if you read the article and looked at the maps, the waterfalls and fish tank are in the entrance hallway and conference room, and the mist generator is in one of the greenrooms/monitoring rooms. The humidity features are where the *people* are, not where the servers are. The servers are off in another giant room, on the other side of what I would presume to be airtight doors.
The difference being that in open source you don't know the cost until after you've been using the software. I know we joke about "the first one is always free", but is that really the sort of business model that we want? The same business model used by drug dealers and payday loans?
Actually, University of Chicago economics have done systematic analysis of the financial records of on-the-street drug dealers in the US, and have used the empirical evidence to fairly conclusively prove that drug dealers use a franchise business model. That is, drug dealers use the same basic business model as McDonalds. I think you're confusing sales practices with business models.
That's very nice, but you don't understand the mathematics involved. It's not psychology; it's game theory and Nash Equilibriums and statistics. Here are some links for further information on this topic:
If you vote third party and vote for the Green Party, the only thing you'll do within a Plurality Voting System (aka a Winner-Takes-All system, such as we have in the US) is that you'll wind up with a two party system between the Greens and the Democrats, or a two party system between the Greens and the Republicans. The equilibrium of a plurality system settles on a two-party system. Doesn't matter if you vote for a third party, and it doesn't matter what the psychology involved is. The equilibrium is for two parties in a winner-takes-all election, and voting third party simply changes the two parties involved. It doesn't create a three party system.
Good ideas, but the mathematics and the set up of the system don't support your argument.
We have a two party system due to the winner-takes-all model of the election process. Voting for a third party in a winner-takes-all system merely is a vote for changing who the two parties are. The only way that you can maintain a multi-party system is for election results to be divided up proportionately, according to the results of the election. This principle can be seen in the voting processes of many European countries which have multi-party systems. You will consistently find that winner-takes-all results in two party; and proportional-distribution results in multi-party systems.
Learned all of this in Model Congress and Model United Nations in High School and College. The mathematics get into game theory, statistics, and combinatorics, but there are mathematical proofs supporting all of what I've just said.
If you really want to get rid of the two party system in America, you'll need to ratify a constitutional amendment that replaces the winner-takes-all model with a proportional distribution model. Might not be a bad idea, actually.
Why is one irrational and the other a dolt? That makes no sense to me.
If the woman is superior enough to view the man's answer as doltish rather than just confusing or irrational, then obviously she understands that the answer was direct and not the meta-meta-meta-meta-answer she expected. But in that case, who cares? She has no justification for being mad or taking the answer badly since she understands that it's doltish and not carefully calculated to be mean or insensitive.
I'm bringing this up because of your comment about this understanding being "a matter of survival" to you, due to your prolonged daily exposure to women. I don't get it. If they're so high level and wordly, then they should have no problem accommodating you, right?
Consider the farmer, the chef, and the food critic. The chef is meta gaming what the farmer does; while the food critic is meta-gaming what the chef does, and meta-meta-gaming the farmer. The chef understands food, but might not be able to grow his/her own. Same with the food-critic: might be able to write a good article and communicate to others which places are the best restaurants, but doesn't have the direct skills to make or prep the food.
And regarding a 'matter of survival', you've probably never worked in an office environment with a 80% or more women around, have you? Women can be *vicious*, and if you've not worked in such an environment, you don't understand what backstabbing can be like. Yeah, surviving at a work place (i.e. not getting fired) when all your coworkers are women requires you to be much more alert and on your toes than in an all-male environment.
Well, yes, they are "using" set theory, game theory analysis, and all those disciplines in the same way worker ants use graph theory to optimally search for food. They don't deserve any more credit for that than an individual ant in the colony does. The effort is not self-aware. It is not disciplined, and it is not even necessarily correct, probably tending more toward heuristics than the algorithms used to actually make progress in those fields. If you really want to know if a girl innately understands graph theory, give her the Konigsberg Bridges problem and see how long it takes her. If she's "average", she'd probably give up after 15 seconds, insult you, and go back to gossiping on her iPhone.
This is where I'd disagree with you. Guys are going to pose this kind of problem as a spatio-temporal problem (i.e. bridges); whereas women are more likely to frame it as a relationship problem. Translating the bridge problem into a dating problem amongst various clubs, and you've got an application of graph theory and topology that's going to be of interest to many teenage girls. And they'll pick up right away on features of the problem like even/oddness. Seriously... what girl *hasn't* doodled a network maps of their friends with colored pens in their diaries? Sure, girls embellishing the maps with doodles, flowers, and rainbows; but they're also using those maps to trace circuits and paths through the network. And they're very conscious and self aware of what they're doing. I look at my niece... she's 8, and she knows how to use a computer, browse the internet, and how to draw network maps of her and her friends.
The detail you're ommiting is that most of the assumptions in these models aren't actually based on reality. And the teenage girl rarely is willing to compromise on the validity of these assumptions.
But this happens to teenage boys also who are busying playing soldier or fantasy RPG games. Not everything is a competition, a zero-sum game, or a hierarchy. Those are the standard assumptions that most teenage boys tend to interpret the world by, I think; and very few of them are willing to compromise on the validity of those assumptions. So, it goes both ways.
The dependencies and logic they create are often completely unrelated with the actual outcomes and situations.
By your own statement, you're admitting that sometimes the dependencies and logic they create *are* related to outcomes. I believe this is simply a matter of experience, with 15 year olds having better dependency and logic models than 11 year olds. Also, your statement is equally applicable to boys.
