Good points. My favorite response to arguments from probability is the simple observation that the "laws" of probability are not laws at all (as compared to physical laws): they don't regulate how events will turn out. All they do is tell us how surprised we should be when whatever was going to happen happens. Add to that the fact that probability claims are inherently tied up with our knowledge, and the probability of an event changes depending on how much we know about the situation. Example: I have a standard deck of cards. The top card is face down. I conclude that the chances the top card is the ace of spades is one in 52. I have another deck of cards. The top card is face up and is the ace of spades. I conclude that the chances that the top card is the ace of spades is 1 in 1. The problem with many of the claims of "creation science" (or related charlatans, like the "Bible Code" guys who find "improbable" messages encoded in scripture) is that they simply say that the probability of such-and-such occurring is fifty-squizillion to one without telling you what sample pool they are drawing from or what knowledge is used to calculate the odds.
Our Founding Fathers viewed exclusive ownership of "intellectual property"...
Others in this thread have correctly identified Jefferson as a proponent of a particular limited version of patents. If that is what you had in mind, you should have said so. Because anyone who says "The Founding Fathers believed..." has no knowledge of history. With the possible exception of independence from England, there is no single issue which all of the Founders were of one mind about. They tended to be sharply divided over most of the crucial issues which went into forming our Constitution. It therefore makes no sense to make them into one monolithic body, "the Founding Fathers," whose "intentions" can be quoted like Scripture.
Sure, it uses some kind of fossil fuel to catalyze a chemical reaction, but it's oxygen that spins the flywheel.
What are they teaching those kids in chemistry class these days?
A "catalyst" is a substance whose presence speeds up a chemical reaction, or causes it to take place at a lower temperature. It is not itself consumed as part of that chemical reaction. Combustion is the rapid combination of fuel with oxygen. The fuel is not a catalyst because without the fuel you wouldn't have any combustion whatsoever. Furthermore, it is the chemical energy stored in the fuel which is converted into heat and kinetic energy during combustion. I don't know where you get the idea that oxygen is the source of the power. And when a carburettor allows more oxygen into the cylinders, it is increasing the rate at which the fuel combusts, causing more chemical energy to be converted into heat and kinetic energy in a given amount of time. It's still the fossil fuel doing the actual work.
Last time I checked, kilograms were a measure of mass, not weight.
Strictly speaking, this is true. However, the accepted practice in countries which use the metric system for everyday measurements is to use the kilogram as a de facto unit of weight equal to the amount one kilogram would weigh at 1G. This is fine for practical purposes, since there are not yet any grocery stores in orbit. Even in metric-using countries, you would search in vain for a product sold by the newton as opposed to the kilogram.
Sure. Except it takes electricity to produce hydrogen, and at the moment it usually takes fossil fuels to produce electricity. Plus there are the problems of how to store enough hydrogen to go any reasonable distance in a standard automobile. (If I recall, the original lunar rover was hydrogen-fueled. Most of its fuel was spent hauling its own fuel tank around-- and that's going slow, in a vacuum with low gravity. Of course on Earth you wouldn't need to haul your own oxygen, but that still leaves a lot of fuel to go a short distance.)
I do not think there were ever enough plant mass ever to give us the amount of oil we have presently.
Not all at one time, no. But remember, fossilization has been going on for many millions of years. That means many, many generations of plants have found their way into our mineral deposits. (Unless you accept the claims of certain "creation scientists" who claim that oil or coal can be made from biomass in an exceedingly short amount of time, in which case the whole earth must have been a miles-thick compost pile at some point in its 6000-year history.)
This sounds convincing - but it's circular logic, like Math. It is based on assumptions that cannot be proven right or wrong.
Go back and take Introduction to Logic and learn your terms. A "circular argument" is one which assumes that which it is trying to prove. Any noncircular deductive argument is based on "assumptions" or premises which are not proved in that argument. They may have been proven by another argument, they may be empirically verified, or they may be asserted as in mathematical systems. (Assertion here does not mean that we are "assuming" something to be true without knowing whether or not it is true; instead, it means we are defining it through the act of the assertion, as with Euclid's postulate, "All right angles are congruent," which defines right angles as having the property of congruence.)
Umm... no. Atoms are not inherently "processors" in any sense, unlike, say, neurons. Nice horribly flawed logic, though.
Why not? They have states, and interactions with other particles can cause changes in those states. They have inputs and outputs (as when absorbing or re-emitting photons.) It would be possible to describe an atom in terms of its inputs, outputs, and internal states, just like an artificial finite-state machine, or a neuron.
