What?? How can they let them go unpunished? They need to at least go out and punish a few in a highly public manner to send the rest a message, kind of like when there is a shark attack and they go hunting for "the" shark that did it.... We can't let the rats get away with this!!
More folds do not imply a more complex wiring pattern.
What they imply is greater cortical surface area. The general idea behind the folding is to fit more cortex (essentially a 2D surface crumpled up) into a head that can't get so big that it won't make it out the birth canal. So greater folding is in essence "more brain".
There is actually tremendous variablitiy in the folding patterns. No two are a like. While pretty much everyone has a STG as you say, its shape and trajectory vary considerably. There is actually a book that tries to detail all the major sulcal variations, but I know for example that my brain has some variations that are not even in the book.
Well, for now, the easiest way to create a new brain is to have sex. Of course that responsibilty hasn't been used with much discretion...
But seriously, this is not really anywhere close to a pressing concern at this point. A human brain contains about 100 billion neurons, each with about 2000 connections to other neurons. We're not exactly on the verge of producing one in a lab. And, even if we did, there is reason to believe that separated from an physical body, deprived of the normal developmental processes, etc. that its behavior still would not resemble consciousness...For example, your question about emotion. What is emotion? Well a lot of it has to do with interpretation of the physiological state of the body - am I aroused, excited - ready to act? When you start to think about it, what could this mean for the lab brain in a vat? Not only does it not have adrenaline coursing through its circulatory system (it doesnt have one) it also does not have a motor system to act with. Nor does it have a face to express this emotion to its peers (it doesn't have those either).
In other words, you can't necessary build one aspect of consciousness apart from the rest, and you can't neccesarily build a conscious brain without building an entire body, and if you're going to do that your best bet for the forseeable future is going to be to find a mate.
In fact, if you click on the Gartner new analysis linked [gartner.com] in the vnunet article, you will find no mention of the "security chip" being quoted by this article so we have nested lousy reporting.
Oh it's in there. Third paragraph under analysis:
"The transition to Intel should be comparatively simple for Apple to manage. Apple has not identified the Intel chips it will use, but next-generation Pentium M and D are the likely choices. Mac OS X and current major applications should run well, and application migration should be fairly simple, because of the Unix code base. (An Apple binary translator technology, code-named "Rosetta," will enable PowerPC applications to run on Intel-based Macintoshes without recompilation.) The x86 Mac OS will run only on Apple hardware, possibly with enforcement through Trusted Platform Module technology."
Furthermore, there is GREAT variability in the gyral/sulcal pattern of the human brain. Harvey's description of the folding patterns in Einstein's parietal lobe is NOT good evidence that his brain was grossly different. (However Marian Diamond's examinations on a cellular level may be...) My brain, for example, has an extra sulcus in the left premotor cortex. It's not uncommon to see these kinds of variations, and it really doesn't amount to a "genetic defect".
I don't think he means sapient. Sapience is really more about wisdom and insight - sentient is closer to having conscious experience, feeling(sentire, to feel).
But in regards to this simulation, it is not being built to do the things that a human brain does. That is, as far as I can tell from the article, it does not have any perceptual, motor, or cognitive functions, it is simply an isolated circuit designed to understand how assemblies of neurons work together.
A growing movement in cognitive neuroscience stresses an understanding of the mind as an "embodied". That is, much of our cognition relies upon and draws from the physical body - its context. For example, in order to understand other people's movements we map them onto our own motor representations. Almost every cognitive function is grounded in some kind of physicality. It may be impossible to create a conscious "brain in a vat"....
All it takes to simulate a human brain is 22.8 teraflops? I thought I was smarter than that.
You are.
According to the Business Week article this thing will be simulating about 10 thousand neurons. The human brain has about 100 billion neurons. This will be simulating a small section of cortex, not an entire brain. The goal seems to be to understand how cortical columns work, not to create a simulated mind. They actually will not even have enough "neurons" to match one human cortical column, but will probably still learn alot about the circuitry....
The thing is indeed over 4 billion years old. That should tell you something about how much she can handle,
That is a good point.
think this is the first time she feels a pinprick?
No, but apparently we haven't done it before ("the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet"). Yes, there have probably been huge objects hitting the planet in the past, volcanic eruptions, etc., but some of these events may have also caused mass extinctions. I guess I am more worried about us than about the planet!
