You claim that the only purpose of making information illegal is as a pretext to interfere and intervene in communications. I disagree. Banning the propagation of some materials is an end in itself, especially if backed up with adequate protections to stop the government routinely intercepting everything in a trawling expedition.
What you are talking about is something that has historical significance only. The change in the communication technology has brought on a radical change in what the government must do to intercept such "banned" information, in addition to the fact that the same technology has made it possible to practically perform full-time automated inspection of all communications. What worked in the age of wax-sealed envelopes is not what happens in the age computer communications. You should perhaps note that none of our electronic mail enjoys even a fraction of the protections afforded the dead-tree version. In fact what would be considered utterly outrageous and would have resulted in an armed revolt back in 1800s, if done to the postal mail of that time, is now a daily, unremarkable routine conducted by governments all over. This alone tells me that what I have stated above is right.
For many decades there were types of information that were illegal to propagate (treasonous plots for example), but that didn't mean that the postal service was considered fair game.
See above. And as far as "treasonous plots" (amusingly, "treason" is a rather subjective definition, too) were concerned, anonymous pamphlets nailed to lamp-posts were a viable (due to the sizes of communities and the nature of their lives) way around these restrictions. As to postal service, your own comparison works against you here, as I already mentioned email is routinely scanned and analyzed by various governmental agencies in bulk daily. NSA in the US for example has backbone level access to all the top tier ISPs for (amongst others) that very purpose. There appears to be no functional supervision of NSA's (and other agencies) activities in this area. At all. Note that this is different from monitoring telephone conversations, which being and "old" technology still enjoy the protections no longer afforded to the new communication methods, which is why the whole FISA hoopla took place.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy into your all or nothing libertarian dogma, and neither do many others.
I am not a libertarian. I merely observe that governments of today are simply out of control and long have since ceased to behave in a sane fashion on many fronts. And that this behaviour of governments is in turn simply a function of the attitudes of those governed, such as you, when faced with new social and technological changes.
This, historically, is a cyclical trend whereby Enlightenments are followed by Dark Ages, bloodshed and war, only to be replaced by another Enlightenment... unfortunately it appears that we live in the twilight of the last Enlightenment and an onset of some seriously messed up Dark Times.
Dude, although I do not normally reply to ACs, your post is such a glorious example of the argumentum ad verecundiam logical fallacy that I just could not resist...
I am not saying that the research in this field in general is hopeless, or that some sort of functional simulation cannot ever be constructed (which we simply do not know), what I am saying is that this chip is a vast over-simplification and thus very, very limited for the purpose you stated. Not to mention it is not exactly warranting all the apparent hoopla it is given under the headlines of a "brain on a chip"...
Thanks for the reply to my admittedly rather sceptical post.
The trouble with your approach however, no doubt well intentioned, is, as I see it, the fact that the core problem of trying to analyze neuronal computing in this way is pretty much counter-productive. Yes, you will very likely be able to replicate some of the firing patterns in neural networks, some of the time, but this sort of simulation is unlikely to provide you with any insights on the real cognitive mechanisms of the brain, other then the realization that what you are doing is falling way short of the mark. It is so because the level of the simplification is so great as to be the equivalent of trying to simulate a network of computers by only observing and replicating the volumes of traffic between them, rather then their software or the contents of the packets they exchange. The "synaptic plasticity" for example is itself in my view only a crude approximation and over-simplification of the actual activity, stemming from our inability to observe the neurotransmitters in action directly and thus allowing us only to measure general statistical trends in the relative electrical activity of the neurons on both sides of the synapse.
I have not published any papers on the subject (since I did not find my own results encouraging and I am after all only an amateur researcher, although I've been at it for over 20 years now) but I did perform a host of similar simulations (in software only) myself years in the past only to realize based on their results that there must be a significantly more complex underlying system of data transmission between neurons than any of the electrical activity based models allow for. In short there is not enough information transfer capacity in simple pulse signals (given the observable neural mechanics) to account for the growth patterns, connection forming and a host of other crucial activities related to the cognitive and other functions which neurons engage in during the formation and then operational life-time of the brain. Trying to figure out those signalling and internal processing mechanisms got me stuck ever since, as we do not have enough experimental data to give us a sufficient idea, and my countless attempts at using genetic algorithms to replicate their core essence got me nowhere so far, to the point that I took a hiatus from the thing in frustration.
But perhaps I am a bit jaded by my experiences and you will get better luck then I did. I wish you that luck.
Oh really? Enlighten me. Tell me about a single case of "illegal information" whereby the governmental powers were not directly involved in the establishment of what is "illegal", subsequent "investigations" or "prosecutions". For bonus points, demonstrate a case in which the definition of "illegal information" can actually be shown as not wholly arbitrary and subjective.
the chemical side just doesn't sound that complex or pivotal except for establishing new connections.
... and moderating the exiting ones... and altering the connectivity topology... and modifying the types of connectivity based on types of neurotransmitters emitted... and altering the electrical properties of the dendrites and axons... and on and on and on. All the electrical side is capable of is simple summation/negation and fast movement along the axon. You seem to forget that neuronal cell is not made out of semiconductors where cleverly orchestrated movement of electrons is all there is to processing.
Instead, how things connect seems to be the important matter, the "software" as it were.
The "software" is encoded in the DNA and expressed via proteins, the electrical activity being merely a particular aspect of a much more complex system. This is where these "simulations" always keep going wrong, the (wholly wishful-thinking based) assumptions that one can somehow cleanly separate the "pure" electrical processing from the "mucky" bio-chemical one.
Let's keep in mind that this chip does that.
No it does not. Not even remotely. The dudes running the "Blue Brain" project are at least trying (and admitting that they are far, far away from anything resembling a functional simulation). These guys are not even pretending.
No offense, but I think you put undue weight on the chemical aspect. For a biological brain the key effect of chemical interaction is to slow the brain down substantially. That timing may be necessary
(for example, storing and recall memories of events that occur over a short period of time).
