It's not really an issue of computing power. Analyzing the structure and function (behavior) of a system are two radically different things, sadly, and while a complete understanding of one really doesn't help you a whole hell of a lot with the other, you need both to really grasp the nature of the system.
One great example of this is ant colony behavior: the ants interact in ways that are not readily apparent simply from studying isolated ants, leading to patterns in movement (in time as well as in space because they rest and work on the same schedule).
I've read that physics in general is a discipline in which you can figure out the way systems work relatively easily, but have a hard time accounting for specific forms or structures...so you have freshman ballistics problems that begin "Imagine a spherical or point-shaped cow launched from a catapult..." Is this why so few problem can be exactly solved? The more intricate the structure, the less the generalized functional model describes it?
Not at all. Biology has the same structure-function paradox as every other discipline...so x-ray crystallographs won't tell you how the active site works, and chemical models don't tell you much about structure. This sounds a lot more like Bioinformatics, which is about modeling information flow in biological systems.
Yes. I want to do a PhD thesis on this exact phenomenon, modeling people's ethical decisionmaking process as a sense-and-respond cycle or OODA loop (check out the wikipedia article).
Interestingly enough, there was a comment to this effect in the Cap'n Crunch discussion earlier today. It seems as if a lot of engineers enjoy technology and tinkering for its own sake, whereas many others value it for its usefulness--it just has to "work."
Not to derail the thread--then again, this is slashdot...
I know that the gambler's fallacy comes into play when you try to ascertain the probability that the next toss will be heads or tails. Based on the previous 10 tosses, you might think there's a 90% it'll come up tails. But the odds are actually 50/50. I understand that this depends on how you frame the question, or what questions you ask of the data.
So let's say you could quantify some relationship between the probability of ovulation and how much skin a girl is showing at the bar on Friday night. Are you committing a fallacy by applying the results of the study to this particular case?
Some method of ferreting out (or at least red-flagging) such posters would probably be solid gold. In large part you can depend on the fact that shills are not very bright, they tend to repeat themselves, and their language gives away their intentions. I don't know how you'd translate such aspects into a methodology though:)
Ok...You're drawing a comparison between two researchers' extensive analysis and criticism of other scientists' methods (ie, peer review) with some dude taking a break from answering remedy tickets and reading fark to say "Hey...what none of you science guys have ever considered is that maybe the sun is just getting hotter!"
Slashdot readers love to one-up each other and point out gaps in each other's knowledge...it's like a great and continuous nerd kumite. But there is a time when you have to sit back and tell someone to shut up--that CS degree was probably a little too light on the "science" to really admit you to the conversation.
Why don't you back up and try this theory from square one? You've left everyone behind.
Look: Your counter-argument to the charge that studies funded by Big Oil are tilted to profit Big Oil whereas studies by innumerable academic researchers funded by tax money tend not to fudge their data (that nasty Peer Review bogeyman again) is that "Well, they're getting paid to do research, therefore they must be..." Must be what? I'm sure I can't make heads or tails of it.
It's your last line that gives you away as a shill, however. "Oil companies don't stand to gain by tilting research in their own favor?" Puh-leeze.
Not at all. This is an issue of the existing disparity between observed and expected climatological models. Or were you going to ask everyone to wait another 100 years in 2107? I only hope my kids live to see that day.
That was a lot of wasted text. You have still failed to address the point: You can speculate that environmentalists and concerned climatologists stand to gain by fudging their research to spread FUD about global warming. On the other hand, Big Oil has already been observed doing this. Badly.
Of course--and I hate to say this for the third or fourth time in this thread--the way you phrase your response marks you as a shill for Big Oil: "I think Global Warming may be true, but let's not get hasty here, gentlemen!" This kind of language is repeated all the time by industry plants in just about every variety of/. thread you will find: "I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but..." "Personally I don't smoke, but..."
Statements such as the above ("Volcanoes do more than us!") which are repeated ad nauseum by oil company shills have also been handled by climatologists. What's next? What are you going to pull out when you reach into your bag? "Cows fart, so cars don't matter!!"
So, essentially you're wrong again, and since you've at this point become a mouthpiece for Big Oil, I see very little reason to listen to anything else you have to say.
Allow me to point something out. Here are some snippets of your post: "...will surely come if..." "They want..." "...if they can make a comfy living..."
