Human accomplishments, much like evolutionary progression, are cumulative. Our brains are basically simulation programs - they take data, feed it through a series of filters and rules, and then act on the output. However, since we're able to learn, each successive generation gets a different set of rules and filters, allowing us to work out new problems without first having to go back to basics. As such, it's wrong to say that the human mind created modern computers - rather, the human SPECIES created modern computers. There's a huge difference there. All of our accomplishments owe as much to natural selection and the passage of time as they do to the complexity of the human brain.
That actually sounds quite intelligent.
Who are you, and what have you done with c6gunner?
I'll bet the 40% "paranoids" are the people who have played video games: they know all the computer-generated characters are about to pull an Uzi on them, bite their necks or kill them to eat their brains.
This is the nature of almost all social-science "research":
We don't know how to study this interesting phenomenon (sexual cues between
people), so we
will study something completely unrelated (interpretation of expressions in photographs)
but easier to set up,
and then pretend that one implies the other.
Sure, that's a great reason to burn someone at the stake.
I know they didn't with Galileo, but they did with Bruno, so Galileo knew exactly
what he risked by not complying with the unexpected Catholic Inquisition.
And as for "making fun of the Pope", I can't think of a better target
than someone who uses torture and murder as a way to deal with dissent.
At the destination, a thought receiver demodulates the DNA information and reconstructs a fully functional life form, including humans.
The tough part is getting the "thought receiver" out a good distance, and since it presumably is made of matter, would suffer exactly the same speed limitations that a flask of embryos would. So you haven't really fixed anything.
As to the need for adults in the raising of a child, I am assuming that Mr. Data-like teacher robots (in conjunction with holograms of actual people) will be sufficiently advanced to be able to simulate the parent-child relationship.
Not that I'm expecting this to happen for several centuries, by which time nobody will know or care that I predicted it.
Furthermore, we may well give up on challenges like exploring and colonizing the universe as soon as we develop direct-to-pleasure-center brain stimulators. That could happen in the next ten years, and would probably be humankind's last invention.
Then there are complex issues with people - our fragile minds and bodies. How do we react to the stress of space-travel, can we do it?
You seem to be assuming that the spacefarers are conscious adults. But, the easist way to ship large numbers of space colonists around would be in flask of frozen embryos. They could travel for millenia without food, water, oxygen or getting bored. And a couple of million could squeeze into a jar that weighs less than a kilogram.
Of course, you would have to have some kind of robot teachers to raise them when the ship reaches its destination, not to mention artificial wombs for gestation. Neither of these should be major barriers.
On topic: Sony obviously haven't learned that, since they had BetaMax"
Which enjoyed better success in professional settings.
Not true.
BetaCam is the dominant professional video format, but is completely different from BetaMax. Sony just likes to put "Beta" in front of its video equipment, since the path of the tape through the machine looks like the Greek letter Beta.
However, calling this kind of behavior "theft" is not new terminology.
I remember when I was kid (40 years ago), people who sneaked onto trains, buses, ski lifts, etc. without a ticket could be convicted of "theft of service".
In fact, in law, "theft" just means obtaining something illegally, regardless of whether you are depriving someone else of it. What you are calling "theft" (i.e. taking something away from someone else) is actually called "larceny". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft.
It's like the term "assault": in common usage, it means "to strike someone". But in legal jargon, that's called "battery", while "assault" just means to threaten.
I can't say it bothers me when patent trolls go after big businesses like the networks. These companies can afford to defend themselves, and if the patents are invalid, Rembrandt will get a royal smackdown.
So it is a good while yet before there starts to be a critical mass of HD formats and there's any sort of victory in the HD war.
It doesn't matter. The end of the HD wars will come when one principal backer (Microsoft/Toshiba vs Sony) decides it could better spend its money elsewhere.
OMG! I had a Kenner Hydrodynamic Building Set, identical to this, when I was a
kid forty years ago! It was the greatest thing! (Be sure to
check out the video: its like a real-live Incredible Machine.)
I ended up getting three whole sets so I could connect them together. One of
the best parts were these little food-color pills that would change the
color of the water as it passed over them.
Furthermore, Turing clearly intended the test he described as a necessary but not necessarily sufficient condition
for demonstrating human-like intelligence. In other words, a machine that in incapable of maintaining a human-like conversation can
not be reasonably considered "intelligent" in the usual sense of the term, but a machine that passes such a test only
earns the right to attempt another, harder test.
For example, if a machine can fool one person for a short period of time, then it must be tested with more people over a longer period of time, and so on.
Where does this stop? Only when everyone is satisfied, which is probably never going to happen.
For me, a machine could be considered reasonably intelligent when it can pass this requirement:
take a thousand people from all walks of life, and all over the world
tell each subject that they will engage someone else in conversation for a half hour a day, every day for a year
tell the subjects that they will be paid X dollars an hour to talk, plus a big bonus at the end of the year if they can correctly answer a set of questions about the person that they have been talking to. They will not know what the questions are until the end, forcing
them to find out as much as they can.
following this end-of-year test, they will be told that there is a fifty-fifty chance that the "person" they were
talking to all year was in fact a machine, and they should guess whether or not it was. A big reward will be
given if they guess correctly.
If any significant number of subjects guess correctly,
then this Turing test will have failed. If, on the other hand, the guesses are statistically random, the test will have passed.
Again, passing this test doesn't confer the title of "intelligent" on the machine, but does show that significant progress has been made.
