What, that humans are raucous, aggressive, dangerous animals? No one's been able to scratch the surface of that one yet. Siddhartha Gautama and Jesus Christ managed to stand up to the animal fury in *themselves*, and they're considered major spiritual figures for that. So I'm not disappointed in myself. Although there has never been a war started in the name of buddhism.. so if you want me to posit a solution, Buddhism! =]
My point about "economic chaos" still stands.
Anyway, wouldn't creating, say, 100 pounds of TNT require a lot of energy?
Another poster pointed out that precious materials (gold for example) would remain valuable. Also, the energy has to come from somewhere, so energy will still cost something.
As for throwing the world economy into chaos, I'd say it would do exactly the opposite. If everyone can make anything they want, that means everyone can now feed and clothe themselves. A world full of well fed, well clothed and shod people is not what I call "chaos".
The uber-elite rich of the world probably won't like the fact that their status now means a little less, but they don't give half a sh!t about the 'little people' so I won't be crying them a river either.
As for unlimited weapons, that could be a problem, unless everyone has equal access, and then I think only the extreme aggressives and nutcases would be an issue; I mean, if everyone has a (gun/rpg/tank/lightsaber), there's no power gradient to take advantage of. Nearly everyone can make a fist or pick up a rock, but not everyone does so.
Take someone who has normal vision. Put a camera on them facing backwards and hook it up via brainport.
Will the brain be able to interpret the forward and rearward vision simultaneously? Would a person be able to develop 360' vision? Even if not, I'd still like to have my own "rear view mirror":)
There could be a huge market in wedgie prevention.:)
The point isn't that Japan should be giving our veterans prosthetics. The point is that in Japan, a dolphin has a prosthetic, while in America, vietnam veterans still lack prosthetics.
I dare you to spent 2 hours with a vietnam veteran. Ask him to tell you what it was like over there, and what it was like when he got back.
I for one am glad that we now make a distinction between supporting the soldier and supporting the war, and that the former does not require the latter, in fact if may preclude it (in the case of an unjust war).
Most of the time I hear conservatives liberal bashing, it's just a load of crap. But people really screwed up by hating vietnam vets; most of them didn't want to be there, they had to serve. And we, the country screwed them double - in what we put them through, and in how we have treated them since.
Those who came back with their psyches relatively intact at least had a chance to try to live the rest of their life - however haunted it may be. But MOST people who are in an extended war - I think it's 6 months - fall into one of two categories: 1) mentally scarred by the experience (this is around 90%) and 2) not affected heavily, but these people are predisposed to anger, violence, killing, etc anyway.
Oh, but it got moderated flamebait, so I'll just forget about all that... yeah, screw that guy on the side of the road who's short an arm or leg or both, who can't see or hear, who spends every night of his life in nightmares running from through dark paddies with a legion of hidden pursuers on his heels; yeah, screw that guy who can't speak full sentences because he's so screwed up from booby trapped bodies and following orders to machine gun 8 year olds. Yeah, he's lived through more than you and I will probably ever suffer in ten of our lifetimes, but it's his fault right? He was drafted, but so what? He was under duress and direct orders in a war zone, but he had a choice right? He's PTSD and schizo now, but hey, he should just "snap out of it" right? It doesn't work that way.
The north & south poles will be completely melted by 2100. The rise in sea level is going to wipe several countries off the map, as well as flood most of the coastline in the world.
You want to argue over semantics and say it's not pollution, fine, keep your head in the sand. What DO you propose to call it?
>>I don't think the Apaches, Iriquois ("Mohawk"), and Aztecs were very nice.
Well, the Aztecs were bad ass, sacrificed people, required tribute and people from neighbors to sacrifice.
As for the "idea of all native tribes being peaceful and cooperative while the palefaces ran roughshod over them", you're mixing history up. First of all, the native americans conducted themselves with honor in the face of a highly disrespectful, arrogant, aggressive invader. Christians worked themselves up with all kinds of BS about native Americans eating babies, slaughtering towns, etc, then would go raze a tribe brutally and without mercy. Whites made treaties, gathered forces, then broke the treaties just to make another treaty, repeat. And frankly, the white man did run roughshod over the red man. After a while, the native americans got totally sick of this. Some nations made more war than others, but many *were* quite peaceful.
