Evidently he has. NonP is still the complement of P, even if NonP is the union of many different hypotheses that are alternatives to P. (By definition, it is the set of all hypotheses that are alternatives to P.)
I'm always interested in seeing how often the word "debate" appears in comments on topics like this and evolution. While it's true that most scientists love to engage in debate, either with each other or with non-scientists (the latter especially in the case of evolution vs. ID/creationism), debate is an argumentative process that has nothing to do with science (which is an inductive process). I venture that a scientist's interest in debate is not for the purpose of furthering scientific inquiry, but to feed a curiosity about the human mind. Neither the existence of a debate, nor its outcome, has any bearing on the scientific value of a hypothesis or theory.
This point is always lost on the public. In the public's eye, any hint of a debate suggests that the theory in question is highly suspect. Of course, there will always be theories that are suspect because of questionable science, but intensity of debate is not a reliable indicator.
If you want to discredit a theory (beyond the naive eye of laymen), do so by stating what evidence contradicts the theory, not by saying "There's still a lot of debate about that."
First, remember that Wikipedia is a secondary source, not a primary source. Grandparent's point, I think, is that a Wikipedia article already represents somebody else's compilation of facts obtained from primary sources, so citing Wikipedia (alone) might be construed as a form of laziness.
Now regarding your point, if you come across something in Wikipedia and think it needs to be included in your paper for completeness, but you go read the primary source for confirmation because you don't fully trust Wikipedia, are you obligated to cite both as sources?
when you read an article on wikipedia you don't know anything about the person who wrote it.
True, but you can look at the history. Is the article a collaborative effort or was it written by one person? It does make a difference if there are many eyes looking over the page for misinformation and non-neutral points of view, compared to something written by a self-proclaimed expert. Also, the discussion section can provide insights into which facts are disputed and why.
I just get a little worried when people tout Wikipedia as THE place for information.
It's great, just don't count on it for everything.
I agree that it's easy to put too much faith in it for accuracy. I wouldn't use it for fact-checking if I were a journalist writing a news story or a grad student writing a thesis, though I might use it as a starting point on something I know next to nothing about, or to jog my memory on something I already know about. The real strength of Wikipedia is that you can count on it for relevance. Sometimes a Google search for a phrase will turn up a bunch of retail sites before you finally find a hit with in-depth information on result page 48. Same phrase in Wikipedia might turn up 200 matches, but 90% of the time the relevant article is in the top four or five hits.
I always wondered why the DoJ settled this case. They already had a conviction. The conviction was not reversed, only the penalty was. This was in the penalty phase! Imagine a bank robber being convicted, and then the prosecution going into settlement talks over the penalty.
OK, now I'll stop pretending to be naive. I knew in 2000 that if Bush was elected, his administration would drop the ball on this case. Was I right?
As it turned out, that should have been one of my lesser worries about a Bush administration.
I don't think he's a Cox customer. They don't offer the DVR and guide separately; they are bundled together. The DVR with guide is about $5/month. But there are separate charges for the digital gateway (one per household) and for each tuner you rent. Those are charges you would pay anyway without the DVR, unless you went with basic analog service.
Of course, it's possible that this varies from area to area, but the $25 he cited really seems unlikely.
Show A starts at 8 PM and ends at 9 PM. Show B starts at 9 PM and ends at 10 PM. Both are on the same channel and you want to record both, and you want to include the 5 minutes after each show in case they run long, as some networks are inclined to do. You have to program them indpendently, because some weeks A might be pre-empted or B might be a rerun.
Well, you can't do this, because the Cox DVR will tell you it's impossible to record two overlapping programs on the same channel -- even though you have two tuners and the other tuner is not otherwise being used. WTF?
Re:It's no wonder people buy into Intellegent Desi
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One Big Bang, Or Many?
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If the meaning is, "It's a theory, therefore there's no proof", then it's a tautology. If the meaning is, "It's a theory because there's no proof", then it's a non sequitur. Lack of proof does not necessarily constitute a theory; it could constitute an untestable or nonsensical statement ("pink unicorns can fly") or an outright falsehood (e.g., "2+2=5" or "President George Washington is alive").