These are all conditional/future statements; the fact of Environmentalists gaining anything from convincing people that global climate change is a reality is a purely theoretical one. Whereas we have observations of Big Oil actually making money by tilting their research. This, to me (and anyone else who actually know anything about how science is done) is a rather important distinction.
Anyone with any kind of agenda is always looking to make surveys/studies support his viewpoint. But in this case it's "big oil" { insert doom-and-gloom music here }, so therefore their attempts to skew results are somehow more evil than other groups doing it? What a complete and utter crock.
The idea that environmentalists have something to gain from the pursuit of (e.g.) alternative energy sources is largely theoretical and is based almost entirely upon cynicism (Exhibit A above). Whereas we have plenty of examples of lobbyists for Big * (oil, tobacco, whatever) and the money chain is in plain sight. So, it's more a case of "Big Oil is doing this because they are evil," and "There is no evidence that there is even something like 'Big Environment,' much less that it is somehow paying scientists to skew research results."
Or had you not heard of this little thing called peer review? What makes your statements less than valid is that they depend less upon evidence and more upon FUD.
But apparently it takes a bored IT guy on slashdot to correct an international consortium of climatologists. Maybe you ought to take a course in the statistical analysis of experimental data, and when you have a grasp of how scientists analyze data to construct theories that explain observations, they often take many things into account, you can rejoin the discussion.
Or, the short version: THE FACT THAT THE SOLAR RADIATION HAS INCREASED HAS BEEN ACCOUNTED FOR.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this the subject of a Larry Niven story? With accompanying moral quandary once it's discovered that the mini-universe has evolved sentient life.
I am simply claiming that more Christians have murdered people *for their religious beliefs* than Atheists have murdered people *for their religious beliefs*.
I'm not sure I understand the significance of this. Is motivation for killing the key issue?
Remember, the OP said that the only thing keeping Atheists from killing was fear of getting caught and guilt, while Christians are kept in line by fear of eternal damnation. If that really were true, we should see scores of Atheists shooting up schools and malls, and Atheist governments marching throngs of people into infernos, because those Atheists have no god that they fear.
Nah. People have souls--they are not blind to right and wrong just because they don't practice religion (this is what the Catholics call "general revelation" as opposed to "special revelation," that is, religious texts like the Bible). Also I hate to get caught making a "No True Scotsman" argument but is someone who gets caught in some huge egregious sin, like embezzling money from some Help the Starving African Children with AIDS fund while doing a line off an underage stripper's stomach, authentically Christian? I'm just saying, I don't look to Jim & Tammy Faye for my model, I look to Mother Therese and Dr. Martin Luther King.
Biblical teachings are context-dependent? If the rules change depending on where and when you live, how do you decide which of the teachings are absolute, and which are open to interpretation?
Biblical teachings are as subject to context and interpretation as anything you'll find in a peer-reviewed journal: there is a basic underlying reality, which you may or may not understand. If your understanding of Article A contradicts your understanding of Article B, then you probably have one or both of them wrong.
For example, Jesus says to love everybody, and turn the other cheek. Check. Leviticus, on the other hand, says don't be gay. Is there some way to reconcile the two? Probably, but it might not be completely obvious.
Speaking of peer review, you should probably read up on the evolution of the Talmud. The Church councils are not a whole lot different: people ask "Ok so what does this all mean?" and you get the experts together and try to hammer it out. This doesn't necessarily rule out the resulting text as a source of authority, simply because it was "made by men."
Anyway, the only point I'm trying to make is that there is the underlying truth (which is fixed and absolute), and then there's our understanding of it (which is anything but). Why didn't God make the Bible easy to understand? Who knows? Why does He do anything? It's ineffable!
I do think the bennies spread around a lot better than you claim. But I'm also not a naive idealist who thinks that everyhing is going to be perfect real soon now; nor that there won't always be marginal situations in which the bennies don't spread around at all,; nor that human beings at their worst won't continue to introduce complications and failures into the best of solutions, for the forseeable future of the human race.
The fact that Africa continues to be a seething pesthole of misery and violence, with no sign of letting up, in spite of all the benefits several thousand years of human civilization have been able to come up with, says more to me about the limitations of human nature than it says about the limits of human invention and industry.
