This would seem to echo commentary in a New York Times article about the rise of Russian hackers in recent years.
The Russians may be especially vulnerable to this, coming down as they are from a fully-controlled society. Under Communism, individuals must be taught from childhood to ignore their inner moral voice and instead follow the orders coming down from above. Inner sensibility is bred out, because it can only interfere with a command economy.
But then the command structure toppled, and all of its cogs were set loose in "freedom, horrible freedom". No more orders coming down from above... and no inner voice (or at least an abnormally quiet one) and not much of a national religion to forcibly install one. Perhaps such people are therefore more likely to become free-riders, or worse, as the opportunities arise.
So my question is: Even if there is no God, and you are an atheist, is it possible that a world containing religious people is actually a "better" society than a world full of atheists?
Most people don't have the wit to be honorable for the sake of honor (as, for example, Absurdism would recommend). People need the idea of karma -- of retribution, of a Day of Reckoning, of a Judgment Day, of a final settling of the scores -- in order to behave. But karma is a difficult belief to uphold in this world where the bad guys seem to constantly get away with it.
Religion's primary social benefit, then, is that it provides an unanswerable (in the 'untestable' sense) argument for karma. It gives the provincials what they need in order to believe in karma, a belief which helps a little or a lot to reduce free-riding and predation.
Religion is a vile ideation that reinforces the worst aspects of irrationality and tribalism... but it is also the cheapest way to get laypeople to behave as though they are under the karmic gun.
Of course that may change in the future, once everyone is wearing their Life Recorder and technology provides the karmic retribution that we all need in order to be honorable and polite. It would be so nice to dispense with religion, that it almost makes it worthwhile to allow the inevitable government controls to technologically pervade my life. Almost.
Is this really all that useful? How many of you scan business cards? I never do.
This particular implementation of the idea, may not be all that useful. However, it's the first step towards a computer monitor that can 'see'. At that point, we'll be able to have real videoconferencing, rather than what we have now, where eye contact is impossible. You can't make eye contact if you have to look offscreen at a camera.
Eye contact is a very big deal -- its significance is woven deeply into our brain hardware. When the other party is forever looking away from you (i.e. they are watching their screen instead of their camera), it makes everything they say seem untrustworthy.
> Would we be able to transverse time as easily as space? Yes!
> Would time itself become irrelevent as we could look "forwards"? Yes!
In "Slaughterhouse Five", Vonnegut wrote about creatures who perceived time as a geometric dimension. They could perceive their entire lives as a wide landscape, stretching from past to present to future... and they could move freely within it, to relive the better moments and fast-forward over the unpleasant ones.
One of the implications that these creatures could see, but which we could not, is that the universe can only play out one way. Whatever happens, has always happened, and always will happen, it is unavoidable. The creatures could see their future with absolute certainty, and so they knew that choice is an illusion (or, in my understanding, a mis-connotated word that belongs in the realm of epistemology rather than of metaphysics).
In any case, if the universe experiences this sort of "signature change", then we'll never know it. Consciousness will abruptly cease, like a paused DVD player or a saved Diablo game, waiting forever for time to resume. But, a new sort of consciousness could arise, to which physical movement is the equivalent of temporal progression. Somehow, if it could gather information and then ruminate upon it, by means of movement rather than time, it could become self-aware.
be embarrassing if the hole was just the result of variations in various decades long solar cycles, after all we haven't been observing it for very long. we may have gone environmentally apeshit for no reason with regards to FHCs.
Ozone is manufactured by the sun. So, there must always be a drop in ozone at the pole during the winter. I wonder what part of the current drop in antarctic ozone is our doing, versus what part is inevitable?
Or more precisely: I wonder if it is even possible to know what part is our doing?
***Capitalism*** is evil. A harsh statement, granted. But when you see the 100s of millions of people it has enslaved for the benefit of the few people at the top, there's no other word for it but evil.
Exceedingly sloppy use of the concept of 'enslave' there. A distinguishing characteristic of that concept is, or at least was, the use of physical force to prevent the victim from disengaging.
