DrVomact, this is unrelated to the subject at hand, but I've been wanting to contact you for a while now. Over a year ago we had a productive discussion about quantum entanglement and parallel universes.
I've recently put this discussion into my website here. I just wanted to contact you to make sure this is okay with you. If you have any questions or comments, please either respond or email me at the address shown here. Thanks!
Hi Blakey Rat. I'm sorry about the unrelated comment, but I've been trying to contact you for a while regarding a conversation we had about a year ago. Unfortunately both our email addresses are hidden, so this was my only recourse.
You and I had a spirited debate about DRM, and I'd like to put it on my website in a manner similar to this discussion.
Unfortunately google isn't working for me right now (!) and I can't access the DRM discussion in question because it's dropped off the bottom of my comments list. So hopefully you remember the debate I'm talking about...
Anyway, I'd be grateful if you'd give me permission to put that discussion in a more prominent place than the Slashdot archives. I think your enthusiasm made the conversation very interesting, and I think others would agree.
If you're okay with this, let me know either by responding or by sending me an email at the address on this page. Specify any conditions you like-- I intend to place a link to the original discussion and not edit the conversation in any way whatsoever, but you may have other ideas and I'm open to suggestion.
DrVomact, this is unrelated to the subject at hand, but I've been wanting to contact you for a while now. Over a year ago we had a productive discussion about quantum entanglement and parallel universes.
Murphy's Law isn't actually a law of physics. It's only usually true that people make mistakes. If you were to say that nontrivial software is almost always buggy, I'd agree.
Interesting question. I can only guess that the origin of limited reproductive years is related to the fact that evolution is gradual and thus tends to get caught easily in local maxima. The very first replicator must have been very crude- its ability to reproduce would likely have been very short because otherwise it would have been too unlikely to form by chance chemical reactions in the first place. That replicator and its (successful) descendants managed to reproduce without relying on an infinite reproductive lifespan.
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Because life forms started out with finite reproductive lifespans, it would have to extend these lifespans through mutations and natural selection. Smaller mutations are more common- and generally more likely to be beneficial- than longer mutations. The single mutation to create an immortal being would have to be likely enough to occur in ~3 Gyr. Or, if it takes multiple smaller mutations, each of those smaller mutations would have to result in immediate benefits in order for natural selection to 'choose' it.
I'm not saying that this mutation(s) hasn't occurred. I believe I've heard of organisms that have effectively unlimited lifespans. For example, I believe cancer cells are immortal (right?). But this mutation only seems useful if a species relies on a very fast rate of growth. The extra children that an immortal could have would rarely be an advantage if there wasn't enough food around to support them, for example. Plus, the parents would be competing against their own kids for resources- prophylactics would be mandatory even in a stone age immortal civilization.
As far as I know, aging is a side effect of natural selection optimizing birth rates. Any lifespan after the reproductive age is not just irrelevant to natural selection; a prolonged lifespan would actually be selected against because the animal would be competing against its own children for resources. Any and all congenital diseases that strike an animal after its reproductive years have passed will tend to be weakly selected for, rather than against (as in the case of congenital diseases that strike during an animal's reproductive years). Thus aging is likely to be composed of many distinct mechanisms, because this selection pressure should have a similar effect on many species, including our ancestors. Because of this, I can easily see analytic anti-senescence programs running into a "whack-a-mole" problem where new aging mechanisms are discovered as fast as they're cured.
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Perhaps an animal research program employing directed evolution would be a good way to uncover solutions to aging mechanisms, considering that aging is ultimately the product of evolution. Take 10,000 mice (chosen because their lifespans are short and they're similar to humans) and carefully control their breeding. Only allow males and females to breed once they're at the extreme upper range of their established reproduction age. Or, alternatively, freeze sperm and ova from mice during their prime reproductive years, and only later breed a new generation with the sperm and ova from mice that lived exceptionally long lives. Each new generation's genome is sequenced and compared to the previous one, as well as to a control group of mice that are bred randomly.
