Real numbers do seem to do a really good job at modeling things, except those models seem to break at very small and very large scales. It occurs to me that the precision you lose when you start chopping off repeating reals at some arbitrary decimal might have big effects somewhere in the bushes where you can't get a good look at them.
I don't know, maybe it's time to abandon the coordinate plane entirely and start with something different.
Which I guess is what I'm getting at. We use the math that we're comfortable with, but what if our models don't fit because the math that we use to build them is fundamentally incompatible with the Universe itself? As in, maybe the infinitely divisible coordinate plane are just shadows on the wall of Plato's cave.
Yeah I saw some of that. The one thing is, I don't even think Sarif was so much looking for a super soldier (he could have hired Belltower if he wanted that, they can get them for you wholesale). I think for him he wanted to see how Jensen's unique biology would handle be loaded to the gills with augs. Ultimately, the entire plot centers around the questions raised by Jensen's ability to accept augs without needing to spend his life on drugs. I think Sarif wanted a poster boy for what he considered the next stage of human evolution more than he wanted a super warrior.:)
One of the things I found interesting, and which I wish had been addressed in the game, is that Jensen's legs and one of his arms could have been saved, but Sarif decided to execute a clause in his contract and had them replaced. He also had Jensen loaded up with basically every implant and aug available, all without any kind of direct consent.
So if Jensen had woken up and decided he didn't want to be an aug, he'd have been left a blind paraplegic.
To me, this opens up interesting questions about living wills and the idea of operating on someone and changing their basic biology without their direct consent (a hidden clause in an employment contract doesn't seem adequate for the radical level of changes invovled, the man had a trademarked logo literally stamped on his forehead).
Sounds like it's time for another rethink then. Einstein got his insights from observing things in the real world, a lot of modern theory seems to be based on looking at Math. Maybe it's time to spend some time in the physical world again and to step away from the Platonic realm and see if something sparks some inspiration.
I, for one, wonder what we might learn if we try to model things using integer math instead of the often rounded real numbers that seem to be popular. Of course, with the numbers being so large you run into factoring issues pretty quickly but hey, that's what quantum computers are for right?:)
I'm pretty sure it involves routing something through the main deflector. Probably also going to need some inverted tachyons. I think I have some lying around somewhere I can let go at a discount.
I don't know, maybe we should try a few days without the stock market and see how we do. Maybe a 21 day cold turkey and then maintenance doses as needed to take the edge off withdrawal.
Maybe it would drive a lot of the gamblers to Vegas where they belong.
... it's only supposed to be a category 1 by the time it reaches land, and down to tropical storm strength by the time it reached New York. When I lived in Florida, we didn't even lower the awnings for a cat 1.
After this, and the hullabaloo over that 5.9 earthquake (I live in California now, and we laughed at the big deal they made out of it.), I think the east coast are being a massive bunch of drama queens.
This is a pretty common fallacy. People who live in an area where a certain disaster is common mock those who are experiencing a lesser version of that disaster, but in an area where it uncommon or even unheard of. They forget (or underestimate) the importance of building codes and other adaptive policy that make them more resilient to that kind of disaster, and don't really understand just how much of a difference things like this make. An earthquake that you can laugh off in Los Angeles would critically damage, say, Dallas, TX. A hurricane that Houston laughs off would level a city that isn't used to experiencing high winds and storm surge flooding.
The best way to see this effect is to compare damage and fatalities between developed and poor countries. A bad storm can kill thousands with mud slides in South America, because their building codes don't exist. People just staple together whatever they can find to construct shelter and put it wherever they can get away with it.
In this case, it seems chances are good this will just be a nasty storm, but if things go bad it could be a real mess.
Well that's fine in extreme situations, and there's certainly no sense in being with someone who's utterly incompatible with you, but I do find it surprising that the article implies that you should drop your religion, instead of suggesting that people should actually get to know someone a little better before becoming Judge Dredd.
You slam people for criticizing religion but then go after cosplay!? Poorly played sir.
Well, say what you will about religion, but I simply don't believe that it should factor into dating that heavily. Ignoring someone simply because they are religious is extremely snobbish and sort of goes against what a lot of atheists apparently believe in (free speech and all that). By the way, are you autistic?
You seem to be confused. It is pretty obvious that trying to initiate a romance with someone who has a fundamental difference in worldview (down to the level of the basic mechanics of the Universe) might be an exercise in frustration and futility. Why not spend your effort on someone who has a more promising cost/benefit ratio?
The closer it is on their face and/or the level of photoshopping can probably be directly correlated to the size of the woman. Possibly person but my data on men is sparse due to lack of interest.
