Guthrie presumably sold that right; that's pretty typical for the publishing industry. They don't produce anything, they're just middlemen, and so rights are their handle on the material.
You'll notice that Woody did *not* say that the song was public domain; he said it was copyrighted. That's like the GPL: You see it, you should make sure you understand the terms, because whatever else they may be, they are not grants of freedom. More of a license to employ a lawyer.
I own a literary agency, and we deal in precisely those kinds of contracts. We try - very hard - to protect the author's rights, one as distinct from the next, so that, for instance, having sold a book to print, the author retains the rights to make a movie, an e-book, etc. Publishers, on the other hand, come at it the other way. The typical contract tries to vacuum up every right known, and any that might not be specified.
This is one of the reasons that I *really* welcome e-books; the main reason publishers were able to maintain their position is because it was expensive, very, to print a book. An e-book... no longer true. A good literary agency can provide the editing an author needs, or the author and a few beta readers can get it handled my themselves, and that's a *much* better model for both authors and readers.
The author removes a middle entity, and that raises compensation; that encourages the author; that's good for everyone. Borrowing is reduced, and pass-along is as well. This tends to mean that you'll actually get your income on a per-reader basis. Shops are never "out" of your book; books never have to be out of print. A book can become a hit years after it is released. Advances are not required and earnings are no longer encumbered. Release times are vastly reduced. Whole libraries can be carried in your palm. You can read anywhere. It's not perfect, but man, is it ever better.
Bit of a digression there, sorry.:) The subject is very much on my mind right now.
You need the same thing as you need with any software: A copy of the original, with the terms, in this case a statement that the code is PD. The Internet, bless its digital little heart, probably remembers when it appeared, too. If terms are obeyed, no problem will arise. Its the liars and the cheats you have to watch out for, and that's true no matter what mode of release you choose from commercial to PD.
Yes, but how do you prove it is the public domain?
You don't need to. That's the whole point. At the top of the code, when it was written, it says, PD, date, author. There's your starting point. That chunk is PD. What you do with it is up to you. You can make a chunk exactly like it and make it proprietary; that's fine. The original is still PD, though, and there's nothing you can do to change that. Nothing at all.
If code is floating around without any license and I include it in my proprietary software, on what grounds can you sue me?
It's PD. You can be sued (you can be sued for anything) but all you need to win is "Here's this thing, it's PD, by so and so, date whatever, and I used it as such. Thank you, I'll be leaving now, and by the way, I'll have court costs, too."
If there is nothing that says I have to attribute the copyright to the original author, then what stops me from absorbing the code into my code base
Nothing stops you in the first place. That's the idea, see, the code is FREE. So there's nothing to worry about. Absorb away. (Though it is traditional to eat pizza while you do so, no one will force you.)
If I start changing the code, then is the modified code still in the public domain?
It's whatever you say it is. Once you change it, it isn't the original code. So you're free (get that, FREE) to do anything you want. Call it proprietary, send it back to the author with a thank you note, charge huge amounts of money for it, etc. Anything you want. The only thing you can't do is take the original chunk out of the public domain. That's a done deal, and anyone can use that original chunk any way they want and there isn't squat you can do about that.
On the other hand, if you force a public license on the code with agreements to attribute and disclose its use, and contribute modifications back to the public then the code and its modifications stay public.
The original PD code stays public and available. But the author doesn't claim that changes you make are owned by him, or that he has a right to tell you what to do with them. He respects your freedom. The GPL does not. The GPL says there IS a cost for this, and it is that you will do as we say, or you are subject to these limitations. PD says, here it is, have a party, bye.
And that, my friend, is why all the FREE software I write is PD. Not GPL.
Don't forget that the Internet is a product of the late 20th century. I'd say that it had (and has) even greater potential than television ever did.
I hadn't forgotten. Television could (did, actually) reach almost everyone in the country.
The Internet has not reached everyone (we're at about 77% penetration to date), nor do I expect it ever will unless it becomes free, as television broadcasts were initially. As far as that goes, I think we're headed towards more of a corporate, benefits-to-the-moneyed phase, rather than less.
No question the Internet is a powerful tool; and despite the high noise level, the educational and enlightenment content is extremely high, something we cannot say ever happened with television. But if it's not available to you, that's highly divisive. The rise of paywalls for news (such as it is), and instigation of licenses for bloggers are also very bad signs.
Again, I think that's where we're headed: there are other strong classing mechanisms at work right now, such as the "never forgive, never forget" model of criminal "justice", where records never go away, and felons become permanently locked into a lower strata with a very hard ceiling indeed on the one end; and at the other, there's a persistent "rich get richer" effect created by a society that is habituated to debt - paying interest is an almost perfect way to ensure that the funds of the middle and low classes are worth far less than the funds belonging to the debt-free, or even more so, lenders.
Though I'd definitely agree that prior to that, television was the medium with the most education potential, though it was mostly squandered in the US and many other countries.
Yes, squandered is an excellent term. Facepalm level squandering.
Don't you like a good drama like CSI? Or farout story like Fringe? Or medical show like House?
In a word, no. I prefer an (e-)book, sitting down and listening to music (or playing it myself), or a full-on movie production if I'm looking for entertainment. The vast majority of television does not appeal to me at all. The drama and humor I generally find underwhelming; the news is an outright indictment of our culture from top to bottom, as well as serving the same purpose for the fourth estate; the reality shows... I have no polite words for them at all. And the commercials, when present, inevitably aren't talking to me (even when they seem to think they are.)