No offense, but you have no clue. The chemical aspects of neuronal activity are the key in all of the brain activity. The electrical signals are (for the most part) just high-speed trigger mechanisms which allow for the much slower, chemically computed actual results of the neuronal functions to propagate much faster over large - on a chemical scale - distances then purely chemical transfer would allow. The neurons are essentially bio-chemical computers, of significant complexity, complete with elaborate data processing pathways and complex inter-neuron chemical signalling. You should note that the neurons do not actually make electrical connections between each other, they make electro-chemical ones, whereby a complex apparatus of proteins composing the synaptic neuro-transmitters, receptor channels, in-cell processing on both sides etc. plays a pivotal role. It is these elements, not the electrical signals, which moderate the synaptic sensitivity according to a complex set of chemically stored and expressed algorithms. It is where all of the essential "data processing" characteristics of a neuron reside, including underlying aspects of memory and other cognitive abilities of the whole system.
So looking merely at the electrical patterns is like trying to "simulate" a LAN of PCs without having any representation as to the actual software on those PCs, nor caring for the contents of the packets on the LAN but only observing the rates of traffic between various LAN nodes and then trying to replicate that...
It might be an interesting exercise from some obscure traffic management point of view, but a "simulation" of the LAN in question it will never be.
I'm perfectly happy that some bit patterns be illegal. That's fine.
That is not only not "fine", that is actually a logical fallacy. Determination of "illegality" of bit patterns is, quite easily and using some simple transforms, mathematically, demonstrable to be utterly arbitrary and subjective and this, combined with other merry characteristics of information, makes for a totalitarian asshole's field-day.
Neither do I accept the argument that if the rules are not set at an absolute (i.e. no information can ever be illegal) that we necessarily invite the opposite extreme (totalitarianism), so long as we don't allow the fact that illegal data exists to be a license for government intervention.
Well you can't have it both ways. The whole point of making some bit patterns "illegal" is to provide a pretext for (essentially arbitrary) governmental intervention. There is no other reason for it.
Absolutionist thinking is generally nonsense, anyway.
Yea, so some people should be allowed to charge others for the air they breathe... since the "all the air you breathe is free" is such an outdated "absolutist" garbage... "Micropayment" Air Economy, here we come!
I said nothing about the legality of anything. I said the *I*, personally, a private citizen, am not willing to take part in information exchange that I can't monitor, because I am not comfortable doing so. You feel free to do what you like and I will support your right to do so. Just don't expect me to actually actively support your activities. These are different.
No, they are virtually the same. Since the entire Internet is essentially a (private) network of (private) hosts, such attitude means, in practical terms, no anonymous information transfer for there is no way to establish a path from A to B without going through some C and D etc, where the intermediate nodes are either ISPs with governmental syphons or a (shrinking) number of other private entities willing to help carry anonymous traffic. If there were other means of transmitting the data, somehow not involving you or other privately owned hosts, then the problem would not exist. But the very structure of the network is such that it creates the "all or nothing" scenario. Which of course the fascists are all too happy to exploit.
Well, yea, in theory... assuming no quantum phenomena (which are quite prominent on single-protein scale) are in play. Which is a quite distinct possibility. Then we would have to somehow replicate those....
The point I am making however is that none of this massive complexity of a neuron (each a veritable chemical computer) is even remotely represented in this "simulation" and so the results are rather predictable. People instead are determined to pretend that neurons are AND gates, or some such, because the alternatives are just to mind-boggling to handle for them...
That's because it's irrelevant. It's not how information is transmitted that matters but what.
Oh it is quite relevant. The "what" in this case is merely the superficial. No amount of "simulation" of the superficial, at any speed, will get you anywhere. A million of the best test dummies, made out of most advanced titanium composites, will not behave like a single human.
This is just another example of the abstractions we do every day when dealing with computers. Hell, the system they're comparing it to doesn't even use electrical signals, but attempts to emulate them in software.
No it is not. They are not attempting to simulate the chemical processing in silicon, they are pretending that it does not exist. A world of a difference. And they can do nothing else since we do not know the chemical processing algorithms beyond the most basic of observations. So no "emulation" here, of any kind.
It seems to me that the bigger problem is going to be programming the thing.
The "programming" of the brain is chemical, not electrical, none of which (beyond the utterly superficial) is represented here, and so total bust.
Because, of course, the devil is really in the details. As I pointed out to other posters, neurons are vastly more complex then this "simulation" (more like publicity stunt) allows for. That means that huge aspects of functionality (as in most of it) are not represented here. It is like calling a crash-dummy a "simulation" of a human... well it does represent certain aspects of the human body... but...
A neuron is a simple thing. It collect M signals, and generate a single output.
Sigh. Except of course that it is not. A neuron is not some glorified AND gate, it is an equivalent to a LAN-style connectivity capable micro-controller, with its own firmware, low capacity memory etc, communicating with other neurons via a network of connections carrying a type of packets (in form of various chemical signals).
It is precisely because such gross over-simplifications as the one you just presented why these silly half-assed attempts are so laughable (and doomed to utter failure).
Err, that would be somewhat difficult given that we do not know the underlying chemical mechanisms and their complexity still baffles us. So, nice try... but no cigar.
So while it is true, that we can simulate (theoretically) the whole relevant workings of the neuron, each neuron is an equivalent of a micro-controller networked with other micro-controllers via a type of a LAN. Given that we figure out the firmware the micro-controllers run and the protocols used by the LAN we could theoretically recreate the thing (assuming that no wacky quantum phenomena are involved, which is far from certain and in fact a distinct possibility). But we are nowhere near even getting a part of the firmware right and so pretending that having the wires look "right" and the patterns of traffic of the packets (as opposed to their contents) "similar", which is what the guys in the article are doing, is actually getting us anywhere is laughable.
The core problem of course is that this "simulates" nothing, really. A typical neuron is a vastly complex electro-chemical computer, which all of these researchers seem to keep studiously ignoring. That means that processing of electrical signals is just one (and small at that) aspect of the functioning of the neuron. In fact neurons can communicate via multiple information transfer "channels", involving chemicals called "neurotransmitters" (each having a different effect on the recipient neuron) with the electrical impulses used merely as a high-speed (as compared to purely chemical) long-range trigger mechanism.
