Signing all your emails with PGP/GPG/whatever might be the answer. To make this work, first of all, just discard all messages that aren't signed. This, of course, relies on the assumption that most people in the world sign their emails, which, of course, isn't the case at the moment. But for now, assume that it is.
This means that all your contacts will send you signed messaged. Spammers wouldn't have this option. To sign ever single one of their messages correctly would take an awful amount of computing power. This may be enough to make it not profitable for mass spammings.
That's because people who are technologically adept and who have sufficient resources are quite rare. Only someone who can hack the hardware would be able to grab the original digital content from a properly-designed black box.
But you have to remember that once a sufficiently technologically adept person has cracked the hardware, he or she has a perfect copy of the original. The cost this person of giving other people copies of this content is relatively small.
"Obviously" doesn't cut it in physics, I'm afraid.
Look at it this way; in your thought experiment, replace your instant communication device for an ordinary laser.
As in the original thought experiment, the car's headlight flash is detected by the observer, and he checks his watch: T+1 minutes. The car driver checks his watch and it's T+2 minutes by the time the flash arrives at the observer.
Then the observer sends out a laser pulse in return (assume it is sent as soon as he sees the flash of the car's headlights). Now, the car is 2 light minutes from the observer, travelling at 0.5c, so to the observer it will take 4 minutes for the laser pulse to reach the car. The observer checks his watch when it does, and the time is T+5 minutes.
But to the driver of the car, he might as well be stationary, and the observer moving away from him at 0.5c. Remember that to the driver, the observer received the headlight flash at T+2 minutes, and at that time the observer is 2 light minutes away. The observer's laser pulse in reply will take 2 minutes to cover that distance, so the driver receives the laser pulse at T+4 minutes.
So to the observer, the time when the driver recieves the pulse is five minutes after the start of the experiment. Whilst to the driver, only four minutes have passed.
You see? Time isn't absolute. Even if you don't use an instant communication device, you still have a differing in times. Time differencials don't discount the possibility of instantanious communication.
More interesting is how everyone wants to prove that Einstein's theory is wrong. Seems to me like a bit of brain-envy.
I suppose, then, Einstein must have been pretty jealous of Newton. I had always thought that Einstein worked upon General Relativity to understand more about the Universe, but it's clear that he just wanted to prove Newton wrong out of envy.
Theories are proved wrong all the time. Attempts at combining Quantum Theory with Relativity have all failed. It's not unthinkable to suggest that both Relativity and Quantum Theory may be subtly wrong. There may be a greater theory that explains both large-scale gravitation, and small-scale quantum effects, waiting around the corner.
Relativity is the best theory we have for explaining large-scale gravitational effects, but no-one has been able to fit it together with what we observe at the quantum level. Isn't it logical to suspect that Relativity is not the be-all and end-all of physics?
It's good to be skeptical. But as well as being skeptical of the article (and perhaps rightly so), be skeptical of Einstein's work as well. Scientific theories, even well-established ones, should not be blindly followed, but continuously tested.
Now from the car's perspective, the light is moving away from it at C, but it's moving forward at.5C, so the light is only getting closer to the observer at.5C. Hence it takes two minutes to reach the observer. At T+1 minute, the light has not reached the observer. So the guy in the car is surprised by the announcement that it has, and sends back an instant communique for confirmation.
"Confirmation?" asks the observer, "I haven't sent you anything yet!" After all the light has not yet reached the observer, so how could he have sent the communication?
You're assuming there's such a thing as absolute time, which Special Relatively disproved.
So there is no such thing as T time. There is O(T) - Observer time. And R(T) - caR time. Let T0 be the time when the car flashes its headlights, and T1 be the time when the light from this flash reaches the observer.
So the car flashes it's headlights at R(T0). The observer sees the flash at O(T1). The observer then immediately sends an instantaneous message to the car, which is recieved at R(T1).
To both parties, at the time T1, the light ray from the headlights has reached the observer. The difference is that (R(T1) - R(T0)) > (O(T1) - O(T0)).
Your thought experiment assumes that there is a "universal time". So that one minute for the car is the same as one minute for the observer. This is incorrect.
Socialism and stifling free speech go hand in hand.
You seem to have missed out the part where you attempt to justify this sentence. Socialism and free speech are two completely different concepts that have no bearing on one another.
Free speech has been stifled by left-leaning governments, and right-leaning governments.
A more valid statement would be: "Governments and stifling free speech go hand in hand."
I design my site using XHTML and CSS1. My current development cycle goes: I first design valid XHTML and CSS. Then I check it works on Firefox, and of course, it always does. Then I check in on Konqueror; less problems there now Apple's pushed the KHTML renderer up to scratch.
Then I test it in IE. Almost every single time I revise my site design, IE can't render bits of it properly. This is pretty much very irritating, since I don't have IE on my platform, so it's difficult to check. The latest redesign I've done I haven't tested on IE yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if something was broken. I put it up anyway, because my site doesn't receive a lot of traffic in any case, and most of it's from standards-complient browsers.
So in my experience, IE has been a big pain. I'm not using the latest CSS or javascript. It's all CSS1 and XHTML 1.0. And it still breaks for non-trivial page layouts. IE moaning isn't a myth. IE is very irritating to design for. It doesn't properly suppost CSS1. CSS1, for fuck's sake. Sometimes there isn't a way of fiddling it to fit, so I need to go back and do the layout I want a whole different way.
What's the most annoying thing I find about web design? Making it work with IE.
I only have personal experience with one sort of intelligence--my own, which involves being self-aware.
