We are in the "cargo cult" phase of neurological research. Our level of cognitive understanding is like that of the South Pacific islanders who made bamboo replicas of WWII airplanes and radios after the GIs left. The islanders said to themselves "We must be very close to reproducing these wonders, because our airplanes and radios looks so much those of the GIs. Now we just sit back and wait for the magic goods to come out of the airplanes and wise voices to come out of the radios."
If you really don't know how little we understand about the brain, NY Times science writer James Gorman can explain it to you:
It's not that we refuse to accept that consciousness could be broken down to components. It's that nobody has done it, nor does anyone have any idea how to do it. So far AI is all hand-waving and no substance.
Watson is not AI. In fact, AI is not AI. AI is artificial, alright, but none of it is intelligent. Intelligence requires consciousness. We don't know what consciousness is, hence we cannot built an artificial one. The whole "strong/weak" AI terminology came about because AI researchers made zero progress on consciousness. Stratifying the discipline is a rationalization for continuing to use the term AI when it is totally unwarranted.
The whole concept of an existential threat from an artificial intelligence is bogus. We don't even understand our own consciousness, let alone how to construct one out of digital logic. We are no closer to creating an artificial consciousness today than McCarthy was back in the 1950s. All current AI is parlor tricks and fancy table lookups -- glorified Elizas. In fact, it's bogus to even call today's state of the art in cybernetic software "AI" at all. AI researchers are like the little man in the Elizabethean chess machine, but a little man that redefines the definition of intelligence to meet his actual abilities:
"How about checkers? Let's do checkers, shall we? Or maybe tic-tac-toe. Yes, I'm a machine who thinks, I am! Depending on what the meaning of 'think' is."
Modern AI researchers, knowing how far they are from actual consciousness, are redefining "AI" to include such mechanistic idols as robots and routing algorithms.
It's all reminiscent of the south pacific cargo cults: primitive natives making effigies of airplanes and radios out of bamboo, thinking that the shape of things determines their function, and not their actual construction.
You're thinking of curtilage trespass -- not entrance into a residence. Walking into someone's yard that is posted "no trespassing" is indeed a misdemeanor. But in many states, including liberal California, if you commit what is known as "aggravated trespass" by entering into someone's home without permission, and the resident feels bodily threatened, you can face felony trespass charges. This could mean a jail sentence of sixteen months or up to three years. The threatened resident can also shoot you under the Castle doctrine (California Penal Code Section 198.5). The threatened resident is not required to retreat, and can even chase you and use deadly force to neutralize the threat. And if they manage to just hold you for police, you are still subject to felony trespass charges. What's more, the threat can have been made any time in the preceding 30 days. It need not occur during the trespass.
So death or prison are your options. Only a moron would choose this.
If some moron walks into your house through an unlocked door and begins riffling through your things, that's trespassing. As the home's resident, you're entitled to apprehend them and prosecute. Same thing here. These delinquents will either learn or they will remain morons.
The Tularosa Basin Downwinders came to protest the 70th anniversary tour? Yet The Downwinders' aim is to bring public awareness about the negative impacts of the detonation of the bomb? Seems like an anniversary tour is a perfect opportunity for that. Why protest people who had nothing to do with the testing, and only have historic interest? Should we protest Civil War reenactors? I sympathize with their plight and don't approve of government misdeeds, but the Downwinders shame themselves.
Thanks to your idiotic government, you, the world's foremost connoisseurs of fine timepieces, will be denied the right to own the most revolutionary timepiece in history. Fortunately, you have the means to change the government's mind. By law, each of your men between 20 and 30 years old has received military training and is required to maintain a military-grade automatic weapon at the ready in their homes...
Look how many TONS OF OXYGEN are consumed on human exercise. Exercise that gets you nowhere, generates not one miliwatt of consumable power, and throws off MEGAWATTS of heat that undoubtedly contributes to global warming. We need regulation and we need it now! Close all gyms, tax eliptical machines and treadmills. Do it for the children!
