in your line of sight of either the board or the professor.
Have them kicked out of the classroom. They will hate you, but what do you care? If I was teaching this class, I'd be entirely on your side.
When lecture time is wasted because a professor has to repeat his question twice for all the students that aren't paying attention, [...]
During a lecture, a professor will only occasionally ask a rhetorical question. That's why it's called a "lecture". And if a student is surfing the web during a discussion session when he is expected to talk, he should be removed from the classroom. It's that easy.
OMG why is this not the most popular piece of software in the world?
Yes! For chocolate!
Hypocrite!
And, of course, I've made a usual mistake: "the odds" are an odd term which I almost never use. I was referring to P("winning the prize"), or the expected value, if you think of a car as one and goat as zero. For E = 1/3, the corresponding odds are 1:2.
An excellent explanation of the player's situation. Indeed, it was safe to come to the show with the determination to toss a coin for the second choice (thereby keeping your EV at 1/3), and it was probably an even better strategy to keep your initial choice -- but one would have to hope that the host was "evil", as above.
You are absolutely correct. I think, that was the reason why people (especially mathematicians) wrote in: the actual game gave that freedom to the host.
No, your odds with flipping the coin to choose between two doors will always be exactly 1/2
When I said "host's strategy", I mean his strategy in regard to opening a goat door in the first place. If, for example, the host chooses to never open a door, then your odds will be at 1/3. Certainly, you cannot devise a strategy to improve above that, but deciding to toss a coin will let you remain at these odds.
The problem can be easily misunderstood. If it is a known rule of the game that after we choose a door, a door with a goat is opened, then it always pays to change our choice: as TFA indicates, it raises our odds to 2/3.
If, however, opening a goat door is the host's choice, then we are entering a poker-like situation. For example, if the host only chooses to reveal a goat when we choose correctly, then changing our choice will cause us to loose every time! And in general, for each strategy that a host might employ, there is an optimal counter-strategy.
In the latter scenario, it may be our goal simply to preserve our initial odds. If so, it pays to toss a coin on the second choice. This way, quite regardless of the host's strategy, we will have our odds at 1/3 or above.
Dude, I know one old guy with a long history of chronic pain (and his wife has terminal cancer, AND he is a statistician by trade, so I tend to trust his opinion on medical matters) and he basically told me that if I keep going to the doctor and complain about pain, I only need to go so many times before I get morphine. They'll just keep giving me stronger and stronger painkillers until, one day, here it is, the big M. Powerful drugs can be dangerous, of course, but the whole "illegal drag user = bad person" junk is just stupid.
Too many strings attached. I think the GP wanted specifically threesomes with sluts. For that (I heard), nothing works as well as a few grams of cocaine.