They are implemented in such a way that every. single. person. who uses a computer can make use of them.
You simultaneously underestimate and overestimate the human race, which is a bit odd.
You overestimate them in that you've actually (with emphasis) said that every person who uses a computer can use this -- trivially false. Aside from people who cannot practically justify having a Mac (and thus cannot run the OS, let alone use it), there are the people who learn this stuff by rote, who will refuse to learn a new interface, no matter how shiny, if there is any possible way they can hang on to their old interface and habits.
You underestimate them in that the ones who are actually willing to try out a new OS, and don't have to go through the pain of installing it themselves, don't really seem to have too much trouble using at least some of these concepts on other OSes. For example, I actually can't remember a desktop Linux that didn't support some form of Resume, and I'm a bit confused as to how "Would you like to save your session?" isn't something people could figure out, once the idea was presented to them.
This is why "oh, this other OS has done this for decades" falls on deaf ears. What good is a feature to someone if they can't use it?
First, it irks people to no end to see Apple claiming credit for these things as "innovations" and bashing everyone else for being so far behind, when, in fact, the majority of these "new" features have been elsewhere for decades, and that elsewhere would maybe like a bit of credit.
Second, you would hope these people would then be curious about what other features have been in other OSes for decades. If these things really are so great when Apple does them, isn't it worth a little bit of effort to see what Apple will be claiming as "new" in another ten years?
For geeks who don't want to fuck around with every little detail on their computer, this is huge. For tinker-nerds who would rather spend time setting up their computer rather than using their computer, this is 'meh'.
I'm fairly sure this is not only a false dichotomy, but I'm guessing it leaves out a majority of geeks. I don't want to fuck around with every little detail on my computer, which is why I use an Ubuntu variant, instead of fucking around with Gentoo and kernel compilation like I used to. At the same time, I do like to know what's actually going on inside my machine, and have a bit more control available when I need it, which is actually my biggest problem with Macs in general.
For example: Autosave. If they're billing this as a feature of the OS, how are they hooking that in to my apps? How do I know what does and doesn't support it? If I can't, how is it at all useful to me? I'd then be hitting cmd+s every few minutes anyway, whether or not autosave is enabled -- and I'd probably do that anyway unless the majority of my apps support it. It's also unclear how this is an OS feature when it still needs app-specific support, since apps on all platforms have supported autosave for decades now, and people don't seem to have issues figuring it out. Not sexy and new apps, not obscure and geeky apps -- Intuit Quicken comes to mind.
And how does Versions decide how much to save? Does it expire old versions when I'm low on disk space, or by wall time? If by wall time, am I going to run out of disk space and have to manually delete old versions? If by disk space, how does it prioritize what to delete when it's time? Can I tweak this at all? Can I mark specific versions to be saved, or do I need to copy them as new files themselves? How are exclusions managed -- can I have it automagically ignore every Git repository on the system? Or, conversely, can I have it not do that?
FileVault -- if I'm going to use this, clearly I care about crypto, so I think I have a right to ask: How in the hell are they doing this live? Will
...but I find this kind of hard to take seriously, kind of like when the US government declared cryptography to be a form of munitions and imposed the same export controls.
Here's what I don't get: If someone maliciously attacks a physical base, fine. You can't lock down physical things entirely -- there's always the possibility of an inside man, or, say, a nuke. But these sorts of things, we already have ways of dealing with.
However, if someone can carry out a successful "cyberattack" from their home country, that says far, far more about our incompetence than it does about their ill intentions. Here, anything they exploit is either going to fall into the category of social engineering or espionage -- things we already have ways of dealing with in the real world -- or it's necessarily going to be a security hole we left wide open, one we certainly didn't have to.
I'm not trying to defend the asshat who exploits that, but it occurs to me that maybe responding to this as an "act of war" is entirely the wrong approach, and that the right approach is going to be similar to if you were to discover some mission-critical files which weren't being backed up, or some servers without a UPS or adequate cooling, or some secretary handed out a secret document without checking the person's clearance, and whatever you do, you don't make an international incident out of your own fuck-up.
I'm not entirely sure what I'd do with it, though, and it does seem like other boards would be better. For example, I could turn it into a wireless media frontend (though I wish it did 1080p@60fps) or a web/X11 terminal, 1 gig of RAM is plenty for that -- but in both of those cases, it's going to pretty much be sitting in one place for a long time, so Ethernet is going to be a better option. (Yes, running Ethernet is annoying, even more so if you want it to look pretty, but your connection doesn't drop every time someone makes nachos.)
It's also more than enough horsepower for a NAS or a media server, but in both cases, ethernet would be helpful, and so would SATA -- so that's pushing it.
But I can't really think of a case where I'd want expandable memory -- 1 gig is plenty for almost any application I can think of where I'd want a single board PC.
Frankly, it's taking a fair amount of discipline not to get four or five degrees, simply because I haven't run out of fields which absolutely fascinate me. Along the way, I'm finding very few classes I don't actually enjoy, and it's certainly more fun than real work.
If I was just in it for the money, I'd be a mainframe expert -- it's easy, but there are few enough of them (because no one wants to do it) that it's also very well paid. But then I would hate my life. As it is, I'm likely to end up in some sort of software development, but that's not going to stop me from studying the more interesting bits of biology and cosmology, because the universe is awesome.