If you proceed to lump America and Soviet Union into the same concept ("slave economies"), then that concept will cease to be useful, and you'll thereafter need a new word to describe the very important difference between "Do it our way or else go find a different job" versus "Do it our way or go to jail". I don't know about you, but *I* would vastly prefer the former.
It also seems silly to say that Capitalism has only enriched the people at the top, when in Western Capitalist countries the lower class has an objectively higher standard of living than the upper class does in Communist countries (not counting the handful of upper-upper-crust).
I'd dispute not only the maths but also the philosophy is a bit iffy. Logic leads to maths, I'll buy that, but I am not entirely sure that strict logic would derive from philosophy. I might be wrong, though.
The answer depends on what sort of philosophy you choose.
Some philosophies do not regard it as axiomatic that every entity has an identity which it must obey. (By this I mean "In circumstances A + B + C + D, it must do X".) Without that axiom, induction is impossible, because a past X in circumstances ABCD does not imply that it will X again under the same circumstances... and without induction, deduction is just a word game.
The sceptical philosophies (e.g. Kant, Leftism) reject that axiom. The intrinsic philosophies (e.g. Plotinus, religion, Conservatism), by contrast, embrace it but insist that the human mind has no independent method of inducing truths; inductive truth has to fall into your lap as a revelation (or whatever you want to call it).
There is no evidence that the human mind "congeals" at 30. Saying so is simply inane. Just think Andrew Wiles.
It is not a physiological phenomenon, it is psychological. Around age 30, most people subconsciously decide that "I have thought enough", and roll with their worldview for the rest of their life.
Of course there are exceptions -- exceptional people who continue gathering data and revising their conclusions. Those are the people worth dating.:)
I've often wondered something like this. If we ever have a computer powerful enough to fully simulate a human brain, would, would the simulation qualify as human?
And thus would begin its n-hundred year struggle for political recognition of its sovereignty. And it would be the sort of struggle that simply requires a long time interval, in which members of the obsolete worldview die of old age. The human mind congeals around age 30, so that means that all serious ideological upheavals require everyone over 30 to die off.
In any case, I've always thought that the only prerequisite for having one's political rights recognized, is the act of demanding exactly that.
After the first couple of moves in reading ahead the possibility chain usually grows exponentially. While a human doesn't always have to read these trees out, a computer has to.
And why is that, exactly?
That's the point of newer approaches to programming a chess-playing computer: instead of adding memory and CPUs, instead we'll improve the predictive evaluation of board position.
Your brain isn't looking twelve moves ahead (as Deep Blue does), or even eight. Your brain is a neural network... and the brain of a Grand Master has been trained to 'sense' the general state of the board.
And for the record, I NEVER buy/go anywhere/do anything based on an ad but only on what my needs and wants really are.
True enough. But marketing is only half "raise consumer awareness of new products". This is the half that is, generally, a social benefit.
The other half -- the dark half -- is "adjust the consumer's wants". This is the half that is, at best, a zero sum game. It is the half that makes marketers hate themselves, on those rare occasions when they allow themselves to grasp its nature.
And the line between the two is a diffuse swath of grey unknowability.
It's news because someone on slashdot finally got a girlfriend. CONGRATS!
I've read this meme over and over and over again here on slashdot, and today is the day that I finally say my piece.
I've always been a computer geek, thanks to my older brother dumping his C64 on me when I was in grade school. As an adult, all of my friends are computer geeks too, and so I figured that I would be happy with a geek boyfriend too.
At length I found one (after first trying out country boys and then businesswomen). He was an engineer at NASA, which is just down the road from me here. And he was tall, a great formal dancer, subversive, witty, well read, fond of militaria and especially warbirds, a lover of scifi, and an amateur philosopher. He was, in order words, EXACTLY what I'd always wanted (but didn't dare to hope to find). I was ecstatic.
Except.
By the second date I could see it. He was afraid of me. He anxiously expected me to disapprove of something. He did not quietly expect me to like him, which is what attracted me to the country boys and businesswomen. And so he was afraid to take the lead in any meaningful way.
Every decision had to be checked and double-checked against my whims. Every advance had to receive multiple signals of willingness. Every move was made in expectation of getting swatted.