I think this is pretty impactful. All jokes aside, the fact that Jabberwacky held an 11 hour conversation with a teenage girl is pretty astonishing. Obviuosly, a conversation of that nature is going to be all about emotion - not logic, reason or an empirical display of intelligence. Isn't that the point for AI to seamlessly interface with us? (I realize it's not necessarily the scope of the Turing test). Humans are teriible at logic and reason. Emotion is one of the key components which defines us as a species. I know a lot of humans who couldn't carry on an 11 hour conversation which primarily focussed on emotion... let alone with a teenage girl discussing nothing but fluff, pop-culture, or black and white ideologies.
I know you're actually trying to say that this is impactful, because it means that Jabberwacky is able to incorporate emotional reasoning into it's conversations. But I think you're using a lot of sexist stereotypes, and are seriously underestimating the thinking skills of teenage girls. I don't know where you come from, but where I come from, teenage girls are sharp and clever, and have a tendency to win debate tournaments, math olympiads, and generally get better grades in school.
If you actually sat down and looked at the train of thought that's going on with teenage girls, you might be surprised at the amount of logic that's being used. They're just using different inputs and premises than guys do, and tend to focus on a sort of social networking logic. For example: Say that Jane is dating Dave; and Jane is also part of the Gardening Club at school. Jill is also part of the Gardening Club, has a crush on Dave, and is trying to attract him. How does Jane keep Dave's interest, when Jill is tempting him? Already, you've got a problem that probably requires set theory, network graphs, and game theory to solve. And the way that teenage girls are going to solve these kinds of situations is with exactly those kinds of tools and methods... "i do this, she does that, i do this other, she responds, and then her reputation is toast" is just a rephrasing of game theory with time series analysis. "if we convince Mary to talk Jill into joining Theater, then Jill won't be around to attract Dave" is just a rephrasing of set theory, with a bit of social network analysis tossed in for good measure. Sure the conversation and analysis will be interspersed with talk about emotions and teenage vernacular. But to say that it's lacking empirical displays of intelligence, logic, or reasoning; well, I think you're really underestimating what's going on in the heads of teenage girls.
Also, most guys don't develop the maturity and interest to investigate these social networking problems until they're in college or later. But teenage girls routinely solve these kinds of problems while they're teenagers. And they do require logic and analysis; just a different sort of logic than people with sexist expectations have regarding what constitutes logic. To say that teenage girls don't use logic is probably naive and perhaps a bit sexist.
Actually, having used programmed in C# a fair bit for the past 4 or 5 years, I'll attest to it being rather portable. One just has to avoid any use of those p/Invoke calls, and keep everything contained within the.NET environment.
Yeah, I think you're on the right track here with how to approach this device. What you've listed are fairly reasonable expectations of what the thing can and can't do.
Personally, I think it would work on sealed devices also. In wines, at least, a lot of the aging process occurs due to brownian motion after the yeast has died and the bottle has been sealed. This device could gently add energy to the mixture, to speed up the stochastic mixing that would normally occur over 10 or 20 years or longer; but without adding so much energy that molecules start shearing and breaking apart, as happens during a boil.
You're correct however, that there's no free lunch. The most point is that crap will still be crap; and it will only *maybe* make a medium or good grade wine or beer better.
You're correct, that the mechanical frequency itself probably isn't breaking the bonds. However, there are harmonic frequencies to consider as well. And that's how molecular bonds get broken with this contraption, I suspect.
Regarding the ten years into minutes, that seems about right to me. It's fairly common for various industries to want to test how long a material can withstand aging effects... so they have contraptions that will shine ultraviolet light on something; blast it with a sandblaster; heat it up; cool it down; spray it with water. All that, over and over. And it simulates aging. Turns years into minutes (or hours, at any rate). And what are each of those cycles doing? Adding energy to the system to break down molecular bonds. And I'd say that this isn't all that dissimilar to those contraptions; particularly the ultraviolet light devices.
Remember that, while there is brownian motion going on in a bottle of wine, causing aging; it's not a particularly lot of brownian motion. Wine is usually kept in cool dark places, and it's fairly inert. Ten times zero is still zero; and ten times 0.001 is still only 0.01. They're talking about speeding up chemical reactions that are only taking place in maybe 1% or 2% of the wine.
Agreed. Not just neutrons, but any field effect that can break apart molecular bonds, or add thermodynamic energy to the system. The aging of wine is a stochastic effect, mostly caused by brownian motion. The trick is to gently increase the brownian motion to increase molecular recombinations, without causing all-out molecular shearing (as happens during a boil).
I suspect that the gadget is very inconsistent. Maybe 1 bottle in 5 turns out really well, and causes people to say 'gosh, that thing actually worked'. But the other four times, there's not really any change.
I view this machine as similar to the early home bread-making machines, which only managed to bake 1 loaf out of 5 tries.
Actually, the molecules do collide during the aging process. It's called brownian motion, and it occurs in any liquid that isn't frozen. Furthermore, from a stochastic chemistry perspective, there is a statistical chance that some of those molecules bonds are going to break apart; and a statistical chance that other molecules are going to join together. Therefore, you have some inherent chemical decomposition and combination going on. In good wines, you have enough complex sugars and tanins that this process will create interesting flavors. In cheap wines, which are mostly alcohol, there aren't enough complex sugars and tanins for this stochastic process to ever combine molecules into something flavorful and interesting. An alcohol molecule and an alcohol molecule don't recombine to form a berry flavor molecule. Whoever, two grape flavored tanin molecules might be able to create a berry flavor molecule, if there are the right sugars around and other molecular parts around.
