Well, if we're talking about Nothingness with a capital "N" then I'm with you. But I'm being only slightly pedantic by exclaiming that a perfect vacuum is something. It's space without matter no different than the space between a hydrogen nucleus and its electron. That is Somethingness no matter (pardon the pun) how empty it may be. Nothing requires no space for it to not exist in.
I think we actually are in complete agreement but I'm stumbling around semantically or failing to explain myself. Your analogy using the temperature of three miles is an excellent way to put things. I see your original point about Kjella being more correct. Ultimately, I'm trying to argue that there's no such thing as nothingness. I'm not succeeding because the concept is too usefull.
(Either that or I'm wrong.)
Ahh, but there's the rub. Yes, accounting for contemporary physics and cosmology we can work backwards to a certain point that's amazingly (preposterously) specific and say there was a time zero, then a mystery, then (1x10^-43 seconds, right?) a Big Bang and the arrival of Time and Space. Why is this considered the birth of the Universe out of nowhere?
It's difficult to keep this subject a matter of Science and not Philosophy. So let's skip the Science and point out that you're assuming our somethingness appeared out of a nothingness. Perhaps there is no nothingness to provide us with amazement at the Universe's existance. Claiming it's literaly true that Time and Space appeared out of nowhere would be like claiming it's literally true that one can't fly a plane off the edge of the East.
Violence is almost entirely a male domain. We are both the source and recipient of using force. Men aren't just Humankind's criminals. They're our valiant protectors and homeless failures. Barring that, they're our suicides.
I very recently discovered a quote by Simone de Beauvoir that undoubtably will echo through the ages: "One is not born a Woman but becomes one." This may be true, but I was utterly stunned to find it is trumpeted more than it's male analog. How many kids are in Iraq to liberate and protect the Shia and how many joined the military to "become a man" or die trying. I defy any reader of this post to claim they've never heard of such a motivation. The notion of "Manhood" is so valued and supra-natural that I've even heard it invoked by homosexuals who have nothing to lose by forsaking that status because they aren't given it anyway.
Women who berate the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine as a male conspiracy are full of shit. Those images are created by women for women. Similarly, men should drop the authoritarian hierarchy once it could involve damaging another guy to preserve the status quo. Obediance is the only result besides death, martyrdom, failure, or prison bitchdom.
Isn't it amazing that three, four, and five can relate that way? Kind of a miracle don't you think? It's at least a spooky coincidence right? Well, it's only "trippy" if you're young and have just taken a bong-hit. Physical constants are the same way. There is no magic coincidence that they have specific values that work together. The Universe is here and happening. The speed of light and Planck's constant are what they are because that's how it works. There's no magic in adding two to three to get five and the Golden Gate Bridge wouldn't stand if it were made of lead. Playing fudge the constant to see how harmonious it all is might be intellectually beautiful, but seeing God in those numbers is almost like peering over a sharp cliff just to be thankfull you've got solid ground to stand on. Yeah, the fall would kill you. What else did you expect?
If you want to see divine intervention in self-assembling bio-molecules I say why stop there. Under the right conditions, Hydrogen and Oxygen will spontaneously self-assemble into water.
As for the Big Bang it's quite reasonable to see God's Cue Stick in a Prime Mover. But why assume there ever was a first cause? Right now, cosmology/physics posits a "time zero". Asking what came before that point is like trying to walk to the horizon. There is no "time -1". There also is no first cause -- only causation.
Spinoza's point about infinity was that part of the universe wasn't a part of God -- namely us. Presumably, God should be the set of all numbers of any type if we want to use that analogy. Why should we though? This is a gobbledygook argument that reminds me of Wallace Shawn's Iocane Poison diatribe in The Princess Bride. Let's drop this pedantry and give Spinoza kudos for having the guts and acumen to discredit the personified God (that doesn't actually exist even in pure form -- whoops! did I just say that aloud?) of Judeo-Christian-Islam-dom. I'd like to give a shout-out to my homie Baruch...
One high tide is the ocean being pulled toward the Moon. Twelve hours later it's being thrown away from the Earth by centrifugal force. The Earth-Moon system rotates around a point 1,000 miles below sea level. Tidal braking is however why the Moon always faces the Earth.
Good point. I hadn't considered on the job health risks at all. Then again the kind of health care I'm considering has nothing to do with job related injuries. My specific bone of contention is the apparent extra expense of insuring oneself outside of a large corporate environment. In retrospect, my examples were fortunately chosen. Those two lines of work should have relatively identical risk. Yet something in our system inspires people to crow about landing a "real job" that "has benefits". Shouldn't "benefits" cost the same to me for either of those two jobs?
It's a strange statement to make, but I'll say it anyway. I find that completely believable. One can make a career out of drafting medical bills (it's called "coding" in that circle). Apparently it's more sophisticated than paralegal work.
Thanks for the info on the relationship between employers and insurers. I've never understood why the two are so needlessly interlocked. Actually, I still don't. Health insurance should cost the same whether I work for Charles Schwaab or sell used books on eBay.