I think perhaps part of the reason there is no good evidence on either side of this debate is that there is a false dichotomy between "choice" and "genetically determined". For example, there are probably many genetic factors which may predispose one to end up in certain social positions, which then elicit certain behavioral reactions, which generate hormonal responses related to dominance or submissiveness, during a critical period, etc... It seems to me that a true investigation of the the basis of homosexuality would have to abandon the goal of trying to determine if it was a choice or not.
It's also not enough to rely on people's subjective experience of why they are gay or not. Not that people are necessarily wrong about it, but they are not necessarily right either. Human psychology is complex, and the mind's explanations for its own decisions are influenced by all sorts of motivations.
One last point is that while there are certainly dogmatic people on both sides of the fence, it is not fair to characterize a particular viewpoint as such simply because it is not politically favorable. It is not only the religious and bigoted who view homosexual behavior as not entirely genetic. It's really an open scientific question at this point - but it often seems as if it has already been decided in the public mind, in a reactive response to all the religious nonsense....
Man is both a part of nature, and not a part. We have developed beyond the confines of nature.
No, we're still here within nature. You are arguing about the definition of nature, but you don't really provide a good clarification of what you think nature is - what could it be that we have are outside of now and weren't before?
for instance, your computer. If you put it in a bucket of soil in the garden will it grow a new computer? No. It is the assembly, down to the most intimate and amazing detail. It does not exist 'in nature'.
I see, so nature is all the stuff that spontaneously grows in soil then? Why draw the line there? Beaver dams don't suddenly appear in soil either, at least not without the help of beavers.
our roads, cities, chemicals, fabrics, etc etc etc are all extra-nature. They are not a part of the natural world. Sure, they exist from raw naturally occuring materials, but they are distinctly not-natural.
Nature is constantly rearranging itself into new combinations of things. How did Mother Nature lose custody of these particular children? Tree stuff becomes book stuff and it is metaphysically different because of it?
We are not changing the world in a way that the rest of the natural world can grok. All the plants and animals that had co-evolved with us for millenia have suddenly found themselves outside of the planet's future.
Welcome to nature. This is the way things work here. Things come and go.
We are terra-forming the planet without concern to preserve our co-dependant natural world. This is both immoral and self-destructive. It is hubris like yours (frankly), the "humans are simply nature, what we are doing is natural, dont worry" is seductive but untrue.
Now, here I agree with you. That we are part of nature does not ensure our continual existence, in fact probably the opposite. We should use our natural evolved ability of foresight to consider the effects of our actions.
If you really think that someone who has to view hundreds of such images a day is going to "get off" on them, you're sadly mistaken.
I wouldn't be so sure. For almost anything there is someone who gets off on it. Heck, there are even people who get off on trees. There will most certainly be people who are aroused by naked airplane passengers, and I would not be surprised if some of them came to have this job... People do tend to find jobs which put them near the objects of their sexual desire. Like the whole priest/boy scout leader situation, for example...
Yes, but slashdot is concerned with the internet, and so this is an appropriate forum to discuss how an event like this affects the internet. I don't think someone who runs an ISP in Russia should be trying to figure out how to get the sewer working, they should be figuring out how to get the internet up.
I agree, the main problem with this sentence is that there are misleading words... "even" and "while" set you up for the sentence to have a particular logic that it never delivers on.
That just shows how stupid your dog is - it cares more about you and your "distractions" than itself. That's not smart, that's being easily suggestible.
No, it's being social. Dogs are attuned to human social cues in a way that cats are not.
Again, cat is smart, gets to spend significant amount of time sleeping and being lazy.
They may be smart, but they don't belong cohabitating with humans. Not compatible. Let them have their own places to live.
Slashdot Mirror
Man, this is racy stuff. When I read the first line:
When those of us who are into "gadget porn" look at the latest state-of-the-art home entertainment gear
I didn't know what he was talking about until I got a little further:
Taking the modification yet further, you can also replace both of the X-rated capacitors
Now that is funny...
But the rodents will go unpunished
What?? How can they let them go unpunished? They need to at least go out and punish a few in a highly public manner to send the rest a message, kind of like when there is a shark attack and they go hunting for "the" shark that did it.... We can't let the rats get away with this!!
Is this another nail in the coffin of paid content on the internet?
Or, is this a nail in the coffin of paid (news) content on television?
When you can get it for free (with ads) on demand on the internet will you pay to have it on TV?
Yes, otherwise such cultural gems as goatse.cx would be lost into the void forever...