He may not have been intimidated by women-in-general, but when he finally met one (me) who supposedly met all his criteria, he was surprised that I wanted him. And so he pursued the relationship ever so gingerly, as if teasing the detonator out of a bomb. Despite my genuine, exuberant praise for him, he could never lay aside his conviction that no woman worth having would ever want him or would ever yield to him.
And so his conviction came true. (It was probably a relief for him, too.) I dumped him, bitterly disappointed that he -- a lead engineer at NASA and former airborne ranger -- was afraid to make a decision that I might theoretically object to.
Damn, but six ounces of decisiveness would've changed the entire course of my life.
The moral of the story for all you geeks is: expect women to like you; do not be afraid to challenge them; if you aren't decisive, then fake it; expect them to yield to your boldness; and learn how to dance, because few things are more indicative of a man's confidence than his willingness to make a fool of himself on the dance floor.
Fewer cosmic rays mean fewer clouds will be formed, and so there will be a warmer Earth. If the sun and the solar wind are not so active, then more cosmic rays can come in. That means more clouds [reflecting away more sunlight] and a cooler Earth.
That's odd. The post-9/11 research into the effects of jet contrails suggested that they have two faint effects: mild warming and mild day/night temperature moderation. But the above quote seems to contradict that.
I am now even more suspicious of the conclusions of the contrail research, coming (as it did) in the middle of the global warming craze. Right now you can't even publish the simple observation that plants will grow usefully faster on a warmer Earth; no, you have to spin it as "OMG poison ivy will get worse!".
I'm ready to go nuclear/solar/wind, and drive an electric car, because I've always hated the power that petronomics gives to the backwards nations... but come on guys, can we at least give both sides a fair hearing?
You need you to grow some balls and face the reality: Apple has intentionally crippled these products for no better reason than remain in tight control of the battery replacement procedure and get some cash from there too.
This angry conjecture does not bear up to scrutiny. An internal, soldered, non-user-replaceable battery confers some serious benefits:
no contact connection problems, even in the presence of moisture and vibration
savings of precious internal volume by omitting the battery compartment and battery sheathing
elimination of an entry point for dust and water
elimination of spurious warranty claims stemming from subpar or incorrect third-party batteries, and from user fiddling
Each of these is a serious engineering concern, and each has the potential to significantly impact the user's ownership experience. Your conjecture, therefore, cannot possibly be true, and is also needlessly mean-spirited.
Isn't that weird about our culture? We punish bad behaviour with a vengeance, but rarely do we reward good behaviour.
Except, of course, for the entire economy, which consists of our collective acts of rewarding those who produce values.
Certainly there are a lot of free-riders, and transfer payments, and other instances of injustice, but in the majority of cases, the free market is a fast-moving system of rewards for good behavior.
Being fat is a choice. You choose to start the day [...]
I submit that you cannot explain or even define the term 'choice'. You are using the word to encapsulate an untidy inexplicability, which is: why would anyone choose to get fat?
Yes, they are choosing the short-term pleasure of food over the long-term pleasure of being trim... but why? Why do some people choose such things when they know better? Same goes for the 'choice' to be gay: why would anyone choose that sort of anguish and ostracization? (By the way, I am both trim and gay.)
You don't know the answer. Probably nobody does; I know I sure don't. So please stop pretending that the trite phrase "it's a choice" has any explanatory power whatsoever.
Of course not. I invested the better part of my childhood in intensive study of Chinese products, and so I have it on good authority that the submarine's doors are injection-molded plastic, bright red, mounted on long thin metal hinge-pins. The plastic will break after fifty operations, or the hinge-pin will rust out. The damage will not be field repairable and so the sub will sink. However, the entire sub only costs $23.99 ($12.40 wholesale in lots of 10000), so they'll just pick up a replacement on their way home.
Man, can you imagine getting that thing out of the blister package?
Well, China has been beefing up their military at a high speed and now it seems they are raising the stakes.
A boomer is helpful for ensuring world stability, but it's useless for amphibious assault or even for deterring a US counterattack. You'll know China is getting ready to invade Taiwan when they start investing in their military's sealift capabilities.
Speaking of which -- I wonder if they could use their many many container ships for that? Container ships probably need a port to unload... but ports can be captured.