No, that's not my point at all. I'm not a socialist. What I'm saying is that for whatever reason health insurance is so expensive that it's out of reach for a large swath of the population. You are claiming that people are free to live dangerously by forsaking it. I'm reminding you that the insured are most often covered by their jobs -- so long as the job has a certain level of status. "Choice" has much less to do with it than you think.
If you want to equate healthcare insurance with "anything else" then I'd like to protest every penny spent on public roads and infrastructure that does nothing but allow yuppies to go skiing. My taxes shouldn't fund their lifestyle.
In any event, I'm not sure you understand how insurance works. By definition, when it comes into play someone else is paying for what happened to you.
Your response is shortsighted, ignorant, and miserly. Private healthcare insurance is too exhorbitant to be compared to trifling luxuries like cable television or private transportation. Yet, that is the only option for Americans. One might easily argue that class distinctions are more easily drawn by employment "benefits" than by what one's hands do.
Insurance in principal involves sharing risk. Recommend it for health all you want. Claiming it's a matter of trivial responsibility on par with personal hygene, clean clothing, and shelter is absolutely bogus. There's a reason the "white badge of honor" is a status symbol. Only the wealthy can afford skiing accidents.
A population that would rather kill their countrymen than build a nation with them is not.
That's why Bush 41 considered holding at nullification and containment more prudent than invasion and occupation during the Gulf War. It's also why the State Department had drafted extensive post-Hussein plans for a stable reconstitution. Some actually do learn from history. They were pissed that their experience with Yugoslavia (or Haiti for an inapt example) was ignored.
Insinuating that Iraqis are intractable problem children for the parenting we've assumed is too historically blunt. War has mostly been subjugate and annex. Why do you think Germany and Japan are historically normative and comparable to the Mesopotamians?
I doubt my own personal "thinking mechanism" is larger than my nervous system. You claim it can't be smaller than two neurons. Your basis for this lower limit presumes an equivalence between mind and Turing Machine, and that sub-cellular QM effects don't "talk" through synapses.
Even Penrose admits that quantum computers can't work more than a fraction of second in a living cell.
That point isn't a critique of his hypothesis. IIUC, Penrose's model of the human mind simply includes quantum mechanics as an ingredient in it's operation. You might as well claim that my Athlon isn't really computing because every time its innards clock through an op it shuts down (loses conciousness?) for 1/2,000,000,000th of a second.
You definitely don't NEED quantum computers to reproduce intelligence.
You are assuming that human intelligence can be expressed by a Turing Machine. Even if it can, that doesn't mean such a machine would fit inside a human skull without quantum mechanical assistance.
I wish there were some wiggle room in your assesment for equality in the chip wars, but I think you've justly captured the scenario. Intel need only refine C2 and avoid screwing up. AMD will play second fiddle for some time to come.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if we're talking about Nothingness with a capital "N" then I'm with you. But I'm being only slightly pedantic by exclaiming that a perfect vacuum is something. It's space without matter no different than the space between a hydrogen nucleus and its electron. That is Somethingness no matter (pardon the pun) how empty it may be. Nothing requires no space for it to not exist in.
Now that I've sobered up and reread my own post and your response, I've got to say we both need to get a grip. Yikes!
No mod props for the rainbow suspenders joke?
Ahh, but a perfect vacuum is space (something) with nothing in it!
I think we actually are in complete agreement but I'm stumbling around semantically or failing to explain myself. Your analogy using the temperature of three miles is an excellent way to put things. I see your original point about Kjella being more correct. Ultimately, I'm trying to argue that there's no such thing as nothingness. I'm not succeeding because the concept is too usefull.
(Either that or I'm wrong.)
It's difficult to keep this subject a matter of Science and not Philosophy. So let's skip the Science and point out that you're assuming our somethingness appeared out of a nothingness. Perhaps there is no nothingness to provide us with amazement at the Universe's existance. Claiming it's literaly true that Time and Space appeared out of nowhere would be like claiming it's literally true that one can't fly a plane off the edge of the East.
Then again, I think that's what you mean.
I very recently discovered a quote by Simone de Beauvoir that undoubtably will echo through the ages: "One is not born a Woman but becomes one." This may be true, but I was utterly stunned to find it is trumpeted more than it's male analog. How many kids are in Iraq to liberate and protect the Shia and how many joined the military to "become a man" or die trying. I defy any reader of this post to claim they've never heard of such a motivation. The notion of "Manhood" is so valued and supra-natural that I've even heard it invoked by homosexuals who have nothing to lose by forsaking that status because they aren't given it anyway.
Women who berate the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine as a male conspiracy are full of shit. Those images are created by women for women. Similarly, men should drop the authoritarian hierarchy once it could involve damaging another guy to preserve the status quo. Obediance is the only result besides death, martyrdom, failure, or prison bitchdom.
That's not his crime.
Excellent! But I say Bond dies because the inertia force.