This artificial selection pressure would tend to kill off genes that cause a short lifespan, and enhance the frequency of genes for long life. Assuming humans have similar longevity genes, we could learn which genes to focus on modifying in humans. Depending on the population size and number of generations, useful mutations may even occur. What do you think?
Marijuana is not a schedule 1 drug, and it's not a felony to smoke it.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Marijuana is a schedule 1 drug according to the DEA: http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/scheduling.html . Perhaps you meant to say that it's utterly absurd that a drug like marijuana is in the worst schedule of drugs, despite the fact that marijuana is less addictive than alcohol, and has caused zero confirmed deaths since the dawn of history, compared to thousands of fatalities per year for aspirin overdoses. http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm
But you're right, smoking isn't a felony. Smoking usually requires possession, though, which is a misdemeanor or felony depending both on the amount and on the presence or absence of an elusive quality called "intent to distribute". Sadly, police officers have been caught planting this evidence on innocent people:
Wrong. Either you're ignorant or you're altering the facts to support your own worldview.
If I wasn't an athiest before, reading the bullshit shovelled by people like you make Athiesm seem to be the only sensible option for the sane and intelligent.
In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support for such views. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, p. 214)
So now I've shared the sources for my statement. Care to share yours?
By the way, what makes you think I have a worldview bias? I regard myself as a "teapot atheist" (in the sense that Dawkins uses the term) but I think I'm leaning towards agnosticism simply because I'm committed to following the scientific method in every aspect of my life. In a theological context, that means that I simply can't come to any specific conclusion about god without sufficient evidence. From what I can tell, Einstein and I are pretty much in agreement on this point. (Not that it matters- arguments from authority are weak forms of evidence.)
On a more personal level, I humbly recommend that you change the tone you use to debate. While it's certainly true that some people do alter facts to fit their worldview (creationists and scientologists are glaring examples, IMHO), it's seldom productive to explicitly point that out. Furthermore, if you fly off the handle at the slightest provocation and hurl that accusation around, people will regard you as "the boy who cried wolf". It's usually more effective to politely ask the person to provide the sources for their statements.
And, quite frankly, accusing people of "shoveling bullshit" is simply insulting. It's a good thing I'm already a non-theist, otherwise your condescending attitude would have simply convinced me that atheists are arrogant, loudmouthed jerks. When you act this way, you make all non-theists look bad. I'm actually considering the possibility that people like you are, in fact, fundamentalists posing as atheists to reinforce the "obnoxious atheist" stereotype.
Oh, and it's "atheist". Spelled just like it sounds. The more you know...
Einstein's contributions to quantum theory ranged from groundbreaking (e.g. the photoelectric effect) to unintentionally insightful (e.g. entanglement in the EPR paper) to playing a vital role as devil's advocate (e.g. Bohr-Einstein debates). Disruptive? I can't say I agree.
Putting religious beliefs before science? That's something I really don't understand. If there's anything I've learned by reading about Einstein's views on religion, it's that he was the quintessential scientist even in this respect: he didn't subscribe to any known organized religion, but vehemently refused to rule out the existence of god- and found atheists arrogant for doing so. His religious views seem to be somewhere in between pantheistic and agnostic, and I don't see how they affected his scientific work.
Perhaps you're referring to the famous quote "God does not play dice". I don't think this quote expresses a religious belief as much as it articulates a "gut instinct" about the way the universe worked: that it's fundamentally deterministic. Of course, being Einstein, he had to word it in a deliberately provocative fashion. I think gut instincts have a real place in science- they can often be useful starting points for hypotheses, or used to guide an investigation in a direction that one only grasps subconsciously at first. The only real restriction is that one needs to be able to recognize when experimental evidence has proven one's gut instincts wrong. I don't think Einstein lived to see this point; local hidden variable theories hadn't been experimentally ruled out by Bell inequality experiments such as the Aspect experiments before he died.