Damn. You mentioned Snow Crash and now I have to read it again. You know I actually got introduced to Neal Stephenson because there was a copy of Snow Crash in the game Spectre (a VR tank game for the Macintosh way back in the day).
women complain men are obsessed with t&a but women are exactly the same: if you're not tall, it doesn't matter if you are a CEO and run 3 charities: she'll pick the tall guy who still lives with his mom
Yep, there is even code for this. You can tell a woman likes a guy just for his looks when the only positive feature they can describe (beyond his looks, which are taboo to mention) is how "nice" he is. If that is the first thing a woman mentions about a man, you know she just likes him for his looks.
Women, in general, seem to be threatened very easily. It used to bother me, now I just think it's funny. Klingon women are a little masculine for my tastes, but there is something to be said for a woman who will look you in the eye and punch you in the face, and then laugh about it later.
Wow, coming out of a relationship of 5 years here and I know exactly what you mean. I've been surprised to find just how happy I can be just hanging out with myself, doing whatever I like, whenever I like. That said, I do miss the companionship from time to time. But not enough to engage in a bunch of shallow bullshit dating. I'll wait until I find someone who stimulates my mind enough to be attractive before I try dating again.
I don't worry too much about pro play. It's always a distorted view of any game and tends to favor inhumanly fast twitch responses in FPS games. For normal people, the game is balanced and fun.
Ah, they must have changed their mind after I had already quit. That's OK though, I'm glad I got out before they got around to announcing the inevitable port of their Diablo auction house to WOW. I'm sure it's coming.
You could always unlock talents a few at a time by completing various tutorial achievements / quests. Or have some other way to ease people into the game without levels. Overall, in fact, I think people would be happy if they could roam openly across the world and choose which zones they wanted to explore.
Of course, now that they made the story from zone to zone more linear I guess this won't work as well.
What I'm getting at, though, is that with the laws we have here, you don't need anything like the size of even the observable universe. If things this complex can survive (or emerge enough times after being wiped out) and evolve, then they must be extremely common. So common that life must be pretty much everywhere that has puddles of water sitting around coupled with a proper energy source.
Slashdot Mirror
Real numbers do seem to do a really good job at modeling things, except those models seem to break at very small and very large scales. It occurs to me that the precision you lose when you start chopping off repeating reals at some arbitrary decimal might have big effects somewhere in the bushes where you can't get a good look at them.
I don't know, maybe it's time to abandon the coordinate plane entirely and start with something different.
Which I guess is what I'm getting at. We use the math that we're comfortable with, but what if our models don't fit because the math that we use to build them is fundamentally incompatible with the Universe itself? As in, maybe the infinitely divisible coordinate plane are just shadows on the wall of Plato's cave.
Yeah I saw some of that. The one thing is, I don't even think Sarif was so much looking for a super soldier (he could have hired Belltower if he wanted that, they can get them for you wholesale). I think for him he wanted to see how Jensen's unique biology would handle be loaded to the gills with augs. Ultimately, the entire plot centers around the questions raised by Jensen's ability to accept augs without needing to spend his life on drugs. I think Sarif wanted a poster boy for what he considered the next stage of human evolution more than he wanted a super warrior. :)
So if I save your life, you're my slave?
I think that's a pretty novel solution to this particular moral dilemma.
One of the things I found interesting, and which I wish had been addressed in the game, is that Jensen's legs and one of his arms could have been saved, but Sarif decided to execute a clause in his contract and had them replaced. He also had Jensen loaded up with basically every implant and aug available, all without any kind of direct consent.
So if Jensen had woken up and decided he didn't want to be an aug, he'd have been left a blind paraplegic.
To me, this opens up interesting questions about living wills and the idea of operating on someone and changing their basic biology without their direct consent (a hidden clause in an employment contract doesn't seem adequate for the radical level of changes invovled, the man had a trademarked logo literally stamped on his forehead).
> I am a gravitational theorist.
I don't even understand what that title means, but it sounds very cool.
It's a regular theorist who lives solely on a gamer diet (cheetos and mountain dew).
Sounds like it's time for another rethink then. Einstein got his insights from observing things in the real world, a lot of modern theory seems to be based on looking at Math. Maybe it's time to spend some time in the physical world again and to step away from the Platonic realm and see if something sparks some inspiration.
I, for one, wonder what we might learn if we try to model things using integer math instead of the often rounded real numbers that seem to be popular. Of course, with the numbers being so large you run into factoring issues pretty quickly but hey, that's what quantum computers are for right? :)
I'm pretty sure it involves routing something through the main deflector. Probably also going to need some inverted tachyons. I think I have some lying around somewhere I can let go at a discount.
I don't know, maybe we should try a few days without the stock market and see how we do. Maybe a 21 day cold turkey and then maintenance doses as needed to take the edge off withdrawal.
Maybe it would drive a lot of the gamblers to Vegas where they belong.