Of course, such a level of description doesn't really get at the fundamental meaning of what an atom is, which is exactly my point. The fact that neurons can be connected to other neurons, exchange chemicals with them, and undergo changes of state does not mean that they are inherently processors, or that the property which allows large groups of neurons to think is dependent upon their properties at this level of description. Nor does it mean that a system whose components mimic the finite-state machine description of neurons would necesarrily exhibit the cognitive behavior of a human brain.
As Turing pointed out, inteligence (in a practical sense) is more about 'behaviour' than 'nature'.
You mean as Turing hypothesized. This sort of pigeon-pecking went out of favor in cognitive science years ago. Behaviorism was supplanted by the computational model of mind, and that model itself has fallen on hard times. We're slowly starting to realize that it's not always productive to equate the human mind with the latest shiny new gadget.
our computers were build by millions of simple processors.
Extending this analogy (and assuming physicalism even holds true), all matter in the universe is made up of millions of "simple processors"-- atoms. However, the moon is not more intelligent than a human (or even a sea slug) simply because it has more "processors."
In fact, (and I can't find the reference, sorry), Marvin Minsky has said he believes that evolved-AI is very unlikely to provide an answer to AI problems before human figure them out.
Oh, the same Marvin Minsky that said back in the '60s that the problem of AI would be solved in 20 years?
Oh, please. Bill Nye only has a career because today's kids have too short attention spans to appreciate Mr. Wizard. Now there was a science show. A crusty, ill-tempered old man teaching children to perform dangerous experiments with common household items. You actually learned something after watching that show. Bill Nye's show is just a goofy song-and-dance variety show that spends half an hour on innane skits in order to teach a single, moronically basic concept like "water is more dense than air." Not for me. I want to see more kids getting electrocuted trying to make a glowing pickle.
Landover Baptist: a hateful-inspired church, fake Christians, don't quote Bible in context, slander people in the Bible, and give a bad name to everyone that quotes the bible for its kindness.
Excuse me, but how is this even in the same time zone as the topic?
If your "freedom" only resulted in you being buried under tons of radioactive rubble, I'd be all for it. But when your "freedom" and "rights" have the potential to enable our enemies to slaughter millions of your countrymen alongside you, perhaps it's time to reconsider.
Life. Liberty. Pursuit of happiness. Choose any two, but without life, you cannot pursue happiness, for the dead have no liberty.
Ironically, there are currently thousands of Americans in uniform in Iraq and around the world who curiously risk their life because they, for some reason, find freedom to be more important.
If you really think life is meaningful without freedom, why not move to Cuba? It'd do wonders for your life expectancy. They have a really great health care system there, as long as you don't contract AIDS or disagree with Castro.
First of all, I see no reason to believe that increased wiretapping powers for the FBI will make me any safer, and I fear that the so-called threat of terrorism just gives those in power an excuse to become even more powerful. And I for one would rather subject myself to a higher risk of terrorist attacks than to live in a society that every day edges closer to the one the terrorists would have set up anyway.
Even if you (for some reason) trust the current administration, remember that these executive powers don't just disappear when there's an election. Will you be as quick to support this weapon in the "war on terrorism" when a future President slaps the terrorist label on an organization you support?
> Furthermore, the company behind Skype is Swedish, and based in Stockholm. I just don't see any way for the FBI to exert pressure here and I think the article overstated the danger.
As long as their service is being run over communications lines in the United States, the FBI has jurisdiction. The US government might not be able, for example, to shut down Volvo if their cars failed to meet US safety or emissions standards, but they could certainly stop them from selling them in this country.
> If your not doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about.
Ah, how many kind and caring governments have used this very line to go after the ideological bad guys? The fact is, in this country one is innocent until proven guilty. Hence the FBI, by definition, does not use its authority to go after criminals, only suspected criminals. They do not have to have proof that the person they are wiretapping actually is involved in illegal activities; if they already had the proof, why would they need to wiretap? It logically follows that not all of the people being snooped on will actually wind up being found guilty.
The big danger of extending the surveillance powers of the government is that once they have the power, they only need to cook up an excuse good enough to convince a judge (or, under USA PATRIOT, not even that much) and they can use it on whomever they wish. What's to stop another Nixon from using wiretapping to snoop on the people on his personal enemies list and gather information to blackmail them or worse?