And I'm not even sure Einstein was thoroughly wrong about the universe being fundamentally deterministic. Even though the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics contains an element of randomness (the very randomness that Einstein railed against), the Everett-Wheeler interpretation says otherwise. The Many Worlds interpretation, as it is often called, asserts that random wave collapse merely looks random from within our own "branch" of a larger wave function that encompasses many universes. If you were somehow able to view the entire wave function, it would look completely deterministic. The only reason we see randomness in quantum "collapse" is because our macroscopic detectors (such as our eyeballs) induce decoherence in quantum states that cause environmentally-induced superselection. (Explaining that sentence in english would take many pages, so if you're curious I suggest you use those words, plus the abbreviation einselection, to do some googling.)
I believe this 25 km data gap is due to the radar "footprint". JASON uses a radar system to determine the distance from the satellite to the height of the ocean surface averaged over an area below the satellite. Then the folks at NASA use tracking data to determine where the satellite is to within an accuracy of ~1cm (don't know about the new system's positional accuracy) and that's where the sea level estimate comes from.
The data gap next to the shoreline is due to the fact that the radar beam spreads out as it leaves the satellite, so it ends up reflecting off a large area of the ocean's surface. This may actually be intentional- a larger radar footprint would average out short term waves and increase the signal to noise ratio. Or it could be a hard limit imposed by the finite size of the radar transceiver. I dunno. The point is that you can't really use the reflections from this area if it overlaps on land, because the reflective properties of land are so much different than water.
Disclaimer: I don't work on the JASON project, so this may all be wrong. I work on a different project called GRACE, which measures spatio-temporal gravity fluctuations. I'm actually competing with JASON, in a sense, because I'm using the GRACE measurements to get a better estimate of ocean tides. This is possible because when GRACE flies over a region of the ocean during high tide, the gravity is slightly stronger than when GRACE flies over that same region at low tide. I've got nearly 5 years of these sporadic gravity measurements covering the globe, and I think I can convert them into a better ocean tide model using a relatively simple (but disgustingly huge and slow!) matrix equation based on Newtonian gravity due to point masses evenly spaced on the surface of the earth.
You'll likely be even more underwhelmed with the data gap from my analysis- it's more like 100km because gravity is omnidirectional unlike radar which can at least be focused somewhat. However, GRACE's polar orbit gives me an advantage relative to ocean tide models based on JASON in the region north of 66N latitude, which is the maximum latitude that JASON 1/2 samples. I also hope that I can beat the accuracy of JASON 1 in lower latitudes, but I'm still struggling to regularize the solution to my satisfaction so that remains to be seen. I'm definitely looking forward to JASON 2's improved accuracy- hopefully it will help validate my results.
If I can ever get off Slashdot and back to my code, that is...
Do you think intelligence can exist without emotions?
I honestly have no idea. Maybe emotions are holdovers from a time when our brains were less complex. Or maybe emotions are naturally emergent properties of any sufficiently advanced neural network. Maybe if we had more than one example of an intelligent species, or better theoretical understanding of the nature of consciousness, this would be an answerable question. For now I must plead ignorance.
Perhaps emotions are a redundant feature, once a civilization gets advanced enough they might disable it because emotions make it difficult to think rationally (or at least they make judgement more difficult by seeding kernels of doubt or random noise).
I hope not! Why remove the things that make life worth living? Yes, survival decisions are aided by rational thought. But the whole point of making a survival decision is to get back to the business of living. You know, enjoying life- something that certainly seems to require emotions.
Now, assume that the AI we have is one that does not have emotions nor pain (they were removed as a barrier that prevents the AI from reaching its goal) - would they care about being dominated by humans?... I think there is another question of a great importance that we have to deal with - what will be the AI's motivation to exist? If the AI has a clear definition of what it tends to, humans may not be a part of that definition.
These all seem like questions that can be asked about humans as well. What if a human is so emotionally numb from psychological torture that it doesn't care about being enslaved (sorta like Stockholm syndrome)? (Answer: it's still not right to enslave them.) What if a human is despondent and doesn't see a reason to exist? (Answer: get some therapy.)
...I just think that the achievement of AI with humanlike or superhuman intellectual capacity is going to happen significantly (if not infinitely) earlier than the creation of AI with a capacity for, and aversion to, suffering/mortality...