More folds do not imply a more complex wiring pattern.
What they imply is greater cortical surface area. The general idea behind the folding is to fit more cortex (essentially a 2D surface crumpled up) into a head that can't get so big that it won't make it out the birth canal. So greater folding is in essence "more brain".
There is actually tremendous variablitiy in the folding patterns. No two are a like. While pretty much everyone has a STG as you say, its shape and trajectory vary considerably. There is actually a book that tries to detail all the major sulcal variations, but I know for example that my brain has some variations that are not even in the book.
Well, for now, the easiest way to create a new brain is to have sex. Of course that responsibilty hasn't been used with much discretion...
But seriously, this is not really anywhere close to a pressing concern at this point. A human brain contains about 100 billion neurons, each with about 2000 connections to other neurons. We're not exactly on the verge of producing one in a lab. And, even if we did, there is reason to believe that separated from an physical body, deprived of the normal developmental processes, etc. that its behavior still would not resemble consciousness...For example, your question about emotion. What is emotion? Well a lot of it has to do with interpretation of the physiological state of the body - am I aroused, excited - ready to act? When you start to think about it, what could this mean for the lab brain in a vat? Not only does it not have adrenaline coursing through its circulatory system (it doesnt have one) it also does not have a motor system to act with. Nor does it have a face to express this emotion to its peers (it doesn't have those either).
In other words, you can't necessary build one aspect of consciousness apart from the rest, and you can't neccesarily build a conscious brain without building an entire body, and if you're going to do that your best bet for the forseeable future is going to be to find a mate.
Not to be a stickler but Jobs said that the heart of the MAC (not Apple) is the operating system.
Well, to be a stickler he said that the soul of the Mac is the operating system:
"Because more than the processor, more than the hardware, the soul of the Mac is its operating system," said Jobs. "And we're not standing still."
from MacWorld.
In fact, if you click on the Gartner new analysis linked [gartner.com] in the vnunet article, you will find no mention of the "security chip" being quoted by this article so we have nested lousy reporting.
Oh it's in there. Third paragraph under analysis:
"The transition to Intel should be comparatively simple for Apple to manage. Apple has not identified the Intel chips it will use, but next-generation Pentium M and D are the likely choices. Mac OS X and current major applications should run well, and application migration should be fairly simple, because of the Unix code base. (An Apple binary translator technology, code-named "Rosetta," will enable PowerPC applications to run on Intel-based Macintoshes without recompilation.) The x86 Mac OS will run only on Apple hardware, possibly with enforcement through Trusted Platform Module technology."
But still, the key here is "possibly"...
LSD is not addictive in any sense of the word. In fact, its usage tends to be quite self-limiting.
According to Wikipedia,
Webcore is half of Webkit, the other half being JavascriptCore.
Furthermore, there is GREAT variability in the gyral/sulcal pattern of the human brain. Harvey's description of the folding patterns in Einstein's parietal lobe is NOT good evidence that his brain was grossly different. (However Marian Diamond's examinations on a cellular level may be...) My brain, for example, has an extra sulcus in the left premotor cortex. It's not uncommon to see these kinds of variations, and it really doesn't amount to a "genetic defect".
From dictionary.com:
sentient: Having sense perception; conscious
sapient: Having great wisdom and discernment.
I don't think he means sapient. Sapience is really more about wisdom and insight - sentient is closer to having conscious experience, feeling(sentire, to feel).
This view is called functionalism.
But in regards to this simulation, it is not being built to do the things that a human brain does. That is, as far as I can tell from the article, it does not have any perceptual, motor, or cognitive functions, it is simply an isolated circuit designed to understand how assemblies of neurons work together.
A growing movement in cognitive neuroscience stresses an understanding of the mind as an "embodied". That is, much of our cognition relies upon and draws from the physical body - its context. For example, in order to understand other people's movements we map them onto our own motor representations. Almost every cognitive function is grounded in some kind of physicality. It may be impossible to create a conscious "brain in a vat"....
All it takes to simulate a human brain is 22.8 teraflops? I thought I was smarter than that.
You are.
According to the Business Week article this thing will be simulating about 10 thousand neurons. The human brain has about 100 billion neurons. This will be simulating a small section of cortex, not an entire brain. The goal seems to be to understand how cortical columns work, not to create a simulated mind. They actually will not even have enough "neurons" to match one human cortical column, but will probably still learn alot about the circuitry....