I actually do work with genetic and evolutionary algorithms, since routing on the Internet is a variant of the NP-hard Traveling Salesman Problem. But EAs are only inspired by Darwinian evolution, and just one aspect of evolutionary theory: natural selection. EAs perform their automated selection function in an ideal environment, where there is no loss of information, no friction, and no entropy. The selection function, however, is the crux of EA, and it must be devised by an intelligent programmer. EA selection algorithms do not "evolve" on their own.
In the end, nothing in EA proves anything about evolution, or vice-versa. The experimental realms are totally different.
A much more interesting application of biology to CS is DNA itself, as an information store, and protein construction as programmable machines. No evolution is involved, but the complexities of DNA has given great insight into practical massive computation methods. In particular, a novel proof of concept for solving an NP- hard path problem was devised by computer scientist Leonard Adleman, who employed the massive parallelism of polymerase chain reaction to simultaneously evaluate all possible paths. The final answer was literally spun out of the computation reaction with a centrifuge. This launched the field of DNA Computing.
Saying that you can't test the theory is quite different from saying that the theory is false. And often it's just "we can't *yet* test the theory".
I didn't say it was false. I said it is not science. Like many religions, it may be true. But its adherents must take that on faith. Science can't *yet* prove evolution, just as it cannot *yet* prove God. The two beliefs are on an equal footing, philosophically. Yet evos keep trying to say "it's settled science". Anyone is allowed to call bogus on that position. It is the evos' duty to prove their assertion.
One doesn't have to be "smart enough" to expect scientists to follow the scientific method and good experimental design. Any person of average intelligence can be trained in the methods of critiquing a given experimental design. That's all I'm doing: pointing out the flaws in this experiment in particular, and evolution in general. Scientists that claim "it's too hard for lay people. You must trust us," are simply wrong.
I'd be interested in seeing some of the useful predictions of evolution that you mention. Most "predictions" of evolution start with current observations, and add "just so" stories describing how evolution could account for those observations.
However, evolution is full of failed predictions, starting with Darwin himself. Some of Darwin's failed predictions include:
. The failure of evolutionary biology to provide detailed evolutionary explanations for the origin of complex biochemical features;
. The failure of the fossil record to provide the millions of intermediate forms Darwin predicted;
. The failure of molecular biology to provide evidence for universal common descent;
. The failure of genetics and chemistry to explain the origin of the genetic code;
. The failure of developmental biology to explain why vertebrate embryos diverge from the beginning of development.
But these failings are usually dismissed by evolutionists as "just a theory needing some fine tuning." They should be considered falsifications of the theory. But evolutionists have long since given up admitting any observation that would falsify their theory. Other scientific disciplines are required to state falsifiers up front.
As I've said elsewhere, that's not science. It's religion.
The scientific method starts from a hypothesis making predictions, which are then tested by experiments, leading to conclusions about the hypothesis. But evolution's hypothesis are not testable. The problem is that we know of NO mechanism for abiogenesis. There are zero possibilities so far, because the theory can not be tested.
Consider the theory that DNA contains information for cellular construction. Based on previously collected data, Pauling, Crick, and Watson hypothesized that DNA had a helical structure. From this hypothesis and the mathematics of the helix transform, they predicted that DNA's X-ray diffraction pattern would be X-shaped. Rosalind Franklin then crystallized pure DNA and took an X-ray diffraction image. The results showed the predicted X-shape. When Watson saw the detailed diffraction pattern, he immediately recognized it as a helix. He and Crick then produced a physical model of DNA based on this result and known molecular interactions.
The quantum criticality researchers hypothesized that selected chemicals presumed to be a primordial mixture, placed in a specific energetic environment, will spontaneously combine to create amino acids, components of DNA. But the researchers had no prior data that their primordial mixture is correct. So the best they can hope for, whatever their predictions and experimental methods, is to demonstrate that amino acids can be created by the careful arrangement of selected chemicals. They cannot say this happened in nature, and thus can draw no conclusions supporting evolution.