That's odd, because I would think that your view of the reach of the benefits is a lot more optimistic than my own. Does that make me a naive idealist? Or were you directing this ad-hom at someone else?
The (new and different) argument that you are putting forth--that there will always be imperfections and imbalances, therefore there is no reason to slow down industry or attempt to mitigate its harmful effects in order to correct them--does not address the original question in any way. Nor is it true; in some cases "the process" is itself directly responsible for creating "seething pestholes of misery and violence," and in nearly all cases the long view could be benefited if we switch "the process" to ones that are more sustainable.
The fact that we as a society prefer cheap goods today over clean air tomorrow does, however, speak to the sad state of humankind. I'll give you that much.
That is BS. Influenza virus is one of the most successful "parasites" out there. And it kills whole host of humans.
Compare it to, say, Ebola, which kills its host in no time flat. Not a very "successful" organism but a talented killing machine. I would deem humanity less than successful if we go out choking on our own waste products.
I guess technically we would go out like rock stars if that were the case.
Re-read the parent. He asserted that "industrial activity" had led to cheap and widely-available drugs...
The bitter irony is that it's these very industrial and technological advancements that make the discovery, analysis, synthesis, mass production, and world-wide distribution at affordable prices of this painkiller possible in the first place.
...and I in turn pointed out that this actually is not true where it is most needed.
The point being that the benefits of industrial activity are lopsided, whereas both you and the OP imply that they are universal. In truth, the negative effects of this activity spread around pretty well, but the bennies, well, not so much.
Granted! But I think universally, solutions that directly produce fewer new problems are superior to solutions that are going to produce more.
If you know your process is going to be more expensive, you can budget for that. If you know it's going to harm the environment--well, the environment is a pretty delicate toy to be messing around with and there's no warranty. It's like the 360 I got my godson for Christmas--short-term, he might have fun throwing it around the house, but in the long run it's easier to leave it on the shelf than to try to fix it later.
Your point is well-taken, but consider the third world--the desperately poor parts of it. I think in a lot of places they are still working on the "Getting pennecillin past the warlords" bit much less the "Desperately needed AIDS cocktails."
Slashdot Mirror
It's not really an issue of computing power. Analyzing the structure and function (behavior) of a system are two radically different things, sadly, and while a complete understanding of one really doesn't help you a whole hell of a lot with the other, you need both to really grasp the nature of the system. One great example of this is ant colony behavior: the ants interact in ways that are not readily apparent simply from studying isolated ants, leading to patterns in movement (in time as well as in space because they rest and work on the same schedule).
I've read that physics in general is a discipline in which you can figure out the way systems work relatively easily, but have a hard time accounting for specific forms or structures...so you have freshman ballistics problems that begin "Imagine a spherical or point-shaped cow launched from a catapult..." Is this why so few problem can be exactly solved? The more intricate the structure, the less the generalized functional model describes it?
Not at all. Biology has the same structure-function paradox as every other discipline...so x-ray crystallographs won't tell you how the active site works, and chemical models don't tell you much about structure. This sounds a lot more like Bioinformatics, which is about modeling information flow in biological systems.
Yes. I want to do a PhD thesis on this exact phenomenon, modeling people's ethical decisionmaking process as a sense-and-respond cycle or OODA loop (check out the wikipedia article).
Interestingly enough, there was a comment to this effect in the Cap'n Crunch discussion earlier today. It seems as if a lot of engineers enjoy technology and tinkering for its own sake, whereas many others value it for its usefulness--it just has to "work."
Not to derail the thread--then again, this is slashdot...
I know that the gambler's fallacy comes into play when you try to ascertain the probability that the next toss will be heads or tails. Based on the previous 10 tosses, you might think there's a 90% it'll come up tails. But the odds are actually 50/50. I understand that this depends on how you frame the question, or what questions you ask of the data.
So let's say you could quantify some relationship between the probability of ovulation and how much skin a girl is showing at the bar on Friday night. Are you committing a fallacy by applying the results of the study to this particular case?
Just wonderin'.
That's probably an excellent question.