Well, it's not totally impossible. An ultrasonic wave is likely to be to be able to break apart molecular bonds, thereby causing complex organic molecules to be broken in half. There could very likely be harmonic frequencies that just happen to consistently break certain molecular bonds. For instance, if you had a molecule that was something like:
OH-C-C-Benzene
The ultrasound thingy might have a harmonic frequency that consistently breaks the C-Benzene bond, thereby cleaving the whole thing in half. It's been a while since I took O-Chem, and I'm not trying to say that it's the C-Benzene bond specifically. Might be any of the other bonds. But the point is that the ultrasonic waves add energy to the system, and are likely to be breaking apart some of the molecules. This could very likely cause deflavoring, as aeromatic and flavoid molecules are broken down into non-aeromatic and non-flavorful molecules. It could also possibly cause the alcohol content to decrease.
I agree that it's definitely not a miracle machine. But there is some actual science to support some of the claims.
You're partially correct, although the fermentation process usually ends after a year or two. Afterwords, there is a stochastic aging effect where the molecules in the wine are bumping into each other and sloshing about. It's typical thermodynamics stuff, with brownian motion causing molecules to collide with each other, break in half, and occasionally recombine to form new molecules. If the wine has sufficiently complex sugars and tanins in it, then the molecules will break and recombine in such a way as to form new flavorful molecules. At a stochastic level, if you use the same types of grapes consistently which have the same types of tanins, you have a statistical chance of regularly creating certain flavors over and over repeatedly. If the wine is cheap, is mostly alcohol, and doesn't have enough complex sugars and tanins, it's not going to be able to go through this stochastic aging process.
Don't know about the no hangover part. But ultrasonic aging does have some merit. There is solid molecular theory and thermodynamics theory that supports some of the ideas.
That being said, I wouldn't expect good results on a cheap bottle of wine that's mostly alcohol. It's not going to work miracles. I would suspect it's most likely to show moderate improvement to mid-range wines with low alcohol content; the $20 to $30 a bottle varieties; because they have enough complex tanins and sugars to stochastically recombine in interesting ways.
Well, if you're familiar with aeromatic molecules, you'll know that most flavorful compounds (flavids?) are moderately large molecules, with benzene rings, carbon backbones, and the like. An ultrasonic wave would likely break many of those compounds in half, leaving tasteless molecules. By the same token, the extra energy in the system would cause random molecular collision, resulting in a small, but statistically significant, number of reactions to form new molecules. That's how 'subtle' flavors are generally created in aged wines (and subtle simply means "low percentage"). Stochastically speaking, there is some solid molecular theory backing up this idea. It's not completely snakeoil. However, to use the fruit punch analogy, I think it's more likely to take certain flavors away, than create novel new flavors... more like taking the apple flavor out of the fruit punch, leaving a citrus/berry combination. It does so by breaking aeromatic and flavoid molecules in half, so that they're no longer aeromatic or flavorful.
See, you're looking at it as a procedural program. I don't. Take a look at special effects in movies and video games... we used to try to do everything with polygons, and everything wound up having a funny look to it. But then we learned about information overloading; of layer dozens of photographs on top of those polygon renderings. Result? Much more realistic results.
The point I'm trying to make is that intelligence isn't caused by a single set of rules. It's an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink endeavor. When an individual gets stuck on a single set of rules, after a trauma or for whatever medical condition, what do we call them? Usually something like an idiot savant or handicapped or mentally impaired. We have evidence of people behaving according to a single set of rules, and it's almost always considered to be a downgrade.
So, to implement learning, you really only need a video camera, a lot of storage, and pattern recognition software. That will get you a learning environment, for the most part. Implement the pattern recognition software as a neural net is the obvious method. Making it open ended? Create a data type so that the output of the pattern recognition can be used as an input... thus creating a recursive system. Output probably would need to be photo file, or similar to a video capture frame. This would coincide with humans' abilities to form mnemonics.
I dunno... seems like it's just a bunch of pattern matching and everything-and-the-kitchen-sink to me.
Anyhow. Sorry for being so off topic.
Um... space elevators! Yeah, they're going to need AIs to run the logistics of them.
Oh, I don't think it will stop at the human level. *Our ability to perceive it* is constrained to a human level though. Take the example of the stock markets right now... how many people truly understand what's going on with the mortgage backed securities? Not many. And that's what the future, post-Singularity will be like for most people. Things going on that are so complex that they really don't have any clue what's actually causing the events to happen. They'll put blame here and there, but in the end... we'll just have people making policies about things they don't understand. What's more, some people will continue on worshiping God, some people will start worshiping the AIs, some people won't care. Our ability to comprehend it is limited. Unless you're interested in neural upgrades, exocortexes, software agents, and other cognitive enhancers. That may improve one's ability to understand the complex, but it's still limited.
Nah... we're heading real quickly to cyborgs and androids. And they're going to be just as complicated to maintain as human bodies, and require doctors to keep them up and running. AIs are going to be so advanced that nobody really understands them. There will be people who understand parts of their systems, just like we have doctors who specialize in cardiology or pulmonology. But the emergent behavior? It's going to be just as complicated as any human behavior. And how do we communicate about complex behavior that doesn't have clearly defined causes? We use terms like "personality" and "temperment" and "emotions". Humans have a built in mechanism for dealing with complex phenomena we don't understand.... and it boils down to superstitions, psychology, and the like. Yeah, we'll all keep going at the same general pace we've been going at for hundreds of thousands of years. Most people won't even realize that AIs have even been developed; and there will be some that claim that it's all a hoax.
Regarding space elevators, I think we're going to need AIs to manage the logistics of such endeavors. Whether it be robots doing maintenance outside, or embedded city-wide software agents, we're going to need to AIs to manage the hazardous environments, the transportation logistics, and the timing of events.
ps. Japan, Google, MIT, DARPA... all likely places to see the first AIs develop.