In a truly competitive market the iphone would be free to connect to any telco (and because the phone meets FCC requirements they should not legally be allowed to turn the customer away). [emphasis added]
Don't equate 'truly' with 'instantly', or else you'll inadvertently summon the regulators, akin to accidentally blurting out Beezelbub's name and having him appear before you in a cloud of cinders.
I may be wrong, but I think extraordinary things like these (a man-made object half the size of the moon anyone can point up and see crossing the sky during daytime) is the kind of inspiration this generation may need. At the very least, they will look up.
You are assuming that it will display a message like "Aim high" or "You can do it" or "Another giant leap for mankind", or an inspiring absence of any message.
In reality, it will display a Nike logo, or "Surf Better at AOL.COM", or an American flag (which nowadays is only trotted out when we feel guilty about giving up our freedoms), or some religious crapola. At that point, I will be ready to invest in Burt Rutan's next craft -- the one capable of shooting it down.
Slashdot Mirror
The Russians may be especially vulnerable to this, coming down as they are from a fully-controlled society. Under Communism, individuals must be taught from childhood to ignore their inner moral voice and instead follow the orders coming down from above. Inner sensibility is bred out, because it can only interfere with a command economy.
But then the command structure toppled, and all of its cogs were set loose in "freedom, horrible freedom". No more orders coming down from above... and no inner voice (or at least an abnormally quiet one) and not much of a national religion to forcibly install one. Perhaps such people are therefore more likely to become free-riders, or worse, as the opportunities arise.
Most people don't have the wit to be honorable for the sake of honor (as, for example, Absurdism would recommend). People need the idea of karma -- of retribution, of a Day of Reckoning, of a Judgment Day, of a final settling of the scores -- in order to behave. But karma is a difficult belief to uphold in this world where the bad guys seem to constantly get away with it.
Religion's primary social benefit, then, is that it provides an unanswerable (in the 'untestable' sense) argument for karma. It gives the provincials what they need in order to believe in karma, a belief which helps a little or a lot to reduce free-riding and predation.
Religion is a vile ideation that reinforces the worst aspects of irrationality and tribalism... but it is also the cheapest way to get laypeople to behave as though they are under the karmic gun.
Of course that may change in the future, once everyone is wearing their Life Recorder and technology provides the karmic retribution that we all need in order to be honorable and polite. It would be so nice to dispense with religion, that it almost makes it worthwhile to allow the inevitable government controls to technologically pervade my life. Almost.
This particular implementation of the idea, may not be all that useful. However, it's the first step towards a computer monitor that can 'see'. At that point, we'll be able to have real videoconferencing, rather than what we have now, where eye contact is impossible. You can't make eye contact if you have to look offscreen at a camera.
Eye contact is a very big deal -- its significance is woven deeply into our brain hardware. When the other party is forever looking away from you (i.e. they are watching their screen instead of their camera), it makes everything they say seem untrustworthy.
In "Slaughterhouse Five", Vonnegut wrote about creatures who perceived time as a geometric dimension. They could perceive their entire lives as a wide landscape, stretching from past to present to future... and they could move freely within it, to relive the better moments and fast-forward over the unpleasant ones.
One of the implications that these creatures could see, but which we could not, is that the universe can only play out one way. Whatever happens, has always happened, and always will happen, it is unavoidable. The creatures could see their future with absolute certainty, and so they knew that choice is an illusion (or, in my understanding, a mis-connotated word that belongs in the realm of epistemology rather than of metaphysics).
In any case, if the universe experiences this sort of "signature change", then we'll never know it. Consciousness will abruptly cease, like a paused DVD player or a saved Diablo game, waiting forever for time to resume. But, a new sort of consciousness could arise, to which physical movement is the equivalent of temporal progression. Somehow, if it could gather information and then ruminate upon it, by means of movement rather than time, it could become self-aware.
Linksys gives specific instructions on how to cascade a second wireless router in order to create a public WAP with a private WAP behind it. So, it'll cost you like $50 to set it up.
Ozone is manufactured by the sun. So, there must always be a drop in ozone at the pole during the winter. I wonder what part of the current drop in antarctic ozone is our doing, versus what part is inevitable?