And a hypothesis is not a prediction, it's a testable proposition.
And a better question. The universe is isotropic, which means that it looks the same everywhere (or so I am told).
Yes, we are told that, but it is nothing more than an assumption used in cosmological models, resulting from the application of Occam's Razor.
Or, perhaps there IS a center to the universe. If this is true, what would this do for relativity, which states that ALL frames of reference are valid? If you could just fly in a rocket and see a bit red cement pole with "center of universe" painted on it, that would make a dandy absolute reference point.
I don't think this theory implies a center. If the matter from one Bang has expanded to a great diameter, the next Bang would begin in some specific spacetime locality (since its initial volume is small), so that location (relative to the matter in the old universe) is the center of the new expansion. But it isn't the center of the universe, because the universe (which also includes all that matter from the older Bangs) still has no identifiable center.
As for relativity, all frames of reference would still be valid, because the laws of physics would still be invariant (as far as we have any reason to suspect). If you could determine that location X in spacetime was the origin of Big Bang #125, it really doesn't provide you with an absolute frame of reference, because a single spacetime point does not have a velocity. You are probably thinking of points in 3D space, but you can't leave the temporal dimension out of the picture.
Just think, if we found a "white hole" spewing matter into space, would we assume that we had found the center of the universe, or would we assume it's only the first of many such objects to be discovered?
NPOV doesn't mean that positive and negative viewpoints are absent, or that they balance each other. It means that, when presented, they are presented without advocacy. There's a big difference between a statement like "X has been criticized for its policy of doing Y" and "X is evil because it always does Y".
I think his point was not that differences in molecular-level composition of the animals, or minor differences in their environments, are more significant than their brain states. It's that, if those differences exist, and the monkeys choose differently, you won't know whether to attribute the different choices to those things, or to "free will" (whatever that means).
The converse is, you might have monkeys that are genetically different from each other, in different environments, always making the same choices (e.g., to always run away from the tiger instead of towards it). Would you conclude from that observation that the monkeys *don't* have "free will" (whatever that means)?
There's more to it than that. Computers are "finite" because their states are digitized. But if you factor in the non-zero probability of error in each operation (due to noise, power surges, crosstalk, setup/hold violations, etc.), computers don't fit that model perfectly, and their behavior cannot be predicted with perfect accuracy.
Isn't any system whose states can only be described on a continuum also infinite in the sense of the halting theorem?
Mere uncertainty or chaos doesn't imply choice. Nobody knows exactly how many stars are in the Milky Way (uncertainty) or whether the stock market will be up or down tomorrow, but that doesn't mean we have any choice in those matters.
In any matter of choice, what is it that is doing the choosing? Choices may well be "mere" physical phenomena, but can we identify with that physical state, or not?
When asked if I believe in free will, my response is, "Free from what?"
Except videoconferencing, everything you mention is already done by PDAs, and the user interface of a PDA is superior. Don't know about you, but I don't want to surf the net on a 2-inch screen with no stylus.
I've long suspected that eye-hand cross-dominance affected my tennis. Some think this helps the forehand and hurts the backhand, but I have my doubts. If I'm hitting a shot while running side-to-side, then my dominant eye is towards the net for a forehand but away from the net for a backhand, so it makes sense that the forehand would be helped in that case, but if I hit the ball from a standing position facing the net, then my dominant eye is closer to the racket for a backhand stroke, and so I am viewing the shot more from the racket's perspective. Thus, for a standing shot, cross-dominance helps the backhand.
What I think breaks the tie is the serve, a shot for which cross-dominance is a disadvantage. I can improve my aim on the serve if I close my left eye briefly before tossing the ball, to get a right-eyed view of the court.
Well, you've just listed a handful of authoritarians from the right wing of the Democratic party, which doesn't provide much of a basis for your broad generalization. There are a few real liberals left in the Dems (e.g., Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy) and I don't expect you will see them backing this sort of thing.
