I'm not sure how I feel about this research...and that's pretty much why I'm all for this. We don't understand enough to be able to say whether or not this should be happening, and this is the best way we know how to move forward.
Your argument, then, is that the precautionary principle is never justified? That action should be considered right and safe until proven otherwise?
What has being an atheist to do with knowing if an artificial grown brain is conscious?
Not much, but it's a matter of his motivation for the question. It's quite standard to assume that anyone against embryonic research is religious and only building an argument that justifies existing bias. But there are non-religious people that find it kind of icky, and see the lines as being very blurry, like the GP. And myself.
His point is that when there is a direct threat, people are generally willing to take extreme action. That's not necessarily justification for making a decision to do something potentially objectionable on a non-immenent, calculated future threat. For example: if I was sure that killing 30% of the world's population would prevent a famine and global war in 2096 that would itself kill 50% of the world's population, would it be OK for me to start culling people in every major city in the world?
What self-important atheists do that? Do you consider me one?
Yes, I do. Why? Because you interrupted a thread discussing a very soecific topic on education -- educational technology and adaptive learning - in order to preach (yes, preach) about how bad religion is. That's self-importance: "what I have to say is so important, it doesn't matter that it's off-topic. Listen to me!" If there is a debate to be had about the effect of religion on the content of school lessons (and there is), then have that debate elsewhere -- here we are discussing teaching methodologies. In this discussion there is no need to make enemies out of people based on ideologies that are completely orthogonal to the debate.
Because I don't just accept flat religious assertions and actually try to take power away from religion so it'll do less damage?
Your approach is counterproductive. If you want scientific enquiry properly taught at school level, you will need the support of the numerous parents who are religious. By presenting the teaching of science as being in opposition to religious power, you militate against your own goal. You are doing exactly what I said before: you are taking people who are merely ignorant of science and telling them to be anti-science. And the longer you do this, the higher your moral ground.
I know. Your "virtually all" is a mere handful of isolated incidents among a very small total. "Virtually all" feels like gross overstatement to me.
1. Um, care to cite any recent attacks planned our executed by Christians for anything related to religion?
I was talking about terrorist attacks carried out by nominally Christian attackers -- I didn't specify whether they were carried out in the name of Christianity or not. I don't think that part's relevant.
Well I personally don't believe in any god or gods, but I know a lot of people who do, and during my life I've seen a shift in attitudes within the religious community. When I was young, most religious people were ignorant of science, and shrugged their shoulders about it. They didn't declare it wrong, or the deceitful work of the devil, or anything like that. They didn't refuse medicine because it was unnatural or "interfering with God's plan". But now most of the religious people I know who are ignorant of science (as opposed to those religious people I know with respectable degrees in the physical sciences) are explicitly anti-science. This is not down to their preachers, as the anti-science preachers are restricted to minority evangelic churches where I live. Here in Scotland we have protestant churches with a love of schooling, learning and academic rigour, which have always put knowledge of the universe as a part of knowing God (also part of the Catholic tradition, incidentally) and our faith schools teach Darwinism, not Creationism or Intelligent Design.
The drive against science can not, therefore, be explained as something from within the church, but must be from outside influence.
I personally do not care whether people believe in gods or not, but I do care about people rejecting science, and I'm sick of self-important atheists (many of whom know nothing of science) scaring religious people away from scientific enquiry.
It's even more convoluted than that, because Superman accrued powers on a rather ad hoc basis -- he is the very archetype of the literary device "Deus in machina". Notice "in", not "ex": Superman is the god inside the story, so it is an established part of the narrative that he'll suddenly use some incredible power to defeat anyone and anything. The copyright on each of Superman's powers, if such a thing exists, is bound to the copyright of the first issue in which those powers were first exhibited. This makes derivative works a complete minefield.
It's not just about him whining about not being able to get free money (I'm not a particular fan of that business model), but it's also about the arbitrarity of YouTube's model. If YouTube declared that it wanted public domain videos to be entirely free, that would be one thing, but they don't. Google here are just engaging in unnecessary arse-covering, putting a burden of proof on users for something that is technically impossible to prove. This is one of those cases of "I don't agree with what you are saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" because squashing this guy's opportunistic use of public domain material has knock-on effects for all use of public domain material.
You seem to be pretty familiar with the regulations. The thing that confuses me at the moment is that at the time of the Mickey Mouse act, no-one was clear on the status of expired works -- it looked as though the copyright extension was going to be disregard registration and bring coprights that had expired due to lack of renewal (as opposed to complete expiration of timelimit) would be removed from the public domain, and these cartoons would be part of that. Did this happen? Are these cartoons now copyrighted, even though nobody has been pursuing infringers to date?
Ah no.. the problem is the ignorant masses propagating the fallacious idea that science and religious faith are incompatible, and there are perhaps more such people among atheists than religious.
"How will we make healthy, nutritious food? I know, let's take the stuff traditionally considered inedible junk and use it as food. That ought to do it."
It already exists; it's called a Raspberry Pi 2, and it's cheaper/smaller than a CHIP with the shields necessary to be a competent media player.