What?!? So's a car, but I'll bet my Mom hasn't a clue what a carburetor does, yet she can drive one.
She does, however, understand that it needs gasoline to run (as fuel), and oil to stay cool. She understands that when it makes funny noises, she should probably see a mechanic. And she probably understands the difference between a car like a modern BMW, which can only be serviced at a BMW dealer, and a car which can be serviced by any competent dealer.
The equivalent things are not generally true of computers -- people somehow maintain the belief that they should be able to use a computer with no training whatsoever, and that learning even the tiniest bit about how they work is not their job. Even so, I would expect someone technically inclined enough to have or want a smartphone to be able to understand the concept of whether they control the software, or whether it's up to the carrier or manufacturer, and why they would want that control.
Seems to me that would be a priority to fix, though. I mean, if I'm a terrorist, and I know certain frequencies screw up the pilots' instruments or communication, and those are allowed on the plane anyway...
Or, hey, if I'm just a disgruntled passenger.
Let's not forget that they give us the same story on planes which have built-in wifi. Really, the technology is there to be able to handle this safely. I honestly don't see a good reason for this policy anymore.
They don't ban books, or conversations, or any number of other reasons we might ignore those announcements. Also, even if this were the case, it's a bit depressing that the only way they can make this happen is by lying to us on every single flight.
This is exactly the kind of thing we should be encouraging, independence from cell phone companies. Desiring openness of the platform over this is selfish
Erm... WTF? Openness of the platform, particularly of the individual device, gives the consume independence from the cell phone company. I'd definitely prioritize that over giving the manufacturer independence from the cell phone company, leaving the consumer entirely dependent on the manufacturer. I don't see that really being an improvement other than the fact that, for the moment, the cell phone companies are being the most evil.
while YOU can work around carrier specifics, the vast majority of people cannot and it's not fair nor desirable to have a world where only the technically educated can function well.
If you aren't "technically educated", how are you using that phone in the first place? It's a technical device.
It also doesn't really take much. Teach them to ask for an unlocked bootloader. There are then very nearly one-click methods for rooting and/or flashing the phone.
Furthermore, suggesting that we should all go to a platform which is entirely controlled by the manufacturer seems equally selfish, biased towards those who don't want to do anything particularly imaginative with the device, or to those manufacturers themselves.
Ideally we'd have the best of both worlds, open platforms and no ability for the carriers to dictate what goes on the phones they support. But that is not currently possible.
No more so than closed platforms would in that situation -- the carriers can, for example, reject iOS entirely. They can and have put pressure on the manufacturers to reject certain kinds of apps. The only difference is that with an open platform, the pressure mostly has to come from the consumers, but that (surprisingly!) seems to be working.
If the phone actually does have an unlocked bootloader, there's not much the carriers can do about it. In that case, installing additional crap is just that much more incentive for, say, giving some teenager $20 to flash it with cyanogen such that the carrier now has no control and the customer has twice the battery life.
Yes, and while I wish him the best of luck, it also comes off as a bit pissy. "Autopen" already seems overly ceremonious -- what, they can't fax, email, etc, and have him print and sign that? Even that seems backwards compared to, say, cryptographic keys, but really, having a device that physically signs for him seems like overkill, and questioning it on a legal/constitutional basis is missing the point -- the President approved it.
So, while I do think it'd be cool if he could block it this way, and it'd be well worth the inconvenience of forcing every president from now on to sign bills physically (at least until the constitution can be amended), I doubt this is going to fly.
If no other mind exists then the logical thing to do would be to enslave the planet. Right? That would neutralize all threats to you.
Nope. There's no such thing as a logical goal, unless it's as a prerequisite for some other subjective goal, and I don't particularly want to enslave the planet. I'm capable of feeling empathy for even poorly-simulated creatures in a videogame. Furthermore, the kinds of things I would call unethical because they involve another mind are also frequently risky. And even if these minds are simulated, they are simulated in a way which is similar enough to my own that the best way to predict their behavior is to think of them as minds, so there's still a legitimate question of whether it would actually be useful to know that they are simulated.
What's more, if this turns out to be something that's unknowable, it also immediately becomes irrelevant. And if it turns out that there are other minds -- and I've heard arguments for this -- that still doesn't tell me if any of the minds I think I'm interacting with are those other minds.
Those things are far away. The consciousness is apparently in your brain.
The distance is pretty irrelevant
It's the size that matters. Consciousness would physically be very small, and if it's got anything to do with quantum physics, even smaller. It's also fairly fast and adaptive. Think about how difficult it is for us to deal with other phenomena on that scale -- sometimes we do well, but sometimes we run up against something like cancer.
Everybody who isn't you would be deemed mentally ill if you are the only mind that exists. They'd be mentally ill because you can't control them, not for any other reason than that.
I'm not sure I follow that logic, but I'm even less convinced that this has anything to do with the question of whether governments understanding how consciousness works and manipulating it via quantum physics is a credible threat.
If there is no free will, shouldn't we strive to control as much of the universe as possible and as many lifeforms as possible? For sake of security or for fun?
You've leaped immediately from "There is no free will" to "There are no ethics." That doesn't follow -- there are plenty of compatibilist theories. Nor would that immediately make me think universal conquest is "fun", nor would it justify trading other lifeforms' essential rights for our own security.