I agree with you. However, liner notes and cover art were so much better with LPs. In my college days it was great to sit back and listen to an LP, cover in hand, enjoying the art and music together, or reading the liner notes along with the music. Nowadays the artwork is too small to enjoy thoroughly, and I need a magnifying glass to read the liner notes, so I usually just listen to the music and forget the rest.
Call me old-fashioned, but there's still something gratifying about picking a disc out of your collection and listening all the way through, even the "throwaway tracks" (sometimes you develop an appreciation for a song that you didn't care for on first listening). Also, I don't have to worry about managing storage (backing up all those media files in case I lose a hard drive), except for the physical space needed, but that's not so much an issue as it was in the days of dorm room or apartment living.
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Evidently he has. NonP is still the complement of P, even if NonP is the union of many different hypotheses that are alternatives to P. (By definition, it is the set of all hypotheses that are alternatives to P.)
This point is always lost on the public. In the public's eye, any hint of a debate suggests that the theory in question is highly suspect. Of course, there will always be theories that are suspect because of questionable science, but intensity of debate is not a reliable indicator.
If you want to discredit a theory (beyond the naive eye of laymen), do so by stating what evidence contradicts the theory, not by saying "There's still a lot of debate about that."
"Suzy Creamcheese, honey, what's got into you?
The one other example of this that I'm aware of is ISO
Now regarding your point, if you come across something in Wikipedia and think it needs to be included in your paper for completeness, but you go read the primary source for confirmation because you don't fully trust Wikipedia, are you obligated to cite both as sources?
True, but you can look at the history. Is the article a collaborative effort or was it written by one person? It does make a difference if there are many eyes looking over the page for misinformation and non-neutral points of view, compared to something written by a self-proclaimed expert. Also, the discussion section can provide insights into which facts are disputed and why.
I just get a little worried when people tout Wikipedia as THE place for information. It's great, just don't count on it for everything.
I agree that it's easy to put too much faith in it for accuracy. I wouldn't use it for fact-checking if I were a journalist writing a news story or a grad student writing a thesis, though I might use it as a starting point on something I know next to nothing about, or to jog my memory on something I already know about. The real strength of Wikipedia is that you can count on it for relevance. Sometimes a Google search for a phrase will turn up a bunch of retail sites before you finally find a hit with in-depth information on result page 48. Same phrase in Wikipedia might turn up 200 matches, but 90% of the time the relevant article is in the top four or five hits.
Well, most elementary school students *are* above age 7.
I always wondered why the DoJ settled this case. They already had a conviction. The conviction was not reversed, only the penalty was. This was in the penalty phase! Imagine a bank robber being convicted, and then the prosecution going into settlement talks over the penalty.
OK, now I'll stop pretending to be naive. I knew in 2000 that if Bush was elected, his administration would drop the ball on this case. Was I right?
As it turned out, that should have been one of my lesser worries about a Bush administration.
Of course, it's possible that this varies from area to area, but the $25 he cited really seems unlikely.
Show A starts at 8 PM and ends at 9 PM. Show B starts at 9 PM and ends at 10 PM. Both are on the same channel and you want to record both, and you want to include the 5 minutes after each show in case they run long, as some networks are inclined to do. You have to program them indpendently, because some weeks A might be pre-empted or B might be a rerun.
Well, you can't do this, because the Cox DVR will tell you it's impossible to record two overlapping programs on the same channel -- even though you have two tuners and the other tuner is not otherwise being used. WTF?
And a hypothesis is not a prediction, it's a testable proposition.
Yes, we are told that, but it is nothing more than an assumption used in cosmological models, resulting from the application of Occam's Razor.
Or, perhaps there IS a center to the universe. If this is true, what would this do for relativity, which states that ALL frames of reference are valid? If you could just fly in a rocket and see a bit red cement pole with "center of universe" painted on it, that would make a dandy absolute reference point.
I don't think this theory implies a center. If the matter from one Bang has expanded to a great diameter, the next Bang would begin in some specific spacetime locality (since its initial volume is small), so that location (relative to the matter in the old universe) is the center of the new expansion. But it isn't the center of the universe, because the universe (which also includes all that matter from the older Bangs) still has no identifiable center.