From my perspective, television was the single invention of the 20th century with the most potential to uplift society; it was also a monumental standout in the sense of doing an astonishingly comprehensive job of not living up to that potential.
While I am sure that adrift somewhere in that sea of production there might well be things I would enjoy, I simply am not willing to spend the time to figure out what those might be. There is far too much interesting going on in the real world to even try to go there.
mm, no, I don't buy it. An inexpensive HD video camera is $100; They're all over the place. Methinks you're figuring things using preconceptions picked up years ago.
As for "normal" hard drive use, I think the people who sell Aperture, Lightroom, Photoshop, WinImages, Finalcut, and all the plug-in people who write functions to extend those products... yeah, I think they'd just laugh at you. I know at least one of 'em is.:)
I'm an apple customer -- we have quite a few macs, ipods, even two ipads -- but I won't watch TV for free, much less for.99/show. So let's not paint with too broad a brush, shall we?
Ok. So, in the end, no critical thinking reveal, just a woo-woo flipout about (cough) inner tuning forks with dirt on them. That's kind of what I figured, but I thought I'd give you a chance anyway, since you were the one who put critical thinking on the table.
They're pushing terabyte drives now. I defy the normal computer user (hint: if you're reading this, you are not a normal computer user) to fill a terabyte.
Anyone with a video camera can fill a terabyte easily. And that would be almost everyone with a cellphone, these days, not to mention the millions of dedicated video recorders that are out there.
That link returned a bunch of psychological soft stuff, no hard science at all, at least in the first few pages. Not saying you're wrong, but there was nothing there to back you up.
Not seeing where it really puts a significant lean on AI anyway, frankly - even assuming it's exactly right, it's a broad statement about people, who vary enormously, yet generally still cope reasonably well. I expect that an AI would adapt to whatever differences there were and that would be the end of it.
Sigh. So much wrong with that. Binary is as simple as it gets. Two states. So one looks at that end. Analog has infinite states. That's the other end. Modulation is a transformation from the input state set to a mapped state set. Demodulation goes the other way. I'm not assuming binary, or any other -ary. I'm assuming that when complex and well controlled modulation exists, and we can determine that is the case, we can infer intelligence is responsible. I did not imply that we would understand everything that came our way, or even that we would spot it, or that one mode of modulation was all there would be (even in one signal.)
My point is simply that a signal looks different than noise, and the when the content of a signal appears noiselike due to maximal compression, as was suggested earlier, this does not make the modulation noiselike. As a *simple* example, if you look at a serial line, such as a 20 ma current loop, the content of the line consists of a series of distinctive waveforms when the line is carrying information, compressed or not. Interpretation of the data being carried is not required to infer that data is, in fact, being carried. All you need for that is to observe the nature of the signal. Note that this example does not preclude others, and I am not limiting my argument to 20 ma current loops, or binary. Sheesh.
I should also point out that SETI, by and large, has been looking at such a narrow bandwidth that any information on the signals is likely to be completely invisible to initial detection. They're looking for a carrier wave, as far as RF goes. They'll have to use different methods to actually examine the signal, presuming they ever find one.
I'm interested in why you're such a militant atheist. Why did you become so?
In my 54 years, I have seen nothing - at all - that suggests to me that there is a god or gods. This experience is exactly the same as my experience with astrology, unicorns, talking teapots, crystalomancy, and so forth. I have encountered absolutely no reason to believe.
On the other hand, I have learned a great deal about people's abilities to convince themselves of the most absurd propositions. Depth of faith is clearly not an indicator of truth: it constantly leads people into the ridiculous and the contradictory. The number of people who believe something is also no indicator of truth. Actual approaches to truth within the bounds of our understanding - the presently incontrovertible - are self evident, in that they may be inductively validated by objective fact, testing for falsifiability, and our understanding rigorously adjusted as we learn more. This is a mode of consideration that religion fails miserably. Yet it is, as far as I know, the only one that actually works.
In addition, I find that religion - Christianity in particular - wraps itself around the most odious and hypocritical outlooks. For instance, you are happy to think your god is a good guy for futzing about with the fertility of your circle, while at the same time, this supposedly omnipotent, omniscient entity won't be bothered with moderating the slaughter in Sudan (just to name one of many such venues.)
That's why I am atheist; the reason I am vocal about it is that the religious are interfering with my life on many levels. From adherents flying into skyscrapers to preventing me from buying beer on Sunday to intimating that my honor an character depend upon placing my hand on a book of mythology in a court of law to trying to tell my friends they can't marry, I find religion to be both constantly in my face to an unacceptable degree, and also, an anti-science force with literally centuries of appalling abuses on record.
Do you think that it's provable that God doesn't exist?
No. Nor is it my role, as someone who lacks belief, to try and prove a negative. What you're asking is precisely equivalent to asking if I can prove there is no talking teapot in orbit around the sun, or to prove that earthquakes aren't actually caused by invisible pink unicorns that run upside down along the fault lines. I can't prove those things either; that doesn't, however, serve in *any* way to somehow vouch for the actuality of the matters in question.
But: in fact, I can turn to my experience of reality and give you this answer: While I can't prove a negative, I can evaluate the probability based upon my life experience. And I find that the probability is about as low as it can be; or to put it another way, my confidence is extremely high that there is no god or gods, and that the entire religious experience (outside of intentional scamming) is one of self-delusion.