BTW, I think you're making the mistake of tying together the issues of consciousness and free will. They seem to me to be two distinct phenomena.
I agree, actually. I'm surprised I didn't catch that.
As for "free will", my gut attitude is that the only answer is that it's a philosophical matter whose (non-)answer essentially comes down to perspective and viewpoint because the issue is essentially circular. "Free" from what? The way fate put our brains together?...
Being poorly-defined doesn't make it necessarily circular, although there may be some circular definitions. It tends to be a tricky problem, though. One definition is "Free from coercion." The way you are built is a part of you, so even if you're entirely deterministic, you're still you. Someone external to you taking control and manipulating you to do something, even if it's what you would have done anyway, is coercion.
I suspect that definition can be made relatively objective, but at some point along the way, I'm guessing it will diverge sharply from what our intuition of "Free Will" means.
Penrose is the only one brave enough to ask the question; "Is consciousness real?" and try to answer it using physics and science.
Bullshit. I've asked the question often enough, along with anyone I've ever talked philosophy with, and just about every "strong AI" researcher, along with just about every neurologist, is making progress towards explaining what consciousness is. Whether or not that's "real" is up to you to interpret.
But it's the same question that would be asked by a solipsist, do other minds exist? Do I exist? Why not try to answer that?
Because those aren't terribly useful questions. I suppose they're interesting, but would I behave any differently if I knew that I didn't exist and that no other minds existed?
If we find out consciousness is a matter of physics and can be controlled
Just because it's a matter of physics, why would you assume it can be controlled?
Know what else is a matter of physics? Stars. Black Holes. Supernovae.
Black Parrot has a point, though -- we already know far less exotic ways of affecting consciousness. And I would argue there are ethical reasons we should learn more about consciousness -- what we know now (psychology) goes a long way towards actually treating someone who is mentally ill.
No free will exists? So who is the master of the universe?
I'm not convinced these are related questions. A compatiblist view would allow for the "free" actions of any master of the universe to be completely determined -- or, apply a more restricted compatiblism to the "master" part, so you can have a master who doesn't have free will. It's also possible that free will exists in the absence of any "master of the universe" at all.
All consciousness relies on electrons. You cannot have consciousness without electrons.
In the purest sense, yes, but that's because consciousness lives in brains, which are composed of matter, and matter, at least in our universe and in the environments in which we find brains, has electrons. So what's your point?
So this would be one place to look.
But why on earth would you start there?
If you wanted to understand how an OS worked, where would you start? If you started with individual electrons, you'd be taking the long way. Even without source code, you want to be working at a much higher level. I mean, if you didn't understand what a transistor is, or what it does, you might have trouble, but don't we know enough things about neurons that we don't have to analyze individual electrons running through them?
But basically, if you don't have quantum consciousness you can't have consciousness on higher scales.
Let's start with: WTF is "quantum consciousness"? The closest a quick Google shows is a hypothesis that classical mechanics cannot explain consciousness, which runs contrary to the fact that neurons are big enough that classical mechanics handle them quite well, and quantum mechanics can be largely ignored as noise. This is mentioned in the Wikipedia article you linked to.
And how do you define consciousness mathematically, let alone "prove" that it cannot exist with purely classical mechanics?
I'm not sure the rest of your comment has much of a point unless you can make this one hold, but let's try anyway:
The problem or fear I have is if we did discover what particle or wave function is responsible for consciousness, or how, we'd have governments around the world using these discoveries to enslave and oppress people.
They're already doing this with much more pedestrian means, like psychology and threats of force. I'm not really sure how this would be different.
If we found a way to for example give consciousness to inanimate objects,
Like what, other than computers? And how would you distinguish a conscious computer from one which merely simulates consciousness?
It would be used to make the perfect cyborg slaves, who have the mix of human consciousness, with the absolute obedience of a programmable robot.
How is this better for a government than having a programmable robot?
Is randomness really more satisfying than determinism? Is there really more "free will", by any useful definition?
No, I think the appeal is that it appears random, and that we don't (yet) understand a mechanism by which the waveform collapses into one state or another, other than that it collapses with more frequency in some places than others. It's essentially a god-of-the-gaps argument, only this time for "consciousness" or "free will"...
It is, of course, pure speculation. Worse, we are learning more and more about how the brain actually works, and I suspect at some point we will come to terms with the fact that what we call "consciousness" is an emergent phenomenon of the brain, and that it is no more free than a glider in Conway's Game of Life.
Now, is it actually a fallacy? I suspect there's an informal one in there somewhere -- it certainly feels ad-hoc.
No, ad-hom only applies when you're doing that as a point -- for example, "You're a hater, therefore you're wrong."
If you break this down into a syllogism, it's, "You claim the service never failed until today. It failed in December. Therefore, you are wrong." Childish? Maybe, but it's logical, regardless of adding a "haters" comment afterwards.
He seems very much "out" about what he likes -- and I see no reason why someone who likes "ladyboys" is also required to like any other men, so no, it's not the same thing as homosexual.
I can see the response now -- "If that's what you have to tell yourself..." Except I'm actually straight (and would not like a ladyboy), just a little bit more educated about these things. That, and why should anyone be ashamed of homosexuality, either? It's not a matter of trying to pretend he doesn't like people with penises (so long as they also have breasts and look like women), I'm just trying to clarify things a bit. For instance:
And it's not a "girlfriend". It's your boyfriend.
