I don't disagree with the printing press. But its introduction was much later than the adaptation of Arabic numerals. It was another enabling technology. They are not mutually exclusive, you know.
You are talking about (roughly) 1100-1500. Rome fell in (roughly) 450. Crusades were (roughly) 900-1250. It's not like the Arabic numerals all of a sudden made everything better immediately. But their lack set the western civilization back by 500-700 year.
The most common use of the wheel besides transportation is for making pottery. Native Americans (to the best of my knowledge) never made 1-piece vessels. They had clay vessels, but they made them but layering a thin roll of clay.
Write? How to write? Are you joking? Homo sapience is on (not sure at the moment about the order of magnitude atm) 100k to 1mil years old. There are no writing samples from before 10k years ago. There is a reason why some civilizations advance and some do not. And despite Diamond's well-argued theory, it's not just nature. Plenty of small groups perish when faced with a challenge. Some invent solutions and survive. When the solution they invent can be widely repurposed, it creates new ways of doing things. I am really not sure why so many people skip over the key word in my post. I said ENABLING technology is stumbled on by accident. The development after it's been discovered is inevitable. But stumbling on a new enabling technology is not a guarantee.
The sexagesimal (base 60) numbering system was around for more than a thousand years before the Greeks.
The fact that 60-base system predated the Greeks does not contradict the statement that it was the Greek system. The point of that statement was not to attribute its development to Greeks, but to point out the fact that Greeks were hindered by it. 60x60 multiplication table creates quite a barrier to entry into arithmetic for most.
The rises and falls of civilizations has been the great eraser of knowledge
There is no evidence that much of useful (by the virtue of being used) human knowledge is lost. It moves from civilization to civilization, but I know of no recorded event when a significant scientific discipline was lost. Most examples of scientific knowledge (probably all, but never say "never") that was once known and is no longer known or only known to few is out of use because a better view on the subject (same or better utility but less of a learning curve) has been developed and put to use.
strong ai will result from a combination of hybrids and parallelism. actually, it will emerge naturally from hybrids and it will be perfected through massive parallelism. quantum computing is still uncertain (no pun intended).
You state that most technology is developed out of luck and is not consistently developed around the world.
no, i don't. i claim that root knowledge/insight/technology that enables a new period is developed out of luck. the root
that enables the rest.
The most development retarding device currently in the world is political powers.
no. that is not just now. it's always been the case. the times when it's not the case are usually short-lived and rare. power does not seek ways to have itself challenged.
The FED created the bubble to reduce misery until what everyone was assuming was the next emerging technology boom -- biotech. It was supposed to blossom by 2010. The boom was severely hindered by government policies (oversubsidizing of basic research, hindering of steam-cell research, complete failure to recognize that terrorism's main target is stable society and treating it as a traditional military threat, etc.). Populations don't come out with pitchforks unless a very certain demographic exists -- lots of young people who are not yet established in life. US is not there at the moment. But if the current President's policies continue, it might get there within 5-10 years (2nd baby boom happened '98-'05).
Every time one of these bubbles has been in the making, I hear 99% of people saying this is a "new era", or a "new economy".
This is how most rational people knew this was a bubble. If this is the justification given, just calmly ask yourself the question: what has changed us as a specie? If you can't figure out the answer, look for ways to profit from the new bubble and for to figure out what will signal the end.
The idea that technological advance is as inevitable as a law of nature is a fallacy. It usually relies on us getting lucky because somewhere an enabling technology or knowledge was discovered. The only reason Europe emerged from the dark ages is that crusades brought back the Arabic numbers, for example. Gauss once blamed Euclid's not introducing digital numbers and sticking with base-60 numbers of the Greeks for all of the Dark Ages. Roman numerals do not make multiplication table manageable by any accounts, either. Basically, once the enabling technology is stumbled upon, you get a bunch of people in different parts of the world exploring all of its implications. Until then, you pretty much hit stagnation point sooner or later. American Indians never discovered a wheel, by the way. Social forces ALWAYS play catch up with technological state of humanity. As long as we remain the same specie, that is. Moore's Law is already at its limit. The next step is two-prong: parallelism and hybrid (analog-digital) chips.