I agree.
I have no actual evidence that it is possible to act intelligently without being self-aware. Thus, I am far more likely to ascribe self-awareness to other beings that act intelligently than to invoke some magical argument and claim that my sort of intelligence is somehow better than theirs because humans are just intrinsically superior to all other species for no good reason (other than my being one).
My reasoning is fairly simple; skepticism. It's not a inherent, unwavering belief that humans are in some way superior. It's simply that other animals have not offered the same amount or quality of evidence that humans have done.
It seems pretty clear to me that the difference between human intelligence and that of other animals is merely one of degree, not one of kind, and that the degrees of difference are far less than most people think. (This last part is probably due to that fact that most people feel deeply threatened if they cannot feel that they are somehow special.)
"It seems pretty clear". That sounds like an assumption. And it seems odd to mock people who don't automatically assume the same things you do.
So when we say a robot can "recognize" itself in a mirror, do we mean that it can identify the parts that belong to it, or do we mean that it can reflect upon its reflection, i.e. on some level, say, "Hey, that's me!" And although the former is doable, it's still a hard problem. The latter is, however, Hard.
The former can also be scientifically tested. The latter cannot. Unless, of course, you have any ideas.
Similarly, our robot brain, whether or not we call it "sapient" will still have the same physical features and abilities. The Holy Grail of a definitive definition really doesn't exist, and doesn't need to.
Perhaps. But I don't think so. We know what isn't sapient. A brick isn't. A particle of hydrogen isn't. So we can easily discount over 99% of the Universe.
We can't say "This object is 0% humourous". Or "This object contains 0% beauty". We can say, "This object is 0% sapient. It is not self-aware." So we can say for certain whether some things are not self-aware. Doesn't that imply that there may be some way of telling whether something is sapient?
but then you admit there's no test for whatever it is you're talking about. Well then just how the hell do YOU know?
Essencially, Descartes.
I get so tired of people who think that other creatures are somehow fundamentally different from us, psychically, emotionally, whatever. EVERY theory (because they are all theories) stating this is nothing more than inherited religious bias MASQUERADING as science. Period. It's so unbelievably, ironically arrogant.
There's plenty of reason to hold this belief. Allow me to repeat what I've said elsewhere. Lets start off with two, reasonable assumptions. I will assume I am self-aware. I will assume that most matter in the Universe is not.
At what point, then, does an animal become self-aware? Clearly, there must be some things that are not self-aware, and some things that are.
I'm working from the skeptical angle. Whilst you claim that my skepticism is religious (odd choice of words), I'm inclined to disagree.
Starting skeptically, I start with the belief nothing is self-aware, and work from there. From assumption one (I-think-therefore-I-am), I can conclude that I am self-aware.
Now, there is a large volume of evidence to support the suggestion that I am human. If I am self-aware, and others of my species exhibit similar behaviour as me, then it is reasonable to conclude that the vast majority of humans are also, probably, self aware.
No other species has yet made a convincing enough case to me on its self-awareness. Any creature is welcome to try.
Its not arrogance. It's not religion. It skepticism.
If yo manage to build a robot that can recognize it's own reflection and infer from this whether the reflection is "him" or an image of him or something else, you just have created a robot that is sentinent e.g. self-aware.
Nothing more or less. That robot wouldn't disprove the theory that the ape recognizing itself in the mirror is self-aware. It might even support it, because you know have a better grasp on what is neccessary to be self-aware and what not.
You have created a robot that can recognise its own reflection in the mirror. Nothing more, nothing less. To do this, the robot would probably have to have detailed knowledge of its physical form, its location and orientation, and the surrounding area around it.
So whilst the robot may be body-aware, and environment-aware, in my opinion this is very different from being self-aware.
For instance, I may not know what my "self" is, but I do know what doesn't change it. If I move my body to a different place or pose, I do not change my sense of self. I'm probably still the same person. The position of a person's body has no direct effect on their consciousness. I don't suddenly get a completely different personality based on my acceleration or position of my hands and feet.
Likewise, whilst the environment may have an indirect effect upon the mind, you still remain the same person. The different between being a lazy bum and a successful businessman isn't directly dependant on the environment of a person. If a person flys from the US to the UK, he doesn't change his music tastes and personality until he flys back.
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that our "self" isn't directly affected by our physical form or location in an environment. Therefore, being self-aware is something different from knowing about our physical form and our location in an environment.
If you built a simple (compared to self-aware life) robot for the purpose of recognizing itself, it would either "know" what it looks like in the first place, or it would stand in front of the mirror and wave its robot appendages, then compare its movement to the movement it sees in front of it. In other words, it would be trying to recognize itself.
That's all beside the point. My argument is, that if a non-self-aware robot can be constructed to achieve the same results as a self-aware creature in a test, then that test isn't that good.
The mirror test is; can an entity recognise its physical reflection from visual input. Whilst a researcher may infer other things from watching the animal, that doesn't matter. The fact is, the basic test proposed is not conclusive, and whatever a researcher may infer from the animal's behaviour, is speculation (however good that speculation is).
I didn't say the mirror-test was bad. It certainly narrows the field down. However, I would claim that it isn't conclusive, not by a long shot.
Really? Such a thing appears to be capital-h Hard. If you put a little daub of paint on a chimp, it will rub at the spot in the mirror. I don't know of any robots who go about cleaning themselves off when a little paint has spilled on an arm or a tread.
Allow me to clarify. When I said "it would be too hard", I suppose what I meant, was that "compared to creating a sentient life form, designing a robot to recognise itself in the mirror wouldn't be too hard."