There is a difference between gender and sex. While the two most often coincide, there's no particular reason that someone's gender identity has to match their physical body.
Evolutionary biology has only been around for 150 years, how can these scientists feel secure measuring events that span millions of years?
While I don't know the AC who made this particular anti-science rant, I would imagine the typical response to this would be "Yes! See? Evolution is wrong!"
The underlying issues is a lack of understanding and confidence in science. The only way I know of to deal with the lack of confidence is to work on the understanding.
I *always* laugh when other religious folk bash my belief system.
Good to have a sense of humor!
From an atheist, I'll just respond with "Hey man, I'm not stepping on your rights to gay-marry and drink" (even if there are many other mormons that do that...).
These aren't the only rights people (including Mormons) are causing problems with... and if you tithe, you are part of that problem. Otherwise, while I might wish you had saner beliefs, I've got no problem with you, so please, don't take the following personally. My frustration is from having to explain this so many times, not with you.
And, if you view religion as a system of beliefs... then atheism is a system of beliefs about the world.
Atheism is the lack of one very specific kind of belief -- the belief in a god or gods.
You might be thinking of naturalism, and it's true that many atheists, probably the vast majority of self-identified atheists, are naturalists. It might be true that this is even a natural conclusion of abandoning a theistic view. But it's worth pointing out that technically, the Raelians are atheists, along with many satanists, mystics, and new-age people.
Sure, some of it can be proven, other parts are just solid speculation.
If you're going to make this claim, you should back it up. What makes speculation "solid", and what beliefs do you assume I have that are speculation?
So, I believe that I'm going to be reborn.
Why do you believe that? And what evidence do you have for that belief?
Technically? So does every atheist who ascribes to that pesky thing about atom theory, and matter being neither create-able or destroy-able.
Not in any meaningful sense, "technical" or otherwise.
Yes, I do find a certain amount of comfort in the knowledge that my atoms will most likely remain intact for a long time, that my body will likely be used for other, more useful things, either for science or being recycled as food, so that in some sense, I will be alive, as I have always been.
But that wouldn't be a terribly useful definition of "I".
I take far more comfort in the knowledge that I matter to people here and now, and that some of these people may outlive me, and that my work might also make some lasting contribution. People might not remember my name, but I will have done something which actually does matter, and which has lasting consequences. This is similar to the reason Beowulf sought fame -- as a sort of immortality.
But all of this is beside the point. We have some understanding of how atoms work and how bodies work. How do souls work? By what mechanism will you be reborn? Given that we understand so much about the brain, and given how much of our personalities, identities, and "souls" we have found in the brain, how can you hope to still exist in any meaningful sense when your brain is gone?
The point was never that "rebirth", especially in the fantastically abstract way you defined it here, is unbelievable. The point is that you believe things which, aside from seeming absurd -- as another poster pointed out, quantum theory seems absurd -- but aside from that, you also have no good reason to believe them, and every reason not to.
This is why, when I get to choose how a religious conversation starts, I'll take a line from Matt Dillahunty and ask, "What do you believe and why?" I'd rather not have to assume or guess at the "what", and the "why" is usually the biggest difference between us. I believe the things I do because I have evidence. You likely believe many of the same things I do, but you also believe some things for which you have no evidence.
Or, if you do, please tell us -- to borrow a line from Aron Ra, I would much rather be proven wrong than forever be wrong.
Alright, yes, it's entirely possible that I'm biased, but I do notice the quieter people occasionally jumping in, and I also notice louder people not always being assholes.
What I very rarely notice is a Christian, quiet or not, who joins a discussion like this with anything to add. It does happen, but it's incredibly rare. Much more common is the atheist who has to patiently explain what atheism actually is for the thousandth time to the Christian who's confused it with nihilism, satanism, wicca (really!), evolutionism (or "darwinism"), etc... And the difference between evolution and eugenics, and how Hitler clearly wasn't an atheist (Gott Mit Uns!), and how not all moral or ethical theories require the existence of a deity -- never mind refuting Pascal's Wager for the billionth time.
By contrast, how often do you see a quiet Christian speak up and have to clarify the difference between Christianity and Islam, say? How many even could? Again, there are of course exceptions, but it's incredibly rare.
And yes, it's rarely going to be the quiet people who bring it up. But they do speak up every now and then once the topic is there.
In this case, pretty much every single term you've described is an approximation for something our intuition doesn't extend to. And yes, subatomic particles can be different colors, or "strange" or "charmed", all of which are just weird terms that Murray Gell-Mann came up with -- he was a bit weird that way, but no stranger than whoever comes up with software names.
Big bang is the obvious one -- nothing went "bang", not in the sense people tend to think.
But hey, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we have extraordinary evidence for subatomic particles, relativity, and the Big Bang. Where's the extraordinary evidence for the fact that zombies can even exist, let alone that one is our savior?
Slashdot Mirror
They are implemented in such a way that every. single. person. who uses a computer can make use of them.
You simultaneously underestimate and overestimate the human race, which is a bit odd.
You overestimate them in that you've actually (with emphasis) said that every person who uses a computer can use this -- trivially false. Aside from people who cannot practically justify having a Mac (and thus cannot run the OS, let alone use it), there are the people who learn this stuff by rote, who will refuse to learn a new interface, no matter how shiny, if there is any possible way they can hang on to their old interface and habits.