Yes, that's the problem, you don't know
Isn't not knowing better than presuming to know?
The thing is indeed over 4 billion years old. That should tell you something about how much she can handle,
That is a good point.
think this is the first time she feels a pinprick?
No, but apparently we haven't done it before ("the researchers aim to be the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet"). Yes, there have probably been huge objects hitting the planet in the past, volcanic eruptions, etc., but some of these events may have also caused mass extinctions. I guess I am more worried about us than about the planet!
the first to punch a hole through the rocky crust that covers our planet
I don't know how Mother Earth is going to like this one.
The thing is over 4 billion years old - is it really a good idea to start punching holes in it now?
I think perhaps part of the reason there is no good evidence on either side of this debate is that there is a false dichotomy between "choice" and "genetically determined". For example, there are probably many genetic factors which may predispose one to end up in certain social positions, which then elicit certain behavioral reactions, which generate hormonal responses related to dominance or submissiveness, during a critical period, etc... It seems to me that a true investigation of the the basis of homosexuality would have to abandon the goal of trying to determine if it was a choice or not.
It's also not enough to rely on people's subjective experience of why they are gay or not. Not that people are necessarily wrong about it, but they are not necessarily right either. Human psychology is complex, and the mind's explanations for its own decisions are influenced by all sorts of motivations.
One last point is that while there are certainly dogmatic people on both sides of the fence, it is not fair to characterize a particular viewpoint as such simply because it is not politically favorable. It is not only the religious and bigoted who view homosexual behavior as not entirely genetic. It's really an open scientific question at this point - but it often seems as if it has already been decided in the public mind, in a reactive response to all the religious nonsense....
Man is both a part of nature, and not a part. We have developed beyond the confines of nature.
No, we're still here within nature. You are arguing about the definition of nature, but you don't really provide a good clarification of what you think nature is - what could it be that we have are outside of now and weren't before?
for instance, your computer. If you put it in a bucket of soil in the garden will it grow a new computer? No. It is the assembly, down to the most intimate and amazing detail. It does not exist 'in nature'.
I see, so nature is all the stuff that spontaneously grows in soil then? Why draw the line there? Beaver dams don't suddenly appear in soil either, at least not without the help of beavers.
our roads, cities, chemicals, fabrics, etc etc etc are all extra-nature. They are not a part of the natural world. Sure, they exist from raw naturally occuring materials, but they are distinctly not-natural.
Nature is constantly rearranging itself into new combinations of things. How did Mother Nature lose custody of these particular children? Tree stuff becomes book stuff and it is metaphysically different because of it?
We are not changing the world in a way that the rest of the natural world can grok. All the plants and animals that had co-evolved with us for millenia have suddenly found themselves outside of the planet's future.
Welcome to nature. This is the way things work here. Things come and go.
We are terra-forming the planet without concern to preserve our co-dependant natural world. This is both immoral and self-destructive. It is hubris like yours (frankly), the "humans are simply nature, what we are doing is natural, dont worry" is seductive but untrue.
Now, here I agree with you. That we are part of nature does not ensure our continual existence, in fact probably the opposite. We should use our natural evolved ability of foresight to consider the effects of our actions.
If you really think that someone who has to view hundreds of such images a day is going to "get off" on them, you're sadly mistaken.
I wouldn't be so sure. For almost anything there is someone who gets off on it. Heck, there are even people who get off on trees. There will most certainly be people who are aroused by naked airplane passengers, and I would not be surprised if some of them came to have this job... People do tend to find jobs which put them near the objects of their sexual desire. Like the whole priest/boy scout leader situation, for example...
Yes, but slashdot is concerned with the internet, and so this is an appropriate forum to discuss how an event like this affects the internet. I don't think someone who runs an ISP in Russia should be trying to figure out how to get the sewer working, they should be figuring out how to get the internet up.
I agree, the main problem with this sentence is that there are misleading words... "even" and "while" set you up for the sentence to have a particular logic that it never delivers on.
Yeah, but I wasn't saying that dogs were intelligent, rather that they were nice to be around. It's definitely not the same thing. :)
That just shows how stupid your dog is - it cares more about you and your "distractions" than itself. That's not smart, that's being easily suggestible.
No, it's being social. Dogs are attuned to human social cues in a way that cats are not.
Again, cat is smart, gets to spend significant amount of time sleeping and being lazy.
They may be smart, but they don't belong cohabitating with humans. Not compatible. Let them have their own places to live.