These aren't meant to be proofs of God's existence.
Good; because those stories don't serve the purpose. I'm not very interested in how you interpret mundane events. The fact that they are mundane disqualifies them from serving as evidence for a god or gods. Mundane stuff happens. People get pregnant; congratulations are issued for this and that, and sometimes they are the result of misinformation or guesses. The odds favor all of us encountering the unusual from time to time. Taking such events as evidence for supernatural power is really uncalled for. So what it boils down to is you're telling me mundane stuff happens. Such stories don't serve to make your case, or even to back it up.
In any case, this isn't what I asked you for; I asked you what critical thinking process led you to your position. You said you were a person with a high IQ, as well as a critical thinker. That's why I asked just that w
Take a newborn with no body and/or no senses and wait what becomes of it.
Why would you do this to a baby *or* an AI? And since you obviously wouldn't, how is it relevant?
Just looking at "how the brain works" often totally disregards the fact that the brain is not like a computer.
You mean, brain hardware isn't like silicon logic. That doesn't mean that it is a given that silicon logic can't do what brain hardware can do. That's the beauty of computing - processes that are wholly unlike digital logic may be created by virtue of the flexibility the machine.
The breadth of computing is really quite striking. Chemical, electrical, mechanical and even quantum behaviors are all easily implemented on digital hardware. And since that, in turn, represents the length and breadth of the machinery available to the human brain that we are even *suspicious* of, much less certain of, there's every reason to see them as a workable fit.
We can cope with being born blind or deaf or unable to ever walk or not being cared for to a certain extent, but there are tight limits to that.
Well, as I say, one would not intentionally do such a thing if the intent is to produce a worthwhile result. And clearly, those "tight limits" allow for missing one or more senses. So not all that tight, really.
Honestly, if we can make a machine that can think, the rest isn't that much of a problem. We'll figure it out. In no way is this a worthy argument against the feasibility of AI.
The point is that reproduction is fundamentally a different process from construction.
Yes, I agree. And, having read your entire post, I ask: How is this - in any way - relevant to the feasibility - or not - of AI, or even to an argument that cells are not machines? Does a lever have to be a clock to be a machine? No? So why does a cell have to be a clock or a lever in order to be a machine? You can make a machine out of carved chunks of frozen ice, or shaped corncobs, or a few molecules of whatever. And as I said elsewhere in this article today, you can make logic elements out of darned near anything. Every one needed to make a computer of any nature, given time, space and a masochistic nature.
Sure, lots of time and energy may be wasted in re-learning the things the previous generation already learned, but the benefit this provides is really priceless: creativity.
Wait a second. Machine B rolls off the line, gets instantiated with machine A's state, and then proceeds to go off and have its own experiences. which enrich it, may cause it to modify its positions, etc. It is now fundamentally different from machine A. It's just a lifetime (or many) ahead of your kid in learning. When it sends a copy of its core back to factory, however, it ensures that in the case of an accident, it can be reanimated with only the loss of whatever happened since the last update; and further, the "new kids" are that much smarter, but again, will alter as they gain more of their own experience, which will, by the very unidirectional nature of time, of necessity be different from the "parent's" experiences, though informed by them.
I don't see anything about starting as a blank slate that provides an advantage over one that is full of useful learning. Quite the contrary. A fresh perspective... all that requires is a different experience base, and that is built for machine B at the same rate as for your kid. 15 years down the road, they're both 15 years more experienced than day 0. It's just that machine B has *way* more experience and knowledge than the kid on day 0 and at year 15, even presuming equal learning speeds when interacting with the universe (and sorry, your kid will be slower... odds are excellent that machine B can permanently pick up, for instance, expert class deep space welding skills with a 2 second data transfer. And then learn expert level stained glass window creation that evening for kicks. Also in 2 seconds.) Nor is there a visible link between creativity and originating with blankness in your argument. Perhaps you just neglected to make the point, in which case, by all means, do.
If you are willing to think that way, we are saved then : quantum effects *are* involved in transistor logic.
Yes. Significantly. However, not significantly in electron tubes, or gears, or hydraulics, or folded paper: And you can create any logic element you like out of any one of those building blocks, given space, time, a significant exercise of will and, I think, an unhealthy dose of masochism.:)
Consequently I would argue that the quantum effects that make transistors work are in no way a pre-requisite for what we're having them do for us at a higher level, which is the same: Make logic processing devices.
Invert, and, or, xor, clocked states and various other combinatorial goodies... it's all mundane as can be in terms of what is actually required to implement them. Check this baby out.
my experience of my wife is not primarily objective and empirical
No? What other kind of experience is there? Your thoughts are really happening, are they not? Hormone dumps as well? Memories actually recalled? Fun, sure, but where is the non-objective or non-empirical here? I submit to you (also respectfully btw, thanks for engaging) that just because you don't know how to describe something in simple terms, that said thing is not mundane in nature. For instance, one might well not know what's going on inside a radio, but that doesn't make the experience transcendent; it's still just as mundane as dropping a rock on the ground. No magic at all. You might think like crazy about it, wondering what is going on; you might experience hormone dumps, frightened by the voices you hear coming from the "magic box"; but the box is, in fact, not magic. What I'm getting at here is that your experience is not what makes something mundane, or not; nor is your understanding. It is what it is. And all the "is" we know of to date... you guessed it. Mundane.
