"Did you read the paper? This guy Whitworth says some interesting stuff... personally I think the most interesting part of his paper is near the end, where he compares "Virtual Property" with "Physical Outcome"."
The problem with simulations for most scientists would show that naturalism itself is includes a greater then natural cause (the computer running the universal simulation) that would mean science shows the 'supernatural' is possible at least in principle, if we could get outside the universe and outside of time, we could technically do anything to this universe at will. It smacks too close to god for them, and in the west because of judea-christian heritage, and the rather primitive nature of religious conceptions of god in various major religions, their is mass confusion about thinking about what 'god' is.
Many people in the past were deists (god exists but does not interfere), if such a god created the universe then wouldn't it be possible to reverse engineer the universe and show that it was *logically* true by nature of how the universe itself functioned? As richard dawkins said: The existence of god or something greater then nature is in fact *a scientific* question, whethre scientists (rather: Human beings with western bias and inherited judeo-christian and religious prejudice) disagree or not, matters not, we should all know by now that truth stands alone by itself and is the only thing that is omnipotent - it cannot be defeated.
"having security folks check for people acting odd seems to be an obvious procedure to follow"
But how do you define what is "odd"? I can see many people getting tagged just because they suffer from social or other kinds of anxiety in public spaces, same as someone who has a neurbiological condition.
The world wouldn't be half as scary if our governments and half the population wasn't totally moronic.
Your post looks like a defense of the private sector, the private sector is equally as incompetent as the public sector, (i.e. the whole sub prime crisis, and that was the banks for christ sakes). So no, private != superior, in fact if anything the more time goes on the more human behaviour is showing the mythology of the free market to be non existent. Because markets always bow to interests in the end, so they can never be truly 'free', and the government is merely an extension of private industry to keep the hordes from revolting and the police and army are their to enforce the big economic powers private interests.
Unfortunately the private sector is in fact worse in some regards because of primitive propertarian ideals and human greed and territoriality giving way to abject mediocracy in the pursuit of personal gain. In fact history has shown private and public simply oscillate between periods of excellence and mediocrity. I'm not apt for 'universal truths' since time by it's very nature changes truth (i.e. we have technology and cultural values much different then other societies, and those societies thought 'theres was the best society / economic structure / etc, etc'. The cost of managing information is not going down *yet*, as soon as AI get's there the cost of managing information will go down by orders of magnitude. It may not be within our lifetimes but it will eventually happen, not to mention the biggest cost of managing information is in paying the meat people to manage it.
"the system he's helped build is saving people's lives and improving quality of life in ways the old world just doesn't understand yet."
The old world was based on personal greed and individualism, even ideology cannot trump efficiency and human community, it's nice to know that inside there is a helper/altruistic tendency to human beings.
The problem is they will always fight for extensions, I think this is where democracy fails big time, there should be an absolute law to prevent infection of greedy capitalists into knowledge that will stifle and hold back innovation.
I'm not surprised libraries aren't used as much, there are so many things competing for a persons attention today besides just books, movie, TV, radio, entertainment, internet, etc. The internet is pretty much the one stop-shop for all of these, although I think there will always be libraries, I think one of the failings of the digital age is that digital masses of digital information can be wiped out fairly easily, but on the plus side, it's easier to copy and make redundant. I still wonder about the dangers (pros and cons) of digital storage, in terms of long term.
"If your company is like this, do yourself a favor and quit."
I wish people would stop saying this, people no longer own their own land to provide clothing, electricty, food, housing, etc. You're just being rounded up like sheep and moved from one corporate ranch to another, you're still in their hands.
It has about the same amount of truth in it as "shop elsewhere", what happens when everwhere you shop is owned by the same group of corporate interests and employs the majority of the nation or nations on earth? There is no escape because the centralization of private ownership can get you through many other means by voting themselves in (lobbyists) and tweaking taxes, utilities and all sorts of policies that make sure their interests are served. No money, No power, No voice.
Whenever you are reliant on someone else you are *dependent* and unless you are entirely self-sufficient and have self-sufficient property, you are mutually indentured to those you depend on for your existence.
According to science and relativity, individualism is a mythology, here's what albert had to say:
"When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter.... Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way the concept 'empty space' loses its meaning.... Since the theory of general relatively implies the representation of physical reality by a continuous field, the concept of particles or material points cannot play a fundamental part,... and can only appear as a limited region in space where the field strength / energy density are particularly high. (Albert Einstein, 1950)"
And...
"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty... The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self.... We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)"
Science just said individualism was an optical delusion of consciousness, so much for the theory of 'seperate' objects, not only that, if relativity is true, there is no such thing as subjectivity, only levels of objective correctness or incorrectness.