actually, everyone who was in the market knew it was a bubble. the only thing they didn't know was when it would burst. everyone stays in hoping to cash out before it bursts. anyone who was predicting that housing wasn't a bubble was either lying or he is a charlatan.
yeah, yeah, i get it. it's about trolling on the net so the internet icon is justified. but do how do you justify not putting politics icon on this one?
can you please mark nonsense like this article under politics as well as "the internet"? the whole anti-humanist-under-guise-of-being-anti-corporate crowd makes it sooooooo not worth reading. i'd like to have an opportunity to block this type of drivel.
Your plan is every bit objectionable as the cable company's sleezy "super low introductory rate for six months, with unspecified but much higher rate for the remainder of your twenty-four month commitment."
Much sleazier, actually. It's more like a cable company that offers a low teaser rate but also says that if you don't buy the service, then you'll be responsible for cableman's children's starving .
That's a false analogy. I am not suggesting that animal rights activists should go to jail for volunteering to take a place of a monkey (not that this is even scientifically useful or feasible but just to humor the ethical question). What I am suggesting is that a scientist who would accept their donation of themselves while an experiment could be performed on a monkey would be acting unethically. They should chose to harm an animal if it can spare a suffering of a human being.
You probably think that because you think that this comment:
So if you get raped and get AIDS, it's because of your lifestyle? Damn these girls in their miniskirts. They were asking for it!
was mine. It wasn't.
hell... the entire thread started off with "poor mice", let's get back to that.
Please!!!
I am 100% for testing on animals if it means we can make advances in medical science.
hear, hear
Now, the science of itchiness... I'm quite positive that there is some better project on which these researchers can work.
That's a common misconception about academic research. It does basic science. So it doesn't try to be "useful". Its aim is
(a) to be interesting to the researchers (b) to provide description of natural phenomena without concern for its use. The fact that
some of the basic research ends up being useful is purely coincidental.
In this particular case, it's actually not a bad idea to do a
a completely exhaustive basic research. Since it's not yet understood how every little detail of a human body works, it's not a bad idea
to find out and document all of it. Doing something "useful" with that information is the next stage. But given the interconnected nature
of the all the systems in the body, it's a really, really, really good idea to research and document it all.
It's almost guaranteed that someday someone will make a pill for some nasty condition and that pill might accidentally also effect the
GRPR-bearing neurons. Because of this research, they'll be able to understand why during clinical trials some patients were found to experience
itchiness. It's practically a guarantee that this will happen sooner or later. When it comes to documenting human body, encyclopedic understanding
is never a bad idea.
I don't believe I have the burden of proof of that statement. You attacked the style of the statement (hyperbole) by mis-characterizing it as a joke. I explained your mis-characterization. That doesn't mean that I agreed with the content of the statement. Nor does this very comment mean that I disagree with the content of that statement. So far I made no judgment on the content of that statement. And I don't have a burden of proof of a statement on which I made no judgment.
Better test them on monkey than on animal rights activists. I would actually be against any animal-rights activists that would volunteer to take a monkey's place in an experiment. Peoples' well-being comes before animals'.
You shouldn't be joking about other peoples' misery.
"If a bus hits you, it's comedy. If I get a splinter, it's tragedy" -- Mel Brooks
Having said that, the gp was not "joking". He was using a hyperbole to demonstrate a point. While some jokes are hyperbole, not all hyperbole are jokes -- some simply demonstrate a point.
people mimic their behavior in games to the behavior they learn in the real world environment. the moderate changes in game behavior (of players) are small in comparison in to large scale in-game behavior changes due to factors that occur in real world.
for example, chat channels degenerate into political discussions. those touch on subjects that are not at all covered by the in-game content. the whole premise of this "adaptability" misses another part of cognitive development -- repurposing.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? What fundamental limit do you see us having by means of being human?
Our method of perception (and, as corollary, our methods of communicating ideas) and our need of specific physical resources.
I don't disagree with the printing press. But its introduction was much later than the adaptation of Arabic numerals. It was another enabling technology. They are not mutually exclusive, you know.