With this in the background, it is not difficult to see that this project, like many before it, while sounding "cool", goes really nowhere and is just yet another publicity stunt.
And because your position is quite popular it is why the fascists will in the end win, and when it comes to the Internet and they will "bring it under control" i.e. no dissenting views will be allowed.
It is really very simple: you decided that "child porn" is something you will not allow to propagate via anything you own. But what does this really mean? Put another way, you decided that some (arbitrarily chosen by you) patterns of bits are not allowed storage and passage. But if you do that to some patterns, when faced with a situation where even you yourself cannot see what these patterns contain as they are encrypted or incomplete, you decided that it is "more reasonable" do that to all patterns, since you have no way of distinguishing them. With sufficient numbers of Internet communication nodes thus blocked, soon followed by ISPs who of course want to "play it safe", so ends privacy and anonymous communication, for anyone with your mindset demands to see what the bits are in order to determine if they are sufficiently "icky" for you to deny passage. And the fascists rejoice for privacy and anonymous communication are at the core of any democracy. Game over.
It is precisely why we keep hearing all those power hungry control freaks whine about "child porn" all the time and the supposedly ever-expanding bazillions of "child molesters", because in this they found the Holy Grail of Censorship and Control of Access to Information. If you can make the general public believe this crap and then get them into unthinking outrage about it, you also succeed to paint anyone opposing whatever piece of nasty work you are doing to enslave everyone, as a "child porn user" and shut down your opposition before it has a chance to get going. And this article provides just the latest example. "Child porn", the very thing that shakes your universe, is being used to shut down Wikileaks.de for reasons of having the "wrong sets of bits" (as decided by some bureaucrat), as it was used before over and over again, with the prominent cases like that of Scott Ritter, the inconvenient head of UN WMD inspections in Iraq accused and arrested (but never charged) for possession of computer "child porn" just in time to be removed as an obstacle to the Iraq invasion, coming to mind.
The logical answer is of course that not the bits themselves, but it is the actual physical molestation of children which is a despicable crime. But once you decide that any information can be "criminal" there is no avoiding the only logical outcome, that all information must be controlled and censored all the time, with all the associated totalitarian consequences, in the name of "safety"... err.. "war on drugs"... errr... "war on terror"... err... "children". There is just no way out of this bind.
And I will not even get into the repercussions of some patterns of bits being "crime" when it is so easy to put them on anyone's computer, in most cases remotely and without any trace...
If Obama doesn't change the current approach and still indiscriminately detains people forever, we can talk again. In the meantime, there's at least the chance of the right thing happening. This wasn't there before.
This is just an example of the "but at least he does not eat children.... well not alive anyhow.... " type of thinking that has sadly became quite prevalent lately. The politicos are no longer held to any universal standards of decency, they are instead held to the "at least he is not as bad as the other mass-murderer, pillager and rapist" measurement, where the next "other guy" always ends up worse then the previous one...
Regarding the change to Guantanamo, that was actually very, very significant. Why? Because there are no more enemy combatants. You're either a prisoner of war subject to the Geneva Conventions, or you're a common prisoner subject to US Laws.
Except, of course, this is not what happened. None of the residents of Guantanamo are actually subjected to anything resembling the treatment in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, nor are they treated as subject to the US law. Any of them who have been innocent of whatever they've been accused of (much of which no one seems to know, including the supposed accusers) have been completely fucked over beyond recourse, and are still being fucked over, just under more "politically correct" headings and labels. Any chance of anything actually resembling justice has been long lost due the methods employed by the kangaroo trials and the "evidence" gathering methods used. In other words Obama is merely trying to pretend that he has changed anything but at the same time doing his damnest not to offend all the rednecks in charge of this "process" and the hordes of murderous "war hawks" infesting much of duly manufactured "public opinion". And the result is of course that all who ever had the misfortune to fall pray of Guantanamo are certainly now anti-US radicals, for life, even if they were not so before. And so the US has manufactured its own enemies, whom of course it is now afraid to let go, "justice" be damned.
And as to no longer putting people in Guantanamo, even the Bush administration ceased to do so after the initial orgy of their blood-thirsty stupidity and so Obama gets no points for stating the obvious.
In short Obama did what any self-preserving career politico weasel would do: talked real big for the benefit of his dewy-eyed believers while doing everything in his power not to upset the status quo or the vested interests.
"Blowhard"? "ass-clown"? That hardly sounds like "informed debate".
True, but that is just descending down to their level. Guilty as charged.
I admit that the ever present pompous, arrogant, self-congratulatory, sanctimonious, preening stupidity that has proliferated throughout our society in recent years eventually gets to me too. I am only human. It is like I've been witnessing the Enlightenment in reverse, where the most uniformed, stupid people rise to power and become celebrated for their utter disdain for reason, empiricism and science. Decades of this are bound to get even most detached of sane observers fuming.
Oh, give it up. Wall St. collapsed in September. The people Obama hired were not in charge of things then. Stop helping Limbaugh and Hannity rewrite recent history.
You are confused. Geithner is one of acolytes of Robert Rubin. One can draw a straight line from Rubin, Greenspan, Summers and other Wall Street whores to the current fiasco. All were for "deregulation", NAFTA etc. etc. and thought economic bubbles are the apex of human civilization and did everything in their power to set the stage for this catastrophe. And note that all of those imbecilic "best and brightest" were in turns equally active during Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. Their class warfare crap, the transfer of all real wealth to the richest people and substituting it with debt for everyone else, is simply above party politics. Geithner is an old Wall Street insider and is at present merely attempting to continue with the panicked Bernanke's plan to stick as many fingers into the rapidly disintegrating dike holding untold trillions of debt all of these followers of Rubin, Milton and others have shat out over decades.
Blowhards like Limbaugh and Hannity have nothing whatsoever to do with it. Although it is telling that you would resort to accusing anyone who voices any criticism to be automatically associated with the most vile of opportunistic ass-clowns whose only role is to make things worse for everyone by doing their damnest to appeal to most base instincts of their listeners and to ensure that no informed debate takes place.