Reminds me of IBM's "assistance" to the Nazis 70 years ago:
IBM and the Nazis
The Nazis awarded IBM founder Thomas J. Watson the "Eagle with Star" medal,
for IBM's assistance in keeping track of Jews and other "undesirables". Watson not only
accepted the medal, but traveled to Germany so that Hitler could present it in person .
I think people are fooling themselves into the ultra futuristic world of downloadable content being just around the corner. We have communities within 20 miles of a somewhat major city (if you can call Pittsburgh a major city) that still don't have DSL or Cable internet.
But that is because you live in the US, which is just slightly ahead of Derkderkastan in terms of high-speed internet availability.
Dunno how this got modded to insightful but the idea that there will ever be even 400,000 Americans is ludicrous. Um, that's about 1/20 the population of New York City.
Slashdot Mirror
ID is not, I repeat not, a scientific theory.
Nothing involving the supernatural can be, since by definition the supernatural cannot be tested in a rigorous and consistent way.
As religious philosophy, ID is fine. But scientists are by definition concerned with science. And ID ain't science.
That's what Stein, and apparently you, just don't get.
Who are you, and what have you done with c6gunner?
I'll bet the 40% "paranoids" are the people who have played video games: they know all the computer-generated characters are about to pull an Uzi on them, bite their necks or kill them to eat their brains.
Can you say publicity stunt?
For fuck's sake, don't give this clown any more publicity.It's all he lives for.
This is the nature of almost all social-science "research":
We don't know how to study this interesting phenomenon (sexual cues between people), so we will study something completely unrelated (interpretation of expressions in photographs) but easier to set up, and then pretend that one implies the other.
Sure, that's a great reason to burn someone at the stake.
I know they didn't with Galileo, but they did with Bruno, so Galileo knew exactly what he risked by not complying with the unexpected Catholic Inquisition.
And as for "making fun of the Pope", I can't think of a better target than someone who uses torture and murder as a way to deal with dissent.
As to the need for adults in the raising of a child, I am assuming that Mr. Data-like teacher robots (in conjunction with holograms of actual people) will be sufficiently advanced to be able to simulate the parent-child relationship. Not that I'm expecting this to happen for several centuries, by which time nobody will know or care that I predicted it.
Furthermore, we may well give up on challenges like exploring and colonizing the universe as soon as we develop direct-to-pleasure-center brain stimulators. That could happen in the next ten years, and would probably be humankind's last invention.
Of course, you would have to have some kind of robot teachers to raise them when the ship reaches its destination, not to mention artificial wombs for gestation. Neither of these should be major barriers.
Not true.
BetaCam is the dominant professional video format, but is completely different from BetaMax. Sony just likes to put "Beta" in front of its video equipment, since the path of the tape through the machine looks like the Greek letter Beta.
However, calling this kind of behavior "theft" is not new terminology.
I remember when I was kid (40 years ago), people who sneaked onto trains, buses, ski lifts, etc. without a ticket could be convicted of "theft of service". In fact, in law, "theft" just means obtaining something illegally, regardless of whether you are depriving someone else of it. What you are calling "theft" (i.e. taking something away from someone else) is actually called "larceny". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft.
It's like the term "assault": in common usage, it means "to strike someone". But in legal jargon, that's called "battery", while "assault" just means to threaten.
I can't say it bothers me when patent trolls go after big businesses like the networks. These companies can afford to defend themselves, and if the patents are invalid, Rembrandt will get a royal smackdown.
- students or faculty members in either English or Women's Studies
- gay
- man-haters
Unfortunately, these extremists seem to get all the press, unlike most regular feminists, who are just women seeking a more level playing field.That increasingly looks like the former.
I'm sorry you bet the wrong way
OMG! I had a Kenner Hydrodynamic Building Set, identical to this, when I was a kid forty years ago!
It was the greatest thing! (Be sure to check out the video: its like a real-live Incredible Machine.)
I ended up getting three whole sets so I could connect them together. One of the best parts were these little food-color pills that would change the color of the water as it passed over them.
For example, if a machine can fool one person for a short period of time, then it must be tested with more people over a longer period of time, and so on. Where does this stop? Only when everyone is satisfied, which is probably never going to happen. For me, a machine could be considered reasonably intelligent when it can pass this requirement:
- take a thousand people from all walks of life, and all over the world
- tell each subject that they will engage someone else in conversation for a half hour a day, every day for a year
- tell the subjects that they will be paid X dollars an hour to talk, plus a big bonus at the end of the year if they can correctly answer a set of questions about the person that they have been talking to. They will not know what the questions are until the end, forcing
them to find out as much as they can.
- following this end-of-year test, they will be told that there is a fifty-fifty chance that the "person" they were
talking to all year was in fact a machine, and they should guess whether or not it was. A big reward will be
given if they guess correctly.
If any significant number of subjects guess correctly, then this Turing test will have failed. If, on the other hand, the guesses are statistically random, the test will have passed.Again, passing this test doesn't confer the title of "intelligent" on the machine, but does show that significant progress has been made.
Reminds me of IBM's "assistance" to the Nazis 70 years ago: IBM and the Nazis
The Nazis awarded IBM founder Thomas J. Watson the "Eagle with Star" medal, for IBM's assistance in keeping track of Jews and other "undesirables".
Watson not only accepted the medal, but traveled to Germany so that Hitler could present it in person .
It's not theft, it's copyright infringement!
Unless you believe the AWAA.
But, PR is vital to getting $$ from a basically anti-scientific federal government.
I think conservatives mean:
---It's your choice to stay in the closet.---
Presumably, other animals don't have closets.
Robot Marriage : Human Marriage
as
Masturbation : Intercourse
It may not be ideal, but it's probably better than nothing.
Definitely cheaper.