You are derived from objective reality, therefore your thoughts, feelings and perspectives are *objective* in some partial sense all the time (i.e. because they are a derived existence from you, and you were derived from objective existence), there are only levels of correctness or incorrectness (error).
"A 'perfectly designed' being, in this case, would be one that its perfectly suited to its environmental niche."
You're missing the point, the whole point of being perfect is that it is *always* perfect, as soon as the environment changes or the body changes (i.e. the body is an environment), then it is no longer perfect.
A true perfect being would be indestructable and immortal, and would be outside of cause and effect, a god by definition. Evolution has not produced such beings, my claim is that within nature, there is no such thing as 'perfect' only 'good enough'.
"Our testicles, for example, hang from our undersides dangerously exposed,"
Existing is dangerous in and of itself, I'm sure next you'll claim "existing is dangerous" kill me now! The design or non-design of something is totally arbitrary. If we look at entropy and the laws of nature, it's a double edged sword, you can't have one thing without the other, it falls out of the geometry naturally.
A perfectly designed being would be a *god* by definition, and hence not natural, not made of the kind of matter and energy we know of, it would be of an entirely differnet nature (i.e. some kind of strange omni-vector energy, which is in omni-superposition), that never changes.
I wonder why they just don't focus all their research resources on Robots and AI vs playing around, why not send automated units instead of 'live' people? automated units could be just as good if not better then people and save space/energy in the process. Not only that the spin off technologies from robotics and AI will have enormous implications for society here on earth and most likely for the better.
Wiki was a word with good symmetry, "knol" is not really, they should have picked something more elegant and catchy. Everyone knows "wiki" or "wikipedia" by now, it's a brand unto itself.
Knol better be superior software or else I can't see it competing very well with wikipedia.
"Real scientists are much more sloppy with the terms. I've even heard a few suggest that they're interchangeable."
Maybe it's because *they are* one is simply a more refined version of the other. The hypothesis is the seed, the seed doesn't go away if it is found to be valid.
"(e.g. overdiagnosis of ADD to include kids who are just undiscipled)"
Is it? Or is it that we have a religious cult worship of overwork? I'm with Bertrand Russel, Socrates and Buckminster fuller on this one, people work so much their relationships with their fellow human beings absolutely suck.
"What's sad is that 20 years later, FF1 is still the best. With the possible exception of FF Tactics."
FF2 and FF3 (US) were just as good if not better then FF1. FF1 was a total grindfest with no story, it was amazing for the time (NES days), but let's not pretend it was the best. FF3 (US) is the best in the series with FF2 (US) and perhaps FF7 near tied.
"Why would we outsource open source software? Is there really that little interest in FOSS in the US, EU, etc.? "
I think it's a matter of best bang for your open source buck. It's pretty obvious. People have a finite amount of time and some proponents of open source forget that whenever you spend time, that is time you're not spending doing something else like working for $, etc. So I think it's a very astute observation on the part of Sun's management and also a very intelligent move in understanding that: Software is so complex it is much better to have as many eyes as possible on it to catch errors, there are no "one man shows" anymore when software projects get huge.
Maintaining modern software is like maintaining a city or country, it is an extremely difficult task as things change.
The cheif should have been briefed and given a special laptop or computer for the job, this was lazyness on both sides. The govenrment in it's cheapness and improper hiring of staff that doesn't know enough deserves all it gets when this shit happens.
I agree with what you're saying, but I'm certain even you would think the change of *your kid* downloading spyware was pretty remote. The issues with security stem from ignorance of technology and how it works, and that is the hardest thing to cure, security courses don't matter if you don't even have a grasp of technology and how it functions.
"The family of the chief information security officer of the Department of Commerce can't afford to have one computer for the family and another for high-security work?"
I doubt he was thinking about a random event where his kid replies to an email and downloads spyware, I mean really. Most people wouldn't think such things would occur, that is pretty damn random, and most importantly most people have tonnes of things on their minds, they are not obsessed with their job, he has a family, he has to shower, he has to eat, he has to take a shit. Cut the guy a break.
"And the nation can't afford a separate computer for this apparently impoverished officer?"
Welcome to Capitalist america, where profit gives way to mediocrity!
... about privacy. I mean really online unencrypted email gives any bad person in the right place access to a lot of your personal information anyway. If we dumped all the email out of the free emails services, I'm sure we'd have a hell of a lot of data just from that alone.
Slashdot Mirror
"Did you read the paper? This guy Whitworth says some interesting stuff... personally I think the most interesting part of his paper is near the end, where he compares "Virtual Property" with "Physical Outcome"."
The problem with simulations for most scientists would show that naturalism itself is includes a greater then natural cause (the computer running the universal simulation) that would mean science shows the 'supernatural' is possible at least in principle, if we could get outside the universe and outside of time, we could technically do anything to this universe at will. It smacks too close to god for them, and in the west because of judea-christian heritage, and the rather primitive nature of religious conceptions of god in various major religions, their is mass confusion about thinking about what 'god' is.