... it's only supposed to be a category 1 by the time it reaches land, and down to tropical storm strength by the time it reached New York. When I lived in Florida, we didn't even lower the awnings for a cat 1.
After this, and the hullabaloo over that 5.9 earthquake (I live in California now, and we laughed at the big deal they made out of it.), I think the east coast are being a massive bunch of drama queens.
This is a pretty common fallacy. People who live in an area where a certain disaster is common mock those who are experiencing a lesser version of that disaster, but in an area where it uncommon or even unheard of. They forget (or underestimate) the importance of building codes and other adaptive policy that make them more resilient to that kind of disaster, and don't really understand just how much of a difference things like this make. An earthquake that you can laugh off in Los Angeles would critically damage, say, Dallas, TX. A hurricane that Houston laughs off would level a city that isn't used to experiencing high winds and storm surge flooding.
The best way to see this effect is to compare damage and fatalities between developed and poor countries. A bad storm can kill thousands with mud slides in South America, because their building codes don't exist. People just staple together whatever they can find to construct shelter and put it wherever they can get away with it.
In this case, it seems chances are good this will just be a nasty storm, but if things go bad it could be a real mess.
Well that's fine in extreme situations, and there's certainly no sense in being with someone who's utterly incompatible with you, but I do find it surprising that the article implies that you should drop your religion, instead of suggesting that people should actually get to know someone a little better before becoming Judge Dredd.
You slam people for criticizing religion but then go after cosplay!? Poorly played sir.
Well, say what you will about religion, but I simply don't believe that it should factor into dating that heavily. Ignoring someone simply because they are religious is extremely snobbish and sort of goes against what a lot of atheists apparently believe in (free speech and all that). By the way, are you autistic?
You seem to be confused. It is pretty obvious that trying to initiate a romance with someone who has a fundamental difference in worldview (down to the level of the basic mechanics of the Universe) might be an exercise in frustration and futility. Why not spend your effort on someone who has a more promising cost/benefit ratio?
The closer it is on their face and/or the level of photoshopping can probably be directly correlated to the size of the woman. Possibly person but my data on men is sparse due to lack of interest.
Damn. You mentioned Snow Crash and now I have to read it again.
You know I actually got introduced to Neal Stephenson because there was a copy of Snow Crash in the game Spectre (a VR tank game for the Macintosh way back in the day).
Random story of the day I guess.
women complain men are obsessed with t&a but women are exactly the same: if you're not tall, it doesn't matter if you are a CEO and run 3 charities: she'll pick the tall guy who still lives with his mom
Yep, there is even code for this. You can tell a woman likes a guy just for his looks when the only positive feature they can describe (beyond his looks, which are taboo to mention) is how "nice" he is. If that is the first thing a woman mentions about a man, you know she just likes him for his looks.
Sure, you game, but how dedicated are you to the hobby? Will you freak out when I shout "For the Emperor!" in bed?
Women, in general, seem to be threatened very easily. It used to bother me, now I just think it's funny. Klingon women are a little masculine for my tastes, but there is something to be said for a woman who will look you in the eye and punch you in the face, and then laugh about it later.
Wow, coming out of a relationship of 5 years here and I know exactly what you mean. I've been surprised to find just how happy I can be just hanging out with myself, doing whatever I like, whenever I like. That said, I do miss the companionship from time to time. But not enough to engage in a bunch of shallow bullshit dating. I'll wait until I find someone who stimulates my mind enough to be attractive before I try dating again.
I would never suggest to anyone to change who they are just to find a date.
How do you feel about improving who they are in order to find a date?
I know, right? My augmentation surgery is set for Tuesday next week, I can't wait to try out the new eyes!
Yeah, judging by who I see when I look out my front window, it's the part where all the Mexicans live.
Nah, if he loses he'll change the name to Scrollz.
Can you still carry a battering ram in your back pocket? :)
I don't worry too much about pro play. It's always a distorted view of any game and tends to favor inhumanly fast twitch responses in FPS games. For normal people, the game is balanced and fun.
Ah, they must have changed their mind after I had already quit. That's OK though, I'm glad I got out before they got around to announcing the inevitable port of their Diablo auction house to WOW. I'm sure it's coming.
You could always unlock talents a few at a time by completing various tutorial achievements / quests. Or have some other way to ease people into the game without levels. Overall, in fact, I think people would be happy if they could roam openly across the world and choose which zones they wanted to explore.
Of course, now that they made the story from zone to zone more linear I guess this won't work as well.
What I'm getting at, though, is that with the laws we have here, you don't need anything like the size of even the observable universe. If things this complex can survive (or emerge enough times after being wiped out) and evolve, then they must be extremely common. So common that life must be pretty much everywhere that has puddles of water sitting around coupled with a proper energy source.