Yet people are trumpeting that something has been discovered about the actual origin of life.Nothing of the sort has occurred. It's all a sideshow, an intellectually dishonest presentation. The researchers may have been sincere, but their conclusions are not remotely warranted by the design of their experiment, which at its outset is not based on previously collected data.
On the contrary, evolution's ability to explain the evidence is dramatically diminishing as new evidence appears. New discoveries reveal previously-unknown complexities for which evolution has no processes. In fact, it's becoming increasingly apparent that evolution is not a scientific theory at all, because its proponents admit to no falsifiability. What would disprove evolution? Nothing! That's religion, not science.
And the solar system is completely unexplainable with quantum physics, and particles are completely unexplainable with relativity. It doesn't mean we should just say "God does it", and be done.
The idea that belief in God somehow interferes with scientific discovery is unfounded. Most scientists, until recent history, believed in God without conflict, and made great discoveries without seeing any inconsistency. Mendel, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, Pascal, Newton, Faraday, Planck and many others handily disprove the idea that belief in God and science are mutually exclusive. Many living scientists today are happy to explain why they believe in God and don't see any conflict
So your statement "It doesn't mean we should just say "God does it", and be done." is actually true for both atheists and theists: we don't stop seeking truth because we believe in God, any more than atheist stops seeking truth because they have no reason for living.
Slashdot Mirror
Improv,
We are in the "cargo cult" phase of neurological research. Our level of cognitive understanding is like that of the South Pacific islanders who made bamboo replicas of WWII airplanes and radios after the GIs left. The islanders said to themselves "We must be very close to reproducing these wonders, because our airplanes and radios looks so much those of the GIs. Now we just sit back and wait for the magic goods to come out of the airplanes and wise voices to come out of the radios."
If you really don't know how little we understand about the brain, NY Times science writer James Gorman can explain it to you:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...
Next thing you're going to tell me is that Lake Wobegone was faked. Every week for FORTY YEARS!
Don't even get me started about Paul Bunyan.
I paid my student loans. I suspect you didn't, which explains your sophomoric attempt to justify a clear and simple crime.
"I chose life. That is to say, I defaulted on my student loans." says Siegel.
Wrong. He chose Theft.
Ah. So an Artificial Argument then. Eliza IV :)
Your response is incongruent. Consciousness, like stars, exist. Artificial versions of either are fantasies.
It's not that we refuse to accept that consciousness could be broken down to components. It's that nobody has done it, nor does anyone have any idea how to do it. So far AI is all hand-waving and no substance.
Watson is not AI. In fact, AI is not AI. AI is artificial, alright, but none of it is intelligent. Intelligence requires consciousness. We don't know what consciousness is, hence we cannot built an artificial one. The whole "strong/weak" AI terminology came about because AI researchers made zero progress on consciousness. Stratifying the discipline is a rationalization for continuing to use the term AI when it is totally unwarranted.
The whole concept of an existential threat from an artificial intelligence is bogus. We don't even understand our own consciousness, let alone how to construct one out of digital logic. We are no closer to creating an artificial consciousness today than McCarthy was back in the 1950s. All current AI is parlor tricks and fancy table lookups -- glorified Elizas. In fact, it's bogus to even call today's state of the art in cybernetic software "AI" at all. AI researchers are like the little man in the Elizabethean chess machine, but a little man that redefines the definition of intelligence to meet his actual abilities:
"How about checkers? Let's do checkers, shall we? Or maybe tic-tac-toe. Yes, I'm a machine who thinks, I am! Depending on what the meaning of 'think' is."
Modern AI researchers, knowing how far they are from actual consciousness, are redefining "AI" to include such mechanistic idols as robots and routing algorithms.
It's all reminiscent of the south pacific cargo cults: primitive natives making effigies of airplanes and radios out of bamboo, thinking that the shape of things determines their function, and not their actual construction.