He has put out the word that he wants a dialogue with Iran.
It is not difficult to play a "reasonable" person with 8 years of utter insanity in the background. I note that "talking" does not equate with "handling well" though.
He made changes with Guantanamo.
Cosmetic ones. As far as the whole mess is concerned, changing names and moving the "unspeakables" around changes little of consequence.
He's made changes in the tax system - albeit not enough for my tastes.
Yes, he did rearrange the chairs on the Titanic. Now the 3rd class passengers have 3 more of them.
He's dealing with one of the worst economies in decades.
Brought on by the very people he hired to "solve" it. He is surrounded by and has the ear of all the corporate thieves. That is one thing in which the Republicans and Democrats do not differ at all. Lobbyists, ex-lawyers and corporate crooks infest all the top echelons of both parties. Ending up whoring themselves to the highest bidder is just a logical outcome of the composition of the party power structures.
It looks like we're finally getting out of Iraq and maybe things in Afghanistan will improve too.
... in years... maybe... if stars are aligned right... if the wind blows from the right angle... etc.
Maybe he is a tool of the RIAA.
He is not just the tool of the RIAA, he is a tool of all lobbyists and corporate crooks that dictate things in Washington. That includes all the "defence industry" assholes who are directly responsible for (and who profit handsomely from) the merry "Wars on (fill in your bogeyman here)" USA has been waging for generations now.
I don't know, but considering the other shit happening in this World, the RIAA and their actions are not exactly high on people's list.
RIAA is just a symptom not the cause. It is like the a rotten smell emanating from some pile of vile gunk. It simply tells you that the thing rather unhealthy to the core. But the stink has not caused the rot, it is the other way around.
Unfortunately these all share some common problems. Almost invariably they rely on some sort of central power (individual or oligarchy) who must resist the temptation to abuse the power they are entrusted with.
Or the power is wholly decentralized, something that might be possible with information technology. Yes, that is true that some power must exist, otherwise the thing is simply not a society but a random collection of individuals and has no properties of a society. Every society has some "core" ideology that glues it together, in the case of the USA it is its "national ethos", the geography and the laws stemming from its history. Remove that and the whole thing disappears to be soon swallowed by its neighbouring societies. That is in fact one of the fatal problems of extreme libertarianism, more correctly described as "total anarchy": the weakening up to the point of dis-integration of the very society itself. A collection of individuals whose sole motivation is self-centered greed is simply incapable of maintaining strong social cohesion. Heck, if self-centered greed (ala Ayn Rand) was the only "societal" force present, even simple raising of offspring would fail as children offer no material gain to be had to their parents (unless of course you treat them as indentured slaves).
So the real question is not if such power would exist to hold the thing together, but what its properties should be. And I believe that a combination of social engineering and technology can result in radically new designs that do not fit the moulds of old you are so stuck upon.
I think it ought to be clear from the title of the thread that I started that I can indeed encompass within my (according to you) walnut sized brain the idea that people are capable of *voluntarily* forming quite a wide array of small scale societies, including communes. I do not consider anything much larger-scale than currently implemented to be realistic without devolving into tyranny.
That is where your ideology leads you astray. What is "tyranny" anyhow? Consider this extreme case: if your personal interests and wants are in full alignment at all times with the "tyrant", is he/she/it still a "tyrant", even if his/her/its power over you is "absolute"? What if it is you, yourself, via an advanced implant-based, automated real-time consensus resolution system who are your own "tyrant"? Or, in a completely different scenario, what if individuals in that society use a system measuring compassion for others as a form of "currency"? There are many, many possibilities, each with its own interesting characteristics and pitfalls, all that could be considered, but you are stuck on "now" and "the way things are" as the only conceivable way to look at things. I think it is simply an animalistic fear that drives your attitude, fear of the "unknown" and "unfamiliar".
Moreover, I consider your idea that the entire world would voluntarily shift their way of life to something you and your "societal research" concoct to be the height of naivety.
Really? Then consider this scenario: you have a small "nation", somewhere on an island, whose technological and scientific power positively eclipses all the other nations on the planet, whose citizens appear to receive very long life, excellent care, who are happy and content and who seem to want for nothing. Now imagine that this small nation has a clever immigration policy, essentially accepting all those who are willing to 100% commit to its ways and that its power keeps increasing exponentially, leaving all the other nations further and further in the dust. And everyone knows it.
What do you think would happen? There are many alternatives from this point on, but they all pretty much do not end well for the rest of the nations on Earth. The most likely scenario I see is that the other nations, whose leaders and power-holders find themselves completely shaken
I do not, as a rule, reply to ACs, particularly childish and petulant ones who do so only so that they can down-mod posts on the very threads they try to "participate" in. Use your real account and I will demolish your silly misconceptions forthwith.
LOL!! I'll ship you your "I win" button shortly. I'm afraid it's broken though. Our system of the use of money as a medium of exchange is what enables us to not have to farm and be blacksmiths and know building trades, etc. It is vastly more scalable than barter. Can you imagine the development of solid state electronics in a barter or other currency lacking society? Your utopia has a severe bootstrapping problem. As it is, I am quite comfortable in my assumption that currencies will remain a tool we use for the indefinite future.
You miss the point entirely. It is almost as if you are so indoctrinated as to be incapable of even imagining other (however unlikely) scenarios. For example, there are many religious (and other) communes around USA and Canada which use no money (nor barter) internally. At all. While their particular method of co-operation is pretty much known to be not scalable to larger societies, I am sure that other forms of organization exist that are, given some serious societal research.
On a smaller scale yet, every family in the USA (or one would hope so) does not use currency nor barter between their members. Mothers and fathers give children care and nutrition with no expectation of material recompense.
I could go on, but these examples should give you at least some idea how wrong you are.
Seriously, though. You give no consideration to *how* a society would get from point a to point b. You gloss over it with "we should experiment" etc. Well, it would require the considerable exercise of coercive and tyrannical power against the vast majority of the population to make any of these changes in what hitherto has been considered to be human nature. Many will see your proposed coercion as evil in its own right despite any noble assertions you might make regarding your motives (I am one of those).