Whilst I admit there would be quite a few problems with it, it is possible using today's technology, to create a robot that could recognise its reflection. The rubbing off of paint is beside the point; that demonstrates problem-solving ability. I am talking solely about creating a robot that can recognise itself within a mirror. Therefore, I conclude that since it is most likely possible to create a robot that could recognise its own image, the mirror-test isn't a good test for self-awareness.
Whilst it is a difficult problem, at least we could currently have a good crack at it. And it wouldn't require a self-aware robot.
Similarly, it seems clear that you can never be convinced that animals are sentient. You seemingly have a mystical belief in the unique status of the human soul (what you call "id"). And there's nothing wrong with that position. Plenty of philosophers, including Penrose who you refer to in all but name, would agree. But don't pretend that the problem is lack of a good definition. Definitions are a dime a dozen, and as good as you want them to be.
And why are there definitions a dozen? The brain is, after all, a physical object. If we ignore the possibility that there is a soul, then we just have a wet squishy thing. Now, whilst it may be possible that all particles in the Universe are self aware, this seems unlikely. A reasonable assumption is that only a small percentage of matter can be classed as "self aware".
Is a single neuron self aware? Probably not. At which point, then, does a structure of neurons give rise to consciousness? And what is consciousness? Can we define it by a mathematical formula? Is there a precise mechanism about which this can take place?
It's not that I have a mystical belief in the human soul. I know I am self aware, and therefore can conclude most humans are probably self aware, too. Beyond that, as mentioned earlier, I can assume that most of the matter in the Universe is not conscious. Therefore, if the vast majority of matter is inert, it makes some sense to assume something is not self aware, until there is enough evidence to the contrary.
But nobody can define it for everyone because it's ultimately a matter of faith.
Why should this be the case? If the brain is a physical object, then why should there not be a suitable theory that explains the difference between a non-sapient brick, and a sapient human brain? Unless you believe some things cannot be explained by mortal devices, then surely there should be an explanation of what makes us human.
Just because we have no suitable definition, or concept, of what it means to be sapient/self-aware/whatever, doesn't mean that this will always be the case.
"The robot would just have to be equipped with a visual model of itself in memory,"
Which would be a simple self-concept.
I disagree. The robot's self is not its body, nor its physical location in space. My sentient/sapientness, my I-think-therefore-I-am, does not depend on my location, and I'd imagine it doesn't depend on my physical form, either.
Also, you're confusing sentient with sapient:
sentient, adj.
1. Having sense perception; conscious: "The living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage" (T.E. Lawrence).
2. Experiencing sensation or feeling.
Perhaps:). But given the vague definitions of everything involved with self-awareness, it's really a coin toss what phrase we use. There's no formula or rule or description to adequately and accurately sum up what we mean by self-awareness. I think I'll stick to the phrase "self-aware"; just to make it clear what I mean.
Heck, every dog owner is probably quite familiar with this - you can observe changes in a dog's attitude based on it's self-image, shame in the realization that they've done something wrong... the way they can exploit cute looks and actions to win back their master's favor. This is evident, at least, with intelligent breeds like Greyhounds, Collies, and the like. How are they supposed to exhibit these behaviors without a concept of how they, themselves are percieved by others?
I'm not quite sure how this is strong evidence of a creature being self aware. A dog could look cute because it knows that in the past, that has earnt it rewards. It could have no concept of why you react, just that you do.
And even if it does have a concept of why you react so, that doesn't necessarily imply self. Bear in mind that these emotions and attitudes are human interpretations of animalistic actions. Our own concepts of pride and shame may be very different from what the animal experiences.
That's not to say dogs aren't self aware, just that I haven't seen any evidence to make me believe that that is the case.
If you really want to beleive that humans are super-special, there are probably ways that you can try to rationalize this evidence away... but really, spend some time around the right kind of dog, and your perceptions may change. 'Cause the truth is, members of _other_ species behave similarly to you, too, if you take the time to look.
I'd be careful about this. Humans anthropomorphize. They see faces in Martian mountains. Religions figures in coffee stains. Animals in clouds. And, perhaps, sentience in things that are not really self-aware. To an large extent, this colours our judgement. I can see the face on Mars, and it looks very face-like to me. However, then I drag myself back to reality and remember that it only looks like a face from a particular angle, and that there are thousands of mountains on mars, and the chance of one *not* looking like something interesting is relatively slim.
Furthermore, if one can "rationalize this evidence away", then it's not really very good evidence in the first place. Especially to convince a bitter old skeptic like myself.
I don't believe humans are super-special because of some pride in the human species. I believe humans are probably the only sentient species on this planet because no other species has provided enough evidence to convince me of that. The only real reason I believe humans are self aware, is because I'm fairly sure I'm human, and I know I'm self aware, so it stands to reason others that act like me may share a similar self-awareness.
I'd imagine that's all to do with movement. If you close one eye, don't move, and are shown an image that looks precisely like you, there's be no way to tell it was a mirror.
The robot would just have to be equipped with a visual model of itself in memory, and compare this to an image of itself in a mirror. If needs be, it could wiggle, and see if the mirror-image wiggled in the way it was supposed to. If there were two robots, then a random deviation to the wiggle could be constructed.
Or, the robot could just have a visual model of itself in memory, along with the rest of the surrounding area. The robot would take the input data around it then convert it to a 3D environment inside its memory. I'm sure it wouldn't be beyond current robots to create a machine that would recognise mirrors, and to recognise which robot in the mirror represented itself, even if there were a multitude of identical robots around.