Many designs of the space elevator envision it being built up into a megastructure, so that it does, indeed, become something of a massive tower into space. The idea would be to not only have elevators, but to have subway car and rail-road sized elevator cars.
But you're right that we wouldn't start off that way.
Actually incorrect on AI and androids. Regarding the AI, we're getting pretty good neural maps of the human brain nowdays, and are going to be able to model them atomically before long... we're already doing it with the visual cortex. Some of the newer thinking with AI is that it's a problem of overlapping systems. Sort of the idea that if you throw in every conceivable program possible into the AI system, that it will eventually start having AI type emergent effects. Heck, we already have software that does voice recognition, facial recognition, optical recognition, path navigation, motor control, decision making, and pattern analysis. The problem with old-school AI was that they focused primarily on the decision making systems. Newer AI systems are going to be 'everything and the kitchen sink' models, where all of those different subsystems, and more, will be installed.
Regarding androids, we're real close to having cyborgs right now. Until recently, I worked at a hospital in the department of radiology. You simply would not believe the number of people walking around nowdays with hip replacements, knee replacements, artificial hearts, pacemakers, neural implants, cochlear implants, and the like. Every person with one of these prosthetics is arguably a cyborg already. I don't have exact numbers, but I would bet it's something like 2% of the population. And with those new rat-brained robots, we're paving the way for full cyborg body replacements real soon. We're already doing pretty good with limb replacements and sensory implants. It's just a few small steps before people getting full body replacements (most likely in the army first).
Anyhow, having worked in the medical field and having done research in neuroradiology, I have to disagree with you that those other 'pipe dreams' are all that difficult. At the rate that computers and biotechnology are improving, we're likely to see AIs and androids within 20 years or so.
And yes, given all the evidence I've run across, I'm inclined to believe that some type of Singularity type event is about to happen. Unlike those techno-geeks who think it's going to be some type of Rapture like event, however, I think it's going to be more like Y2K and be a big anti-climatic letdown. Woo hoo. Androids and AI. Meet the new boss: same as the old boss. It will simply mean we'll have new job opportunities for robot psychologists and medical specialists in bionics. But mostly it will all be the same.
Agreed! 'Imperative vs functional' programming styles have roots in the argument of 'stasis vs change' and 'being vs doing' that goes back 2000 years to the arguments of Parmenides and Heraclitus. The argument over a state-based vs. flux-based worldview is one of the oldest philosophical arguments in history. This is merely a 21st century adaptation, where procedural programming incorporates a state-based world view, and functional programming incorporates a flux-based worldview. Kudos to Turing and Church for formalizing the argument into machine compilable logic.
Actually, as far as I'm aware, you have it precisely backwards. If it's truly an arbitrage site, it should succeed, by definition, until the arbitrage opportunity runs out.
And while some people are going to wring their hands and moan that value was taken away from, arbitrage is simply one of the many mechanisms that markets use to adjust mispriced commodities and services to their correct market value. Same with shorting stock. Yes, some people are going to loose in the process, but in the end, both shorting stock and arbitrage are necessary and useful mechanisms for repricing commodities, services, assets, and other tradable goods.
This is just a signal that they need to readjust their prices, and that their revenue may be about ready to be affected also. Just because they're Google doesn't mean that they can ignore the economy they operate within.
Yes, except you've forgotten a critical point... Companies who advertise and pay them money are their customers, not the masses who use their services for free.
Living in Brooklyn, I'll attest that hit-and-run type incidents are very common here. There are just soooo many people living here, that people bump into each other all the time and have minor to moderate altercations. From cars sideswiping people and other vehicles and then driving off, to crazy people using pepper-spray on others in the subway and running off.... There are lots of people with marginal understanding of civility and/or responsibility living here, and they'd much rather run off than do the right thing and accept the consequences for their uncivil behavior.
In my two examples above, I managed to get photos of the car driving away, and of the crazy lady who used the pepper-spray. The license plate was half blurry; but maybe the forensics analysts could clean it up and get a license plate number. And the pic of the lady was sort of a side profile from the back; maybe enough to generate suspects, but not a straight-on shot that's good for evidence. In both incidences, the nature of the crime was just low enough, and the hassle of getting the evidence to the police just high enough, that I simply walked away from it and deleted the images. *shrug*
With this new system, I'll know who to send the photos to. The real benefit from this is going to be pattern analysis. Obviously, they're going to eventually wind up generating a big pool of unresolved photos. However, after enough sighting of a crazy woman in the subway using pepper-spray on people, they'll eventually be able to identify the lady, get some counseling, maybe take away the pepper spray, and put a stop to that behavior. And after enough sighting of a particularly make and model of car that's associated with sideswiping pedestrians, they'll be able to get that person into driving school or take away their license. Same with pick-pockets, purse-snatchers, hit-and-run automobile accidents, and other type of crimes. Partial evidence from hit-and-run crime scenes will eventually be able to be pulled together, using pattern recognition, into a larger picture that can help stop uncivil behavior.
Also, regarding the telemedicine help and stuff, on more than one occasion, I've stumbled across bodies of homeless people laying on the ground that really appeared to be either dead or unconscious (hopefully, they were just asleep or passed-out drunk). I've called 911 on one of those occasions, but it would have been a lot easier to send a photo, than try to explain "uh, yeah, the body is on 63rd and 4th ave... um, yes... yes... no, not that i can see... um, well, he might be asleep, but he's partially under a car... mmm, uh huh... well, he doesn't *look* like he's breathing..."
Slashdot Mirror
if you read the article and looked at the maps, the waterfalls and fish tank are in the entrance hallway and conference room, and the mist generator is in one of the greenrooms/monitoring rooms. The humidity features are where the *people* are, not where the servers are. The servers are off in another giant room, on the other side of what I would presume to be airtight doors.