Not at all. Again, you purposefully restrict the available options so that your ideologically pre-conceived notions appear somehow as the only choices. The fact is that it is within the realm of possibility for a small group of people to organize themselves in some radically new way, followed which it can grow via recruitment and natural growth until it achieves a very large scale. That is in fact how all idea-based groups formed, in a spectrum as wide as new religions all the way to the Communists. At some point such groups tend to achieve critical mass and go "mainstream". What happens next is really up to the tenets of the philosophy and the attitude of the group's members, some seeking "converts" via persuasion and setting of examples, some at gun-point. You of course only consider the second possibility.
Also, what is "human nature" exactly? Some of it is clearly genetic, but much of it is shaped by the society itself by interaction of the minds of young children with the society and its "culture" around them. Thus it is clearly possible, to a large extent, to modify this "human nature". And that even before considering more drastic measures such as genetic manipulation or future technologies such as nanotech.
I will not entertain the rest of your one dimensional assertions regarding e.g. feudalism. You are trolling here, even if you don't realize it. Go read some more history.
No, you do not "entertain" these arguments because you are simply incapable of meeting them. And the "go look it up" "argument" might "work" on the Bill O'Reilly's audience, but it won't here.
And I've yet to be able to get you to state the origins of your "ethics" and "morals". Since you evidently have no problem forcing others to do things you consider "right" I cannot consider any of your ends moral because coercion is not compatible with my ethics.
"Forcing?" See above. The fact that you cannot conceive of any method other then forcible coercion tells far more about you then me. But then again you are proba
I don't consider her successful, just because she has lots of $$. Yes, she was born well. But ask your self if she has real friends....
So now you are moving the goalposts. Look, we were discussing here in the context of the economy, CEO pay etc, a particular kind of "success", i.e. the financial variety.
But if you now want to move onto the whole existential outlook, then one can easily see that people who have enough food to eat, roof over the head, and a lot of friends to goof around with and are not suffering from a mental disease called "greed" are more then likely to consider themselves "successful". As, say, would members of a healthy commune. Or some co-operative or what not.
But from the point of view of the "economists" and much of the US "culture" these would be classified as "total losers", not even having an individual bank account to their name.
And this is precisely the point I am trying to illustrate: money, and thus all "capitalist" measurements and systemic assumptions are not the only way to look at things.
Slashdot Mirror
What you are talking about is something that has historical significance only. The change in the communication technology has brought on a radical change in what the government must do to intercept such "banned" information, in addition to the fact that the same technology has made it possible to practically perform full-time automated inspection of all communications. What worked in the age of wax-sealed envelopes is not what happens in the age computer communications. You should perhaps note that none of our electronic mail enjoys even a fraction of the protections afforded the dead-tree version. In fact what would be considered utterly outrageous and would have resulted in an armed revolt back in 1800s, if done to the postal mail of that time, is now a daily, unremarkable routine conducted by governments all over. This alone tells me that what I have stated above is right.
See above. And as far as "treasonous plots" (amusingly, "treason" is a rather subjective definition, too) were concerned, anonymous pamphlets nailed to lamp-posts were a viable (due to the sizes of communities and the nature of their lives) way around these restrictions. As to postal service, your own comparison works against you here, as I already mentioned email is routinely scanned and analyzed by various governmental agencies in bulk daily. NSA in the US for example has backbone level access to all the top tier ISPs for (amongst others) that very purpose. There appears to be no functional supervision of NSA's (and other agencies) activities in this area. At all. Note that this is different from monitoring telephone conversations, which being and "old" technology still enjoy the protections no longer afforded to the new communication methods, which is why the whole FISA hoopla took place.
I am not a libertarian. I merely observe that governments of today are simply out of control and long have since ceased to behave in a sane fashion on many fronts. And that this behaviour of governments is in turn simply a function of the attitudes of those governed, such as you, when faced with new social and technological changes.
This, historically, is a cyclical trend whereby Enlightenments are followed by Dark Ages, bloodshed and war, only to be replaced by another Enlightenment ... unfortunately it appears that we live in the twilight of the last Enlightenment and an onset of some seriously messed up Dark Times.
Dude, although I do not normally reply to ACs, your post is such a glorious example of the argumentum ad verecundiam logical fallacy that I just could not resist...
I am not saying that the research in this field in general is hopeless, or that some sort of functional simulation cannot ever be constructed (which we simply do not know), what I am saying is that this chip is a vast over-simplification and thus very, very limited for the purpose you stated. Not to mention it is not exactly warranting all the apparent hoopla it is given under the headlines of a "brain on a chip" ...
Thanks for the reply to my admittedly rather sceptical post.
The trouble with your approach however, no doubt well intentioned, is, as I see it, the fact that the core problem of trying to analyze neuronal computing in this way is pretty much counter-productive. Yes, you will very likely be able to replicate some of the firing patterns in neural networks, some of the time, but this sort of simulation is unlikely to provide you with any insights on the real cognitive mechanisms of the brain, other then the realization that what you are doing is falling way short of the mark. It is so because the level of the simplification is so great as to be the equivalent of trying to simulate a network of computers by only observing and replicating the volumes of traffic between them, rather then their software or the contents of the packets they exchange. The "synaptic plasticity" for example is itself in my view only a crude approximation and over-simplification of the actual activity, stemming from our inability to observe the neurotransmitters in action directly and thus allowing us only to measure general statistical trends in the relative electrical activity of the neurons on both sides of the synapse.
I have not published any papers on the subject (since I did not find my own results encouraging and I am after all only an amateur researcher, although I've been at it for over 20 years now) but I did perform a host of similar simulations (in software only) myself years in the past only to realize based on their results that there must be a significantly more complex underlying system of data transmission between neurons than any of the electrical activity based models allow for. In short there is not enough information transfer capacity in simple pulse signals (given the observable neural mechanics) to account for the growth patterns, connection forming and a host of other crucial activities related to the cognitive and other functions which neurons engage in during the formation and then operational life-time of the brain. Trying to figure out those signalling and internal processing mechanisms got me stuck ever since, as we do not have enough experimental data to give us a sufficient idea, and my countless attempts at using genetic algorithms to replicate their core essence got me nowhere so far, to the point that I took a hiatus from the thing in frustration.