You are talking about (roughly) 1100-1500. Rome fell in (roughly) 450. Crusades were (roughly) 900-1250. It's not like the Arabic numerals all of a sudden made everything better immediately. But their lack set the western civilization back by 500-700 year.
The most common use of the wheel besides transportation is for making pottery. Native Americans (to the best of my knowledge) never made 1-piece vessels. They had clay vessels, but they made them but layering a thin roll of clay.
Write? How to write? Are you joking? Homo sapience is on (not sure at the moment about the order of magnitude atm) 100k to 1mil years old. There are no writing samples from before 10k years ago. There is a reason why some civilizations advance and some do not. And despite Diamond's well-argued theory, it's not just nature. Plenty of small groups perish when faced with a challenge. Some invent solutions and survive. When the solution they invent can be widely repurposed, it creates new ways of doing things. I am really not sure why so many people skip over the key word in my post. I said ENABLING technology is stumbled on by accident. The development after it's been discovered is inevitable. But stumbling on a new enabling technology is not a guarantee.
The sexagesimal (base 60) numbering system was around for more than a thousand years before the Greeks.
The fact that 60-base system predated the Greeks does not contradict the statement that it was the Greek system. The point of that statement was not to attribute its development to Greeks, but to point out the fact that Greeks were hindered by it. 60x60 multiplication table creates quite a barrier to entry into arithmetic for most.
The rises and falls of civilizations has been the great eraser of knowledge
There is no evidence that much of useful (by the virtue of being used) human knowledge is lost. It moves from civilization to civilization, but I know of no recorded event when a significant scientific discipline was lost. Most examples of scientific knowledge (probably all, but never say "never") that was once known and is no longer known or only known to few is out of use because a better view on the subject (same or better utility but less of a learning curve) has been developed and put to use.
no
strong ai will result from a combination of hybrids and parallelism. actually, it will emerge naturally from hybrids and it will be perfected through massive parallelism. quantum computing is still uncertain (no pun intended).
You state that most technology is developed out of luck and is not consistently developed around the world.
no, i don't. i claim that root knowledge/insight/technology that enables a new period is developed out of luck. the root that enables the rest.
The most development retarding device currently in the world is political powers.
no. that is not just now. it's always been the case. the times when it's not the case are usually short-lived and rare. power does not seek ways to have itself challenged.
The FED created the bubble to reduce misery until what everyone was assuming was the next emerging technology boom -- biotech. It was supposed to blossom by 2010. The boom was severely hindered by government policies (oversubsidizing of basic research, hindering of steam-cell research, complete failure to recognize that terrorism's main target is stable society and treating it as a traditional military threat, etc.). Populations don't come out with pitchforks unless a very certain demographic exists -- lots of young people who are not yet established in life. US is not there at the moment. But if the current President's policies continue, it might get there within 5-10 years (2nd baby boom happened '98-'05).
Every time one of these bubbles has been in the making, I hear 99% of people saying this is a "new era", or a "new economy".
This is how most rational people knew this was a bubble. If this is the justification given, just calmly ask yourself the question: what has changed us as a specie? If you can't figure out the answer, look for ways to profit from the new bubble and for to figure out what will signal the end.
The idea that technological advance is as inevitable as a law of nature is a fallacy. It usually relies on us getting lucky because somewhere an enabling technology or knowledge was discovered. The only reason Europe emerged from the dark ages is that crusades brought back the Arabic numbers, for example. Gauss once blamed Euclid's not introducing digital numbers and sticking with base-60 numbers of the Greeks for all of the Dark Ages. Roman numerals do not make multiplication table manageable by any accounts, either. Basically, once the enabling technology is stumbled upon, you get a bunch of people in different parts of the world exploring all of its implications. Until then, you pretty much hit stagnation point sooner or later. American Indians never discovered a wheel, by the way. Social forces ALWAYS play catch up with technological state of humanity. As long as we remain the same specie, that is. Moore's Law is already at its limit. The next step is two-prong: parallelism and hybrid (analog-digital) chips.
actually, everyone who was in the market knew it was a bubble. the only thing they didn't know was when it would burst. everyone stays in hoping to cash out before it bursts. anyone who was predicting that housing wasn't a bubble was either lying or he is a charlatan.
yeah, yeah, i get it. it's about trolling on the net so the internet icon is justified. but do how do you justify not putting politics icon on this one?
can you please mark nonsense like this article under politics as well as "the internet"? the whole anti-humanist-under-guise-of-being-anti-corporate crowd makes it sooooooo not worth reading. i'd like to have an opportunity to block this type of drivel.