The difference being that in open source you don't know the cost until after you've been using the software. I know we joke about "the first one is always free", but is that really the sort of business model that we want? The same business model used by drug dealers and payday loans?
Actually, University of Chicago economics have done systematic analysis of the financial records of on-the-street drug dealers in the US, and have used the empirical evidence to fairly conclusively prove that drug dealers use a franchise business model. That is, drug dealers use the same basic business model as McDonalds. I think you're confusing sales practices with business models.
More info so you can look it up yourself: http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/006073132X
That's very nice, but you don't understand the mathematics involved. It's not psychology; it's game theory and Nash Equilibriums and statistics. Here are some links for further information on this topic:
Duvergers Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law
Plurality Voting System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Past_the_Post_electoral_system
If you vote third party and vote for the Green Party, the only thing you'll do within a Plurality Voting System (aka a Winner-Takes-All system, such as we have in the US) is that you'll wind up with a two party system between the Greens and the Democrats, or a two party system between the Greens and the Republicans. The equilibrium of a plurality system settles on a two-party system. Doesn't matter if you vote for a third party, and it doesn't matter what the psychology involved is. The equilibrium is for two parties in a winner-takes-all election, and voting third party simply changes the two parties involved. It doesn't create a three party system.
Good ideas, but the mathematics and the set up of the system don't support your argument.
We have a two party system due to the winner-takes-all model of the election process. Voting for a third party in a winner-takes-all system merely is a vote for changing who the two parties are. The only way that you can maintain a multi-party system is for election results to be divided up proportionately, according to the results of the election. This principle can be seen in the voting processes of many European countries which have multi-party systems. You will consistently find that winner-takes-all results in two party; and proportional-distribution results in multi-party systems.
Learned all of this in Model Congress and Model United Nations in High School and College. The mathematics get into game theory, statistics, and combinatorics, but there are mathematical proofs supporting all of what I've just said.
If you really want to get rid of the two party system in America, you'll need to ratify a constitutional amendment that replaces the winner-takes-all model with a proportional distribution model. Might not be a bad idea, actually.
Why is one irrational and the other a dolt? That makes no sense to me.
If the woman is superior enough to view the man's answer as doltish rather than just confusing or irrational, then obviously she understands that the answer was direct and not the meta-meta-meta-meta-answer she expected. But in that case, who cares? She has no justification for being mad or taking the answer badly since she understands that it's doltish and not carefully calculated to be mean or insensitive.
I'm bringing this up because of your comment about this understanding being "a matter of survival" to you, due to your prolonged daily exposure to women. I don't get it. If they're so high level and wordly, then they should have no problem accommodating you, right?
Consider the farmer, the chef, and the food critic. The chef is meta gaming what the farmer does; while the food critic is meta-gaming what the chef does, and meta-meta-gaming the farmer. The chef understands food, but might not be able to grow his/her own. Same with the food-critic: might be able to write a good article and communicate to others which places are the best restaurants, but doesn't have the direct skills to make or prep the food.
And regarding a 'matter of survival', you've probably never worked in an office environment with a 80% or more women around, have you? Women can be *vicious*, and if you've not worked in such an environment, you don't understand what backstabbing can be like. Yeah, surviving at a work place (i.e. not getting fired) when all your coworkers are women requires you to be much more alert and on your toes than in an all-male environment.
Well, yes, they are "using" set theory, game theory analysis, and all those disciplines in the same way worker ants use graph theory to optimally search for food. They don't deserve any more credit for that than an individual ant in the colony does. The effort is not self-aware. It is not disciplined, and it is not even necessarily correct, probably tending more toward heuristics than the algorithms used to actually make progress in those fields. If you really want to know if a girl innately understands graph theory, give her the Konigsberg Bridges problem and see how long it takes her. If she's "average", she'd probably give up after 15 seconds, insult you, and go back to gossiping on her iPhone.
This is where I'd disagree with you. Guys are going to pose this kind of problem as a spatio-temporal problem (i.e. bridges); whereas women are more likely to frame it as a relationship problem. Translating the bridge problem into a dating problem amongst various clubs, and you've got an application of graph theory and topology that's going to be of interest to many teenage girls. And they'll pick up right away on features of the problem like even/oddness. Seriously... what girl *hasn't* doodled a network maps of their friends with colored pens in their diaries? Sure, girls embellishing the maps with doodles, flowers, and rainbows; but they're also using those maps to trace circuits and paths through the network. And they're very conscious and self aware of what they're doing. I look at my niece... she's 8, and she knows how to use a computer, browse the internet, and how to draw network maps of her and her friends.
The detail you're ommiting is that most of the assumptions in these models aren't actually based on reality. And the teenage girl rarely is willing to compromise on the validity of these assumptions.
But this happens to teenage boys also who are busying playing soldier or fantasy RPG games. Not everything is a competition, a zero-sum game, or a hierarchy. Those are the standard assumptions that most teenage boys tend to interpret the world by, I think; and very few of them are willing to compromise on the validity of those assumptions. So, it goes both ways.
The dependencies and logic they create are often completely unrelated with the actual outcomes and situations.
By your own statement, you're admitting that sometimes the dependencies and logic they create *are* related to outcomes. I believe this is simply a matter of experience, with 15 year olds having better dependency and logic models than 11 year olds. Also, your statement is equally applicable to boys.