You underestimate them in that the ones who are actually willing to try out a new OS, and don't have to go through the pain of installing it themselves, don't really seem to have too much trouble using at least some of these concepts on other OSes. For example, I actually can't remember a desktop Linux that didn't support some form of Resume, and I'm a bit confused as to how "Would you like to save your session?" isn't something people could figure out, once the idea was presented to them.
This is why "oh, this other OS has done this for decades" falls on deaf ears. What good is a feature to someone if they can't use it?
First, it irks people to no end to see Apple claiming credit for these things as "innovations" and bashing everyone else for being so far behind, when, in fact, the majority of these "new" features have been elsewhere for decades, and that elsewhere would maybe like a bit of credit.
Second, you would hope these people would then be curious about what other features have been in other OSes for decades. If these things really are so great when Apple does them, isn't it worth a little bit of effort to see what Apple will be claiming as "new" in another ten years?
For geeks who don't want to fuck around with every little detail on their computer, this is huge. For tinker-nerds who would rather spend time setting up their computer rather than using their computer, this is 'meh'.
I'm fairly sure this is not only a false dichotomy, but I'm guessing it leaves out a majority of geeks. I don't want to fuck around with every little detail on my computer, which is why I use an Ubuntu variant, instead of fucking around with Gentoo and kernel compilation like I used to. At the same time, I do like to know what's actually going on inside my machine, and have a bit more control available when I need it, which is actually my biggest problem with Macs in general.
For example: Autosave. If they're billing this as a feature of the OS, how are they hooking that in to my apps? How do I know what does and doesn't support it? If I can't, how is it at all useful to me? I'd then be hitting cmd+s every few minutes anyway, whether or not autosave is enabled -- and I'd probably do that anyway unless the majority of my apps support it. It's also unclear how this is an OS feature when it still needs app-specific support, since apps on all platforms have supported autosave for decades now, and people don't seem to have issues figuring it out. Not sexy and new apps, not obscure and geeky apps -- Intuit Quicken comes to mind.
And how does Versions decide how much to save? Does it expire old versions when I'm low on disk space, or by wall time? If by wall time, am I going to run out of disk space and have to manually delete old versions? If by disk space, how does it prioritize what to delete when it's time? Can I tweak this at all? Can I mark specific versions to be saved, or do I need to copy them as new files themselves? How are exclusions managed -- can I have it automagically ignore every Git repository on the system? Or, conversely, can I have it not do that?
FileVault -- if I'm going to use this, clearly I care about crypto, so I think I have a right to ask: How in the hell are they doing this live? Will
...but I find this kind of hard to take seriously, kind of like when the US government declared cryptography to be a form of munitions and imposed the same export controls.
Here's what I don't get: If someone maliciously attacks a physical base, fine. You can't lock down physical things entirely -- there's always the possibility of an inside man, or, say, a nuke. But these sorts of things, we already have ways of dealing with.
However, if someone can carry out a successful "cyberattack" from their home country, that says far, far more about our incompetence than it does about their ill intentions. Here, anything they exploit is either going to fall into the category of social engineering or espionage -- things we already have ways of dealing with in the real world -- or it's necessarily going to be a security hole we left wide open, one we certainly didn't have to.
I'm not trying to defend the asshat who exploits that, but it occurs to me that maybe responding to this as an "act of war" is entirely the wrong approach, and that the right approach is going to be similar to if you were to discover some mission-critical files which weren't being backed up, or some servers without a UPS or adequate cooling, or some secretary handed out a secret document without checking the person's clearance, and whatever you do, you don't make an international incident out of your own fuck-up.
It does, however, have wireless.
I'm not entirely sure what I'd do with it, though, and it does seem like other boards would be better. For example, I could turn it into a wireless media frontend (though I wish it did 1080p@60fps) or a web/X11 terminal, 1 gig of RAM is plenty for that -- but in both of those cases, it's going to pretty much be sitting in one place for a long time, so Ethernet is going to be a better option. (Yes, running Ethernet is annoying, even more so if you want it to look pretty, but your connection doesn't drop every time someone makes nachos.)
It's also more than enough horsepower for a NAS or a media server, but in both cases, ethernet would be helpful, and so would SATA -- so that's pushing it.
But I can't really think of a case where I'd want expandable memory -- 1 gig is plenty for almost any application I can think of where I'd want a single board PC.
Frankly, it's taking a fair amount of discipline not to get four or five degrees, simply because I haven't run out of fields which absolutely fascinate me. Along the way, I'm finding very few classes I don't actually enjoy, and it's certainly more fun than real work.
If I was just in it for the money, I'd be a mainframe expert -- it's easy, but there are few enough of them (because no one wants to do it) that it's also very well paid. But then I would hate my life. As it is, I'm likely to end up in some sort of software development, but that's not going to stop me from studying the more interesting bits of biology and cosmology, because the universe is awesome.
What?!? So's a car, but I'll bet my Mom hasn't a clue what a carburetor does, yet she can drive one.
She does, however, understand that it needs gasoline to run (as fuel), and oil to stay cool. She understands that when it makes funny noises, she should probably see a mechanic. And she probably understands the difference between a car like a modern BMW, which can only be serviced at a BMW dealer, and a car which can be serviced by any competent dealer.