Religion makes claims of truth that don't share an identical domain with science, and therefore need not be mutually exclusive.
To date, we have discovered exactly one domain. Mundane reality. Religion is no more than an exercise of storytelling; there's no difference between a story of Zeus and one of Spongebob. Telling a story doesn't validate its content, any more than any flight of imagination actualizes the concepts involved. Now - if you disagree and would like to engage on the level of what you think the separate domain is, I'd be pleased to discuss it with you.
Please know, however, that those believing in a religion are not necessarily stupid
Well aware of it. My position on what engenders belief in religion (as opposed to implementation and practice as a mechanism for control) may be found here. You'll note intelligence isn't even mentioned.
I'm high IQ myself, well educated, and a better critical thinker than many of my acquaintances.
Ok, so... are you religious? If so, why? Do you think you have an immortal "soul"? What critical thinking process led to that conclusion, if that's what you think? Or, do you think that nature somehow requires a creator? Again, what critical thinking process led you there? By all means, let's talk about it. Perhaps I will have some observations that you can pick apart, or contrariwise, find useful.
I'm open to talk further if you want, but I'm not sure what it would accomplish.
If you're *actually* open, it could accomplish quite a lot. I'm open the other way; show me some solid evidence, that's all.
This claim of yours is clearly using a different definition for "machine" than I used. It's a word game, not an argument.
It's not a game at all. A machine is a device that does something; in action, it has an energy input, a mechanism that does something to or with that energy, and often an output as well. That's how we work - that's as precise a description of a cell as it is a screw, a clock or an aircraft. We're made up of cells. I don't see any possible way to describe us as not machines.
Perhaps the broadest definition one might use of this sort of machine might be a complex device built by assembling pieces
You mean pieces like... cells? Of course you do.:)
This is as opposed to biological organisms that grow through subsequent reproduction of their constituent parts (that is, cell division).
Plants grow by reproduction of their constituent parts. This isn't exactly an argument for a capacity limited to intelligences. So I fail to see the relevance. I may just be obtuse; please explain. Just to set you up, I'm with you that cell division is a different process than a factory full of assembly lines. What I'm missing here is why it is relevant - in any way - to the issue of whether created intelligence is either possible, or necessarily only the result of organic processes.
We're not going to construct any sort of "machine" that reproduces in the same way we do that will be capable of outpacing ourselves, simply because we aren't anywhere near clever enough to outdo some 3+ billion years of evolution.
I'm sorry... 3 billion years of evolution didn't produce quite a lot of things we've managed to produce in the last hundred years or so. I'm afraid your argument is without basis. We're actually pretty good at producing things evolution has utterly failed at (not to mention significantly improving some things... like the survivability of children after birth, for instance.) Evolution didn't produce gas chromatographs or radio or lego blocks, either. Turns out we're actually really good at cooking up things that outdo 3+ billion years of evolution.
Also, who cares how it reproduces? And why, even so, would you have it do it "our way"? Surely a few second copy operation that results in entity B, complete with all learning that entity A has done is more efficient, not to mention less wasteful, than cooking up a human baby.
And we're probably not going to produce constructed machines that can build a more efficient society that advances more rapidly than our own, just because I doubt that such a society could even be self-sustaining, given the maintenance requirements alone.
Hm. Well, when machines can be expected to be able to work in space and mine asteroids and comets for essentially unlimited materials at very little cost in energy, I don't really see what maintainance has to do with it. Even we manage to fix your dented car body without having to go to the iron mine to get it handled. We anticipate failure, stockpile parts, and have 'em ready when needed. You think machines as intelligent, or more so, than we, can't work out how to fix themselves? I just don't buy it. Heck, even my roomba can already find an AC socket. And you know what's making the AC for that socket? Yup. Machines. Dumb ones designed to run without a whole lot of oversight. If we can do it, so can they, at least, that's the obvious conclusion.
Let's go back to reproduction for a moment. Consider: You make a baby. Fifteen years later (because this is truly an exceptional child), you've got another productive human being.
The AI, on the other hand, rolls a chassis off the assembly line at a rate limited only by materials and line complexity. Turning it from base hardware into another productive entity is the resul
I'm inclined to lump quantum effects in with the mechanically mundane. I don't see any problem creating activity that functions like quantum activity. Right up to and including losing information if observed (though the obvious shortcut there is not to bother even putting the information in the variable...) or not knowing the answer to something until the variable is examined, or causing one variable's state to change based on nothing but another variable's state.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that quantum mechanical behavior is mundane and I doubt that, should we find it is actively involved in our version of intelligence (as opposed to energy conversion as hypothesized in photosynthesis), it would either present a serious impediment to AI, or serve as any kind of an indicator for a magical soul or unknown fourth mechanism of any kind.
But you'd be hard pressed to detect my perfectly compressed message in between all those truly random data streams.
I don't even need to: I'm holding an ethernet cable. Clearly, this is an artificial message conduit. But in the spirit in which you meant your post, I *still* don't need to detect your message, because the random data streams are still products of intelligence. We know this because the carrier - the ethernet 0/1 levels - are clearly artificially generated. That was the point I was making. If I send an AM signal and modulate it in a way that can carry data, it's going to be very clear that I am doing so to anyone who receives it and understands the concept of modulation. Likewise, FM, PM, spread spectrum, laser, a modulated stream of rocks... you get the idea.
so slow to see that religion is uniquely human and an advantage humans have over other animals?