All sentient creatures are probably capable of recognising themselves in a mirror (assuming they can see). However, not all creatures that can recognise themselves in a mirror, are sentient.
I'm rather familiar with assembly, though the last time I fiddled with it was back two years ago when my CompSci degree covered a lengthy course on low-level hardware design and architecture (if I recall, we were using 68008 chips).
I remember back in the days of 486s and such, that my father wrote several tests in both C and assembly. There was little difference between the speed of the resulting programs. It could be that the assembly was programmed badly, but my father has a background in hardware and low-level design-work, so I'm not so certain of that.
Bear in mind that today's C compilers, especially the processor-specific ones, can optimise code considerably better than they used to do. So I don't think that assembly, nowadays, works very well. Sometimes, code-generators are more efficient than human hand. For instance, lexer-generators are generally more efficent than hand-written lexers. I'd imagine that your average C compiler today, wouldn't offer much slowdown over something programmed entirely in assembly.
I think a 1% to 2% speed increase for a modern 3D game is generous, at best. If you have statistics to prove different, then be my guest and post them. However, whilst you claim that I do not know much about assembly, I'd contend that if you think pieces of assembly would have any significant effect on a 3D game, you don't know a lot about 3D graphics. The bottleneck is not in the code, but the algorithms.
I'm fairly sure an professional game programmer could write a much faster 3D engine in, say, python or perl, than a less experienced programmer could write in C, or even in C/assembly.
Prove it. When's the last time an ape told you he wasn't sentient? There are many ways to determine if an animal is intelligent. One is being self aware. Only larger primates and dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror. Another aspect is knowing of ones' lifespan. Only humans and a few primates are aware of our own demise.
I don't think the mirror-test is an accurate refleciton (no pun intended) of whether an animal is self aware. All a mirror shows is that the animal is aware of its body. And it wouldn't really be too hard to program a robot that could recognise itself in a mirror. Would that make it self aware? Nope. Because your self, your id, is considerably different to your body.
There is no current test for self-awareness. Now, I can tell that I am self aware, because I have a distinct concept of "self". I really can't be sure of anyone else, but I can assume that since others of my species exibit similar behaviour to me, I can reasonably assume that they possess the same trait of self-awareness that I do.
Dolphins and gorillas... Well, I'm not too convinced. They're intelligent, but I don't quite think that they're quite there; the evidence availiable doesn't make a good case, in my opinion. Though I'll admit that this is mainly due to no-one having inventing a convincing self-awareness test, yet.
Problem solving doesn't show an animal is self-aware. Recognising physical objects does not, either. I'm not entirely sure what does, however. Speech helps, of course. It could be that certain language patterns can only arise with self-awareness. It could be that a self-awareness is related to some effect on the quantum level, that cannot be replicated by a Turing Machine. There is some evidence to believe that a Turing Machine cannot represent a self-aware entity.
To be honest, we have such a crude definition of "self", that we'd need to figure out precisely what we mean when we talk about sentience, before we can start to think up tests for it.
Perhaps that will prove to be the greatest scientific challenge of our race.
The majority of 3D optimisations is deciding what not to draw. Quadmaps, octrees, BSPs and so forth, are all techniques for quickly discounting large areas of polygons. The bottleneck of most 3D games is the drawing of the display. You may, perhaps get 1% or 2% improvement using assembly, but I doubt it. Today, compilers can optimise code pretty well. There's little difference in raw speed between C and assembly.
In addition, games don't just compete on framerate. Games have to be very, very, very stable. If a word processor crashes, people seem to be able to live with it. If a game crashes just as you were about to rack up a new hiscore, then the player is going to be very cross indeed. The more assembly is used, the more unstable the game is likely to become.
Thirdly, there's the difficulty of time. Assembly would obviously take more time, for benefits that are pretty much negilible. Coding inner loops in assembly really wouldn't improve framerate by any great degree, and would just contribute to the overall expense and instability of the system.
There's no problem knowing assembly. In many cases, understanding how computers work is very useful. But coding in assembly on modern PCs/consoles, even for video games, isn't likely to have very good results.
3D optimisation is all about having good algorithms. Case in point; I designed a 3D, OpenGL demo in C++. I then designed a similar demo in python. The one in python ran much faster, partly because I knew what I got wrong on the C++ demonstration, but mainly because in python, I could code better optimisations (various frustrum culling and octrees were the main ones), in a much shorter space of time.
In C++/SDL I had to write algorithms for taking a bitmap and converting it into an array, and then creating a heightmap. In python/pygame, image loading was done for me, and creating a heightmap was quite simple. The rest of the time I used designing an octree interface for my terrain.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if an attacker has the permissions to trawl through the swap, then couldn't they just insert a keylogger, instead? That seems to be considerably simpler, to me.
I suppose there's an argument about someone getting the passwords off old machines that have been thrown out. But even then, surely any respectable business will use some software to scrub out all the last traces of sensitive data on any hard drives they're dumping.
An encrypted hard drive wouldn't protect against a key logger. It would protect sensitive data against physical theft, I suppose. But I wouldn't call that "hacking".
Slashdot Mirror
I ran firefox as root and upgraded. The patch installed two files:
/opt/firefox/components/nsHelperAppDlg.js
/opt/firefox/defaults/pref/bug259708.js
But the permissions were off, so I needed to do a quick "chmod 644" on both the upgraded files. Only then did the patch world for me.
$100 is £55. DSL isn't that expensive in the UK. It's more like £15 per month, which is about $25.