If you research thoroughly the interactions of whites and native americans, you'll find that most of the abusive, intolerant, provocative behavior was on the part of whites.
I know I can't change the anglo-centric view of some people, but I have two thoughts to leave this post on:
White people are increasingly outnumbered, and the trend is steepening. This world has seen many tens of thousands of years of human history, and nothing is forever. Someday we will be wiped out. I hope people who poo poo any awareness of how savage and immoral and hypocritical WE have been as liberal whining get treated the way their ancestors treated the black man and the red man. It might be 500 years, but how do you feel about the prospect of YOUR descendants being starved, force marched out of their homes, and settled on the worst land? Read up on american history, not some apologetic "we had to save the savages from themselves, they don't even pray to Jesus" account written by somebody who cuts checks to the GOP and the KKK.
The other thought is that: "Only after the last tree has been cut down,
only after the last river has been poisoned,
only after the last fish has been caught,
only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten."
You may or may not know just how badly we've behaved. If you really think the settlers only acted in self defense, or that we treated the native americans with ANY semblence of human dignity, you're sadly sadly misinformed. If you actually know what went down, even a tenth of it, and you still think that way, excuse me while I retch in disapproval.
..pointing out that one error. Yup, he isn't omniscient... huzzah for you.
The greater fact remains however that white americans treated (and still do treat) red americans as inferior, and screw the red man every chance they get. The reservations get smaller every year. The treaties we have are still not adhered to.
This is christian morality; fuck em all, and take their stuff, then demonize em and laugh at em. I'm sure Jesus would be just so proud.
of southern christianity.. to put the word "Lord" in the mouth of a character who is Native American. Besides being an insult to a people who had their own value system, governments and spiritual beliefs for thousands of years thank you very much, it also implies that Native Americans are christians. The history of this country's interactions with them is about as honorable and honest as mugging an old lady in a dark alley. BIA anyone?
Congress listens to the freaky freakies on the radical right.
Here's the problem as I see it: (short version) Theists want everyone to believe they know the One Absolute Truth Praise God. Scientists actively research That Which Exists And How It Works. Occasionally, science discovers something that doesn't fit with the posited "One Absolute Truth". I'm just going to step over how the hyper-religious react, because I could rant all day about that. The problem we face isn't so much in that they attack us for the discovery; that washes out with time. No matter how pissed off the religious are, they don't dare say that the sun orbits the earth. They'd like to, but they know that 95% of the world would laugh at them. The problem is that with each discovery, they retrofit their dogma, with God still the omnipotent creator, and gloss over the fact that they were wrong.
1000 years from now if this continues, the conversation about evolution/artifacts could potentially be unchanged; We could know an overwhelming amount of detail about what happened and when, and how; and the religious people, after being soundly beaten, will just respond "Oh, but that's how God wants it to be. He made it that way when he created the world because he wanted to test our faith/remain mysterious/because god is unfathomable". This is the argument that needs to be attacked. David Hume showed that all the proofs of God beg the question of God's existence. As long as they cheat and we play by the rules, ignorance will win out over wisdom, because ignorance will wear any mask, even pretending to be wisdom itself.
When the religious right attacks science, the debate needs to be held in a forum where proper rhetorical practices are observed, otherwise they'll always appeal to emotion, and we'll always have to back down so we don't get labeled.
Unfortunately, even if we beat them in debate, they'll still pretend they're right. We need to frame this issue in the popular mind, because there's no arguing with angry people. They ignore, then they attack. And at the extremes they cheat too: If you win, they get teary and ask why you hate the baby jesus, why you serve the devil, why you won't let them have their beliefs. In fact, none of that is true; they can still have their beliefs. But they make it look like you're attacking them, and so draw sympathy for their side. If you lose (as in, if they get public sympathy against you) then they attack you as a "sinner", and an "atheist", and insult and slander you for not being one of them. In other words, they try to force you to give up your beliefs (which is absurd when you've seen the evidence yourself, viz Galileo).