Religion is simply belief without the benefit of objective facts. Dogs exhibit this same behavior when they come back to an owner, hoping for kindness, even though the owner kicks them every time they do.
Religion's key sociological benefit is that it easily keeps the masses under control using a targeted fear of the unknown, and further, can be used to focus their enmity upon any other group by defining them as outside the pale. Religion's primary downside is that it massively retards technological progress by teaching a world model that is made of fairy tales.
Since there are other ways to control a populace than feeding them mythology, and alternate ways of providing the charity that some religions espouse, I consider religion itself to be a wholly negative factor.
it's not so much identity or awareness of one's identity that makes one human, but rather the search for the ideal, the good, or even the divine.
Or... it's not so much identity or awareness of one's identity that makes one human, but rather the search for the ideal, the good, or even the Easter bunny.
Personally, I try to identify searches for concepts that are utterly unsupported by objective facts, and then stay as far away from them as I can; they waste my time and they annoy me.
A real advantage humans have over animals is that at least some of us can quickly detect an unjustified belief and walk away from it, even in the face of significant peer pressure.
Slashdot Mirror
Guthrie presumably sold that right; that's pretty typical for the publishing industry. They don't produce anything, they're just middlemen, and so rights are their handle on the material.
You'll notice that Woody did *not* say that the song was public domain; he said it was copyrighted. That's like the GPL: You see it, you should make sure you understand the terms, because whatever else they may be, they are not grants of freedom. More of a license to employ a lawyer.
I own a literary agency, and we deal in precisely those kinds of contracts. We try - very hard - to protect the author's rights, one as distinct from the next, so that, for instance, having sold a book to print, the author retains the rights to make a movie, an e-book, etc. Publishers, on the other hand, come at it the other way. The typical contract tries to vacuum up every right known, and any that might not be specified.
This is one of the reasons that I *really* welcome e-books; the main reason publishers were able to maintain their position is because it was expensive, very, to print a book. An e-book... no longer true. A good literary agency can provide the editing an author needs, or the author and a few beta readers can get it handled my themselves, and that's a *much* better model for both authors and readers.
The author removes a middle entity, and that raises compensation; that encourages the author; that's good for everyone. Borrowing is reduced, and pass-along is as well. This tends to mean that you'll actually get your income on a per-reader basis. Shops are never "out" of your book; books never have to be out of print. A book can become a hit years after it is released. Advances are not required and earnings are no longer encumbered. Release times are vastly reduced. Whole libraries can be carried in your palm. You can read anywhere. It's not perfect, but man, is it ever better.
Bit of a digression there, sorry. :) The subject is very much on my mind right now.
You need the same thing as you need with any software: A copy of the original, with the terms, in this case a statement that the code is PD. The Internet, bless its digital little heart, probably remembers when it appeared, too. If terms are obeyed, no problem will arise. Its the liars and the cheats you have to watch out for, and that's true no matter what mode of release you choose from commercial to PD.
You don't need to. That's the whole point. At the top of the code, when it was written, it says, PD, date, author. There's your starting point. That chunk is PD. What you do with it is up to you. You can make a chunk exactly like it and make it proprietary; that's fine. The original is still PD, though, and there's nothing you can do to change that. Nothing at all.
It's PD. You can be sued (you can be sued for anything) but all you need to win is "Here's this thing, it's PD, by so and so, date whatever, and I used it as such. Thank you, I'll be leaving now, and by the way, I'll have court costs, too."
Nothing stops you in the first place. That's the idea, see, the code is FREE. So there's nothing to worry about. Absorb away. (Though it is traditional to eat pizza while you do so, no one will force you.)
It's whatever you say it is. Once you change it, it isn't the original code. So you're free (get that, FREE) to do anything you want. Call it proprietary, send it back to the author with a thank you note, charge huge amounts of money for it, etc. Anything you want. The only thing you can't do is take the original chunk out of the public domain. That's a done deal, and anyone can use that original chunk any way they want and there isn't squat you can do about that.
The original PD code stays public and available. But the author doesn't claim that changes you make are owned by him, or that he has a right to tell you what to do with them. He respects your freedom. The GPL does not. The GPL says there IS a cost for this, and it is that you will do as we say, or you are subject to these limitations. PD says, here it is, have a party, bye.
And that, my friend, is why all the FREE software I write is PD. Not GPL.
Actually, I was just talking about its potential in general. But that's ok. Bottom line, I'm not fond of it. :)
I hadn't forgotten. Television could (did, actually) reach almost everyone in the country.
The Internet has not reached everyone (we're at about 77% penetration to date), nor do I expect it ever will unless it becomes free, as television broadcasts were initially. As far as that goes, I think we're headed towards more of a corporate, benefits-to-the-moneyed phase, rather than less.
No question the Internet is a powerful tool; and despite the high noise level, the educational and enlightenment content is extremely high, something we cannot say ever happened with television. But if it's not available to you, that's highly divisive. The rise of paywalls for news (such as it is), and instigation of licenses for bloggers are also very bad signs.