Signing all your emails with PGP/GPG/whatever might be the answer. To make this work, first of all, just discard all messages that aren't signed. This, of course, relies on the assumption that most people in the world sign their emails, which, of course, isn't the case at the moment. But for now, assume that it is.
This means that all your contacts will send you signed messaged. Spammers wouldn't have this option. To sign ever single one of their messages correctly would take an awful amount of computing power. This may be enough to make it not profitable for mass spammings.
That's because people who are technologically adept and who have sufficient resources are quite rare. Only someone who can hack the hardware would be able to grab the original digital content from a properly-designed black box.
But you have to remember that once a sufficiently technologically adept person has cracked the hardware, he or she has a perfect copy of the original. The cost this person of giving other people copies of this content is relatively small.
obviously makes no sense
"Obviously" doesn't cut it in physics, I'm afraid.
Look at it this way; in your thought experiment, replace your instant communication device for an ordinary laser.
As in the original thought experiment, the car's headlight flash is detected by the observer, and he checks his watch: T+1 minutes. The car driver checks his watch and it's T+2 minutes by the time the flash arrives at the observer.
Then the observer sends out a laser pulse in return (assume it is sent as soon as he sees the flash of the car's headlights). Now, the car is 2 light minutes from the observer, travelling at 0.5c, so to the observer it will take 4 minutes for the laser pulse to reach the car. The observer checks his watch when it does, and the time is T+5 minutes.
But to the driver of the car, he might as well be stationary, and the observer moving away from him at 0.5c. Remember that to the driver, the observer received the headlight flash at T+2 minutes, and at that time the observer is 2 light minutes away. The observer's laser pulse in reply will take 2 minutes to cover that distance, so the driver receives the laser pulse at T+4 minutes.
So to the observer, the time when the driver recieves the pulse is five minutes after the start of the experiment. Whilst to the driver, only four minutes have passed.
You see? Time isn't absolute. Even if you don't use an instant communication device, you still have a differing in times. Time differencials don't discount the possibility of instantanious communication.
More interesting is how everyone wants to prove that Einstein's theory is wrong. Seems to me like a bit of brain-envy.
I suppose, then, Einstein must have been pretty jealous of Newton. I had always thought that Einstein worked upon General Relativity to understand more about the Universe, but it's clear that he just wanted to prove Newton wrong out of envy.
Theories are proved wrong all the time. Attempts at combining Quantum Theory with Relativity have all failed. It's not unthinkable to suggest that both Relativity and Quantum Theory may be subtly wrong. There may be a greater theory that explains both large-scale gravitation, and small-scale quantum effects, waiting around the corner.
Relativity is the best theory we have for explaining large-scale gravitational effects, but no-one has been able to fit it together with what we observe at the quantum level. Isn't it logical to suspect that Relativity is not the be-all and end-all of physics?
It's good to be skeptical. But as well as being skeptical of the article (and perhaps rightly so), be skeptical of Einstein's work as well. Scientific theories, even well-established ones, should not be blindly followed, but continuously tested.
Now from the car's perspective, the light is moving away from it at C, but it's moving forward at .5C, so the light is only getting closer to the observer at .5C. Hence it takes two minutes to reach the observer. At T+1 minute, the light has not reached the observer. So the guy in the car is surprised by the announcement that it has, and sends back an instant communique for confirmation.
"Confirmation?" asks the observer, "I haven't sent you anything yet!" After all the light has not yet reached the observer, so how could he have sent the communication?
You're assuming there's such a thing as absolute time, which Special Relatively disproved.
So there is no such thing as T time. There is O(T) - Observer time. And R(T) - caR time. Let T0 be the time when the car flashes its headlights, and T1 be the time when the light from this flash reaches the observer.
So the car flashes it's headlights at R(T0). The observer sees the flash at O(T1). The observer then immediately sends an instantaneous message to the car, which is recieved at R(T1).
To both parties, at the time T1, the light ray from the headlights has reached the observer. The difference is that (R(T1) - R(T0)) > (O(T1) - O(T0)).
Your thought experiment assumes that there is a "universal time". So that one minute for the car is the same as one minute for the observer. This is incorrect.
Socialism and stifling free speech go hand in hand.
You seem to have missed out the part where you attempt to justify this sentence. Socialism and free speech are two completely different concepts that have no bearing on one another.
Free speech has been stifled by left-leaning governments, and right-leaning governments.
A more valid statement would be:
"Governments and stifling free speech go hand in hand."
The fact is, all the IE moaning is a BIG MYTH.
I design my site using XHTML and CSS1. My current development cycle goes: I first design valid XHTML and CSS. Then I check it works on Firefox, and of course, it always does. Then I check in on Konqueror; less problems there now Apple's pushed the KHTML renderer up to scratch.
Then I test it in IE. Almost every single time I revise my site design, IE can't render bits of it properly. This is pretty much very irritating, since I don't have IE on my platform, so it's difficult to check. The latest redesign I've done I haven't tested on IE yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if something was broken. I put it up anyway, because my site doesn't receive a lot of traffic in any case, and most of it's from standards-complient browsers.
So in my experience, IE has been a big pain. I'm not using the latest CSS or javascript. It's all CSS1 and XHTML 1.0. And it still breaks for non-trivial page layouts. IE moaning isn't a myth. IE is very irritating to design for. It doesn't properly suppost CSS1. CSS1, for fuck's sake. Sometimes there isn't a way of fiddling it to fit, so I need to go back and do the layout I want a whole different way.