But perhaps I am a bit jaded by my experiences and you will get better luck then I did. I wish you that luck.
Oh really? Enlighten me. Tell me about a single case of "illegal information" whereby the governmental powers were not directly involved in the establishment of what is "illegal", subsequent "investigations" or "prosecutions". For bonus points, demonstrate a case in which the definition of "illegal information" can actually be shown as not wholly arbitrary and subjective.
... and moderating the exiting ones ... and altering the connectivity topology ... and modifying the types of connectivity based on types of neurotransmitters emitted ... and altering the electrical properties of the dendrites and axons ... and on and on and on. All the electrical side is capable of is simple summation/negation and fast movement along the axon. You seem to forget that neuronal cell is not made out of semiconductors where cleverly orchestrated movement of electrons is all there is to processing.
The "software" is encoded in the DNA and expressed via proteins, the electrical activity being merely a particular aspect of a much more complex system. This is where these "simulations" always keep going wrong, the (wholly wishful-thinking based) assumptions that one can somehow cleanly separate the "pure" electrical processing from the "mucky" bio-chemical one.
No it does not. Not even remotely. The dudes running the "Blue Brain" project are at least trying (and admitting that they are far, far away from anything resembling a functional simulation). These guys are not even pretending.
No offense, but you have no clue. The chemical aspects of neuronal activity are the key in all of the brain activity. The electrical signals are (for the most part) just high-speed trigger mechanisms which allow for the much slower, chemically computed actual results of the neuronal functions to propagate much faster over large - on a chemical scale - distances then purely chemical transfer would allow. The neurons are essentially bio-chemical computers, of significant complexity, complete with elaborate data processing pathways and complex inter-neuron chemical signalling. You should note that the neurons do not actually make electrical connections between each other, they make electro-chemical ones, whereby a complex apparatus of proteins composing the synaptic neuro-transmitters, receptor channels, in-cell processing on both sides etc. plays a pivotal role. It is these elements, not the electrical signals, which moderate the synaptic sensitivity according to a complex set of chemically stored and expressed algorithms. It is where all of the essential "data processing" characteristics of a neuron reside, including underlying aspects of memory and other cognitive abilities of the whole system.
So looking merely at the electrical patterns is like trying to "simulate" a LAN of PCs without having any representation as to the actual software on those PCs, nor caring for the contents of the packets on the LAN but only observing the rates of traffic between various LAN nodes and then trying to replicate that...
It might be an interesting exercise from some obscure traffic management point of view, but a "simulation" of the LAN in question it will never be.
That is not only not "fine", that is actually a logical fallacy. Determination of "illegality" of bit patterns is, quite easily and using some simple transforms, mathematically, demonstrable to be utterly arbitrary and subjective and this, combined with other merry characteristics of information, makes for a totalitarian asshole's field-day.
Well you can't have it both ways. The whole point of making some bit patterns "illegal" is to provide a pretext for (essentially arbitrary) governmental intervention. There is no other reason for it.
Yea, so some people should be allowed to charge others for the air they breathe ... since the "all the air you breathe is free" is such an outdated "absolutist" garbage ... "Micropayment" Air Economy, here we come!
No, they are virtually the same. Since the entire Internet is essentially a (private) network of (private) hosts, such attitude means, in practical terms, no anonymous information transfer for there is no way to establish a path from A to B without going through some C and D etc, where the intermediate nodes are either ISPs with governmental syphons or a (shrinking) number of other private entities willing to help carry anonymous traffic. If there were other means of transmitting the data, somehow not involving you or other privately owned hosts, then the problem would not exist. But the very structure of the network is such that it creates the "all or nothing" scenario. Which of course the fascists are all too happy to exploit.
Well, yea, in theory ... assuming no quantum phenomena (which are quite prominent on single-protein scale) are in play. Which is a quite distinct possibility. Then we would have to somehow replicate those ....
The point I am making however is that none of this massive complexity of a neuron (each a veritable chemical computer) is even remotely represented in this "simulation" and so the results are rather predictable. People instead are determined to pretend that neurons are AND gates, or some such, because the alternatives are just to mind-boggling to handle for them ...
Oh it is quite relevant. The "what" in this case is merely the superficial. No amount of "simulation" of the superficial, at any speed, will get you anywhere. A million of the best test dummies, made out of most advanced titanium composites, will not behave like a single human.
No it is not. They are not attempting to simulate the chemical processing in silicon, they are pretending that it does not exist. A world of a difference. And they can do nothing else since we do not know the chemical processing algorithms beyond the most basic of observations. So no "emulation" here, of any kind.
The "programming" of the brain is chemical, not electrical, none of which (beyond the utterly superficial) is represented here, and so total bust.
Because, of course, the devil is really in the details. As I pointed out to other posters, neurons are vastly more complex then this "simulation" (more like publicity stunt) allows for. That means that huge aspects of functionality (as in most of it) are not represented here. It is like calling a crash-dummy a "simulation" of a human ... well it does represent certain aspects of the human body ... but ...
Sigh. Except of course that it is not. A neuron is not some glorified AND gate, it is an equivalent to a LAN-style connectivity capable micro-controller, with its own firmware, low capacity memory etc, communicating with other neurons via a network of connections carrying a type of packets (in form of various chemical signals).
It is precisely because such gross over-simplifications as the one you just presented why these silly half-assed attempts are so laughable (and doomed to utter failure).
Err, that would be somewhat difficult given that we do not know the underlying chemical mechanisms and their complexity still baffles us. So, nice try ... but no cigar.
So while it is true, that we can simulate (theoretically) the whole relevant workings of the neuron, each neuron is an equivalent of a micro-controller networked with other micro-controllers via a type of a LAN. Given that we figure out the firmware the micro-controllers run and the protocols used by the LAN we could theoretically recreate the thing (assuming that no wacky quantum phenomena are involved, which is far from certain and in fact a distinct possibility). But we are nowhere near even getting a part of the firmware right and so pretending that having the wires look "right" and the patterns of traffic of the packets (as opposed to their contents) "similar", which is what the guys in the article are doing, is actually getting us anywhere is laughable.