It seems the WHO is Patient Zero for a new malady, the Bureaucratic Busy-Body Butinsky Syndrome. Which I hereby christen "Whobola".
You're thinking of curtilage trespass -- not entrance into a residence. Walking into someone's yard that is posted "no trespassing" is indeed a misdemeanor. But in many states, including liberal California, if you commit what is known as "aggravated trespass" by entering into someone's home without permission, and the resident feels bodily threatened, you can face felony trespass charges. This could mean a jail sentence of sixteen months or up to three years. The threatened resident can also shoot you under the Castle doctrine (California Penal Code Section 198.5). The threatened resident is not required to retreat, and can even chase you and use deadly force to neutralize the threat. And if they manage to just hold you for police, you are still subject to felony trespass charges. What's more, the threat can have been made any time in the preceding 30 days. It need not occur during the trespass.
So death or prison are your options. Only a moron would choose this.
If some moron walks into your house through an unlocked door and begins riffling through your things, that's trespassing. As the home's resident, you're entitled to apprehend them and prosecute. Same thing here. These delinquents will either learn or they will remain morons.
The Tularosa Basin Downwinders came to protest the 70th anniversary tour? Yet The Downwinders' aim is to bring public awareness about the negative impacts of the detonation of the bomb? Seems like an anniversary tour is a perfect opportunity for that. Why protest people who had nothing to do with the testing, and only have historic interest? Should we protest Civil War reenactors? I sympathize with their plight and don't approve of government misdeeds, but the Downwinders shame themselves.
Thanks to your idiotic government, you, the world's foremost connoisseurs of fine timepieces, will be denied the right to own the most revolutionary timepiece in history. Fortunately, you have the means to change the government's mind. By law, each of your men between 20 and 30 years old has received military training and is required to maintain a military-grade automatic weapon at the ready in their homes...
Look how many TONS OF OXYGEN are consumed on human exercise. Exercise that gets you nowhere, generates not one miliwatt of consumable power, and throws off MEGAWATTS of heat that undoubtedly contributes to global warming. We need regulation and we need it now! Close all gyms, tax eliptical machines and treadmills. Do it for the children!
Neither is food or shelter. We have the right to _pursue_ these things. Nobody is required to guarantee them to us.
I actually do work with genetic and evolutionary algorithms, since routing on the Internet is a variant of the NP-hard Traveling Salesman Problem. But EAs are only inspired by Darwinian evolution, and just one aspect of evolutionary theory: natural selection. EAs perform their automated selection function in an ideal environment, where there is no loss of information, no friction, and no entropy. The selection function, however, is the crux of EA, and it must be devised by an intelligent programmer. EA selection algorithms do not "evolve" on their own.
In the end, nothing in EA proves anything about evolution, or vice-versa. The experimental realms are totally different.
A much more interesting application of biology to CS is DNA itself, as an information store, and protein construction as programmable machines. No evolution is involved, but the complexities of DNA has given great insight into practical massive computation methods. In particular, a novel proof of concept for solving an NP- hard path problem was devised by computer scientist Leonard Adleman, who employed the massive parallelism of polymerase chain reaction to simultaneously evaluate all possible paths. The final answer was literally spun out of the computation reaction with a centrifuge. This launched the field of DNA Computing.
Saying that you can't test the theory is quite different from saying that the theory is false. And often it's just "we can't *yet* test the theory".
I didn't say it was false. I said it is not science. Like many religions, it may be true. But its adherents must take that on faith. Science can't *yet* prove evolution, just as it cannot *yet* prove God. The two beliefs are on an equal footing, philosophically. Yet evos keep trying to say "it's settled science". Anyone is allowed to call bogus on that position. It is the evos' duty to prove their assertion.
DNA is software. It's my field.
Reread the sentence.