Many people in the past were deists (god exists but does not interfere), if such a god created the universe then wouldn't it be possible to reverse engineer the universe and show that it was *logically* true by nature of how the universe itself functioned? As richard dawkins said: The existence of god or something greater then nature is in fact *a scientific* question, whethre scientists (rather: Human beings with western bias and inherited judeo-christian and religious prejudice) disagree or not, matters not, we should all know by now that truth stands alone by itself and is the only thing that is omnipotent - it cannot be defeated.
"having security folks check for people acting odd seems to be an obvious procedure to follow"
But how do you define what is "odd"? I can see many people getting tagged just because they suffer from social or other kinds of anxiety in public spaces, same as someone who has a neurbiological condition.
The world wouldn't be half as scary if our governments and half the population wasn't totally moronic.
Your post looks like a defense of the private sector, the private sector is equally as incompetent as the public sector, (i.e. the whole sub prime crisis, and that was the banks for christ sakes). So no, private != superior, in fact if anything the more time goes on the more human behaviour is showing the mythology of the free market to be non existent. Because markets always bow to interests in the end, so they can never be truly 'free', and the government is merely an extension of private industry to keep the hordes from revolting and the police and army are their to enforce the big economic powers private interests.
Unfortunately the private sector is in fact worse in some regards because of primitive propertarian ideals and human greed and territoriality giving way to abject mediocracy in the pursuit of personal gain. In fact history has shown private and public simply oscillate between periods of excellence and mediocrity. I'm not apt for 'universal truths' since time by it's very nature changes truth (i.e. we have technology and cultural values much different then other societies, and those societies thought 'theres was the best society / economic structure / etc, etc'. The cost of managing information is not going down *yet*, as soon as AI get's there the cost of managing information will go down by orders of magnitude. It may not be within our lifetimes but it will eventually happen, not to mention the biggest cost of managing information is in paying the meat people to manage it.
A silicon AI doesn't need to get paid.
"the system he's helped build is saving people's lives and improving quality of life in ways the old world just doesn't understand yet."
The old world was based on personal greed and individualism, even ideology cannot trump efficiency and human community, it's nice to know that inside there is a helper/altruistic tendency to human beings.
"I figure 10-15 years for most things."
The problem is they will always fight for extensions, I think this is where democracy fails big time, there should be an absolute law to prevent infection of greedy capitalists into knowledge that will stifle and hold back innovation.
I'm not surprised libraries aren't used as much, there are so many things competing for a persons attention today besides just books, movie, TV, radio, entertainment, internet, etc. The internet is pretty much the one stop-shop for all of these, although I think there will always be libraries, I think one of the failings of the digital age is that digital masses of digital information can be wiped out fairly easily, but on the plus side, it's easier to copy and make redundant. I still wonder about the dangers (pros and cons) of digital storage, in terms of long term.
"If your company is like this, do yourself a favor and quit."
... ... Since the theory of general relatively implies the representation of physical reality by a continuous field, the concept of particles or material points cannot play a fundamental part, ... and can only appear as a limited region in space where the field strength / energy density are particularly high. (Albert Einstein, 1950)"
... We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)"
I wish people would stop saying this, people no longer own their own land to provide clothing, electricty, food, housing, etc. You're just being rounded up like sheep and moved from one corporate ranch to another, you're still in their hands.
It has about the same amount of truth in it as "shop elsewhere", what happens when everwhere you shop is owned by the same group of corporate interests and employs the majority of the nation or nations on earth? There is no escape because the centralization of private ownership can get you through many other means by voting themselves in (lobbyists) and tweaking taxes, utilities and all sorts of policies that make sure their interests are served. No money, No power, No voice.
Whenever you are reliant on someone else you are *dependent* and unless you are entirely self-sufficient and have self-sufficient property, you are mutually indentured to those you depend on for your existence.
According to science and relativity, individualism is a mythology, here's what albert had to say:
"When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence:
Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter.
Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way the concept 'empty space' loses its meaning.
And...
"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty... The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self.
Science just said individualism was an optical delusion of consciousness, so much for the theory of 'seperate' objects, not only that, if relativity is true, there is no such thing as subjectivity, only levels of objective correctness or incorrectness.
You are derived from objective reality, therefore your thoughts, feelings and perspectives are *objective* in some partial sense all the time (i.e. because they are a derived existence from you, and you were derived from objective existence), there are only levels of correctness or incorrectness (error).
"I find it a paradox that the more humans there are, the less humanity you find."
Competition for resources = the outgroup is less human then the "in" or "known" group.
They slip back to Daikatana priority!