What's the most annoying thing I find about web design? Making it work with IE.
I only have personal experience with one sort of intelligence--my own, which involves being self-aware.
I agree.
I have no actual evidence that it is possible to act intelligently without being self-aware. Thus, I am far more likely to ascribe self-awareness to other beings that act intelligently than to invoke some magical argument and claim that my sort of intelligence is somehow better than theirs because humans are just intrinsically superior to all other species for no good reason (other than my being one).
My reasoning is fairly simple; skepticism. It's not a inherent, unwavering belief that humans are in some way superior. It's simply that other animals have not offered the same amount or quality of evidence that humans have done.
It seems pretty clear to me that the difference between human intelligence and that of other animals is merely one of degree, not one of kind, and that the degrees of difference are far less than most people think. (This last part is probably due to that fact that most people feel deeply threatened if they cannot feel that they are somehow special.)
"It seems pretty clear". That sounds like an assumption. And it seems odd to mock people who don't automatically assume the same things you do.
So when we say a robot can "recognize" itself in a mirror, do we mean that it can identify the parts that belong to it, or do we mean that it can reflect upon its reflection, i.e. on some level, say, "Hey, that's me!" And although the former is doable, it's still a hard problem. The latter is, however, Hard.
The former can also be scientifically tested. The latter cannot. Unless, of course, you have any ideas.
Similarly, our robot brain, whether or not we call it "sapient" will still have the same physical features and abilities. The Holy Grail of a definitive definition really doesn't exist, and doesn't need to.
Perhaps. But I don't think so. We know what isn't sapient. A brick isn't. A particle of hydrogen isn't. So we can easily discount over 99% of the Universe.
We can't say "This object is 0% humourous". Or "This object contains 0% beauty". We can say, "This object is 0% sapient. It is not self-aware." So we can say for certain whether some things are not self-aware. Doesn't that imply that there may be some way of telling whether something is sapient?
but then you admit there's no test for whatever it is you're talking about. Well then just how the hell do YOU know?
Essencially, Descartes.
I get so tired of people who think that other creatures are somehow fundamentally different from us, psychically, emotionally, whatever. EVERY theory (because they are all theories) stating this is nothing more than inherited religious bias MASQUERADING as science. Period. It's so unbelievably, ironically arrogant.
There's plenty of reason to hold this belief. Allow me to repeat what I've said elsewhere. Lets start off with two, reasonable assumptions. I will assume I am self-aware. I will assume that most matter in the Universe is not.
At what point, then, does an animal become self-aware? Clearly, there must be some things that are not self-aware, and some things that are.
I'm working from the skeptical angle. Whilst you claim that my skepticism is religious (odd choice of words), I'm inclined to disagree.
Starting skeptically, I start with the belief nothing is self-aware, and work from there. From assumption one (I-think-therefore-I-am), I can conclude that I am self-aware.
Now, there is a large volume of evidence to support the suggestion that I am human. If I am self-aware, and others of my species exhibit similar behaviour as me, then it is reasonable to conclude that the vast majority of humans are also, probably, self aware.
No other species has yet made a convincing enough case to me on its self-awareness. Any creature is welcome to try.
Its not arrogance. It's not religion. It skepticism.
If yo manage to build a robot that can recognize it's own reflection and infer from this whether the reflection is "him" or an image of him or something else, you just have created a robot that is sentinent e.g. self-aware.
Nothing more or less. That robot wouldn't disprove the theory that the ape recognizing itself in the mirror is self-aware. It might even support it, because you know have a better grasp on what is neccessary to be self-aware and what not.
You have created a robot that can recognise its own reflection in the mirror. Nothing more, nothing less. To do this, the robot would probably have to have detailed knowledge of its physical form, its location and orientation, and the surrounding area around it.
So whilst the robot may be body-aware, and environment-aware, in my opinion this is very different from being self-aware.
For instance, I may not know what my "self" is, but I do know what doesn't change it. If I move my body to a different place or pose, I do not change my sense of self. I'm probably still the same person. The position of a person's body has no direct effect on their consciousness. I don't suddenly get a completely different personality based on my acceleration or position of my hands and feet.
Likewise, whilst the environment may have an indirect effect upon the mind, you still remain the same person. The different between being a lazy bum and a successful businessman isn't directly dependant on the environment of a person. If a person flys from the US to the UK, he doesn't change his music tastes and personality until he flys back.
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that our "self" isn't directly affected by our physical form or location in an environment. Therefore, being self-aware is something different from knowing about our physical form and our location in an environment.
If you built a simple (compared to self-aware life) robot for the purpose of recognizing itself, it would either "know" what it looks like in the first place, or it would stand in front of the mirror and wave its robot appendages, then compare its movement to the movement it sees in front of it. In other words, it would be trying to recognize itself.
That's all beside the point. My argument is, that if a non-self-aware robot can be constructed to achieve the same results as a self-aware creature in a test, then that test isn't that good.
The mirror test is; can an entity recognise its physical reflection from visual input. Whilst a researcher may infer other things from watching the animal, that doesn't matter. The fact is, the basic test proposed is not conclusive, and whatever a researcher may infer from the animal's behaviour, is speculation (however good that speculation is).
I didn't say the mirror-test was bad. It certainly narrows the field down. However, I would claim that it isn't conclusive, not by a long shot.
I'm not sure this is evidence enough for me (I tend to be skeptical about these things).
However, it does bring up an intriguing thought; can self-awareness be taught?
You may wish to help out with Wikipedia and update this page, then.