One doesn't have to be "smart enough" to expect scientists to follow the scientific method and good experimental design. Any person of average intelligence can be trained in the methods of critiquing a given experimental design. That's all I'm doing: pointing out the flaws in this experiment in particular, and evolution in general. Scientists that claim "it's too hard for lay people. You must trust us," are simply wrong.
I'd be interested in seeing some of the useful predictions of evolution that you mention. Most "predictions" of evolution start with current observations, and add "just so" stories describing how evolution could account for those observations.
However, evolution is full of failed predictions, starting with Darwin himself. Some of Darwin's failed predictions include:
. The failure of evolutionary biology to provide detailed evolutionary explanations for the origin of complex biochemical features;
. The failure of the fossil record to provide the millions of intermediate forms Darwin predicted;
. The failure of molecular biology to provide evidence for universal common descent;
. The failure of genetics and chemistry to explain the origin of the genetic code;
. The failure of developmental biology to explain why vertebrate embryos diverge from the beginning of development.
But these failings are usually dismissed by evolutionists as "just a theory needing some fine tuning." They should be considered falsifications of the theory. But evolutionists have long since given up admitting any observation that would falsify their theory. Other scientific disciplines are required to state falsifiers up front.
As I've said elsewhere, that's not science. It's religion.
The scientific method starts from a hypothesis making predictions, which are then tested by experiments, leading to conclusions about the hypothesis. But evolution's hypothesis are not testable. The problem is that we know of NO mechanism for abiogenesis. There are zero possibilities so far, because the theory can not be tested.
.Nothing of the sort has occurred. It's all a sideshow, an intellectually dishonest presentation. The researchers may have been sincere, but their conclusions are not remotely warranted by the design of their experiment, which at its outset is not based on previously collected data.
Consider the theory that DNA contains information for cellular construction. Based on previously collected data, Pauling, Crick, and Watson hypothesized that DNA had a helical structure. From this hypothesis and the mathematics of the helix transform, they predicted that DNA's X-ray diffraction pattern would be X-shaped. Rosalind Franklin then crystallized pure DNA and took an X-ray diffraction image. The results showed the predicted X-shape. When Watson saw the detailed diffraction pattern, he immediately recognized it as a helix. He and Crick then produced a physical model of DNA based on this result and known molecular interactions.
The quantum criticality researchers hypothesized that selected chemicals presumed to be a primordial mixture, placed in a specific energetic environment, will spontaneously combine to create amino acids, components of DNA. But the researchers had no prior data that their primordial mixture is correct. So the best they can hope for, whatever their predictions and experimental methods, is to demonstrate that amino acids can be created by the careful arrangement of selected chemicals. They cannot say this happened in nature, and thus can draw no conclusions supporting evolution.
Yet people are trumpeting that something has been discovered about the actual origin of life
That's not science. It's an "activity".
On the contrary, evolution's ability to explain the evidence is dramatically diminishing as new evidence appears. New discoveries reveal previously-unknown complexities for which evolution has no processes. In fact, it's becoming increasingly apparent that evolution is not a scientific theory at all, because its proponents admit to no falsifiability. What would disprove evolution? Nothing! That's religion, not science.
And the solar system is completely unexplainable with quantum physics, and particles are completely unexplainable with relativity. It doesn't mean we should just say "God does it", and be done.
The idea that belief in God somehow interferes with scientific discovery is unfounded. Most scientists, until recent history, believed in God without conflict, and made great discoveries without seeing any inconsistency. Mendel, Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, Pascal, Newton, Faraday, Planck and many others handily disprove the idea that belief in God and science are mutually exclusive. Many living scientists today are happy to explain why they believe in God and don't see any conflict
So your statement "It doesn't mean we should just say "God does it", and be done." is actually true for both atheists and theists: we don't stop seeking truth because we believe in God, any more than atheist stops seeking truth because they have no reason for living.
But Bruce never proved his hypothesis. He did not empirical studies. He analyzed no rigorous data. He made it up.
:)
Yet another religion