The equivalent things are not generally true of computers -- people somehow maintain the belief that they should be able to use a computer with no training whatsoever, and that learning even the tiniest bit about how they work is not their job. Even so, I would expect someone technically inclined enough to have or want a smartphone to be able to understand the concept of whether they control the software, or whether it's up to the carrier or manufacturer, and why they would want that control.
Seems to me that would be a priority to fix, though. I mean, if I'm a terrorist, and I know certain frequencies screw up the pilots' instruments or communication, and those are allowed on the plane anyway...
Or, hey, if I'm just a disgruntled passenger.
Let's not forget that they give us the same story on planes which have built-in wifi. Really, the technology is there to be able to handle this safely. I honestly don't see a good reason for this policy anymore.
They don't ban books, or conversations, or any number of other reasons we might ignore those announcements. Also, even if this were the case, it's a bit depressing that the only way they can make this happen is by lying to us on every single flight.
This is exactly the kind of thing we should be encouraging, independence from cell phone companies. Desiring openness of the platform over this is selfish
Erm... WTF? Openness of the platform, particularly of the individual device, gives the consume independence from the cell phone company. I'd definitely prioritize that over giving the manufacturer independence from the cell phone company, leaving the consumer entirely dependent on the manufacturer. I don't see that really being an improvement other than the fact that, for the moment, the cell phone companies are being the most evil.
while YOU can work around carrier specifics, the vast majority of people cannot and it's not fair nor desirable to have a world where only the technically educated can function well.
If you aren't "technically educated", how are you using that phone in the first place? It's a technical device.
It also doesn't really take much. Teach them to ask for an unlocked bootloader. There are then very nearly one-click methods for rooting and/or flashing the phone.
Furthermore, suggesting that we should all go to a platform which is entirely controlled by the manufacturer seems equally selfish, biased towards those who don't want to do anything particularly imaginative with the device, or to those manufacturers themselves.
Ideally we'd have the best of both worlds, open platforms and no ability for the carriers to dictate what goes on the phones they support. But that is not currently possible.
No more so than closed platforms would in that situation -- the carriers can, for example, reject iOS entirely. They can and have put pressure on the manufacturers to reject certain kinds of apps. The only difference is that with an open platform, the pressure mostly has to come from the consumers, but that (surprisingly!) seems to be working.
If the phone actually does have an unlocked bootloader, there's not much the carriers can do about it. In that case, installing additional crap is just that much more incentive for, say, giving some teenager $20 to flash it with cyanogen such that the carrier now has no control and the customer has twice the battery life.
Oh, he not only read and understood it, he publicly spoke about how glad he was that it had been extended.
Yes, and while I wish him the best of luck, it also comes off as a bit pissy. "Autopen" already seems overly ceremonious -- what, they can't fax, email, etc, and have him print and sign that? Even that seems backwards compared to, say, cryptographic keys, but really, having a device that physically signs for him seems like overkill, and questioning it on a legal/constitutional basis is missing the point -- the President approved it.
So, while I do think it'd be cool if he could block it this way, and it'd be well worth the inconvenience of forcing every president from now on to sign bills physically (at least until the constitution can be amended), I doubt this is going to fly.
If no other mind exists then the logical thing to do would be to enslave the planet. Right? That would neutralize all threats to you.
Nope. There's no such thing as a logical goal, unless it's as a prerequisite for some other subjective goal, and I don't particularly want to enslave the planet. I'm capable of feeling empathy for even poorly-simulated creatures in a videogame. Furthermore, the kinds of things I would call unethical because they involve another mind are also frequently risky. And even if these minds are simulated, they are simulated in a way which is similar enough to my own that the best way to predict their behavior is to think of them as minds, so there's still a legitimate question of whether it would actually be useful to know that they are simulated.
What's more, if this turns out to be something that's unknowable, it also immediately becomes irrelevant. And if it turns out that there are other minds -- and I've heard arguments for this -- that still doesn't tell me if any of the minds I think I'm interacting with are those other minds.
Those things are far away. The consciousness is apparently in your brain.
The distance is pretty irrelevant
It's the size that matters. Consciousness would physically be very small, and if it's got anything to do with quantum physics, even smaller. It's also fairly fast and adaptive. Think about how difficult it is for us to deal with other phenomena on that scale -- sometimes we do well, but sometimes we run up against something like cancer.
Everybody who isn't you would be deemed mentally ill if you are the only mind that exists. They'd be mentally ill because you can't control them, not for any other reason than that.
I'm not sure I follow that logic, but I'm even less convinced that this has anything to do with the question of whether governments understanding how consciousness works and manipulating it via quantum physics is a credible threat.
If there is no free will, shouldn't we strive to control as much of the universe as possible and as many lifeforms as possible? For sake of security or for fun?
You've leaped immediately from "There is no free will" to "There are no ethics." That doesn't follow -- there are plenty of compatibilist theories. Nor would that immediately make me think universal conquest is "fun", nor would it justify trading other lifeforms' essential rights for our own security.
BTW, I think you're making the mistake of tying together the issues of consciousness and free will. They seem to me to be two distinct phenomena.
I agree, actually. I'm surprised I didn't catch that.