I think this is pretty impactful. All jokes aside, the fact that Jabberwacky held an 11 hour conversation with a teenage girl is pretty astonishing. Obviuosly, a conversation of that nature is going to be all about emotion - not logic, reason or an empirical display of intelligence. Isn't that the point for AI to seamlessly interface with us? (I realize it's not necessarily the scope of the Turing test). Humans are teriible at logic and reason. Emotion is one of the key components which defines us as a species. I know a lot of humans who couldn't carry on an 11 hour conversation which primarily focussed on emotion... let alone with a teenage girl discussing nothing but fluff, pop-culture, or black and white ideologies.
I know you're actually trying to say that this is impactful, because it means that Jabberwacky is able to incorporate emotional reasoning into it's conversations. But I think you're using a lot of sexist stereotypes, and are seriously underestimating the thinking skills of teenage girls. I don't know where you come from, but where I come from, teenage girls are sharp and clever, and have a tendency to win debate tournaments, math olympiads, and generally get better grades in school.
If you actually sat down and looked at the train of thought that's going on with teenage girls, you might be surprised at the amount of logic that's being used. They're just using different inputs and premises than guys do, and tend to focus on a sort of social networking logic. For example: Say that Jane is dating Dave; and Jane is also part of the Gardening Club at school. Jill is also part of the Gardening Club, has a crush on Dave, and is trying to attract him. How does Jane keep Dave's interest, when Jill is tempting him? Already, you've got a problem that probably requires set theory, network graphs, and game theory to solve. And the way that teenage girls are going to solve these kinds of situations is with exactly those kinds of tools and methods... "i do this, she does that, i do this other, she responds, and then her reputation is toast" is just a rephrasing of game theory with time series analysis. "if we convince Mary to talk Jill into joining Theater, then Jill won't be around to attract Dave" is just a rephrasing of set theory, with a bit of social network analysis tossed in for good measure. Sure the conversation and analysis will be interspersed with talk about emotions and teenage vernacular. But to say that it's lacking empirical displays of intelligence, logic, or reasoning; well, I think you're really underestimating what's going on in the heads of teenage girls.
Also, most guys don't develop the maturity and interest to investigate these social networking problems until they're in college or later. But teenage girls routinely solve these kinds of problems while they're teenagers. And they do require logic and analysis; just a different sort of logic than people with sexist expectations have regarding what constitutes logic. To say that teenage girls don't use logic is probably naive and perhaps a bit sexist.
Actually, having used programmed in C# a fair bit for the past 4 or 5 years, I'll attest to it being rather portable. One just has to avoid any use of those p/Invoke calls, and keep everything contained within the .NET environment.
Yeah, I think you're on the right track here with how to approach this device. What you've listed are fairly reasonable expectations of what the thing can and can't do.
Personally, I think it would work on sealed devices also. In wines, at least, a lot of the aging process occurs due to brownian motion after the yeast has died and the bottle has been sealed. This device could gently add energy to the mixture, to speed up the stochastic mixing that would normally occur over 10 or 20 years or longer; but without adding so much energy that molecules start shearing and breaking apart, as happens during a boil.
You're correct however, that there's no free lunch. The most point is that crap will still be crap; and it will only *maybe* make a medium or good grade wine or beer better.
You're correct, that the mechanical frequency itself probably isn't breaking the bonds. However, there are harmonic frequencies to consider as well. And that's how molecular bonds get broken with this contraption, I suspect.
Regarding the ten years into minutes, that seems about right to me. It's fairly common for various industries to want to test how long a material can withstand aging effects... so they have contraptions that will shine ultraviolet light on something; blast it with a sandblaster; heat it up; cool it down; spray it with water. All that, over and over. And it simulates aging. Turns years into minutes (or hours, at any rate). And what are each of those cycles doing? Adding energy to the system to break down molecular bonds. And I'd say that this isn't all that dissimilar to those contraptions; particularly the ultraviolet light devices.
Remember that, while there is brownian motion going on in a bottle of wine, causing aging; it's not a particularly lot of brownian motion. Wine is usually kept in cool dark places, and it's fairly inert. Ten times zero is still zero; and ten times 0.001 is still only 0.01. They're talking about speeding up chemical reactions that are only taking place in maybe 1% or 2% of the wine.
Agreed. Not just neutrons, but any field effect that can break apart molecular bonds, or add thermodynamic energy to the system. The aging of wine is a stochastic effect, mostly caused by brownian motion. The trick is to gently increase the brownian motion to increase molecular recombinations, without causing all-out molecular shearing (as happens during a boil).
I suspect that the gadget is very inconsistent. Maybe 1 bottle in 5 turns out really well, and causes people to say 'gosh, that thing actually worked'. But the other four times, there's not really any change.
I view this machine as similar to the early home bread-making machines, which only managed to bake 1 loaf out of 5 tries.
Actually, the molecules do collide during the aging process. It's called brownian motion, and it occurs in any liquid that isn't frozen. Furthermore, from a stochastic chemistry perspective, there is a statistical chance that some of those molecules bonds are going to break apart; and a statistical chance that other molecules are going to join together. Therefore, you have some inherent chemical decomposition and combination going on. In good wines, you have enough complex sugars and tanins that this process will create interesting flavors. In cheap wines, which are mostly alcohol, there aren't enough complex sugars and tanins for this stochastic process to ever combine molecules into something flavorful and interesting. An alcohol molecule and an alcohol molecule don't recombine to form a berry flavor molecule. Whoever, two grape flavored tanin molecules might be able to create a berry flavor molecule, if there are the right sugars around and other molecular parts around.