:)
Some method of ferreting out (or at least red-flagging) such posters would probably be solid gold. In large part you can depend on the fact that shills are not very bright, they tend to repeat themselves, and their language gives away their intentions. I don't know how you'd translate such aspects into a methodology though
Ok...You're drawing a comparison between two researchers' extensive analysis and criticism of other scientists' methods (ie, peer review) with some dude taking a break from answering remedy tickets and reading fark to say "Hey...what none of you science guys have ever considered is that maybe the sun is just getting hotter!"
Slashdot readers love to one-up each other and point out gaps in each other's knowledge...it's like a great and continuous nerd kumite. But there is a time when you have to sit back and tell someone to shut up--that CS degree was probably a little too light on the "science" to really admit you to the conversation.
Bravo.
Why don't you back up and try this theory from square one? You've left everyone behind.
Look: Your counter-argument to the charge that studies funded by Big Oil are tilted to profit Big Oil whereas studies by innumerable academic researchers funded by tax money tend not to fudge their data (that nasty Peer Review bogeyman again) is that "Well, they're getting paid to do research, therefore they must be..." Must be what? I'm sure I can't make heads or tails of it.
It's your last line that gives you away as a shill, however. "Oil companies don't stand to gain by tilting research in their own favor?" Puh-leeze.
Not at all. This is an issue of the existing disparity between observed and expected climatological models.
Or were you going to ask everyone to wait another 100 years in 2107? I only hope my kids live to see that day.
That was a lot of wasted text. You have still failed to address the point: You can speculate that environmentalists and concerned climatologists stand to gain by fudging their research to spread FUD about global warming. On the other hand, Big Oil has already been observed doing this. Badly.
/. thread you will find: "I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but..." "Personally I don't smoke, but..."
Of course--and I hate to say this for the third or fourth time in this thread--the way you phrase your response marks you as a shill for Big Oil: "I think Global Warming may be true, but let's not get hasty here, gentlemen!" This kind of language is repeated all the time by industry plants in just about every variety of
Nice try, though.
I'm not sure I would have said it in those terms, but I've got to hand it to you--that guy is certainly full of shit.
I'm guessing oil company stooge.
Statements such as the above ("Volcanoes do more than us!") which are repeated ad nauseum by oil company shills have also been handled by climatologists. What's next? What are you going to pull out when you reach into your bag? "Cows fart, so cars don't matter!!"
So, essentially you're wrong again, and since you've at this point become a mouthpiece for Big Oil, I see very little reason to listen to anything else you have to say.
Allow me to point something out.
Here are some snippets of your post:
"...will surely come if..."
"They want..."
"...if they can make a comfy living..."
These are all conditional/future statements; the fact of Environmentalists gaining anything from convincing people that global climate change is a reality is a purely theoretical one. Whereas we have observations of Big Oil actually making money by tilting their research. This, to me (and anyone else who actually know anything about how science is done) is a rather important distinction.
Anyone with any kind of agenda is always looking to make surveys/studies support his viewpoint. But in this case it's "big oil" { insert doom-and-gloom music here }, so therefore their attempts to skew results are somehow more evil than other groups doing it? What a complete and utter crock.
The idea that environmentalists have something to gain from the pursuit of (e.g.) alternative energy sources is largely theoretical and is based almost entirely upon cynicism (Exhibit A above). Whereas we have plenty of examples of lobbyists for Big * (oil, tobacco, whatever) and the money chain is in plain sight. So, it's more a case of "Big Oil is doing this because they are evil," and "There is no evidence that there is even something like 'Big Environment,' much less that it is somehow paying scientists to skew research results."
Or had you not heard of this little thing called peer review?
What makes your statements less than valid is that they depend less upon evidence and more upon FUD.
Doesn't take a rocket scientist
But apparently it takes a bored IT guy on slashdot to correct an international consortium of climatologists.
Maybe you ought to take a course in the statistical analysis of experimental data, and when you have a grasp of how scientists analyze data to construct theories that explain observations, they often take many things into account, you can rejoin the discussion.
Or, the short version: THE FACT THAT THE SOLAR RADIATION HAS INCREASED HAS BEEN ACCOUNTED FOR.
Good day!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this the subject of a Larry Niven story? With accompanying moral quandary once it's discovered that the mini-universe has evolved sentient life.
I am simply claiming that more Christians have murdered people *for their religious beliefs* than Atheists have murdered people *for their religious beliefs*.
I'm not sure I understand the significance of this. Is motivation for killing the key issue?