As for "free will", my gut attitude is that the only answer is that it's a philosophical matter whose (non-)answer essentially comes down to perspective and viewpoint because the issue is essentially circular. "Free" from what? The way fate put our brains together?...
Being poorly-defined doesn't make it necessarily circular, although there may be some circular definitions. It tends to be a tricky problem, though. One definition is "Free from coercion." The way you are built is a part of you, so even if you're entirely deterministic, you're still you. Someone external to you taking control and manipulating you to do something, even if it's what you would have done anyway, is coercion.
I suspect that definition can be made relatively objective, but at some point along the way, I'm guessing it will diverge sharply from what our intuition of "Free Will" means.
Banging them against a wall is just not sufficient.
I already posted on this article. Someone mod this guy up to a billion.
Penrose is the only one brave enough to ask the question; "Is consciousness real?" and try to answer it using physics and science.
Bullshit. I've asked the question often enough, along with anyone I've ever talked philosophy with, and just about every "strong AI" researcher, along with just about every neurologist, is making progress towards explaining what consciousness is. Whether or not that's "real" is up to you to interpret.
But it's the same question that would be asked by a solipsist, do other minds exist? Do I exist? Why not try to answer that?
Because those aren't terribly useful questions. I suppose they're interesting, but would I behave any differently if I knew that I didn't exist and that no other minds existed?
If we find out consciousness is a matter of physics and can be controlled
Just because it's a matter of physics, why would you assume it can be controlled?
Know what else is a matter of physics? Stars. Black Holes. Supernovae.
Black Parrot has a point, though -- we already know far less exotic ways of affecting consciousness. And I would argue there are ethical reasons we should learn more about consciousness -- what we know now (psychology) goes a long way towards actually treating someone who is mentally ill.
No free will exists? So who is the master of the universe?
I'm not convinced these are related questions. A compatiblist view would allow for the "free" actions of any master of the universe to be completely determined -- or, apply a more restricted compatiblism to the "master" part, so you can have a master who doesn't have free will. It's also possible that free will exists in the absence of any "master of the universe" at all.
All consciousness relies on electrons. You cannot have consciousness without electrons.
In the purest sense, yes, but that's because consciousness lives in brains, which are composed of matter, and matter, at least in our universe and in the environments in which we find brains, has electrons. So what's your point?
So this would be one place to look.
But why on earth would you start there?
If you wanted to understand how an OS worked, where would you start? If you started with individual electrons, you'd be taking the long way. Even without source code, you want to be working at a much higher level. I mean, if you didn't understand what a transistor is, or what it does, you might have trouble, but don't we know enough things about neurons that we don't have to analyze individual electrons running through them?
But basically, if you don't have quantum consciousness you can't have consciousness on higher scales.
Let's start with: WTF is "quantum consciousness"? The closest a quick Google shows is a hypothesis that classical mechanics cannot explain consciousness, which runs contrary to the fact that neurons are big enough that classical mechanics handle them quite well, and quantum mechanics can be largely ignored as noise. This is mentioned in the Wikipedia article you linked to.
And how do you define consciousness mathematically, let alone "prove" that it cannot exist with purely classical mechanics?
I'm not sure the rest of your comment has much of a point unless you can make this one hold, but let's try anyway:
The problem or fear I have is if we did discover what particle or wave function is responsible for consciousness, or how, we'd have governments around the world using these discoveries to enslave and oppress people.
They're already doing this with much more pedestrian means, like psychology and threats of force. I'm not really sure how this would be different.
If we found a way to for example give consciousness to inanimate objects,
Like what, other than computers? And how would you distinguish a conscious computer from one which merely simulates consciousness?
It would be used to make the perfect cyborg slaves, who have the mix of human consciousness, with the absolute obedience of a programmable robot.
How is this better for a government than having a programmable robot?
Is randomness really more satisfying than determinism? Is there really more "free will", by any useful definition?
No, I think the appeal is that it appears random, and that we don't (yet) understand a mechanism by which the waveform collapses into one state or another, other than that it collapses with more frequency in some places than others. It's essentially a god-of-the-gaps argument, only this time for "consciousness" or "free will"...
It is, of course, pure speculation. Worse, we are learning more and more about how the brain actually works, and I suspect at some point we will come to terms with the fact that what we call "consciousness" is an emergent phenomenon of the brain, and that it is no more free than a glider in Conway's Game of Life.
Now, is it actually a fallacy? I suspect there's an informal one in there somewhere -- it certainly feels ad-hoc.
If you've got those, why do you need to fuck with DNS anyway?
No, ad-hom only applies when you're doing that as a point -- for example, "You're a hater, therefore you're wrong."
If you break this down into a syllogism, it's, "You claim the service never failed until today. It failed in December. Therefore, you are wrong." Childish? Maybe, but it's logical, regardless of adding a "haters" comment afterwards.
Why do you talk about ladyboys on every single post you make?
Because someone challenged him to.
Get out of the closet.
He seems very much "out" about what he likes -- and I see no reason why someone who likes "ladyboys" is also required to like any other men, so no, it's not the same thing as homosexual.
I can see the response now -- "If that's what you have to tell yourself..." Except I'm actually straight (and would not like a ladyboy), just a little bit more educated about these things. That, and why should anyone be ashamed of homosexuality, either? It's not a matter of trying to pretend he doesn't like people with penises (so long as they also have breasts and look like women), I'm just trying to clarify things a bit. For instance:
And it's not a "girlfriend".