The flip-side of that coin is that if you want to attach a touch-screen, the lack of need for an adaptor makes the CHIP cheaper and smaller that a Pi. The same goes for batteries.
Well I read satire into the GP's post. After all, the specs on the computer are kind of 2005 vintage, and about as out-of-date as the "Beowulf cluster" running gag...
I prefer to think of it as a modern alternative to a traditional microcontroller for hobbyists, because that's what it seems to be. Look at the number of people already using the Pi as a microcontroller substitute due to the ease of programming (ubiquitous operating environment and standard programming tools) and ready availability. This is not only cheaper than the Pi, but it comes with battery management built in, making it a heck of a lot more convenient to "makers".
The other big advantage this has is in prototyping embedded systems. People use the Pi in prototype systems, but it means that there's a lot of reworking to do to bring the code to production readiness, as you may well be changing architecture -- the Broadcom SoC in the Pi is only available in massive bulk, whereas Allwinner parts can be bought off the various direct export sites in fairly low numbers, meaning that code prototypes developed on CHIP can be moved to production on the same SoC without the CHIP board with little or no reworking.
And that's what I think drew Allwinner to be so cooperative here -- they can see the potential in the market for all the low-order gadgets coming through Kickstarter, and they want to get that cash.
I suppose you're right, in which case what I should have said was that Chomsky was wrong to focus so narrowly on syntax. His attempts to dicorce "grammaticality" from meaning still poison linguistics to this day. Every single course I have taken on grammars (in both linguistics and computing) spends a lot of time on CFGs but doesn't even mention Tesnière's valency model, which, published just a couple of years after Chomsky published CFGs, managed to fill the disjoin between Chomskyan grammar and real language.
... which does less harm than some of the vaccines [...] being forced on people to promote "herd immunity".
This is a true statement. The problem is that the harmful vaccines are a minority of the extant treatments, and when the anti-vaxxer crowd falsely claims all vaccines, including the safe life-savers, are toxic it makes it easier for the pharmaceutical companies to cover up the ill effects of dangerous ones, because everyone assumes anyone who speaks up against the vaccine is a lunatic.
There's a super-huge flaw that's staring you right in the face. The egg shape is claimed to help gather rainwater, but it does precisely the opposite -- it disperses it. You need to funnel the water into a single intake, not spread it out everywhere. Basically, their funnel is upside down.
I don't get why they don't have wheels and an A-bar on this -- it looks an awful lot like a caravan to me, even to the point of being pretty aerodynamic (other than the sodding great windmill getting in the way).
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I'm not sure how I feel about this research...and that's pretty much why I'm all for this. We don't understand enough to be able to say whether or not this should be happening, and this is the best way we know how to move forward.
Your argument, then, is that the precautionary principle is never justified? That action should be considered right and safe until proven otherwise?
What has being an atheist to do with knowing if an artificial grown brain is conscious?
Not much, but it's a matter of his motivation for the question. It's quite standard to assume that anyone against embryonic research is religious and only building an argument that justifies existing bias. But there are non-religious people that find it kind of icky, and see the lines as being very blurry, like the GP. And myself.
His point is that when there is a direct threat, people are generally willing to take extreme action. That's not necessarily justification for making a decision to do something potentially objectionable on a non-immenent, calculated future threat. For example: if I was sure that killing 30% of the world's population would prevent a famine and global war in 2096 that would itself kill 50% of the world's population, would it be OK for me to start culling people in every major city in the world?
What self-important atheists do that? Do you consider me one?
Yes, I do. Why? Because you interrupted a thread discussing a very soecific topic on education -- educational technology and adaptive learning - in order to preach (yes, preach) about how bad religion is. That's self-importance: "what I have to say is so important, it doesn't matter that it's off-topic. Listen to me!" If there is a debate to be had about the effect of religion on the content of school lessons (and there is), then have that debate elsewhere -- here we are discussing teaching methodologies. In this discussion there is no need to make enemies out of people based on ideologies that are completely orthogonal to the debate.
Because I don't just accept flat religious assertions and actually try to take power away from religion so it'll do less damage?
Your approach is counterproductive. If you want scientific enquiry properly taught at school level, you will need the support of the numerous parents who are religious. By presenting the teaching of science as being in opposition to religious power, you militate against your own goal. You are doing exactly what I said before: you are taking people who are merely ignorant of science and telling them to be anti-science. And the longer you do this, the higher your moral ground.
Or so it seems. In reality, it's just your horse.
0. I did write 'virtually'.
I know. Your "virtually all" is a mere handful of isolated incidents among a very small total. "Virtually all" feels like gross overstatement to me.
1. Um, care to cite any recent attacks planned our executed by Christians for anything related to religion?
I was talking about terrorist attacks carried out by nominally Christian attackers -- I didn't specify whether they were carried out in the name of Christianity or not. I don't think that part's relevant.
Yes, virtually every terrorist threat to the United States is sponsored or instigated by some Islamic group or individual.
Only if you ignore all the ones from white, nominally-Christian Americans.