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Good points. My favorite response to arguments from probability is the simple observation that the "laws" of probability are not laws at all (as compared to physical laws): they don't regulate how events will turn out. All they do is tell us how surprised we should be when whatever was going to happen happens. Add to that the fact that probability claims are inherently tied up with our knowledge, and the probability of an event changes depending on how much we know about the situation. Example: I have a standard deck of cards. The top card is face down. I conclude that the chances the top card is the ace of spades is one in 52. I have another deck of cards. The top card is face up and is the ace of spades. I conclude that the chances that the top card is the ace of spades is 1 in 1. The problem with many of the claims of "creation science" (or related charlatans, like the "Bible Code" guys who find "improbable" messages encoded in scripture) is that they simply say that the probability of such-and-such occurring is fifty-squizillion to one without telling you what sample pool they are drawing from or what knowledge is used to calculate the odds.
Our Founding Fathers viewed exclusive ownership of "intellectual property"...
Others in this thread have correctly identified Jefferson as a proponent of a particular limited version of patents. If that is what you had in mind, you should have said so. Because anyone who says "The Founding Fathers believed..." has no knowledge of history. With the possible exception of independence from England, there is no single issue which all of the Founders were of one mind about. They tended to be sharply divided over most of the crucial issues which went into forming our Constitution. It therefore makes no sense to make them into one monolithic body, "the Founding Fathers," whose "intentions" can be quoted like Scripture.
Sure, it uses some kind of fossil fuel to catalyze a chemical reaction, but it's oxygen that spins the flywheel.
What are they teaching those kids in chemistry class these days?
A "catalyst" is a substance whose presence speeds up a chemical reaction, or causes it to take place at a lower temperature. It is not itself consumed as part of that chemical reaction. Combustion is the rapid combination of fuel with oxygen. The fuel is not a catalyst because without the fuel you wouldn't have any combustion whatsoever. Furthermore, it is the chemical energy stored in the fuel which is converted into heat and kinetic energy during combustion. I don't know where you get the idea that oxygen is the source of the power. And when a carburettor allows more oxygen into the cylinders, it is increasing the rate at which the fuel combusts, causing more chemical energy to be converted into heat and kinetic energy in a given amount of time. It's still the fossil fuel doing the actual work.
Last time I checked, kilograms were a measure of mass, not weight.
Strictly speaking, this is true. However, the accepted practice in countries which use the metric system for everyday measurements is to use the kilogram as a de facto unit of weight equal to the amount one kilogram would weigh at 1G. This is fine for practical purposes, since there are not yet any grocery stores in orbit. Even in metric-using countries, you would search in vain for a product sold by the newton as opposed to the kilogram.
Does that mean vegans will have to keep using the old plant-based fossil fuels?
Anyone for Hydrogen?
Sure. Except it takes electricity to produce hydrogen, and at the moment it usually takes fossil fuels to produce electricity. Plus there are the problems of how to store enough hydrogen to go any reasonable distance in a standard automobile. (If I recall, the original lunar rover was hydrogen-fueled. Most of its fuel was spent hauling its own fuel tank around-- and that's going slow, in a vacuum with low gravity. Of course on Earth you wouldn't need to haul your own oxygen, but that still leaves a lot of fuel to go a short distance.)
I do not think there were ever enough plant mass ever to give us the amount of oil we have presently.
Not all at one time, no. But remember, fossilization has been going on for many millions of years. That means many, many generations of plants have found their way into our mineral deposits. (Unless you accept the claims of certain "creation scientists" who claim that oil or coal can be made from biomass in an exceedingly short amount of time, in which case the whole earth must have been a miles-thick compost pile at some point in its 6000-year history.)
This sounds convincing - but it's circular logic, like Math. It is based on assumptions that cannot be proven right or wrong.
Go back and take Introduction to Logic and learn your terms. A "circular argument" is one which assumes that which it is trying to prove. Any noncircular deductive argument is based on "assumptions" or premises which are not proved in that argument. They may have been proven by another argument, they may be empirically verified, or they may be asserted as in mathematical systems. (Assertion here does not mean that we are "assuming" something to be true without knowing whether or not it is true; instead, it means we are defining it through the act of the assertion, as with Euclid's postulate, "All right angles are congruent," which defines right angles as having the property of congruence.)
Umm... no. Atoms are not inherently "processors" in any sense, unlike, say, neurons. Nice horribly flawed logic, though.