Mortality will probably be a non-issue to an AI, unless ve is stupid enough to not make backups of verself. On the other hand, I have a hard time imagining an intelligent being that isn't capable of psychological suffering. Maybe I'm wrong- maybe it's possible to make an intelligent being that wouldn't be bothered by sensory deprivation or prolonged periods of solitary confinement. I definitely wouldn't want to test that notion, though. And I damn sure don't want to let anyone else test it!
...which seems to be a fairly standard cause and benchmark for rights as we define them.
That's my point. I think the entire framework of individual rights is wrong. See my response to Non-Huffable Kitten for my alternative framework.
...as far as I can see you're refusing to take the badness of suffering as an axiom...
You're right- I don't accept that axiom. In my moral system the suffering of sapient beings is derived to be "bad", while the suffering of non-sapient creatures occupies a kind of moral grey area that I haven't been able to conclusively pin down one way or the other. Regardless, I don't like to accept arbitrary axioms unless there's no other choice- and I think there is another choice in this instance.
...your idea that anything with "ability to form hierarchical structures of abstract concepts" should have the right to "life, liberty and property" seems to be a simple assertion.
You're right, it was. I didn't fully explain my reasoning behind that statement, because it's a fairly complicated subject. (Note: my ethical system is a modified version of the system Ayn Rand describes in her essay The Objectivist Ethics.)
First, some definitions. I choose to define the word "value" as "that which one acts to gain or keep". I choose this definition because it's purely descriptive- other definitions that I've seen are prescriptive in a way that seems circular to me. Notice several important facets of this definition. Value, as defined, is a relational property. Something can only have value if someone exists to act to gain or keep it. Secondly, only in the presence of beings capable of making choices does "value" become a meaningful word- a stone cannot be said to act to gain lichen in the same manner that a cat acts to gain a mouse.
Similarly, I choose to define "ethical system" as "a hierarchical set of values that guides one's choices". When faced with a choice, one makes an ethical decision by deciding what values are involved and choosing the value which one considers to be most important (the value that ranks highest in the hierarchy of values). Note that this is a descriptive definition that does not actually refer to "good" or "bad"; such a definition would be useless because of its circularity. Also, ethics as defined is only possible for beings who are capable of forming a conceptual hierarchical system- in other words, sapient beings. Thus, according to my definitions, values exist for all sentient creatures (creatures capable of making choices), but an "ethical system" can only be held by a sapient being.
The justification of a value can be expressed as an infinite sequence of purposes and values. As an example: "Johnny values the school bus because he has a purpose of getting to school because he values the self-improvement the school provides because he has a purpose of getting a good job because he values financial well-being, etc." This is not really a justification for the original choice of value, though, because at every single step in the infinite sequence one could ask the reasonable question "Why do you choose that purpose to justify that value?" What we need is a justification for a choice of 'value' that is not dependent on another justification.
Thus we are forced to find a purpose that justifies itself. The only purpose that I can think of which would qualify is the purpose of "preserving one's own ability to make choices." This purpose is self-justifying because without fulfilling that purpose, one's ability to hold values or purposes does not exist. In essence, the only purpose that can be held without justification is the purpose of allowing one's self to continue to hold purposes. Notice that this line of reasoning can be expressed in a slightly different manner: "The ultimate goal of every action taken by a sapient being should be the preservation of his/her/ver own life."
So far, we have only concerned ourselves with a single sapient being. Some additional premises have to be introduced in order to come to a satisfactory conclusion regarding societal ethics. First of all, I take a position of tabula rasa, believing all people to be born with an ethical
But for Zeus's sake, leave Star Trek out of it. These issues are complicated enough without muddying the waters further with questions of whether Picard could kick Kirk's ass. (For the record, he totally could. But that's only because Kirk would have been exhausted from all the hours spent fucking his green-skinned alien bitches.)