Again, I think that's where we're headed: there are other strong classing mechanisms at work right now, such as the "never forgive, never forget" model of criminal "justice", where records never go away, and felons become permanently locked into a lower strata with a very hard ceiling indeed on the one end; and at the other, there's a persistent "rich get richer" effect created by a society that is habituated to debt - paying interest is an almost perfect way to ensure that the funds of the middle and low classes are worth far less than the funds belonging to the debt-free, or even more so, lenders.
Yes, squandered is an excellent term. Facepalm level squandering.
In a word, no. I prefer an (e-)book, sitting down and listening to music (or playing it myself), or a full-on movie production if I'm looking for entertainment. The vast majority of television does not appeal to me at all. The drama and humor I generally find underwhelming; the news is an outright indictment of our culture from top to bottom, as well as serving the same purpose for the fourth estate; the reality shows... I have no polite words for them at all. And the commercials, when present, inevitably aren't talking to me (even when they seem to think they are.)
From my perspective, television was the single invention of the 20th century with the most potential to uplift society; it was also a monumental standout in the sense of doing an astonishingly comprehensive job of not living up to that potential.
While I am sure that adrift somewhere in that sea of production there might well be things I would enjoy, I simply am not willing to spend the time to figure out what those might be. There is far too much interesting going on in the real world to even try to go there.
mm, no, I don't buy it. An inexpensive HD video camera is $100; They're all over the place. Methinks you're figuring things using preconceptions picked up years ago.
As for "normal" hard drive use, I think the people who sell Aperture, Lightroom, Photoshop, WinImages, Finalcut, and all the plug-in people who write functions to extend those products... yeah, I think they'd just laugh at you. I know at least one of 'em is. :)
In the case of broadcast television...
A fool and his time are soon parted.
I'm an apple customer -- we have quite a few macs, ipods, even two ipads -- but I won't watch TV for free, much less for .99/show. So let's not paint with too broad a brush, shall we?
Ok. So, in the end, no critical thinking reveal, just a woo-woo flipout about (cough) inner tuning forks with dirt on them. That's kind of what I figured, but I thought I'd give you a chance anyway, since you were the one who put critical thinking on the table.
Nope.
Anyone with a video camera can fill a terabyte easily. And that would be almost everyone with a cellphone, these days, not to mention the millions of dedicated video recorders that are out there.
Actually, they do; see Sigma's foveon sensor for the SD-14, for instance.
That link returned a bunch of psychological soft stuff, no hard science at all, at least in the first few pages. Not saying you're wrong, but there was nothing there to back you up.
Not seeing where it really puts a significant lean on AI anyway, frankly - even assuming it's exactly right, it's a broad statement about people, who vary enormously, yet generally still cope reasonably well. I expect that an AI would adapt to whatever differences there were and that would be the end of it.
Sigh. So much wrong with that. Binary is as simple as it gets. Two states. So one looks at that end. Analog has infinite states. That's the other end. Modulation is a transformation from the input state set to a mapped state set. Demodulation goes the other way. I'm not assuming binary, or any other -ary. I'm assuming that when complex and well controlled modulation exists, and we can determine that is the case, we can infer intelligence is responsible. I did not imply that we would understand everything that came our way, or even that we would spot it, or that one mode of modulation was all there would be (even in one signal.)
My point is simply that a signal looks different than noise, and the when the content of a signal appears noiselike due to maximal compression, as was suggested earlier, this does not make the modulation noiselike. As a *simple* example, if you look at a serial line, such as a 20 ma current loop, the content of the line consists of a series of distinctive waveforms when the line is carrying information, compressed or not. Interpretation of the data being carried is not required to infer that data is, in fact, being carried. All you need for that is to observe the nature of the signal. Note that this example does not preclude others, and I am not limiting my argument to 20 ma current loops, or binary. Sheesh.
I should also point out that SETI, by and large, has been looking at such a narrow bandwidth that any information on the signals is likely to be completely invisible to initial detection. They're looking for a carrier wave, as far as RF goes. They'll have to use different methods to actually examine the signal, presuming they ever find one.
Ok, and you base this claim of linkage upon... ???
In my 54 years, I have seen nothing - at all - that suggests to me that there is a god or gods. This experience is exactly the same as my experience with astrology, unicorns, talking teapots, crystalomancy, and so forth. I have encountered absolutely no reason to believe.
On the other hand, I have learned a great deal about people's abilities to convince themselves of the most absurd propositions. Depth of faith is clearly not an indicator of truth: it constantly leads people into the ridiculous and the contradictory. The number of people who believe something is also no indicator of truth. Actual approaches to truth within the bounds of our understanding - the presently incontrovertible - are self evident, in that they may be inductively validated by objective fact, testing for falsifiability, and our understanding rigorously adjusted as we learn more. This is a mode of consideration that religion fails miserably. Yet it is, as far as I know, the only one that actually works.
In addition, I find that religion - Christianity in particular - wraps itself around the most odious and hypocritical outlooks. For instance, you are happy to think your god is a good guy for futzing about with the fertility of your circle, while at the same time, this supposedly omnipotent, omniscient entity won't be bothered with moderating the slaughter in Sudan (just to name one of many such venues.)
That's why I am atheist; the reason I am vocal about it is that the religious are interfering with my life on many levels. From adherents flying into skyscrapers to preventing me from buying beer on Sunday to intimating that my honor an character depend upon placing my hand on a book of mythology in a court of law to trying to tell my friends they can't marry, I find religion to be both constantly in my face to an unacceptable degree, and also, an anti-science force with literally centuries of appalling abuses on record.