Well, it's not totally impossible. An ultrasonic wave is likely to be to be able to break apart molecular bonds, thereby causing complex organic molecules to be broken in half. There could very likely be harmonic frequencies that just happen to consistently break certain molecular bonds. For instance, if you had a molecule that was something like:
OH-C-C-Benzene
The ultrasound thingy might have a harmonic frequency that consistently breaks the C-Benzene bond, thereby cleaving the whole thing in half. It's been a while since I took O-Chem, and I'm not trying to say that it's the C-Benzene bond specifically. Might be any of the other bonds. But the point is that the ultrasonic waves add energy to the system, and are likely to be breaking apart some of the molecules. This could very likely cause deflavoring, as aeromatic and flavoid molecules are broken down into non-aeromatic and non-flavorful molecules. It could also possibly cause the alcohol content to decrease.
I agree that it's definitely not a miracle machine. But there is some actual science to support some of the claims.
You're partially correct, although the fermentation process usually ends after a year or two. Afterwords, there is a stochastic aging effect where the molecules in the wine are bumping into each other and sloshing about. It's typical thermodynamics stuff, with brownian motion causing molecules to collide with each other, break in half, and occasionally recombine to form new molecules. If the wine has sufficiently complex sugars and tanins in it, then the molecules will break and recombine in such a way as to form new flavorful molecules. At a stochastic level, if you use the same types of grapes consistently which have the same types of tanins, you have a statistical chance of regularly creating certain flavors over and over repeatedly. If the wine is cheap, is mostly alcohol, and doesn't have enough complex sugars and tanins, it's not going to be able to go through this stochastic aging process.
Don't know about the no hangover part. But ultrasonic aging does have some merit. There is solid molecular theory and thermodynamics theory that supports some of the ideas.
That being said, I wouldn't expect good results on a cheap bottle of wine that's mostly alcohol. It's not going to work miracles. I would suspect it's most likely to show moderate improvement to mid-range wines with low alcohol content; the $20 to $30 a bottle varieties; because they have enough complex tanins and sugars to stochastically recombine in interesting ways.
Well, if you're familiar with aeromatic molecules, you'll know that most flavorful compounds (flavids?) are moderately large molecules, with benzene rings, carbon backbones, and the like. An ultrasonic wave would likely break many of those compounds in half, leaving tasteless molecules. By the same token, the extra energy in the system would cause random molecular collision, resulting in a small, but statistically significant, number of reactions to form new molecules. That's how 'subtle' flavors are generally created in aged wines (and subtle simply means "low percentage"). Stochastically speaking, there is some solid molecular theory backing up this idea. It's not completely snakeoil. However, to use the fruit punch analogy, I think it's more likely to take certain flavors away, than create novel new flavors... more like taking the apple flavor out of the fruit punch, leaving a citrus/berry combination. It does so by breaking aeromatic and flavoid molecules in half, so that they're no longer aeromatic or flavorful.
See, you're looking at it as a procedural program. I don't. Take a look at special effects in movies and video games... we used to try to do everything with polygons, and everything wound up having a funny look to it. But then we learned about information overloading; of layer dozens of photographs on top of those polygon renderings. Result? Much more realistic results.
The point I'm trying to make is that intelligence isn't caused by a single set of rules. It's an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink endeavor. When an individual gets stuck on a single set of rules, after a trauma or for whatever medical condition, what do we call them? Usually something like an idiot savant or handicapped or mentally impaired. We have evidence of people behaving according to a single set of rules, and it's almost always considered to be a downgrade.
So, to implement learning, you really only need a video camera, a lot of storage, and pattern recognition software. That will get you a learning environment, for the most part. Implement the pattern recognition software as a neural net is the obvious method. Making it open ended? Create a data type so that the output of the pattern recognition can be used as an input... thus creating a recursive system. Output probably would need to be photo file, or similar to a video capture frame. This would coincide with humans' abilities to form mnemonics.
I dunno... seems like it's just a bunch of pattern matching and everything-and-the-kitchen-sink to me.
Anyhow. Sorry for being so off topic.
Um... space elevators! Yeah, they're going to need AIs to run the logistics of them.
Oh, I don't think it will stop at the human level. *Our ability to perceive it* is constrained to a human level though. Take the example of the stock markets right now... how many people truly understand what's going on with the mortgage backed securities? Not many. And that's what the future, post-Singularity will be like for most people. Things going on that are so complex that they really don't have any clue what's actually causing the events to happen. They'll put blame here and there, but in the end... we'll just have people making policies about things they don't understand. What's more, some people will continue on worshiping God, some people will start worshiping the AIs, some people won't care. Our ability to comprehend it is limited. Unless you're interested in neural upgrades, exocortexes, software agents, and other cognitive enhancers. That may improve one's ability to understand the complex, but it's still limited.
Nah... we're heading real quickly to cyborgs and androids. And they're going to be just as complicated to maintain as human bodies, and require doctors to keep them up and running. AIs are going to be so advanced that nobody really understands them. There will be people who understand parts of their systems, just like we have doctors who specialize in cardiology or pulmonology. But the emergent behavior? It's going to be just as complicated as any human behavior. And how do we communicate about complex behavior that doesn't have clearly defined causes? We use terms like "personality" and "temperment" and "emotions". Humans have a built in mechanism for dealing with complex phenomena we don't understand.... and it boils down to superstitions, psychology, and the like. Yeah, we'll all keep going at the same general pace we've been going at for hundreds of thousands of years. Most people won't even realize that AIs have even been developed; and there will be some that claim that it's all a hoax.
Regarding space elevators, I think we're going to need AIs to manage the logistics of such endeavors. Whether it be robots doing maintenance outside, or embedded city-wide software agents, we're going to need to AIs to manage the hazardous environments, the transportation logistics, and the timing of events.
ps. Japan, Google, MIT, DARPA... all likely places to see the first AIs develop.