There is far more to programming than brevity.
Really? Such a thing appears to be capital-h Hard. If you put a little daub of paint on a chimp, it will rub at the spot in the mirror. I don't know of any robots who go about cleaning themselves off when a little paint has spilled on an arm or a tread.
Allow me to clarify. When I said "it would be too hard", I suppose what I meant, was that "compared to creating a sentient life form, designing a robot to recognise itself in the mirror wouldn't be too hard."
Whilst I admit there would be quite a few problems with it, it is possible using today's technology, to create a robot that could recognise its reflection. The rubbing off of paint is beside the point; that demonstrates problem-solving ability. I am talking solely about creating a robot that can recognise itself within a mirror. Therefore, I conclude that since it is most likely possible to create a robot that could recognise its own image, the mirror-test isn't a good test for self-awareness.
Whilst it is a difficult problem, at least we could currently have a good crack at it. And it wouldn't require a self-aware robot.
Similarly, it seems clear that you can never be convinced that animals are sentient. You seemingly have a mystical belief in the unique status of the human soul (what you call "id"). And there's nothing wrong with that position. Plenty of philosophers, including Penrose who you refer to in all but name, would agree. But don't pretend that the problem is lack of a good definition. Definitions are a dime a dozen, and as good as you want them to be.
And why are there definitions a dozen? The brain is, after all, a physical object. If we ignore the possibility that there is a soul, then we just have a wet squishy thing. Now, whilst it may be possible that all particles in the Universe are self aware, this seems unlikely. A reasonable assumption is that only a small percentage of matter can be classed as "self aware".
Is a single neuron self aware? Probably not. At which point, then, does a structure of neurons give rise to consciousness? And what is consciousness? Can we define it by a mathematical formula? Is there a precise mechanism about which this can take place?
It's not that I have a mystical belief in the human soul. I know I am self aware, and therefore can conclude most humans are probably self aware, too. Beyond that, as mentioned earlier, I can assume that most of the matter in the Universe is not conscious. Therefore, if the vast majority of matter is inert, it makes some sense to assume something is not self aware, until there is enough evidence to the contrary.
But nobody can define it for everyone because it's ultimately a matter of faith.
Why should this be the case? If the brain is a physical object, then why should there not be a suitable theory that explains the difference between a non-sapient brick, and a sapient human brain? Unless you believe some things cannot be explained by mortal devices, then surely there should be an explanation of what makes us human.
Just because we have no suitable definition, or concept, of what it means to be sapient/self-aware/whatever, doesn't mean that this will always be the case.
"The robot would just have to be equipped with a visual model of itself in memory,"
:). But given the vague definitions of everything involved with self-awareness, it's really a coin toss what phrase we use. There's no formula or rule or description to adequately and accurately sum up what we mean by self-awareness. I think I'll stick to the phrase "self-aware"; just to make it clear what I mean.
Which would be a simple self-concept.
I disagree. The robot's self is not its body, nor its physical location in space. My sentient/sapientness, my I-think-therefore-I-am, does not depend on my location, and I'd imagine it doesn't depend on my physical form, either.
Also, you're confusing sentient with sapient:
sentient, adj.
1. Having sense perception; conscious: "The living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage" (T.E. Lawrence).
2. Experiencing sensation or feeling.
Perhaps
Heck, every dog owner is probably quite familiar with this - you can observe changes in a dog's attitude based on it's self-image, shame in the realization that they've done something wrong... the way they can exploit cute looks and actions to win back their master's favor. This is evident, at least, with intelligent breeds like Greyhounds, Collies, and the like. How are they supposed to exhibit these behaviors without a concept of how they, themselves are percieved by others?
I'm not quite sure how this is strong evidence of a creature being self aware. A dog could look cute because it knows that in the past, that has earnt it rewards. It could have no concept of why you react, just that you do.
And even if it does have a concept of why you react so, that doesn't necessarily imply self. Bear in mind that these emotions and attitudes are human interpretations of animalistic actions. Our own concepts of pride and shame may be very different from what the animal experiences.
That's not to say dogs aren't self aware, just that I haven't seen any evidence to make me believe that that is the case.
If you really want to beleive that humans are super-special, there are probably ways that you can try to rationalize this evidence away... but really, spend some time around the right kind of dog, and your perceptions may change. 'Cause the truth is, members of _other_ species behave similarly to you, too, if you take the time to look.
I'd be careful about this. Humans anthropomorphize. They see faces in Martian mountains. Religions figures in coffee stains. Animals in clouds. And, perhaps, sentience in things that are not really self-aware. To an large extent, this colours our judgement. I can see the face on Mars, and it looks very face-like to me. However, then I drag myself back to reality and remember that it only looks like a face from a particular angle, and that there are thousands of mountains on mars, and the chance of one *not* looking like something interesting is relatively slim.
Furthermore, if one can "rationalize this evidence away", then it's not really very good evidence in the first place. Especially to convince a bitter old skeptic like myself.
I don't believe humans are super-special because of some pride in the human species. I believe humans are probably the only sentient species on this planet because no other species has provided enough evidence to convince me of that. The only real reason I believe humans are self aware, is because I'm fairly sure I'm human, and I know I'm self aware, so it stands to reason others that act like me may share a similar self-awareness.
I'd imagine that's all to do with movement. If you close one eye, don't move, and are shown an image that looks precisely like you, there's be no way to tell it was a mirror.
The robot would just have to be equipped with a visual model of itself in memory, and compare this to an image of itself in a mirror. If needs be, it could wiggle, and see if the mirror-image wiggled in the way it was supposed to. If there were two robots, then a random deviation to the wiggle could be constructed.