As for relativity, all frames of reference would still be valid, because the laws of physics would still be invariant (as far as we have any reason to suspect). If you could determine that location X in spacetime was the origin of Big Bang #125, it really doesn't provide you with an absolute frame of reference, because a single spacetime point does not have a velocity. You are probably thinking of points in 3D space, but you can't leave the temporal dimension out of the picture.
Just think, if we found a "white hole" spewing matter into space, would we assume that we had found the center of the universe, or would we assume it's only the first of many such objects to be discovered?
NPOV doesn't mean that positive and negative viewpoints are absent, or that they balance each other. It means that, when presented, they are presented without advocacy. There's a big difference between a statement like "X has been criticized for its policy of doing Y" and "X is evil because it always does Y".
What you are saying is that free will is a prerequisite for utilitarianism. I think that's a non sequitur.
The converse is, you might have monkeys that are genetically different from each other, in different environments, always making the same choices (e.g., to always run away from the tiger instead of towards it). Would you conclude from that observation that the monkeys *don't* have "free will" (whatever that means)?
Nonsense. Randomness is what makes betting interesting.
Isn't any system whose states can only be described on a continuum also infinite in the sense of the halting theorem?
Mere uncertainty or chaos doesn't imply choice. Nobody knows exactly how many stars are in the Milky Way (uncertainty) or whether the stock market will be up or down tomorrow, but that doesn't mean we have any choice in those matters.
In any matter of choice, what is it that is doing the choosing? Choices may well be "mere" physical phenomena, but can we identify with that physical state, or not?
When asked if I believe in free will, my response is, "Free from what?"
Except videoconferencing, everything you mention is already done by PDAs, and the user interface of a PDA is superior. Don't know about you, but I don't want to surf the net on a 2-inch screen with no stylus.
Yep. Add PDA functionality to a phone, you get a smart phone. Add phone functionality to a PDA, you get a smart phone.
Install Skype on your computer, and it's still called a computer, though. Go figure.
I've long suspected that eye-hand cross-dominance affected my tennis. Some think this helps the forehand and hurts the backhand, but I have my doubts. If I'm hitting a shot while running side-to-side, then my dominant eye is towards the net for a forehand but away from the net for a backhand, so it makes sense that the forehand would be helped in that case, but if I hit the ball from a standing position facing the net, then my dominant eye is closer to the racket for a backhand stroke, and so I am viewing the shot more from the racket's perspective. Thus, for a standing shot, cross-dominance helps the backhand.
What I think breaks the tie is the serve, a shot for which cross-dominance is a disadvantage. I can improve my aim on the serve if I close my left eye briefly before tossing the ball, to get a right-eyed view of the court.
"Rotating knives. Yes."
"Are you proposing to slaughter our tenants?"
"Does that not fit in with your plans?"
"No, it does not. We wanted a simple block of flats."
"Ahh, I see. I hadn't correctly divined your attitude towards your tenants."
Well, you've just listed a handful of authoritarians from the right wing of the Democratic party, which doesn't provide much of a basis for your broad generalization. There are a few real liberals left in the Dems (e.g., Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy) and I don't expect you will see them backing this sort of thing.
I agree with you. However, liner notes and cover art were so much better with LPs. In my college days it was great to sit back and listen to an LP, cover in hand, enjoying the art and music together, or reading the liner notes along with the music. Nowadays the artwork is too small to enjoy thoroughly, and I need a magnifying glass to read the liner notes, so I usually just listen to the music and forget the rest.
Call me old-fashioned, but there's still something gratifying about picking a disc out of your collection and listening all the way through, even the "throwaway tracks" (sometimes you develop an appreciation for a song that you didn't care for on first listening). Also, I don't have to worry about managing storage (backing up all those media files in case I lose a hard drive), except for the physical space needed, but that's not so much an issue as it was in the days of dorm room or apartment living.
So, it's "free as in $10 beer" free?