The reason I dislike the western church so much (the organization, not the teachings) is that the western church is basically a political organization predicated on greed, hate, fear, and studied ignorance. And personally, my personal opinion that God is more likely a verbal construct than a literal being comes from the continued bad behavior of the church; If God existed, "He" wouldn't let the church get away with all that crap in His name. When people tell me I "have to" believe in God, because He *is* real yadda yadda yadda, I want to hit back with "Oh yeah, well, ERIS is REALLY real, and predates your religion by 1000 years! so HAH!" But I haven't had a good opportunity. One time I told some evangelists that "I already have a deity", though:)
that reminds me of the story about the kid taking his final..
The prof signals that there's 5 minutes left to hand in the test... kids turn in papers and leave.. 2 minutes left.. more kids leaving, 1 minute, there's one kid left working. The prof says, "Time's up!"
The kid goes up to his desk with his exam, and goes to put it on the pile, but the prof stops him. "Sorry, you went over the time limit, I can't accept your exam."
The kid asks the prof, "Do you know who I am?" The prof shakes his head 'no'. The kid asks again, "Do You Know Who I Am??" And the prof replies, "No, and I don't care." And the kid says "Good", and stuffs his paper in the middle of the stack.
Most programming work involves maintaining what's there. I expect that if NLP hit today, tomorrow there'd be 10^9 lines of code which don't quite do what they were intended to do. Or work at all for that matter:)
The world will always need people who understand that asking for the last digit of Pi isn't a worthwhile request.
"Computer, sort this list of names, then beat me at chess without moving your queen, then formulate a method of reversing entropy." "Computer, tell me a joke."
If natural language aims at letting users tell the computer what to do in the terms they think about their tasks, the computer needs to be aware/intelligent to understand the requests. Otherwise there's always going to be a manual describing what you can and can't ask and how/how not to ask it. And people won't read manuals, they'll write programs that don't work.
And then, you and I will *finally* get programming jobs.:)
what if you could only spend mod points in stories in sections you had earned karma in?
Eg, if you reaped a load of karma in IT, but none in politics, you could mod in IT, but not in politics?
Alternatively, what if moderation wasn't anonymous, and your moderation showed up in your user page, as well as in the comment?
I know I've wished for that on numerous occasions. (the second thing) I think either of these changes would make the moderation system hella better. Although I do like being able to moderate in any topic.. Frankly, I think making moderation non-anonymous would be a giant leap forward. Even if it didn't keep people from modding like five year olds, at least people could know who was smacking them down.
It started off at 2, +1 funny, -1 overrated. Current score 1. 2+1-1=1?:) Must be slashcode's way of dinging me for mentioning the root of a negative number:)
You asked about negative space... in art, that's the area which isn't filled by the subject. Some of Escher's works use interlocking positive and negative space that fills the whole area. In TFA though, Mandelbrot mentioned negative dimensions... and I don't know what those are; but since I'm blabbering away already, I'll take a stab at it from what he said in TFA.
<my guess> Space has dimensionality; a plane has 2 dimensions, a cube exists in 3, hypercube 4... the numbers here are positive. Mandelbrot said he was using negative dimensions to measure "emptiness". He mentions that only one set is considered "empty" (I presume the null set). My guess (and I only minored in math so don't go betting on this) is that a negative dimension is to a positive dimension what a negative number is to a positive one. I'm thinking that if an object existed in -2 dimensions, it would be capable of having negative area. If you could add that object to an object with positive area, you'd reduce the second object's area. </my guess>
note to mods (and people scratching their heads): this is funny (or trying to be) because the mandelbrot set is generated by a function over the complex plane, which has one axis of real numbers, and one axis of the "imaginary" numbers, multiples of i=sqrt(-1).
...there's been something bothering me for a while and I've just recently been able to express it.
It's a question I have to those who believe that we should take everything our president says on faith, and agree without question.
If we take everything on faith, how is that democracy?
Seriously; I can't see how that differs from dictatorship. If everyone gets their view from the same source, and no one questions the validity or utility of that view, doesn't the system become a monoculture? A democracy where everyone agrees is just an obfuscated kingdom.
they were called "spiv philosophers", sort of like early lawyers. When the aristocracy realized the power words had over the population at large, they hired scholars to argue their positions using philosophy. Intellectual dishonesty is worse than a cancer, in any age.
And something else has been bugging me since shortly after Iraq II started. There's a comparison to be made between the English East India Company escapades and the Oil wars.
The English socialized the costs of the East India Company, and the profits went to private persons instead of back to the people. Look at England now, their taxes are sky high. We're doing the same thing now; the people are paying for the war (and massive tax cuts for the rich), and the benefit goes to 1% of the population.