No. Nor is it my role, as someone who lacks belief, to try and prove a negative. What you're asking is precisely equivalent to asking if I can prove there is no talking teapot in orbit around the sun, or to prove that earthquakes aren't actually caused by invisible pink unicorns that run upside down along the fault lines. I can't prove those things either; that doesn't, however, serve in *any* way to somehow vouch for the actuality of the matters in question.
But: in fact, I can turn to my experience of reality and give you this answer: While I can't prove a negative, I can evaluate the probability based upon my life experience. And I find that the probability is about as low as it can be; or to put it another way, my confidence is extremely high that there is no god or gods, and that the entire religious experience (outside of intentional scamming) is one of self-delusion.
Good; because those stories don't serve the purpose. I'm not very interested in how you interpret mundane events. The fact that they are mundane disqualifies them from serving as evidence for a god or gods. Mundane stuff happens. People get pregnant; congratulations are issued for this and that, and sometimes they are the result of misinformation or guesses. The odds favor all of us encountering the unusual from time to time. Taking such events as evidence for supernatural power is really uncalled for. So what it boils down to is you're telling me mundane stuff happens. Such stories don't serve to make your case, or even to back it up.
In any case, this isn't what I asked you for; I asked you what critical thinking process led you to your position. You said you were a person with a high IQ, as well as a critical thinker. That's why I asked just that w
Why would you do this to a baby *or* an AI? And since you obviously wouldn't, how is it relevant?
You mean, brain hardware isn't like silicon logic. That doesn't mean that it is a given that silicon logic can't do what brain hardware can do. That's the beauty of computing - processes that are wholly unlike digital logic may be created by virtue of the flexibility the machine.
The breadth of computing is really quite striking. Chemical, electrical, mechanical and even quantum behaviors are all easily implemented on digital hardware. And since that, in turn, represents the length and breadth of the machinery available to the human brain that we are even *suspicious* of, much less certain of, there's every reason to see them as a workable fit.
Well, as I say, one would not intentionally do such a thing if the intent is to produce a worthwhile result. And clearly, those "tight limits" allow for missing one or more senses. So not all that tight, really.
Honestly, if we can make a machine that can think, the rest isn't that much of a problem. We'll figure it out. In no way is this a worthy argument against the feasibility of AI.
Yes, I agree. And, having read your entire post, I ask: How is this - in any way - relevant to the feasibility - or not - of AI, or even to an argument that cells are not machines? Does a lever have to be a clock to be a machine? No? So why does a cell have to be a clock or a lever in order to be a machine? You can make a machine out of carved chunks of frozen ice, or shaped corncobs, or a few molecules of whatever. And as I said elsewhere in this article today, you can make logic elements out of darned near anything. Every one needed to make a computer of any nature, given time, space and a masochistic nature.
Wait a second. Machine B rolls off the line, gets instantiated with machine A's state, and then proceeds to go off and have its own experiences. which enrich it, may cause it to modify its positions, etc. It is now fundamentally different from machine A. It's just a lifetime (or many) ahead of your kid in learning. When it sends a copy of its core back to factory, however, it ensures that in the case of an accident, it can be reanimated with only the loss of whatever happened since the last update; and further, the "new kids" are that much smarter, but again, will alter as they gain more of their own experience, which will, by the very unidirectional nature of time, of necessity be different from the "parent's" experiences, though informed by them.
I don't see anything about starting as a blank slate that provides an advantage over one that is full of useful learning. Quite the contrary. A fresh perspective... all that requires is a different experience base, and that is built for machine B at the same rate as for your kid. 15 years down the road, they're both 15 years more experienced than day 0. It's just that machine B has *way* more experience and knowledge than the kid on day 0 and at year 15, even presuming equal learning speeds when interacting with the universe (and sorry, your kid will be slower... odds are excellent that machine B can permanently pick up, for instance, expert class deep space welding skills with a 2 second data transfer. And then learn expert level stained glass window creation that evening for kicks. Also in 2 seconds.) Nor is there a visible link between creativity and originating with blankness in your argument. Perhaps you just neglected to make the point, in which case, by all means, do.
Yes. Significantly. However, not significantly in electron tubes, or gears, or hydraulics, or folded paper: And you can create any logic element you like out of any one of those building blocks, given space, time, a significant exercise of will and, I think, an unhealthy dose of masochism. :)
Consequently I would argue that the quantum effects that make transistors work are in no way a pre-requisite for what we're having them do for us at a higher level, which is the same: Make logic processing devices.
Invert, and, or, xor, clocked states and various other combinatorial goodies... it's all mundane as can be in terms of what is actually required to implement them. Check this baby out.
No? What other kind of experience is there? Your thoughts are really happening, are they not? Hormone dumps as well? Memories actually recalled? Fun, sure, but where is the non-objective or non-empirical here? I submit to you (also respectfully btw, thanks for engaging) that just because you don't know how to describe something in simple terms, that said thing is not mundane in nature. For instance, one might well not know what's going on inside a radio, but that doesn't make the experience transcendent; it's still just as mundane as dropping a rock on the ground. No magic at all. You might think like crazy about it, wondering what is going on; you might experience hormone dumps, frightened by the voices you hear coming from the "magic box"; but the box is, in fact, not magic. What I'm getting at here is that your experience is not what makes something mundane, or not; nor is your understanding. It is what it is. And all the "is" we know of to date... you guessed it. Mundane.