Remember, the OP said that the only thing keeping Atheists from killing was fear of getting caught and guilt, while Christians are kept in line by fear of eternal damnation. If that really were true, we should see scores of Atheists shooting up schools and malls, and Atheist governments marching throngs of people into infernos, because those Atheists have no god that they fear.
Nah. People have souls--they are not blind to right and wrong just because they don't practice religion (this is what the Catholics call "general revelation" as opposed to "special revelation," that is, religious texts like the Bible). Also I hate to get caught making a "No True Scotsman" argument but is someone who gets caught in some huge egregious sin, like embezzling money from some Help the Starving African Children with AIDS fund while doing a line off an underage stripper's stomach, authentically Christian? I'm just saying, I don't look to Jim & Tammy Faye for my model, I look to Mother Therese and Dr. Martin Luther King.
Biblical teachings are context-dependent? If the rules change depending on where and when you live, how do you decide which of the teachings are absolute, and which are open to interpretation?
Biblical teachings are as subject to context and interpretation as anything you'll find in a peer-reviewed journal: there is a basic underlying reality, which you may or may not understand. If your understanding of Article A contradicts your understanding of Article B, then you probably have one or both of them wrong.
For example, Jesus says to love everybody, and turn the other cheek. Check. Leviticus, on the other hand, says don't be gay. Is there some way to reconcile the two? Probably, but it might not be completely obvious.
Speaking of peer review, you should probably read up on the evolution of the Talmud. The Church councils are not a whole lot different: people ask "Ok so what does this all mean?" and you get the experts together and try to hammer it out. This doesn't necessarily rule out the resulting text as a source of authority, simply because it was "made by men."
Anyway, the only point I'm trying to make is that there is the underlying truth (which is fixed and absolute), and then there's our understanding of it (which is anything but). Why didn't God make the Bible easy to understand? Who knows? Why does He do anything? It's ineffable!
I do think the bennies spread around a lot better than you claim. But I'm also not a naive idealist who thinks that everyhing is going to be perfect real soon now; nor that there won't always be marginal situations in which the bennies don't spread around at all,; nor that human beings at their worst won't continue to introduce complications and failures into the best of solutions, for the forseeable future of the human race.
The fact that Africa continues to be a seething pesthole of misery and violence, with no sign of letting up, in spite of all the benefits several thousand years of human civilization have been able to come up with, says more to me about the limitations of human nature than it says about the limits of human invention and industry.
That's odd, because I would think that your view of the reach of the benefits is a lot more optimistic than my own. Does that make me a naive idealist? Or were you directing this ad-hom at someone else?
The (new and different) argument that you are putting forth--that there will always be imperfections and imbalances, therefore there is no reason to slow down industry or attempt to mitigate its harmful effects in order to correct them--does not address the original question in any way. Nor is it true; in some cases "the process" is itself directly responsible for creating "seething pestholes of misery and violence," and in nearly all cases the long view could be benefited if we switch "the process" to ones that are more sustainable.
The fact that we as a society prefer cheap goods today over clean air tomorrow does, however, speak to the sad state of humankind. I'll give you that much.
That is BS. Influenza virus is one of the most successful "parasites" out there. And it kills whole host of humans.
Compare it to, say, Ebola, which kills its host in no time flat. Not a very "successful" organism but a talented killing machine.
I would deem humanity less than successful if we go out choking on our own waste products.
I guess technically we would go out like rock stars if that were the case.
The point being that the benefits of industrial activity are lopsided, whereas both you and the OP imply that they are universal. In truth, the negative effects of this activity spread around pretty well, but the bennies, well, not so much.
Better is not even easy to define in hindsight.
Granted! But I think universally, solutions that directly produce fewer new problems are superior to solutions that are going to produce more.
If you know your process is going to be more expensive, you can budget for that. If you know it's going to harm the environment--well, the environment is a pretty delicate toy to be messing around with and there's no warranty. It's like the 360 I got my godson for Christmas--short-term, he might have fun throwing it around the house, but in the long run it's easier to leave it on the shelf than to try to fix it later.
Your point is well-taken, but consider the third world--the desperately poor parts of it. I think in a lot of places they are still working on the "Getting pennecillin past the warlords" bit much less the "Desperately needed AIDS cocktails."