Your plan is every bit objectionable as the cable company's sleezy "super low introductory rate for six months, with unspecified but much higher rate for the remainder of your twenty-four month commitment."
Much sleazier, actually. It's more like a cable company that offers a low teaser rate but also says that if you don't buy the service, then you'll be responsible for cableman's children's starving .
That's a false analogy. I am not suggesting that animal rights activists should go to jail for volunteering to take a place of a monkey (not that this is even scientifically useful or feasible but just to humor the ethical question). What I am suggesting is that a scientist who would accept their donation of themselves while an experiment could be performed on a monkey would be acting unethically. They should chose to harm an animal if it can spare a suffering of a human being.
I wonder if you would still have that opinion if you were reincarnated as a lab monkey.
I don't wonder that. I am also going to continue not wondering that. I'll take my chances. But I do appreciate the concern. Really... I really do.
Aaaaaaah!!! Stop it! You obviously disagreed with
You probably think that because you think that this comment:
So if you get raped and get AIDS, it's because of your lifestyle? Damn these girls in their miniskirts. They were asking for it!
was mine. It wasn't.
hell... the entire thread started off with "poor mice", let's get back to that.
Please!!!
I am 100% for testing on animals if it means we can make advances in medical science.
hear, hear
Now, the science of itchiness... I'm quite positive that there is some better project on which these researchers can work.
That's a common misconception about academic research. It does basic science. So it doesn't try to be "useful". Its aim is (a) to be interesting to the researchers (b) to provide description of natural phenomena without concern for its use. The fact that some of the basic research ends up being useful is purely coincidental.
In this particular case, it's actually not a bad idea to do a a completely exhaustive basic research. Since it's not yet understood how every little detail of a human body works, it's not a bad idea to find out and document all of it. Doing something "useful" with that information is the next stage. But given the interconnected nature of the all the systems in the body, it's a really, really, really good idea to research and document it all.
It's almost guaranteed that someday someone will make a pill for some nasty condition and that pill might accidentally also effect the GRPR-bearing neurons. Because of this research, they'll be able to understand why during clinical trials some patients were found to experience itchiness. It's practically a guarantee that this will happen sooner or later. When it comes to documenting human body, encyclopedic understanding is never a bad idea.
Now, please explain, how is that "lifestyle"?
I don't believe I have the burden of proof of that statement. You attacked the style of the statement (hyperbole) by mis-characterizing it as a joke. I explained your mis-characterization. That doesn't mean that I agreed with the content of the statement. Nor does this very comment mean that I disagree with the content of that statement. So far I made no judgment on the content of that statement. And I don't have a burden of proof of a statement on which I made no judgment.
Better test them on monkey than on animal rights activists. I would actually be against any animal-rights activists that would volunteer to take a monkey's place in an experiment. Peoples' well-being comes before animals'.
You shouldn't be joking about other peoples' misery.
"If a bus hits you, it's comedy. If I get a splinter, it's tragedy" -- Mel Brooks
Having said that, the gp was not "joking". He was using a hyperbole to demonstrate a point. While some jokes are hyperbole, not all hyperbole are jokes -- some simply demonstrate a point.
energy is never created or destroyed
oh? i think a certain german disagreed.
"If you dance with the devil, the devil don't change. The devil changes you."
people mimic their behavior in games to the behavior they learn in the real world environment. the moderate changes in game behavior (of players) are small in comparison in to large scale in-game behavior changes due to factors that occur in real world. for example, chat channels degenerate into political discussions. those touch on subjects that are not at all covered by the in-game content. the whole premise of this "adaptability" misses another part of cognitive development -- repurposing.