The core problem of course is that this "simulates" nothing, really. A typical neuron is a vastly complex electro-chemical computer, which all of these researchers seem to keep studiously ignoring. That means that processing of electrical signals is just one (and small at that) aspect of the functioning of the neuron. In fact neurons can communicate via multiple information transfer "channels", involving chemicals called "neurotransmitters" (each having a different effect on the recipient neuron) with the electrical impulses used merely as a high-speed (as compared to purely chemical) long-range trigger mechanism.
With this in the background, it is not difficult to see that this project, like many before it, while sounding "cool", goes really nowhere and is just yet another publicity stunt.
And because your position is quite popular it is why the fascists will in the end win, and when it comes to the Internet and they will "bring it under control" i.e. no dissenting views will be allowed.
It is really very simple: you decided that "child porn" is something you will not allow to propagate via anything you own. But what does this really mean? Put another way, you decided that some (arbitrarily chosen by you) patterns of bits are not allowed storage and passage. But if you do that to some patterns, when faced with a situation where even you yourself cannot see what these patterns contain as they are encrypted or incomplete, you decided that it is "more reasonable" do that to all patterns, since you have no way of distinguishing them. With sufficient numbers of Internet communication nodes thus blocked, soon followed by ISPs who of course want to "play it safe", so ends privacy and anonymous communication, for anyone with your mindset demands to see what the bits are in order to determine if they are sufficiently "icky" for you to deny passage. And the fascists rejoice for privacy and anonymous communication are at the core of any democracy. Game over.
It is precisely why we keep hearing all those power hungry control freaks whine about "child porn" all the time and the supposedly ever-expanding bazillions of "child molesters", because in this they found the Holy Grail of Censorship and Control of Access to Information. If you can make the general public believe this crap and then get them into unthinking outrage about it, you also succeed to paint anyone opposing whatever piece of nasty work you are doing to enslave everyone, as a "child porn user" and shut down your opposition before it has a chance to get going. And this article provides just the latest example. "Child porn", the very thing that shakes your universe, is being used to shut down Wikileaks.de for reasons of having the "wrong sets of bits" (as decided by some bureaucrat), as it was used before over and over again, with the prominent cases like that of Scott Ritter, the inconvenient head of UN WMD inspections in Iraq accused and arrested (but never charged) for possession of computer "child porn" just in time to be removed as an obstacle to the Iraq invasion, coming to mind.
The logical answer is of course that not the bits themselves, but it is the actual physical molestation of children which is a despicable crime. But once you decide that any information can be "criminal" there is no avoiding the only logical outcome, that all information must be controlled and censored all the time, with all the associated totalitarian consequences, in the name of "safety" ... err .. "war on drugs" ... errr ... "war on terror" ... err ... "children". There is just no way out of this bind.
And I will not even get into the repercussions of some patterns of bits being "crime" when it is so easy to put them on anyone's computer, in most cases remotely and without any trace...
This is just an example of the "but at least he does not eat children .... well not alive anyhow .... " type of thinking that has sadly became quite prevalent lately. The politicos are no longer held to any universal standards of decency, they are instead held to the "at least he is not as bad as the other mass-murderer, pillager and rapist" measurement, where the next "other guy" always ends up worse then the previous one...
Except, of course, this is not what happened. None of the residents of Guantanamo are actually subjected to anything resembling the treatment in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, nor are they treated as subject to the US law. Any of them who have been innocent of whatever they've been accused of (much of which no one seems to know, including the supposed accusers) have been completely fucked over beyond recourse, and are still being fucked over, just under more "politically correct" headings and labels. Any chance of anything actually resembling justice has been long lost due the methods employed by the kangaroo trials and the "evidence" gathering methods used. In other words Obama is merely trying to pretend that he has changed anything but at the same time doing his damnest not to offend all the rednecks in charge of this "process" and the hordes of murderous "war hawks" infesting much of duly manufactured "public opinion". And the result is of course that all who ever had the misfortune to fall pray of Guantanamo are certainly now anti-US radicals, for life, even if they were not so before. And so the US has manufactured its own enemies, whom of course it is now afraid to let go, "justice" be damned.
And as to no longer putting people in Guantanamo, even the Bush administration ceased to do so after the initial orgy of their blood-thirsty stupidity and so Obama gets no points for stating the obvious.
In short Obama did what any self-preserving career politico weasel would do: talked real big for the benefit of his dewy-eyed believers while doing everything in his power not to upset the status quo or the vested interests.
True, but that is just descending down to their level. Guilty as charged.
I admit that the ever present pompous, arrogant, self-congratulatory, sanctimonious, preening stupidity that has proliferated throughout our society in recent years eventually gets to me too. I am only human. It is like I've been witnessing the Enlightenment in reverse, where the most uniformed, stupid people rise to power and become celebrated for their utter disdain for reason, empiricism and science. Decades of this are bound to get even most detached of sane observers fuming.
You are confused. Geithner is one of acolytes of Robert Rubin. One can draw a straight line from Rubin, Greenspan, Summers and other Wall Street whores to the current fiasco. All were for "deregulation", NAFTA etc. etc. and thought economic bubbles are the apex of human civilization and did everything in their power to set the stage for this catastrophe. And note that all of those imbecilic "best and brightest" were in turns equally active during Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. Their class warfare crap, the transfer of all real wealth to the richest people and substituting it with debt for everyone else, is simply above party politics. Geithner is an old Wall Street insider and is at present merely attempting to continue with the panicked Bernanke's plan to stick as many fingers into the rapidly disintegrating dike holding untold trillions of debt all of these followers of Rubin, Milton and others have shat out over decades.
Blowhards like Limbaugh and Hannity have nothing whatsoever to do with it. Although it is telling that you would resort to accusing anyone who voices any criticism to be automatically associated with the most vile of opportunistic ass-clowns whose only role is to make things worse for everyone by doing their damnest to appeal to most base instincts of their listeners and to ensure that no informed debate takes place.
