Re:really scraping the bottom of the barrel
on
Happy Tau Day
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· Score: 1
There isn't but there should be. I'm writing the gamma manifesto where instead of e - the euler constant - we use gamma. For the obvious reasons, gamma=2e.
Interesting view. (1) I would say consciousness is useful from the social point of view since we can explain our actions and change other's. It's an evolutionary advantage that we can exchange lower level information between us and not just 'act' as the only causality. I also can say that, as we are not very efficient analyzing every situation, we have some feelings, sensations, and gut instinct. The fact that we are conscious and can get input for the conscience of others and act against this instinct also has evolutionary advantages. I understand that in an hypothetical world with no randomness things are predetermined but it's still a chaotic system and the interactions we have with each other affect the behavior of the system. Being conscious changes these interactions and is still an advantage from the evolutionary point of view. (2) I'm not disputing that there is quantum mechanics black magic happening in the world and randomness - although i'm not an expert in this, it seems to be well founded and experimentally testable. Wouldn't it be enough to have randomness around us and in some chemical processes going inside us - without our brain being this machine to do amplification of quantum effects to compute incomputable functions, like Penrose defends?
I don't see how free will is connected with consciousness. From my point of view, consciousness is the awareness of process of accessing my experiences/memory and make a decision/act according to that. Usually in (what i think is) my best interest. We can even justify the decisions (and so we are very aware of the process), but i would not say that's a requirement to have a conscience. Free will is something different, It's the question of the amount of liberty you have to take whatever decision. What I defend is that the decision one wants to take is defined by who one is. If who you are is defined at an atomic level there is no need of a subatomic brain to have free will.
Free will is not the most important here. If my decisions depend just on my current state (up to the atomic level) and, given that state, I would act the same way, there are no problems with that. Since my 'current state' depends on the lives of my ancestors (passed through their genes) and everything I experienced throughout my life, my current state is what I really am. Me.
I don't know of any evidence that points to consciousness being linked with quantum mechanics and I don't see why it would need to be.
In fact I'm curious about this too. The iphone/itunes link means that you can infect one and get the other as bonus. Additionally phones give more vectors of infection. You carry them around and connect them to several different networks. This has to be appealing for exploiters(tm).
I'm exaggerating, i try to keep photos organized, folders for code, etc. I just use this attic to put every file that i'm not sure I wan't to keep until I read and analyze it.
There are some things people send to my gmail that I just save there. I have it in gmail anyway if I ever what to find it again, and sometime this folder has several copies of the same file.As I do research, I read lots of articles and I'm not really sure if they are useful or not until I read the abstract and the introduction. Someone sends you a pdf where do you put it? I think I wouldn't lose much information if my disk died. I have all my pictures in flickr. All code and important stuff under versioning... I don't even care about backups...
My comment was just to illustrate the problem with directories - the information that does not easily fit is the structure.... I would like to have a solution for this but I don't have any...
Agreed. Theory of evolution is a descriptive theory. Anything is selection of the fittest as long the traits survive. Otherwise it's called discrimination. Theory of evolution has nothing to do with decisions we make because it always applies, no matter what. One could be against adoption because "it's against selection of the fittest". But we evolved to be (some say) a society conscious animal.
Another example. One can be against transgenic food because it reduces biodiversity. But indestructible rice has clearly some evolutionary advantages. Until the day (in 1 century, say) a bug appears and we have no more rice.
Anyway, like you say, our reasoning about all this stuff is part of the evolutionary process. The only thing I think we should be aware is than on this kind of stuff, the precautionary principle is more applicable than our usual "innocent until proven guilty principle". The precautionary principle says "If something you're doing can have a irreversible impact, it should be proven safe first". We already apply this to pharmaceuticals, and many other things but we should be more aware of it, because in a way, is counter intuitive for us, democratic people.
Who cares if it's debatable if there is global warming? Just because that there is the risk of it, we must take action to prevent its possibility. This ruins 99.9% of the arguments of GW deniers and conspiracy theorists. Because they think GW should be proven, whereas the only thing to be proven is the mere possibility of it.
... the Vatican is building a solar power plant in Italian territory, subsidized by Italian money, to export energy to Italy? That seems like a good deal.
The fact that you can inspect the source code doesn't prove (although it helps) that the code does the right thing.
Are they inspecting the compiler's code? And the compiler of the compiler's code?
It's just because these types of devices sell the hardware below the cost of production. They make money from the games! Therefore it's a really cheap way of having computer power.
I guess we'll have to wait and see. But I don't see improvments since China joined the WTO. Most of the times is the other way arround. I would say, that now, there are more workers being explored and working for a rice bowl than before.
I think trade is only fair if the countries have more or less the same set of rules. Because it has a lot of implications, not only in China, but in the western world too. (search the great leap forward)
I think that UN could use trade to pressure China. In other way it didn't work well with Cuba and only increased the poverty of the people.
It is obviously not an easy subject. But to have an algorithm like this... is the best solution?
if (hasbig(market) && want(commerce))
do_commerce_with(); esle if (has(oil) && !want(commerce))
conquer(); else block();
Slashdot Mirror
Actually the EU's economy is larger than USA's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union
There isn't but there should be. I'm writing the gamma manifesto where instead of e - the euler constant - we use gamma. For the obvious reasons, gamma=2e.
All the chinese people can still read this story after all the comments done say "Yeah!!!".
It would be good, but what would be the reason for the descent of that colony to stop being immune to the previous drugs?
Though I can't remember by who...
RMS?