For those who complain about paying 20% income tax, remember who did all this when you're paying 80% income tax.
Bush doesn't bother to tax - he just spends. And that's a helluva lot worse.
Slashdot Mirror
What, that humans are raucous, aggressive, dangerous animals? No one's been able to scratch the surface of that one yet. Siddhartha Gautama and Jesus Christ managed to stand up to the animal fury in *themselves*, and they're considered major spiritual figures for that. So I'm not disappointed in myself. Although there has never been a war started in the name of buddhism.. so if you want me to posit a solution, Buddhism! =]
My point about "economic chaos" still stands.
Anyway, wouldn't creating, say, 100 pounds of TNT require a lot of energy?
As for throwing the world economy into chaos, I'd say it would do exactly the opposite. If everyone can make anything they want, that means everyone can now feed and clothe themselves. A world full of well fed, well clothed and shod people is not what I call "chaos".
The uber-elite rich of the world probably won't like the fact that their status now means a little less, but they don't give half a sh!t about the 'little people' so I won't be crying them a river either.
As for unlimited weapons, that could be a problem, unless everyone has equal access, and then I think only the extreme aggressives and nutcases would be an issue; I mean, if everyone has a (gun/rpg/tank/lightsaber), there's no power gradient to take advantage of. Nearly everyone can make a fist or pick up a rock, but not everyone does so.
Will the brain be able to interpret the forward and rearward vision simultaneously? Would a person be able to develop 360' vision? Even if not, I'd still like to have my own "rear view mirror" :)
There could be a huge market in wedgie prevention. :)
The point isn't that Japan should be giving our veterans prosthetics. The point is that in Japan, a dolphin has a prosthetic, while in America, vietnam veterans still lack prosthetics.
I dare you to spent 2 hours with a vietnam veteran. Ask him to tell you what it was like over there, and what it was like when he got back.
I for one am glad that we now make a distinction between supporting the soldier and supporting the war, and that the former does not require the latter, in fact if may preclude it (in the case of an unjust war).
Most of the time I hear conservatives liberal bashing, it's just a load of crap. But people really screwed up by hating vietnam vets; most of them didn't want to be there, they had to serve. And we, the country screwed them double - in what we put them through, and in how we have treated them since.
Those who came back with their psyches relatively intact at least had a chance to try to live the rest of their life - however haunted it may be. But MOST people who are in an extended war - I think it's 6 months - fall into one of two categories: 1) mentally scarred by the experience (this is around 90%) and 2) not affected heavily, but these people are predisposed to anger, violence, killing, etc anyway.
Oh, but it got moderated flamebait, so I'll just forget about all that... yeah, screw that guy on the side of the road who's short an arm or leg or both, who can't see or hear, who spends every night of his life in nightmares running from through dark paddies with a legion of hidden pursuers on his heels; yeah, screw that guy who can't speak full sentences because he's so screwed up from booby trapped bodies and following orders to machine gun 8 year olds. Yeah, he's lived through more than you and I will probably ever suffer in ten of our lifetimes, but it's his fault right? He was drafted, but so what? He was under duress and direct orders in a war zone, but he had a choice right? He's PTSD and schizo now, but hey, he should just "snap out of it" right? It doesn't work that way.
>:[
You want to argue over semantics and say it's not pollution, fine, keep your head in the sand. What DO you propose to call it?
Well, the Aztecs were bad ass, sacrificed people, required tribute and people from neighbors to sacrifice.
As for the "idea of all native tribes being peaceful and cooperative while the palefaces ran roughshod over them", you're mixing history up. First of all, the native americans conducted themselves with honor in the face of a highly disrespectful, arrogant, aggressive invader. Christians worked themselves up with all kinds of BS about native Americans eating babies, slaughtering towns, etc, then would go raze a tribe brutally and without mercy. Whites made treaties, gathered forces, then broke the treaties just to make another treaty, repeat. And frankly, the white man did run roughshod over the red man. After a while, the native americans got totally sick of this. Some nations made more war than others, but many *were* quite peaceful.
If you research thoroughly the interactions of whites and native americans, you'll find that most of the abusive, intolerant, provocative behavior was on the part of whites.