Or, the robot could just have a visual model of itself in memory, along with the rest of the surrounding area. The robot would take the input data around it then convert it to a 3D environment inside its memory. I'm sure it wouldn't be beyond current robots to create a machine that would recognise mirrors, and to recognise which robot in the mirror represented itself, even if there were a multitude of identical robots around.
All sentient creatures are probably capable of recognising themselves in a mirror (assuming they can see). However, not all creatures that can recognise themselves in a mirror, are sentient.
I'm rather familiar with assembly, though the last time I fiddled with it was back two years ago when my CompSci degree covered a lengthy course on low-level hardware design and architecture (if I recall, we were using 68008 chips).
I remember back in the days of 486s and such, that my father wrote several tests in both C and assembly. There was little difference between the speed of the resulting programs. It could be that the assembly was programmed badly, but my father has a background in hardware and low-level design-work, so I'm not so certain of that.
Bear in mind that today's C compilers, especially the processor-specific ones, can optimise code considerably better than they used to do. So I don't think that assembly, nowadays, works very well. Sometimes, code-generators are more efficient than human hand. For instance, lexer-generators are generally more efficent than hand-written lexers. I'd imagine that your average C compiler today, wouldn't offer much slowdown over something programmed entirely in assembly.
I think a 1% to 2% speed increase for a modern 3D game is generous, at best. If you have statistics to prove different, then be my guest and post them. However, whilst you claim that I do not know much about assembly, I'd contend that if you think pieces of assembly would have any significant effect on a 3D game, you don't know a lot about 3D graphics. The bottleneck is not in the code, but the algorithms.
I'm fairly sure an professional game programmer could write a much faster 3D engine in, say, python or perl, than a less experienced programmer could write in C, or even in C/assembly.
Prove it. When's the last time an ape told you he wasn't sentient? There are many ways to determine if an animal is intelligent. One is being self aware. Only larger primates and dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror. Another aspect is knowing of ones' lifespan. Only humans and a few primates are aware of our own demise.
I don't think the mirror-test is an accurate refleciton (no pun intended) of whether an animal is self aware. All a mirror shows is that the animal is aware of its body. And it wouldn't really be too hard to program a robot that could recognise itself in a mirror. Would that make it self aware? Nope. Because your self, your id, is considerably different to your body.
There is no current test for self-awareness. Now, I can tell that I am self aware, because I have a distinct concept of "self". I really can't be sure of anyone else, but I can assume that since others of my species exibit similar behaviour to me, I can reasonably assume that they possess the same trait of self-awareness that I do.
Dolphins and gorillas... Well, I'm not too convinced. They're intelligent, but I don't quite think that they're quite there; the evidence availiable doesn't make a good case, in my opinion. Though I'll admit that this is mainly due to no-one having inventing a convincing self-awareness test, yet.
Problem solving doesn't show an animal is self-aware. Recognising physical objects does not, either. I'm not entirely sure what does, however. Speech helps, of course. It could be that certain language patterns can only arise with self-awareness. It could be that a self-awareness is related to some effect on the quantum level, that cannot be replicated by a Turing Machine. There is some evidence to believe that a Turing Machine cannot represent a self-aware entity.
To be honest, we have such a crude definition of "self", that we'd need to figure out precisely what we mean when we talk about sentience, before we can start to think up tests for it.
Perhaps that will prove to be the greatest scientific challenge of our race.
The majority of 3D optimisations is deciding what not to draw. Quadmaps, octrees, BSPs and so forth, are all techniques for quickly discounting large areas of polygons. The bottleneck of most 3D games is the drawing of the display. You may, perhaps get 1% or 2% improvement using assembly, but I doubt it. Today, compilers can optimise code pretty well. There's little difference in raw speed between C and assembly.
In addition, games don't just compete on framerate. Games have to be very, very, very stable. If a word processor crashes, people seem to be able to live with it. If a game crashes just as you were about to rack up a new hiscore, then the player is going to be very cross indeed. The more assembly is used, the more unstable the game is likely to become.
Thirdly, there's the difficulty of time. Assembly would obviously take more time, for benefits that are pretty much negilible. Coding inner loops in assembly really wouldn't improve framerate by any great degree, and would just contribute to the overall expense and instability of the system.
There's no problem knowing assembly. In many cases, understanding how computers work is very useful. But coding in assembly on modern PCs/consoles, even for video games, isn't likely to have very good results.
3D optimisation is all about having good algorithms. Case in point; I designed a 3D, OpenGL demo in C++. I then designed a similar demo in python. The one in python ran much faster, partly because I knew what I got wrong on the C++ demonstration, but mainly because in python, I could code better optimisations (various frustrum culling and octrees were the main ones), in a much shorter space of time.
In C++/SDL I had to write algorithms for taking a bitmap and converting it into an array, and then creating a heightmap. In python/pygame, image loading was done for me, and creating a heightmap was quite simple. The rest of the time I used designing an octree interface for my terrain.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if an attacker has the permissions to trawl through the swap, then couldn't they just insert a keylogger, instead? That seems to be considerably simpler, to me.
I suppose there's an argument about someone getting the passwords off old machines that have been thrown out. But even then, surely any respectable business will use some software to scrub out all the last traces of sensitive data on any hard drives they're dumping.
An encrypted hard drive wouldn't protect against a key logger. It would protect sensitive data against physical theft, I suppose. But I wouldn't call that "hacking".