Or more precisely: I wonder if it is even possible to know what part is our doing?
Exceedingly sloppy use of the concept of 'enslave' there. A distinguishing characteristic of that concept is, or at least was, the use of physical force to prevent the victim from disengaging.
If you proceed to lump America and Soviet Union into the same concept ("slave economies"), then that concept will cease to be useful, and you'll thereafter need a new word to describe the very important difference between "Do it our way or else go find a different job" versus "Do it our way or go to jail". I don't know about you, but *I* would vastly prefer the former.
It also seems silly to say that Capitalism has only enriched the people at the top, when in Western Capitalist countries the lower class has an objectively higher standard of living than the upper class does in Communist countries (not counting the handful of upper-upper-crust).
Lemme guess: you're still in school?
The answer depends on what sort of philosophy you choose.
Some philosophies do not regard it as axiomatic that every entity has an identity which it must obey. (By this I mean "In circumstances A + B + C + D, it must do X".) Without that axiom, induction is impossible, because a past X in circumstances ABCD does not imply that it will X again under the same circumstances... and without induction, deduction is just a word game.
The sceptical philosophies (e.g. Kant, Leftism) reject that axiom. The intrinsic philosophies (e.g. Plotinus, religion, Conservatism), by contrast, embrace it but insist that the human mind has no independent method of inducing truths; inductive truth has to fall into your lap as a revelation (or whatever you want to call it).
It is not a physiological phenomenon, it is psychological. Around age 30, most people subconsciously decide that "I have thought enough", and roll with their worldview for the rest of their life.
Of course there are exceptions -- exceptional people who continue gathering data and revising their conclusions. Those are the people worth dating. :)
And thus would begin its n-hundred year struggle for political recognition of its sovereignty. And it would be the sort of struggle that simply requires a long time interval, in which members of the obsolete worldview die of old age. The human mind congeals around age 30, so that means that all serious ideological upheavals require everyone over 30 to die off.
In any case, I've always thought that the only prerequisite for having one's political rights recognized, is the act of demanding exactly that.
And why is that, exactly?
That's the point of newer approaches to programming a chess-playing computer: instead of adding memory and CPUs, instead we'll improve the predictive evaluation of board position.
Your brain isn't looking twelve moves ahead (as Deep Blue does), or even eight. Your brain is a neural network... and the brain of a Grand Master has been trained to 'sense' the general state of the board.
Humans are Mother Nature's way of getting her carbon out of the ground and back into circulation.
/kidding
//sort of
True enough. But marketing is only half "raise consumer awareness of new products". This is the half that is, generally, a social benefit.
The other half -- the dark half -- is "adjust the consumer's wants". This is the half that is, at best, a zero sum game. It is the half that makes marketers hate themselves, on those rare occasions when they allow themselves to grasp its nature.
And the line between the two is a diffuse swath of grey unknowability.
I've read this meme over and over and over again here on slashdot, and today is the day that I finally say my piece.
I've always been a computer geek, thanks to my older brother dumping his C64 on me when I was in grade school. As an adult, all of my friends are computer geeks too, and so I figured that I would be happy with a geek boyfriend too.
At length I found one (after first trying out country boys and then businesswomen). He was an engineer at NASA, which is just down the road from me here. And he was tall, a great formal dancer, subversive, witty, well read, fond of militaria and especially warbirds, a lover of scifi, and an amateur philosopher. He was, in order words, EXACTLY what I'd always wanted (but didn't dare to hope to find). I was ecstatic.
Except.
By the second date I could see it. He was afraid of me. He anxiously expected me to disapprove of something. He did not quietly expect me to like him, which is what attracted me to the country boys and businesswomen. And so he was afraid to take the lead in any meaningful way.
Every decision had to be checked and double-checked against my whims. Every advance had to receive multiple signals of willingness. Every move was made in expectation of getting swatted.
He may not have been intimidated by women-in-general, but when he finally met one (me) who supposedly met all his criteria, he was surprised that I wanted him. And so he pursued the relationship ever so gingerly, as if teasing the detonator out of a bomb. Despite my genuine, exuberant praise for him, he could never lay aside his conviction that no woman worth having would ever want him or would ever yield to him.