It's your boyfriend.
There is a difference between gender and sex. While the two most often coincide, there's no particular reason that someone's gender identity has to match their physical body.
Then what is the relevant difference?
Zombies are dead, then come back to life with some or all of their wounds still there. Jesus was dead, and came back with holes in him.
It's also interesting that you take issue with the "zombie" part of that rant. Are you suggesting, then, that the rest of it is still accurate?
Evolutionary biology has only been around for 150 years, how can these scientists feel secure measuring events that span millions of years?
While I don't know the AC who made this particular anti-science rant, I would imagine the typical response to this would be "Yes! See? Evolution is wrong!"
The underlying issues is a lack of understanding and confidence in science. The only way I know of to deal with the lack of confidence is to work on the understanding.
I *always* laugh when other religious folk bash my belief system.
Good to have a sense of humor!
From an atheist, I'll just respond with "Hey man, I'm not stepping on your rights to gay-marry and drink" (even if there are many other mormons that do that...).
These aren't the only rights people (including Mormons) are causing problems with... and if you tithe, you are part of that problem. Otherwise, while I might wish you had saner beliefs, I've got no problem with you, so please, don't take the following personally. My frustration is from having to explain this so many times, not with you.
And, if you view religion as a system of beliefs ... then atheism is a system of beliefs about the world.
Atheism is the lack of one very specific kind of belief -- the belief in a god or gods.
You might be thinking of naturalism, and it's true that many atheists, probably the vast majority of self-identified atheists, are naturalists. It might be true that this is even a natural conclusion of abandoning a theistic view. But it's worth pointing out that technically, the Raelians are atheists, along with many satanists, mystics, and new-age people.
Sure, some of it can be proven, other parts are just solid speculation.
If you're going to make this claim, you should back it up. What makes speculation "solid", and what beliefs do you assume I have that are speculation?
So, I believe that I'm going to be reborn.
Why do you believe that? And what evidence do you have for that belief?
Technically? So does every atheist who ascribes to that pesky thing about atom theory, and matter being neither create-able or destroy-able.
Not in any meaningful sense, "technical" or otherwise.
Yes, I do find a certain amount of comfort in the knowledge that my atoms will most likely remain intact for a long time, that my body will likely be used for other, more useful things, either for science or being recycled as food, so that in some sense, I will be alive, as I have always been.
But that wouldn't be a terribly useful definition of "I".
I take far more comfort in the knowledge that I matter to people here and now, and that some of these people may outlive me, and that my work might also make some lasting contribution. People might not remember my name, but I will have done something which actually does matter, and which has lasting consequences. This is similar to the reason Beowulf sought fame -- as a sort of immortality.
But all of this is beside the point. We have some understanding of how atoms work and how bodies work. How do souls work? By what mechanism will you be reborn? Given that we understand so much about the brain, and given how much of our personalities, identities, and "souls" we have found in the brain, how can you hope to still exist in any meaningful sense when your brain is gone?
The point was never that "rebirth", especially in the fantastically abstract way you defined it here, is unbelievable. The point is that you believe things which, aside from seeming absurd -- as another poster pointed out, quantum theory seems absurd -- but aside from that, you also have no good reason to believe them, and every reason not to.
This is why, when I get to choose how a religious conversation starts, I'll take a line from Matt Dillahunty and ask, "What do you believe and why?" I'd rather not have to assume or guess at the "what", and the "why" is usually the biggest difference between us. I believe the things I do because I have evidence. You likely believe many of the same things I do, but you also believe some things for which you have no evidence.
Or, if you do, please tell us -- to borrow a line from Aron Ra, I would much rather be proven wrong than forever be wrong.
That hasn't been my observation.
Alright, yes, it's entirely possible that I'm biased, but I do notice the quieter people occasionally jumping in, and I also notice louder people not always being assholes.
What I very rarely notice is a Christian, quiet or not, who joins a discussion like this with anything to add. It does happen, but it's incredibly rare. Much more common is the atheist who has to patiently explain what atheism actually is for the thousandth time to the Christian who's confused it with nihilism, satanism, wicca (really!), evolutionism (or "darwinism"), etc... And the difference between evolution and eugenics, and how Hitler clearly wasn't an atheist (Gott Mit Uns!), and how not all moral or ethical theories require the existence of a deity -- never mind refuting Pascal's Wager for the billionth time.
By contrast, how often do you see a quiet Christian speak up and have to clarify the difference between Christianity and Islam, say? How many even could? Again, there are of course exceptions, but it's incredibly rare.
And yes, it's rarely going to be the quiet people who bring it up. But they do speak up every now and then once the topic is there.
In this case, pretty much every single term you've described is an approximation for something our intuition doesn't extend to. And yes, subatomic particles can be different colors, or "strange" or "charmed", all of which are just weird terms that Murray Gell-Mann came up with -- he was a bit weird that way, but no stranger than whoever comes up with software names.
Big bang is the obvious one -- nothing went "bang", not in the sense people tend to think.
But hey, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we have extraordinary evidence for subatomic particles, relativity, and the Big Bang. Where's the extraordinary evidence for the fact that zombies can even exist, let alone that one is our savior?