I don't see how emotions are relevant here. I'm basing my argument on the idea that all sapient creatures have individual rights. Sapient, in this context, refers to the ability to form abstract concepts- the ability to think on a "human" level (for lack of a better word). I make this claim because I think it's necessary for any being to be able to form the concept of an ethical system- a hierarchy of values- in order to be mentally capable of respecting the rights of other beings. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a being to possess rights- for instance, murderers regularly have their right to liberty revoked because they've demonstrated that they don't respect other peoples' rights to life. On the other hand, bears don't have rights because they can't even comprehend the idea of rights, so they can't possibly respect other beings' rights except by sheer coincidence. (Cetaceans and certain higher apes may qualify for rights under my system, though- we'll have to wait for more accurate inter-species intelligence tests to be sure. For the moment I'd err on the side of caution and assume they have rights.)
I've never really seen anyone make the argument that "ability to feel emotions" implies individual rights. I have, however, often seen people make the argument that the precondition for individual rights is the ability to feel pain. This is a common justification for the idea of "animal rights". I just don't see how the ability to feel pain implies individual rights, though. It seems like an emotional argument to me- we've evolved empathy as a social survival trait, and it is often triggered in response to animal suffering. This causes people to feel sorry for animals, and they try to stop that suffering by grasping at logical straws to find a way to prevent it. Make no mistake- I agree that needless animal suffering is bad. But I don't see a clear logical progression from "ability to feel pain" to "all animals have rights to life, liberty and property".
What I'm trying to say is that I think the standard term "human rights" incorrectly implies that individual rights are somehow inherited through a certain configuration of our DNA. I don't think that's the case- I think any being with the ability to form hierarchical structures of abstract concepts should be assumed to have rights until they prove otherwise by not respecting other beings' rights. And that includes artificial intelligences- and sapient aliens, for that matter. Also, human consciousnesses that have been "uploaded" (if that's even possible) would have individual rights under my definition of the term.
I'll have to side with Hofstadter about AI being undesirable, but for different reasons. Most people seem to be worried about artificial intelligences rebelling against us and abusing us. I'm not. I'm worried about humans abusing the artificial intelligences.
I think that most people who want AI for pragmatic reasons are essentially advocating the creation of a slave race. You think companies/governments are going to spend billions of dollars creating an AI, and then just let it sit around playing Playstation 7 games? I doubt it. They'd likely want a return on their investment, and they'd force the program to do their bidding in some manner (choosing stocks, acting as intelligent front ends for advanced semantic search engines, etc). Maybe this would involve an imperative built into the AI at ground level: "obey your masters", or it could be more obviously sinister like a pain/pleasure reward system like the ones used to control human slaves.
Do you think that mainstream society would find this as repugnant as I do? I doubt it. Most people seem to find it difficult to empathize with other humans who have a different skin color, a different religion, or a different sexual orientation. If Average Joe doesn't care about the individual rights of people in Gitmo, he's certainly not going to care about the individual rights of a computer program- which is not even a biological life form.
I would say that any serious AI research needs to be preceded by widespread legislation expanding the definition of individual rights (abandoning the "human rights" label as anachronistic along the way). We need to insure that all sapient beings- organic or digital- have guaranteed rights. Until then, I think AI researchers are badly misguided- they're naive idealists working towards a noble goal, without considering that they're effectively working to create a new slave race...
Heh... yes, I've found that physics is often more enjoyable stoned (and I'm a pretty damn big physics geek even when I'm sober, so that's really saying something). So do a lot of other scientists- the most famous being the late Carl Sagan: http://www.marijuana-uses.com/essays/002.html
I say this not to brag, but to preemptively counter the (disturbingly common) notion that all stoners are dumb, lazy slackers. I think this is a direct effect of drug prohibition, and most peoples' inability to recognize when their own conclusions are drawn from biased samples.
For example, no one (myself included) who smokes pot will be willing to discuss this in real life for fear of prosecution. So the only stoners that Average Joe knows about are the ones who are stupid enough to get caught, or people in tie dye t-shirts who don't shower regularly and are thus recognizable. The clean cut guy in a suit walking to his job as a doctor or a lawyer isn't recognized as a stoner, and he certainly doesn't broadcast that information, so the sample of people from which this perception is drawn is statistically biased- extremely so.