Why not? They have states, and interactions with other particles can cause changes in those states. They have inputs and outputs (as when absorbing or re-emitting photons.) It would be possible to describe an atom in terms of its inputs, outputs, and internal states, just like an artificial finite-state machine, or a neuron.
Of course, such a level of description doesn't really get at the fundamental meaning of what an atom is, which is exactly my point. The fact that neurons can be connected to other neurons, exchange chemicals with them, and undergo changes of state does not mean that they are inherently processors, or that the property which allows large groups of neurons to think is dependent upon their properties at this level of description. Nor does it mean that a system whose components mimic the finite-state machine description of neurons would necesarrily exhibit the cognitive behavior of a human brain.
As Turing pointed out, inteligence (in a practical sense) is more about 'behaviour' than 'nature'.
You mean as Turing hypothesized. This sort of pigeon-pecking went out of favor in cognitive science years ago. Behaviorism was supplanted by the computational model of mind, and that model itself has fallen on hard times. We're slowly starting to realize that it's not always productive to equate the human mind with the latest shiny new gadget.
our computers were build by millions of simple processors.
Extending this analogy (and assuming physicalism even holds true), all matter in the universe is made up of millions of "simple processors"-- atoms. However, the moon is not more intelligent than a human (or even a sea slug) simply because it has more "processors."
In fact, (and I can't find the reference, sorry), Marvin Minsky has said he believes that evolved-AI is very unlikely to provide an answer to AI problems before human figure them out.
Oh, the same Marvin Minsky that said back in the '60s that the problem of AI would be solved in 20 years?
Oh, please. Bill Nye only has a career because today's kids have too short attention spans to appreciate Mr. Wizard. Now there was a science show. A crusty, ill-tempered old man teaching children to perform dangerous experiments with common household items. You actually learned something after watching that show. Bill Nye's show is just a goofy song-and-dance variety show that spends half an hour on innane skits in order to teach a single, moronically basic concept like "water is more dense than air." Not for me. I want to see more kids getting electrocuted trying to make a glowing pickle.
Landover Baptist: a hateful-inspired church, fake Christians, don't quote Bible in context, slander people in the Bible, and give a bad name to everyone that quotes the bible for its kindness.
Excuse me, but how is this even in the same time zone as the topic?
If your "freedom" only resulted in you being buried under tons of radioactive rubble, I'd be all for it. But when your "freedom" and "rights" have the potential to enable our enemies to slaughter millions of your countrymen alongside you, perhaps it's time to reconsider.
Life. Liberty. Pursuit of happiness. Choose any two, but without life, you cannot pursue happiness, for the dead have no liberty.
Ironically, there are currently thousands of Americans in uniform in Iraq and around the world who curiously risk their life because they, for some reason, find freedom to be more important.
If you really think life is meaningful without freedom, why not move to Cuba? It'd do wonders for your life expectancy. They have a really great health care system there, as long as you don't contract AIDS or disagree with Castro.
First of all, I see no reason to believe that increased wiretapping powers for the FBI will make me any safer, and I fear that the so-called threat of terrorism just gives those in power an excuse to become even more powerful. And I for one would rather subject myself to a higher risk of terrorist attacks than to live in a society that every day edges closer to the one the terrorists would have set up anyway.
Even if you (for some reason) trust the current administration, remember that these executive powers don't just disappear when there's an election. Will you be as quick to support this weapon in the "war on terrorism" when a future President slaps the terrorist label on an organization you support?
> Furthermore, the company behind Skype is Swedish, and based in Stockholm. I just don't see any way for the FBI to exert pressure here and I think the article overstated the danger.
As long as their service is being run over communications lines in the United States, the FBI has jurisdiction. The US government might not be able, for example, to shut down Volvo if their cars failed to meet US safety or emissions standards, but they could certainly stop them from selling them in this country.
> If your not doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about.
Ah, how many kind and caring governments have used this very line to go after the ideological bad guys? The fact is, in this country one is innocent until proven guilty. Hence the FBI, by definition, does not use its authority to go after criminals, only suspected criminals. They do not have to have proof that the person they are wiretapping actually is involved in illegal activities; if they already had the proof, why would they need to wiretap? It logically follows that not all of the people being snooped on will actually wind up being found guilty. The big danger of extending the surveillance powers of the government is that once they have the power, they only need to cook up an excuse good enough to convince a judge (or, under USA PATRIOT, not even that much) and they can use it on whomever they wish. What's to stop another Nixon from using wiretapping to snoop on the people on his personal enemies list and gather information to blackmail them or worse?