Interesting view. (1) I would say consciousness is useful from the social point of view since we can explain our actions and change other's. It's an evolutionary advantage that we can exchange lower level information between us and not just 'act' as the only causality. I also can say that, as we are not very efficient analyzing every situation, we have some feelings, sensations, and gut instinct. The fact that we are conscious and can get input for the conscience of others and act against this instinct also has evolutionary advantages. I understand that in an hypothetical world with no randomness things are predetermined but it's still a chaotic system and the interactions we have with each other affect the behavior of the system. Being conscious changes these interactions and is still an advantage from the evolutionary point of view. (2) I'm not disputing that there is quantum mechanics black magic happening in the world and randomness - although i'm not an expert in this, it seems to be well founded and experimentally testable. Wouldn't it be enough to have randomness around us and in some chemical processes going inside us - without our brain being this machine to do amplification of quantum effects to compute incomputable functions, like Penrose defends?
Nevertheless it would be cool to have my brain factorizing integers faster ;)
I don't see how free will is connected with consciousness. From my point of view, consciousness is the awareness of process of accessing my experiences/memory and make a decision/act according to that. Usually in (what i think is) my best interest. We can even justify the decisions (and so we are very aware of the process), but i would not say that's a requirement to have a conscience. Free will is something different, It's the question of the amount of liberty you have to take whatever decision. What I defend is that the decision one wants to take is defined by who one is. If who you are is defined at an atomic level there is no need of a subatomic brain to have free will.
I agree with that. I'm just OK with a "fake" free will that depends on all my experiences and all those of my ancestors.
The rest of the book is pretty good, tho.
Free will is not the most important here. If my decisions depend just on my current state (up to the atomic level) and, given that state, I would act the same way, there are no problems with that. Since my 'current state' depends on the lives of my ancestors (passed through their genes) and everything I experienced throughout my life, my current state is what I really am. Me. I don't know of any evidence that points to consciousness being linked with quantum mechanics and I don't see why it would need to be.
According to some studies 1 fifth of the world population can't see the milky way at night.
In fact I'm curious about this too. The iphone/itunes link means that you can infect one and get the other as bonus. Additionally phones give more vectors of infection. You carry them around and connect them to several different networks. This has to be appealing for exploiters(tm).
I'm exaggerating, i try to keep photos organized, folders for code, etc. I just use this attic to put every file that i'm not sure I wan't to keep until I read and analyze it. There are some things people send to my gmail that I just save there. I have it in gmail anyway if I ever what to find it again, and sometime this folder has several copies of the same file.As I do research, I read lots of articles and I'm not really sure if they are useful or not until I read the abstract and the introduction. Someone sends you a pdf where do you put it? I think I wouldn't lose much information if my disk died. I have all my pictures in flickr. All code and important stuff under versioning... I don't even care about backups... My comment was just to illustrate the problem with directories - the information that does not easily fit is the structure.... I would like to have a solution for this but I don't have any...
I basically use the same structure as you but I have an extra directory called "attic" where in practice I end up putting everything.
Agreed. Theory of evolution is a descriptive theory. Anything is selection of the fittest as long the traits survive. Otherwise it's called discrimination. Theory of evolution has nothing to do with decisions we make because it always applies, no matter what. One could be against adoption because "it's against selection of the fittest". But we evolved to be (some say) a society conscious animal. Another example. One can be against transgenic food because it reduces biodiversity. But indestructible rice has clearly some evolutionary advantages. Until the day (in 1 century, say) a bug appears and we have no more rice. Anyway, like you say, our reasoning about all this stuff is part of the evolutionary process. The only thing I think we should be aware is than on this kind of stuff, the precautionary principle is more applicable than our usual "innocent until proven guilty principle". The precautionary principle says "If something you're doing can have a irreversible impact, it should be proven safe first". We already apply this to pharmaceuticals, and many other things but we should be more aware of it, because in a way, is counter intuitive for us, democratic people. Who cares if it's debatable if there is global warming? Just because that there is the risk of it, we must take action to prevent its possibility. This ruins 99.9% of the arguments of GW deniers and conspiracy theorists. Because they think GW should be proven, whereas the only thing to be proven is the mere possibility of it.
... the Vatican is building a solar power plant in Italian territory, subsidized by Italian money, to export energy to Italy? That seems like a good deal.
Citeseer http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/ ;)
The fact that you can inspect the source code doesn't prove (although it helps) that the code does the right thing. Are they inspecting the compiler's code? And the compiler of the compiler's code?
It's just because these types of devices sell the hardware below the cost of production. They make money from the games! Therefore it's a really cheap way of having computer power.
207,986,688,852 / 62 = 3,354,624,013 flops = 3199 MFlops/watt My AMD64 3000 + has around 42 MFlops/watt
Well, I guess Tom Hanks is better actor than "The Governator"... But, Chaplin was also better actor than Regan and that didn't make him President.
I guess we'll have to wait and see. But I don't see improvments since China joined the WTO. Most of the times is the other way arround. I would say, that now, there are more workers being explored and working for a rice bowl than before.
I think trade is only fair if the countries have more or less the same set of rules. Because it has a lot of implications, not only in China, but in the western world too. (search the great leap forward)
I think that UN could use trade to pressure China. In other way it didn't work well with Cuba and only increased the poverty of the people.
It is obviously not an easy subject. But to have an algorithm like this... is the best solution?
if (hasbig(market) && want(commerce))
do_commerce_with();
esle if (has(oil) && !want(commerce))
conquer();
else block();
I don't understand what doing business has to do with spreading democracy
I've done several tests and wikipedia seems not to be censored. try Great Leap Forward Mao Cultural Revolution