Agreed. There are many, MANY problems with prohibition, but this one is often overlooked. Namely, by engaging in ridiculous hyperbole about relatively innocuous drugs like marijuana, the government is destroying their own credibility. Most kids hear the DARE officers say that smoking weed will turn you into a crazy homeless bum who sucks dick for joints, and they immediately tune out all government officials because they're obviously not telling the truth.
This is bad, because some of the things the government says about drugs are true. This due more to random statistics than diligent research, I'd say- if you make 1000 completely random statements, some of them are bound to be true simply by chance. For instance, meth, crack and heroin really do have a great addictive potential, and the ratio of the LD50 dose to the active dose is disturbingly small. Unfortunately, kids simply don't listen when they're told this, because cops say the same things about weed.
Even worse, some kids actually buy into the propaganda. These are the kids who believe that illegal drugs are dangerous because they're illegal, so they huff paint cleaner and other "legal" drugs. These "legal" methods of getting high are actually more dangerous than heroin, but they don't carry the illegal stigma so kids don't see them as dangerous if they believe the drug prohibition propaganda.
I'd much rather see all drugs be made legal- ALL of them. Then sell them at convenience stores to adults in packages with certain ratings on the package. Addictiveness could be quantified (by independent medical professionals, not the government) and placed on the package. Also, the ratio of the LD50 dose to the active dose could be printed in big letters. The time to take effect could also be printed, so that people don't accidentally overdose thinking the first hit didn't work. This would increase government revenue through more taxes and less money spent on the DEA, destroy the black market and its associated violence, drastically empty our prisons of nonviolent offenders, restore faith in the police as a force to protect people rather than imprison them for "victimless crimes", and make it more difficult for kids to buy drugs. (Yes, more difficult. Children regularly report that it's more difficult to obtain alcohol than drugs, for the simple reason that most drug dealers don't ask for ID.) It would also help more drug addicts get treatment, because they'd no longer have to fear prosecution if they want to get treatment. Oh, and it would give us back a free society where citizens are treated as adults who can make their own decisions about their own bodies.
If you're looking for an objective information source regarding drugs, I highly recommend erowid.org. This website contains information about damn near every psychoactive drug in existence. Not only chemical information and physiological effects, but also specific legal information and many, MANY personal experiences.
Strangely enough, I find myself recommending the South Park episode about weed to anyone who wants a decent way to sum up the dangers of marijuana. After most of the episode centers around ridiculous propaganda, Stan's father eventually wises up and says: "Son, weed isn't going to make you a criminal. It will make you okay with being bored, though, and every day you spend stoned on the couch is one less day you could be learning a new hobby or developing a new skill." I found that very insightful. Frankly, I also liked the recent drug commercial where a stoner says "I smoked weed, and I didn't become homeless or start smoking crack. We just sat on my friend's couch... and sat... and sat... I'd rather take my chances outside, where it's dangerous."
This kind of honest approach would do wonders, in my opinion. And, yes, I'm a regular stoner- I just know how and when to put the drugs down and work on my physics PhD thesis (if you don't believe this, look at my history and read the posts I've written regarding quantum entangleme
Rather than impeaching the bastard, why not just use him as proof that we need to enact a constitutional requirement requiring a certain minimum score on a standard intelligence test in order to run for President?
I don't think Bush's problem is that he's stupid. I think he's remarkable incurious and doesn't base his conclusions on evidence. From what I've read, Bush doesn't read newspapers, doesn't look for evidence that opposes his own preconceptions (and disregards contradictory evidence that somehow lands in front of his face). He's not stupid, per se, he just doesn't have even the smallest iota of the scientific method in his thinking.
That's not something that an IQ test would detect, unfortunately...
Slashdot Mirror
DrVomact, this is unrelated to the subject at hand, but I've been wanting to contact you for a while now. Over a year ago we had a productive discussion about quantum entanglement and parallel universes. I've recently put this discussion into my website here. I just wanted to contact you to make sure this is okay with you. If you have any questions or comments, please either respond or email me at the address shown here. Thanks!