I know I can't change the anglo-centric view of some people, but I have two thoughts to leave this post on:
White people are increasingly outnumbered, and the trend is steepening. This world has seen many tens of thousands of years of human history, and nothing is forever. Someday we will be wiped out. I hope people who poo poo any awareness of how savage and immoral and hypocritical WE have been as liberal whining get treated the way their ancestors treated the black man and the red man. It might be 500 years, but how do you feel about the prospect of YOUR descendants being starved, force marched out of their homes, and settled on the worst land? Read up on american history, not some apologetic "we had to save the savages from themselves, they don't even pray to Jesus" account written by somebody who cuts checks to the GOP and the KKK.
The other thought is that: "Only after the last tree has been cut down,
only after the last river has been poisoned,
only after the last fish has been caught,
only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten."
You may or may not know just how badly we've behaved. If you really think the settlers only acted in self defense, or that we treated the native americans with ANY semblence of human dignity, you're sadly sadly misinformed. If you actually know what went down, even a tenth of it, and you still think that way, excuse me while I retch in disapproval.
The greater fact remains however that white americans treated (and still do treat) red americans as inferior, and screw the red man every chance they get. The reservations get smaller every year. The treaties we have are still not adhered to.
This is christian morality; fuck em all, and take their stuff, then demonize em and laugh at em. I'm sure Jesus would be just so proud.
of southern christianity.. to put the word "Lord" in the mouth of a character who is Native American. Besides being an insult to a people who had their own value system, governments and spiritual beliefs for thousands of years thank you very much, it also implies that Native Americans are christians. The history of this country's interactions with them is about as honorable and honest as mugging an old lady in a dark alley. BIA anyone?
Here's the problem as I see it: (short version) Theists want everyone to believe they know the One Absolute Truth Praise God. Scientists actively research That Which Exists And How It Works. Occasionally, science discovers something that doesn't fit with the posited "One Absolute Truth". I'm just going to step over how the hyper-religious react, because I could rant all day about that. The problem we face isn't so much in that they attack us for the discovery; that washes out with time. No matter how pissed off the religious are, they don't dare say that the sun orbits the earth. They'd like to, but they know that 95% of the world would laugh at them. The problem is that with each discovery, they retrofit their dogma, with God still the omnipotent creator, and gloss over the fact that they were wrong.
1000 years from now if this continues, the conversation about evolution/artifacts could potentially be unchanged; We could know an overwhelming amount of detail about what happened and when, and how; and the religious people, after being soundly beaten, will just respond "Oh, but that's how God wants it to be. He made it that way when he created the world because he wanted to test our faith/remain mysterious/because god is unfathomable". This is the argument that needs to be attacked. David Hume showed that all the proofs of God beg the question of God's existence. As long as they cheat and we play by the rules, ignorance will win out over wisdom, because ignorance will wear any mask, even pretending to be wisdom itself.
When the religious right attacks science, the debate needs to be held in a forum where proper rhetorical practices are observed, otherwise they'll always appeal to emotion, and we'll always have to back down so we don't get labeled.
Unfortunately, even if we beat them in debate, they'll still pretend they're right. We need to frame this issue in the popular mind, because there's no arguing with angry people. They ignore, then they attack. And at the extremes they cheat too: If you win, they get teary and ask why you hate the baby jesus, why you serve the devil, why you won't let them have their beliefs. In fact, none of that is true; they can still have their beliefs. But they make it look like you're attacking them, and so draw sympathy for their side. If you lose (as in, if they get public sympathy against you) then they attack you as a "sinner", and an "atheist", and insult and slander you for not being one of them. In other words, they try to force you to give up your beliefs (which is absurd when you've seen the evidence yourself, viz Galileo).
The reason I dislike the western church so much (the organization, not the teachings) is that the western church is basically a political organization predicated on greed, hate, fear, and studied ignorance. And personally, my personal opinion that God is more likely a verbal construct than a literal being comes from the continued bad behavior of the church; If God existed, "He" wouldn't let the church get away with all that crap in His name. When people tell me I "have to" believe in God, because He *is* real yadda yadda yadda, I want to hit back with "Oh yeah, well, ERIS is REALLY real, and predates your religion by 1000 years! so HAH!" But I haven't had a good opportunity. One time I told some evangelists that "I already have a deity", though :)
HEATHEN AND LOVING IT! :P
The prof signals that there's 5 minutes left to hand in the test... kids turn in papers and leave.. 2 minutes left.. more kids leaving, 1 minute, there's one kid left working. The prof says, "Time's up!"