How about not letting the muslims enter our country
Given the number of common Arabic names on the no-fly list, most Muslims are already prevented from entering the US. That's part of the problem here.
Hahaha... mrbester actually believes space goats are goats. Everyone knows it's just a name.
The drive against science can not, therefore, be explained as something from within the church, but must be from outside influence.
I personally do not care whether people believe in gods or not, but I do care about people rejecting science, and I'm sick of self-important atheists (many of whom know nothing of science) scaring religious people away from scientific enquiry.
It's even more convoluted than that, because Superman accrued powers on a rather ad hoc basis -- he is the very archetype of the literary device "Deus in machina". Notice "in", not "ex": Superman is the god inside the story, so it is an established part of the narrative that he'll suddenly use some incredible power to defeat anyone and anything. The copyright on each of Superman's powers, if such a thing exists, is bound to the copyright of the first issue in which those powers were first exhibited. This makes derivative works a complete minefield.
True, but he has every right to be a lamer, and we should defend those rights.
It's not just about him whining about not being able to get free money (I'm not a particular fan of that business model), but it's also about the arbitrarity of YouTube's model. If YouTube declared that it wanted public domain videos to be entirely free, that would be one thing, but they don't. Google here are just engaging in unnecessary arse-covering, putting a burden of proof on users for something that is technically impossible to prove. This is one of those cases of "I don't agree with what you are saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" because squashing this guy's opportunistic use of public domain material has knock-on effects for all use of public domain material.
You seem to be pretty familiar with the regulations. The thing that confuses me at the moment is that at the time of the Mickey Mouse act, no-one was clear on the status of expired works -- it looked as though the copyright extension was going to be disregard registration and bring coprights that had expired due to lack of renewal (as opposed to complete expiration of timelimit) would be removed from the public domain, and these cartoons would be part of that. Did this happen? Are these cartoons now copyrighted, even though nobody has been pursuing infringers to date?
Ah no.. the problem is the ignorant masses propagating the fallacious idea that science and religious faith are incompatible, and there are perhaps more such people among atheists than religious.
"How will we make healthy, nutritious food? I know, let's take the stuff traditionally considered inedible junk and use it as food. That ought to do it."
It already exists; it's called a Raspberry Pi 2, and it's cheaper/smaller than a CHIP with the shields necessary to be a competent media player.
The flip-side of that coin is that if you want to attach a touch-screen, the lack of need for an adaptor makes the CHIP cheaper and smaller that a Pi. The same goes for batteries.
Well I read satire into the GP's post. After all, the specs on the computer are kind of 2005 vintage, and about as out-of-date as the "Beowulf cluster" running gag...
Cheap crap but still crap.
I prefer to think of it as a modern alternative to a traditional microcontroller for hobbyists, because that's what it seems to be. Look at the number of people already using the Pi as a microcontroller substitute due to the ease of programming (ubiquitous operating environment and standard programming tools) and ready availability. This is not only cheaper than the Pi, but it comes with battery management built in, making it a heck of a lot more convenient to "makers".
The other big advantage this has is in prototyping embedded systems. People use the Pi in prototype systems, but it means that there's a lot of reworking to do to bring the code to production readiness, as you may well be changing architecture -- the Broadcom SoC in the Pi is only available in massive bulk, whereas Allwinner parts can be bought off the various direct export sites in fairly low numbers, meaning that code prototypes developed on CHIP can be moved to production on the same SoC without the CHIP board with little or no reworking.
And that's what I think drew Allwinner to be so cooperative here -- they can see the potential in the market for all the low-order gadgets coming through Kickstarter, and they want to get that cash.
I suppose you're right, in which case what I should have said was that Chomsky was wrong to focus so narrowly on syntax. His attempts to dicorce "grammaticality" from meaning still poison linguistics to this day. Every single course I have taken on grammars (in both linguistics and computing) spends a lot of time on CFGs but doesn't even mention Tesnière's valency model, which, published just a couple of years after Chomsky published CFGs, managed to fill the disjoin between Chomskyan grammar and real language.
... which does less harm than some of the vaccines [...] being forced on people to promote "herd immunity".
This is a true statement. The problem is that the harmful vaccines are a minority of the extant treatments, and when the anti-vaxxer crowd falsely claims all vaccines, including the safe life-savers, are toxic it makes it easier for the pharmaceutical companies to cover up the ill effects of dangerous ones, because everyone assumes anyone who speaks up against the vaccine is a lunatic.
A super-hydrophillic coating would probably get clogged up with dirt pretty quick.
There's a super-huge flaw that's staring you right in the face. The egg shape is claimed to help gather rainwater, but it does precisely the opposite -- it disperses it. You need to funnel the water into a single intake, not spread it out everywhere. Basically, their funnel is upside down.
I don't get why they don't have wheels and an A-bar on this -- it looks an awful lot like a caravan to me, even to the point of being pretty aerodynamic (other than the sodding great windmill getting in the way).
Compiler error: expression encountered; expected statement.
Note -- Java platforms, not languages. Java can be compiled to various architectures other than JVM.