What makes a pantheist god finite?
Time and Space didn't appear out of nowhere. It just happened to be really small once. As for perpetual motion machines... we all live in one.
Isn't it amazing that three, four, and five can relate that way? Kind of a miracle don't you think? It's at least a spooky coincidence right? Well, it's only "trippy" if you're young and have just taken a bong-hit. Physical constants are the same way. There is no magic coincidence that they have specific values that work together. The Universe is here and happening. The speed of light and Planck's constant are what they are because that's how it works. There's no magic in adding two to three to get five and the Golden Gate Bridge wouldn't stand if it were made of lead. Playing fudge the constant to see how harmonious it all is might be intellectually beautiful, but seeing God in those numbers is almost like peering over a sharp cliff just to be thankfull you've got solid ground to stand on. Yeah, the fall would kill you. What else did you expect?
If you want to see divine intervention in self-assembling bio-molecules I say why stop there. Under the right conditions, Hydrogen and Oxygen will spontaneously self-assemble into water.
As for the Big Bang it's quite reasonable to see God's Cue Stick in a Prime Mover. But why assume there ever was a first cause? Right now, cosmology/physics posits a "time zero". Asking what came before that point is like trying to walk to the horizon. There is no "time -1". There also is no first cause -- only causation.
Spinoza's point about infinity was that part of the universe wasn't a part of God -- namely us. Presumably, God should be the set of all numbers of any type if we want to use that analogy. Why should we though? This is a gobbledygook argument that reminds me of Wallace Shawn's Iocane Poison diatribe in The Princess Bride. Let's drop this pedantry and give Spinoza kudos for having the guts and acumen to discredit the personified God (that doesn't actually exist even in pure form -- whoops! did I just say that aloud?) of Judeo-Christian-Islam-dom. I'd like to give a shout-out to my homie Baruch...
Touche.
One high tide is the ocean being pulled toward the Moon. Twelve hours later it's being thrown away from the Earth by centrifugal force. The Earth-Moon system rotates around a point 1,000 miles below sea level. Tidal braking is however why the Moon always faces the Earth.
Good point. I hadn't considered on the job health risks at all. Then again the kind of health care I'm considering has nothing to do with job related injuries. My specific bone of contention is the apparent extra expense of insuring oneself outside of a large corporate environment. In retrospect, my examples were fortunately chosen. Those two lines of work should have relatively identical risk. Yet something in our system inspires people to crow about landing a "real job" that "has benefits". Shouldn't "benefits" cost the same to me for either of those two jobs?
It's a strange statement to make, but I'll say it anyway. I find that completely believable. One can make a career out of drafting medical bills (it's called "coding" in that circle). Apparently it's more sophisticated than paralegal work.
Thanks for the info on the relationship between employers and insurers. I've never understood why the two are so needlessly interlocked. Actually, I still don't. Health insurance should cost the same whether I work for Charles Schwaab or sell used books on eBay.
If you want to equate healthcare insurance with "anything else" then I'd like to protest every penny spent on public roads and infrastructure that does nothing but allow yuppies to go skiing. My taxes shouldn't fund their lifestyle.
In any event, I'm not sure you understand how insurance works. By definition, when it comes into play someone else is paying for what happened to you.
Insurance in principal involves sharing risk. Recommend it for health all you want. Claiming it's a matter of trivial responsibility on par with personal hygene, clean clothing, and shelter is absolutely bogus. There's a reason the "white badge of honor" is a status symbol. Only the wealthy can afford skiing accidents.
That's why Bush 41 considered holding at nullification and containment more prudent than invasion and occupation during the Gulf War. It's also why the State Department had drafted extensive post-Hussein plans for a stable reconstitution. Some actually do learn from history. They were pissed that their experience with Yugoslavia (or Haiti for an inapt example) was ignored.
Insinuating that Iraqis are intractable problem children for the parenting we've assumed is too historically blunt. War has mostly been subjugate and annex. Why do you think Germany and Japan are historically normative and comparable to the Mesopotamians?
I doubt my own personal "thinking mechanism" is larger than my nervous system. You claim it can't be smaller than two neurons. Your basis for this lower limit presumes an equivalence between mind and Turing Machine, and that sub-cellular QM effects don't "talk" through synapses.
That point isn't a critique of his hypothesis. IIUC, Penrose's model of the human mind simply includes quantum mechanics as an ingredient in it's operation. You might as well claim that my Athlon isn't really computing because every time its innards clock through an op it shuts down (loses conciousness?) for 1/2,000,000,000th of a second.
You definitely don't NEED quantum computers to reproduce intelligence.
You are assuming that human intelligence can be expressed by a Turing Machine. Even if it can, that doesn't mean such a machine would fit inside a human skull without quantum mechanical assistance.
I wish there were some wiggle room in your assesment for equality in the chip wars, but I think you've justly captured the scenario. Intel need only refine C2 and avoid screwing up. AMD will play second fiddle for some time to come.
When did overclockablity become a valid metric?