To date, we have discovered exactly one domain. Mundane reality. Religion is no more than an exercise of storytelling; there's no difference between a story of Zeus and one of Spongebob. Telling a story doesn't validate its content, any more than any flight of imagination actualizes the concepts involved. Now - if you disagree and would like to engage on the level of what you think the separate domain is, I'd be pleased to discuss it with you.
Well aware of it. My position on what engenders belief in religion (as opposed to implementation and practice as a mechanism for control) may be found here. You'll note intelligence isn't even mentioned.
Ok, so... are you religious? If so, why? Do you think you have an immortal "soul"? What critical thinking process led to that conclusion, if that's what you think? Or, do you think that nature somehow requires a creator? Again, what critical thinking process led you there? By all means, let's talk about it. Perhaps I will have some observations that you can pick apart, or contrariwise, find useful.
If you're *actually* open, it could accomplish quite a lot. I'm open the other way; show me some solid evidence, that's all.
It's not a game at all. A machine is a device that does something; in action, it has an energy input, a mechanism that does something to or with that energy, and often an output as well. That's how we work - that's as precise a description of a cell as it is a screw, a clock or an aircraft. We're made up of cells. I don't see any possible way to describe us as not machines.
You mean pieces like... cells? Of course you do. :)
Plants grow by reproduction of their constituent parts. This isn't exactly an argument for a capacity limited to intelligences. So I fail to see the relevance. I may just be obtuse; please explain. Just to set you up, I'm with you that cell division is a different process than a factory full of assembly lines. What I'm missing here is why it is relevant - in any way - to the issue of whether created intelligence is either possible, or necessarily only the result of organic processes.
I'm sorry... 3 billion years of evolution didn't produce quite a lot of things we've managed to produce in the last hundred years or so. I'm afraid your argument is without basis. We're actually pretty good at producing things evolution has utterly failed at (not to mention significantly improving some things... like the survivability of children after birth, for instance.) Evolution didn't produce gas chromatographs or radio or lego blocks, either. Turns out we're actually really good at cooking up things that outdo 3+ billion years of evolution.
Also, who cares how it reproduces? And why, even so, would you have it do it "our way"? Surely a few second copy operation that results in entity B, complete with all learning that entity A has done is more efficient, not to mention less wasteful, than cooking up a human baby.
Hm. Well, when machines can be expected to be able to work in space and mine asteroids and comets for essentially unlimited materials at very little cost in energy, I don't really see what maintainance has to do with it. Even we manage to fix your dented car body without having to go to the iron mine to get it handled. We anticipate failure, stockpile parts, and have 'em ready when needed. You think machines as intelligent, or more so, than we, can't work out how to fix themselves? I just don't buy it. Heck, even my roomba can already find an AC socket. And you know what's making the AC for that socket? Yup. Machines. Dumb ones designed to run without a whole lot of oversight. If we can do it, so can they, at least, that's the obvious conclusion.
Let's go back to reproduction for a moment. Consider: You make a baby. Fifteen years later (because this is truly an exceptional child), you've got another productive human being.
The AI, on the other hand, rolls a chassis off the assembly line at a rate limited only by materials and line complexity. Turning it from base hardware into another productive entity is the resul
I'm inclined to lump quantum effects in with the mechanically mundane. I don't see any problem creating activity that functions like quantum activity. Right up to and including losing information if observed (though the obvious shortcut there is not to bother even putting the information in the variable...) or not knowing the answer to something until the variable is examined, or causing one variable's state to change based on nothing but another variable's state.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that quantum mechanical behavior is mundane and I doubt that, should we find it is actively involved in our version of intelligence (as opposed to energy conversion as hypothesized in photosynthesis), it would either present a serious impediment to AI, or serve as any kind of an indicator for a magical soul or unknown fourth mechanism of any kind.
I don't even need to: I'm holding an ethernet cable. Clearly, this is an artificial message conduit. But in the spirit in which you meant your post, I *still* don't need to detect your message, because the random data streams are still products of intelligence. We know this because the carrier - the ethernet 0/1 levels - are clearly artificially generated. That was the point I was making. If I send an AM signal and modulate it in a way that can carry data, it's going to be very clear that I am doing so to anyone who receives it and understands the concept of modulation. Likewise, FM, PM, spread spectrum, laser, a modulated stream of rocks... you get the idea.
Religion is simply belief without the benefit of objective facts. Dogs exhibit this same behavior when they come back to an owner, hoping for kindness, even though the owner kicks them every time they do.
Religion's key sociological benefit is that it easily keeps the masses under control using a targeted fear of the unknown, and further, can be used to focus their enmity upon any other group by defining them as outside the pale. Religion's primary downside is that it massively retards technological progress by teaching a world model that is made of fairy tales.
Since there are other ways to control a populace than feeding them mythology, and alternate ways of providing the charity that some religions espouse, I consider religion itself to be a wholly negative factor.
Or... it's not so much identity or awareness of one's identity that makes one human, but rather the search for the ideal, the good, or even the Easter bunny.
Personally, I try to identify searches for concepts that are utterly unsupported by objective facts, and then stay as far away from them as I can; they waste my time and they annoy me.
A real advantage humans have over animals is that at least some of us can quickly detect an unjustified belief and walk away from it, even in the face of significant peer pressure.