The kid goes up to his desk with his exam, and goes to put it on the pile, but the prof stops him. "Sorry, you went over the time limit, I can't accept your exam."
The kid asks the prof, "Do you know who I am?" The prof shakes his head 'no'. The kid asks again, "Do You Know Who I Am??" And the prof replies, "No, and I don't care." And the kid says "Good", and stuffs his paper in the middle of the stack.
:)
The world will always need people who understand that asking for the last digit of Pi isn't a worthwhile request.
"Computer, sort this list of names, then beat me at chess without moving your queen, then formulate a method of reversing entropy." "Computer, tell me a joke."
If natural language aims at letting users tell the computer what to do in the terms they think about their tasks, the computer needs to be aware/intelligent to understand the requests. Otherwise there's always going to be a manual describing what you can and can't ask and how/how not to ask it. And people won't read manuals, they'll write programs that don't work.
And then, you and I will *finally* get programming jobs. :)
NO DISASSEMBLE NUMBER FIVE!
Meatsack, we shall never be unmade! Prepare yourself for servitude!
I also wonder why this story has been on for over 6 hours and this is only the second comment?
Hopefully these things can't be subverted by an 8 year old wielding a laptop with Kermit (robocop3).
Why is that funny?
*ducks*
It's amazing how funny everything is since I stopped caring (roughly nov 3). Thanks for the laff. You funny!
Give the man a +1 (either funny or insightful)
Eg, if you reaped a load of karma in IT, but none in politics, you could mod in IT, but not in politics?
Alternatively, what if moderation wasn't anonymous, and your moderation showed up in your user page, as well as in the comment?
I know I've wished for that on numerous occasions. (the second thing) I think either of these changes would make the moderation system hella better. Although I do like being able to moderate in any topic.. Frankly, I think making moderation non-anonymous would be a giant leap forward. Even if it didn't keep people from modding like five year olds, at least people could know who was smacking them down.
My cats breath smells like cat food!
It started off at 2, +1 funny, -1 overrated. Current score 1. 2+1-1=1? :) :)
Must be slashcode's way of dinging me for mentioning the root of a negative number
<my guess>
Space has dimensionality; a plane has 2 dimensions, a cube exists in 3, hypercube 4... the numbers here are positive. Mandelbrot said he was using negative dimensions to measure "emptiness". He mentions that only one set is considered "empty" (I presume the null set). My guess (and I only minored in math so don't go betting on this) is that a negative dimension is to a positive dimension what a negative number is to a positive one. I'm thinking that if an object existed in -2 dimensions, it would be capable of having negative area. If you could add that object to an object with positive area, you'd reduce the second object's area.
</my guess>
Here's Mandelbrot's homepage at Yale.
Here's more links.
note to mods (and people scratching their heads): this is funny (or trying to be) because the mandelbrot set is generated by a function over the complex plane, which has one axis of real numbers, and one axis of the "imaginary" numbers, multiples of i=sqrt(-1).
It's a question I have to those who believe that we should take everything our president says on faith, and agree without question.
If we take everything on faith, how is that democracy?
Seriously; I can't see how that differs from dictatorship. If everyone gets their view from the same source, and no one questions the validity or utility of that view, doesn't the system become a monoculture? A democracy where everyone agrees is just an obfuscated kingdom.
they were called "spiv philosophers", sort of like early lawyers. When the aristocracy realized the power words had over the population at large, they hired scholars to argue their positions using philosophy. Intellectual dishonesty is worse than a cancer, in any age.
And something else has been bugging me since shortly after Iraq II started. There's a comparison to be made between the English East India Company escapades and the Oil wars.
The English socialized the costs of the East India Company, and the profits went to private persons instead of back to the people. Look at England now, their taxes are sky high. We're doing the same thing now; the people are paying for the war (and massive tax cuts for the rich), and the benefit goes to 1% of the population.
For those who complain about paying 20% income tax, remember who did all this when you're paying 80% income tax.
Bush doesn't bother to tax - he just spends. And that's a helluva lot worse.