Many designs of the space elevator envision it being built up into a megastructure, so that it does, indeed, become something of a massive tower into space. The idea would be to not only have elevators, but to have subway car and rail-road sized elevator cars.
But you're right that we wouldn't start off that way.
Actually incorrect on AI and androids. Regarding the AI, we're getting pretty good neural maps of the human brain nowdays, and are going to be able to model them atomically before long... we're already doing it with the visual cortex. Some of the newer thinking with AI is that it's a problem of overlapping systems. Sort of the idea that if you throw in every conceivable program possible into the AI system, that it will eventually start having AI type emergent effects. Heck, we already have software that does voice recognition, facial recognition, optical recognition, path navigation, motor control, decision making, and pattern analysis. The problem with old-school AI was that they focused primarily on the decision making systems. Newer AI systems are going to be 'everything and the kitchen sink' models, where all of those different subsystems, and more, will be installed.
Regarding androids, we're real close to having cyborgs right now. Until recently, I worked at a hospital in the department of radiology. You simply would not believe the number of people walking around nowdays with hip replacements, knee replacements, artificial hearts, pacemakers, neural implants, cochlear implants, and the like. Every person with one of these prosthetics is arguably a cyborg already. I don't have exact numbers, but I would bet it's something like 2% of the population. And with those new rat-brained robots, we're paving the way for full cyborg body replacements real soon. We're already doing pretty good with limb replacements and sensory implants. It's just a few small steps before people getting full body replacements (most likely in the army first).
Anyhow, having worked in the medical field and having done research in neuroradiology, I have to disagree with you that those other 'pipe dreams' are all that difficult. At the rate that computers and biotechnology are improving, we're likely to see AIs and androids within 20 years or so.
And yes, given all the evidence I've run across, I'm inclined to believe that some type of Singularity type event is about to happen. Unlike those techno-geeks who think it's going to be some type of Rapture like event, however, I think it's going to be more like Y2K and be a big anti-climatic letdown. Woo hoo. Androids and AI. Meet the new boss: same as the old boss. It will simply mean we'll have new job opportunities for robot psychologists and medical specialists in bionics. But mostly it will all be the same.
Didn't you know that the # in C# is suppose to be four pluses:
:)
++
++
And C# does have functional programming tacked on in version 3.5 with lambda expressions! Seems like your prediction has already come true.
Agreed! 'Imperative vs functional' programming styles have roots in the argument of 'stasis vs change' and 'being vs doing' that goes back 2000 years to the arguments of Parmenides and Heraclitus. The argument over a state-based vs. flux-based worldview is one of the oldest philosophical arguments in history. This is merely a 21st century adaptation, where procedural programming incorporates a state-based world view, and functional programming incorporates a flux-based worldview. Kudos to Turing and Church for formalizing the argument into machine compilable logic.
Actually, as far as I'm aware, you have it precisely backwards. If it's truly an arbitrage site, it should succeed, by definition, until the arbitrage opportunity runs out.
And while some people are going to wring their hands and moan that value was taken away from, arbitrage is simply one of the many mechanisms that markets use to adjust mispriced commodities and services to their correct market value. Same with shorting stock. Yes, some people are going to loose in the process, but in the end, both shorting stock and arbitrage are necessary and useful mechanisms for repricing commodities, services, assets, and other tradable goods.
This is just a signal that they need to readjust their prices, and that their revenue may be about ready to be affected also. Just because they're Google doesn't mean that they can ignore the economy they operate within.
Yes, except you've forgotten a critical point... Companies who advertise and pay them money are their customers, not the masses who use their services for free.
Living in Brooklyn, I'll attest that hit-and-run type incidents are very common here. There are just soooo many people living here, that people bump into each other all the time and have minor to moderate altercations. From cars sideswiping people and other vehicles and then driving off, to crazy people using pepper-spray on others in the subway and running off.... There are lots of people with marginal understanding of civility and/or responsibility living here, and they'd much rather run off than do the right thing and accept the consequences for their uncivil behavior.
In my two examples above, I managed to get photos of the car driving away, and of the crazy lady who used the pepper-spray. The license plate was half blurry; but maybe the forensics analysts could clean it up and get a license plate number. And the pic of the lady was sort of a side profile from the back; maybe enough to generate suspects, but not a straight-on shot that's good for evidence. In both incidences, the nature of the crime was just low enough, and the hassle of getting the evidence to the police just high enough, that I simply walked away from it and deleted the images. *shrug*
With this new system, I'll know who to send the photos to. The real benefit from this is going to be pattern analysis. Obviously, they're going to eventually wind up generating a big pool of unresolved photos. However, after enough sighting of a crazy woman in the subway using pepper-spray on people, they'll eventually be able to identify the lady, get some counseling, maybe take away the pepper spray, and put a stop to that behavior. And after enough sighting of a particularly make and model of car that's associated with sideswiping pedestrians, they'll be able to get that person into driving school or take away their license. Same with pick-pockets, purse-snatchers, hit-and-run automobile accidents, and other type of crimes. Partial evidence from hit-and-run crime scenes will eventually be able to be pulled together, using pattern recognition, into a larger picture that can help stop uncivil behavior.
Also, regarding the telemedicine help and stuff, on more than one occasion, I've stumbled across bodies of homeless people laying on the ground that really appeared to be either dead or unconscious (hopefully, they were just asleep or passed-out drunk). I've called 911 on one of those occasions, but it would have been a lot easier to send a photo, than try to explain "uh, yeah, the body is on 63rd and 4th ave... um, yes... yes... no, not that i can see... um, well, he might be asleep, but he's partially under a car... mmm, uh huh... well, he doesn't *look* like he's breathing..."