It is not difficult to play a "reasonable" person with 8 years of utter insanity in the background. I note that "talking" does not equate with "handling well" though.
Cosmetic ones. As far as the whole mess is concerned, changing names and moving the "unspeakables" around changes little of consequence.
Yes, he did rearrange the chairs on the Titanic. Now the 3rd class passengers have 3 more of them.
Brought on by the very people he hired to "solve" it. He is surrounded by and has the ear of all the corporate thieves. That is one thing in which the Republicans and Democrats do not differ at all. Lobbyists, ex-lawyers and corporate crooks infest all the top echelons of both parties. Ending up whoring themselves to the highest bidder is just a logical outcome of the composition of the party power structures.
He is not just the tool of the RIAA, he is a tool of all lobbyists and corporate crooks that dictate things in Washington. That includes all the "defence industry" assholes who are directly responsible for (and who profit handsomely from) the merry "Wars on (fill in your bogeyman here)" USA has been waging for generations now.
RIAA is just a symptom not the cause. It is like the a rotten smell emanating from some pile of vile gunk. It simply tells you that the thing rather unhealthy to the core. But the stink has not caused the rot, it is the other way around.
Or the power is wholly decentralized, something that might be possible with information technology. Yes, that is true that some power must exist, otherwise the thing is simply not a society but a random collection of individuals and has no properties of a society. Every society has some "core" ideology that glues it together, in the case of the USA it is its "national ethos", the geography and the laws stemming from its history. Remove that and the whole thing disappears to be soon swallowed by its neighbouring societies. That is in fact one of the fatal problems of extreme libertarianism, more correctly described as "total anarchy": the weakening up to the point of dis-integration of the very society itself. A collection of individuals whose sole motivation is self-centered greed is simply incapable of maintaining strong social cohesion. Heck, if self-centered greed (ala Ayn Rand) was the only "societal" force present, even simple raising of offspring would fail as children offer no material gain to be had to their parents (unless of course you treat them as indentured slaves).
So the real question is not if such power would exist to hold the thing together, but what its properties should be. And I believe that a combination of social engineering and technology can result in radically new designs that do not fit the moulds of old you are so stuck upon.
That is where your ideology leads you astray. What is "tyranny" anyhow? Consider this extreme case: if your personal interests and wants are in full alignment at all times with the "tyrant", is he/she/it still a "tyrant", even if his/her/its power over you is "absolute"? What if it is you, yourself, via an advanced implant-based, automated real-time consensus resolution system who are your own "tyrant"? Or, in a completely different scenario, what if individuals in that society use a system measuring compassion for others as a form of "currency"? There are many, many possibilities, each with its own interesting characteristics and pitfalls, all that could be considered, but you are stuck on "now" and "the way things are" as the only conceivable way to look at things. I think it is simply an animalistic fear that drives your attitude, fear of the "unknown" and "unfamiliar".
Really? Then consider this scenario: you have a small "nation", somewhere on an island, whose technological and scientific power positively eclipses all the other nations on the planet, whose citizens appear to receive very long life, excellent care, who are happy and content and who seem to want for nothing. Now imagine that this small nation has a clever immigration policy, essentially accepting all those who are willing to 100% commit to its ways and that its power keeps increasing exponentially, leaving all the other nations further and further in the dust. And everyone knows it.
What do you think would happen? There are many alternatives from this point on, but they all pretty much do not end well for the rest of the nations on Earth. The most likely scenario I see is that the other nations, whose leaders and power-holders find themselves completely shaken
I do not, as a rule, reply to ACs, particularly childish and petulant ones who do so only so that they can down-mod posts on the very threads they try to "participate" in. Use your real account and I will demolish your silly misconceptions forthwith.
You miss the point entirely. It is almost as if you are so indoctrinated as to be incapable of even imagining other (however unlikely) scenarios. For example, there are many religious (and other) communes around USA and Canada which use no money (nor barter) internally. At all. While their particular method of co-operation is pretty much known to be not scalable to larger societies, I am sure that other forms of organization exist that are, given some serious societal research.
On a smaller scale yet, every family in the USA (or one would hope so) does not use currency nor barter between their members. Mothers and fathers give children care and nutrition with no expectation of material recompense.
I could go on, but these examples should give you at least some idea how wrong you are.
Not at all. Again, you purposefully restrict the available options so that your ideologically pre-conceived notions appear somehow as the only choices. The fact is that it is within the realm of possibility for a small group of people to organize themselves in some radically new way, followed which it can grow via recruitment and natural growth until it achieves a very large scale. That is in fact how all idea-based groups formed, in a spectrum as wide as new religions all the way to the Communists. At some point such groups tend to achieve critical mass and go "mainstream". What happens next is really up to the tenets of the philosophy and the attitude of the group's members, some seeking "converts" via persuasion and setting of examples, some at gun-point. You of course only consider the second possibility.
Also, what is "human nature" exactly? Some of it is clearly genetic, but much of it is shaped by the society itself by interaction of the minds of young children with the society and its "culture" around them. Thus it is clearly possible, to a large extent, to modify this "human nature". And that even before considering more drastic measures such as genetic manipulation or future technologies such as nanotech.
No, you do not "entertain" these arguments because you are simply incapable of meeting them. And the "go look it up" "argument" might "work" on the Bill O'Reilly's audience, but it won't here.
"Forcing?" See above. The fact that you cannot conceive of any method other then forcible coercion tells far more about you then me. But then again you are proba
So now you are moving the goalposts. Look, we were discussing here in the context of the economy, CEO pay etc, a particular kind of "success", i.e. the financial variety.
But if you now want to move onto the whole existential outlook, then one can easily see that people who have enough food to eat, roof over the head, and a lot of friends to goof around with and are not suffering from a mental disease called "greed" are more then likely to consider themselves "successful". As, say, would members of a healthy commune. Or some co-operative or what not.
But from the point of view of the "economists" and much of the US "culture" these would be classified as "total losers", not even having an individual bank account to their name.
And this is precisely the point I am trying to illustrate: money, and thus all "capitalist" measurements and systemic assumptions are not the only way to look at things.