"A 'perfectly designed' being, in this case, would be one that its perfectly suited to its environmental niche."
You're missing the point, the whole point of being perfect is that it is *always* perfect, as soon as the environment changes or the body changes (i.e. the body is an environment), then it is no longer perfect.
A true perfect being would be indestructable and immortal, and would be outside of cause and effect, a god by definition. Evolution has not produced such beings, my claim is that within nature, there is no such thing as 'perfect' only 'good enough'.
"Our testicles, for example, hang from our undersides dangerously exposed,"
Existing is dangerous in and of itself, I'm sure next you'll claim "existing is dangerous" kill me now! The design or non-design of something is totally arbitrary. If we look at entropy and the laws of nature, it's a double edged sword, you can't have one thing without the other, it falls out of the geometry naturally.
A perfectly designed being would be a *god* by definition, and hence not natural, not made of the kind of matter and energy we know of, it would be of an entirely differnet nature (i.e. some kind of strange omni-vector energy, which is in omni-superposition), that never changes.
I wonder why they just don't focus all their research resources on Robots and AI vs playing around, why not send automated units instead of 'live' people? automated units could be just as good if not better then people and save space/energy in the process. Not only that the spin off technologies from robotics and AI will have enormous implications for society here on earth and most likely for the better.
Wiki was a word with good symmetry, "knol" is not really, they should have picked something more elegant and catchy. Everyone knows "wiki" or "wikipedia" by now, it's a brand unto itself.
Knol better be superior software or else I can't see it competing very well with wikipedia.
"Real scientists are much more sloppy with the terms. I've even heard a few suggest that they're interchangeable."
Maybe it's because *they are* one is simply a more refined version of the other. The hypothesis is the seed, the seed doesn't go away if it is found to be valid.
There are no lies, only mis-shapen truths.
"(e.g. overdiagnosis of ADD to include kids who are just undiscipled)"
Is it? Or is it that we have a religious cult worship of overwork? I'm with Bertrand Russel, Socrates and Buckminster fuller on this one, people work so much their relationships with their fellow human beings absolutely suck.
I think we can explain dupes from simply not having infinite memory, I mean really. Those with better memories = less mistakes, I would imagine.
"Where's that guy who shills for wikipedia, I'd love to hear his take on this."
You can say this about all of human history and all human endeavours, nothing is immune from corruption.
"What's sad is that 20 years later, FF1 is still the best. With the possible exception of FF Tactics."
FF2 and FF3 (US) were just as good if not better then FF1. FF1 was a total grindfest with no story, it was amazing for the time (NES days), but let's not pretend it was the best. FF3 (US) is the best in the series with FF2 (US) and perhaps FF7 near tied.
People are just graphics hoes these days.
"I do believe, eventually, "creativity" will be programmable.
I agree, creativity is just pattern creation and harmonizing frequencies of the patterns.
"Why would we outsource open source software? Is there really that little interest in FOSS in the US, EU, etc.? "
I think it's a matter of best bang for your open source buck. It's pretty obvious. People have a finite amount of time and some proponents of open source forget that whenever you spend time, that is time you're not spending doing something else like working for $, etc. So I think it's a very astute observation on the part of Sun's management and also a very intelligent move in understanding that: Software is so complex it is much better to have as many eyes as possible on it to catch errors, there are no "one man shows" anymore when software projects get huge.
Maintaining modern software is like maintaining a city or country, it is an extremely difficult task as things change.
The cheif should have been briefed and given a special laptop or computer for the job, this was lazyness on both sides. The govenrment in it's cheapness and improper hiring of staff that doesn't know enough deserves all it gets when this shit happens.
I agree with what you're saying, but I'm certain even you would think the change of *your kid* downloading spyware was pretty remote. The issues with security stem from ignorance of technology and how it works, and that is the hardest thing to cure, security courses don't matter if you don't even have a grasp of technology and how it functions.
"The family of the chief information security officer of the Department of Commerce can't afford to have one computer for the family and another for high-security work?"
I doubt he was thinking about a random event where his kid replies to an email and downloads spyware, I mean really. Most people wouldn't think such things would occur, that is pretty damn random, and most importantly most people have tonnes of things on their minds, they are not obsessed with their job, he has a family, he has to shower, he has to eat, he has to take a shit. Cut the guy a break.
"And the nation can't afford a separate computer for this apparently impoverished officer?"
Welcome to Capitalist america, where profit gives way to mediocrity!
"Thus those skilled in war subdue the enemy's army without battle .... They conquer by strategy."--Sun Tzu
... about privacy. I mean really online unencrypted email gives any bad person in the right place access to a lot of your personal information anyway. If we dumped all the email out of the free emails services, I'm sure we'd have a hell of a lot of data just from that alone.