And so his conviction came true. (It was probably a relief for him, too.) I dumped him, bitterly disappointed that he -- a lead engineer at NASA and former airborne ranger -- was afraid to make a decision that I might theoretically object to.
Damn, but six ounces of decisiveness would've changed the entire course of my life.
The moral of the story for all you geeks is: expect women to like you; do not be afraid to challenge them; if you aren't decisive, then fake it; expect them to yield to your boldness; and learn how to dance, because few things are more indicative of a man's confidence than his willingness to make a fool of himself on the dance floor.
And, of course, some fava beans.
That's odd. The post-9/11 research into the effects of jet contrails suggested that they have two faint effects: mild warming and mild day/night temperature moderation. But the above quote seems to contradict that.
I am now even more suspicious of the conclusions of the contrail research, coming (as it did) in the middle of the global warming craze. Right now you can't even publish the simple observation that plants will grow usefully faster on a warmer Earth; no, you have to spin it as "OMG poison ivy will get worse!".
I'm ready to go nuclear/solar/wind, and drive an electric car, because I've always hated the power that petronomics gives to the backwards nations... but come on guys, can we at least give both sides a fair hearing?
This angry conjecture does not bear up to scrutiny. An internal, soldered, non-user-replaceable battery confers some serious benefits:
Each of these is a serious engineering concern, and each has the potential to significantly impact the user's ownership experience. Your conjecture, therefore, cannot possibly be true, and is also needlessly mean-spirited.
Except, of course, for the entire economy, which consists of our collective acts of rewarding those who produce values.
Certainly there are a lot of free-riders, and transfer payments, and other instances of injustice, but in the majority of cases, the free market is a fast-moving system of rewards for good behavior.
I submit that you cannot explain or even define the term 'choice'. You are using the word to encapsulate an untidy inexplicability, which is: why would anyone choose to get fat?
Yes, they are choosing the short-term pleasure of food over the long-term pleasure of being trim... but why? Why do some people choose such things when they know better? Same goes for the 'choice' to be gay: why would anyone choose that sort of anguish and ostracization? (By the way, I am both trim and gay.)
You don't know the answer. Probably nobody does; I know I sure don't. So please stop pretending that the trite phrase "it's a choice" has any explanatory power whatsoever.
Of course not. I invested the better part of my childhood in intensive study of Chinese products, and so I have it on good authority that the submarine's doors are injection-molded plastic, bright red, mounted on long thin metal hinge-pins. The plastic will break after fifty operations, or the hinge-pin will rust out. The damage will not be field repairable and so the sub will sink. However, the entire sub only costs $23.99 ($12.40 wholesale in lots of 10000), so they'll just pick up a replacement on their way home.
Man, can you imagine getting that thing out of the blister package?
A boomer is helpful for ensuring world stability, but it's useless for amphibious assault or even for deterring a US counterattack. You'll know China is getting ready to invade Taiwan when they start investing in their military's sealift capabilities.
Speaking of which -- I wonder if they could use their many many container ships for that? Container ships probably need a port to unload... but ports can be captured.
Good post. Just one gripe:
Don't equate 'truly' with 'instantly', or else you'll inadvertently summon the regulators, akin to accidentally blurting out Beezelbub's name and having him appear before you in a cloud of cinders.
Good answer.
I actually have some code that the military can download into their simulator in order to model the Iranian response to world events:
std::auto_ptr sabre = std::auto_ptr(India::getInstance()->DevelopWeapon( WEAPON_WMD));
sabre->rattle();
if (Sun::getInstance()->position() >= SUN_POS_SUNRISE) this->Angry();
You are assuming that it will display a message like "Aim high" or "You can do it" or "Another giant leap for mankind", or an inspiring absence of any message.
In reality, it will display a Nike logo, or "Surf Better at AOL.COM", or an American flag (which nowadays is only trotted out when we feel guilty about giving up our freedoms), or some religious crapola. At that point, I will be ready to invest in Burt Rutan's next craft -- the one capable of shooting it down.
Well said.
I went to 'friend' you, and saw that I had already done so. :)