Hi Blakey Rat. I'm sorry about the unrelated comment, but I've been trying to contact you for a while regarding a conversation we had about a year ago. Unfortunately both our email addresses are hidden, so this was my only recourse.
You and I had a spirited debate about DRM, and I'd like to put it on my website in a manner similar to this discussion.
Unfortunately google isn't working for me right now (!) and I can't access the DRM discussion in question because it's dropped off the bottom of my comments list. So hopefully you remember the debate I'm talking about...
Anyway, I'd be grateful if you'd give me permission to put that discussion in a more prominent place than the Slashdot archives. I think your enthusiasm made the conversation very interesting, and I think others would agree.
If you're okay with this, let me know either by responding or by sending me an email at the address on this page. Specify any conditions you like-- I intend to place a link to the original discussion and not edit the conversation in any way whatsoever, but you may have other ideas and I'm open to suggestion.
Cheers,
Khayman80 (aka Dumb Scientist)
DrVomact, this is unrelated to the subject at hand, but I've been wanting to contact you for a while now. Over a year ago we had a productive discussion about quantum entanglement and parallel universes.
I've recently put this discussion into a website at http://dumbscientist.com/archives/quantum-entanglement-and-parallel-universes . I just wanted to contact you to make sure this is okay with you. If you have any questions or comments, please email me at the address shown on my "about" page ( http://dumbscientist.com/about ). Thanks!
Unless they were looking for a serial killer, who tend to be white males.
Murphy's Law isn't actually a law of physics. It's only usually true that people make mistakes. If you were to say that nontrivial software is almost always buggy, I'd agree.
Because life forms started out with finite reproductive lifespans, it would have to extend these lifespans through mutations and natural selection. Smaller mutations are more common- and generally more likely to be beneficial- than longer mutations. The single mutation to create an immortal being would have to be likely enough to occur in ~3 Gyr. Or, if it takes multiple smaller mutations, each of those smaller mutations would have to result in immediate benefits in order for natural selection to 'choose' it.
I'm not saying that this mutation(s) hasn't occurred. I believe I've heard of organisms that have effectively unlimited lifespans. For example, I believe cancer cells are immortal (right?). But this mutation only seems useful if a species relies on a very fast rate of growth. The extra children that an immortal could have would rarely be an advantage if there wasn't enough food around to support them, for example. Plus, the parents would be competing against their own kids for resources- prophylactics would be mandatory even in a stone age immortal civilization.
Perhaps an animal research program employing directed evolution would be a good way to uncover solutions to aging mechanisms, considering that aging is ultimately the product of evolution. Take 10,000 mice (chosen because their lifespans are short and they're similar to humans) and carefully control their breeding. Only allow males and females to breed once they're at the extreme upper range of their established reproduction age. Or, alternatively, freeze sperm and ova from mice during their prime reproductive years, and only later breed a new generation with the sperm and ova from mice that lived exceptionally long lives. Each new generation's genome is sequenced and compared to the previous one, as well as to a control group of mice that are bred randomly.
This artificial selection pressure would tend to kill off genes that cause a short lifespan, and enhance the frequency of genes for long life. Assuming humans have similar longevity genes, we could learn which genes to focus on modifying in humans. Depending on the population size and number of generations, useful mutations may even occur. What do you think?
Sorry, but you're wrong. Marijuana is a schedule 1 drug according to the DEA: http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/scheduling.html . Perhaps you meant to say that it's utterly absurd that a drug like marijuana is in the worst schedule of drugs, despite the fact that marijuana is less addictive than alcohol, and has caused zero confirmed deaths since the dawn of history, compared to thousands of fatalities per year for aspirin overdoses. http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm
But you're right, smoking isn't a felony. Smoking usually requires possession, though, which is a misdemeanor or felony depending both on the amount and on the presence or absence of an elusive quality called "intent to distribute". Sadly, police officers have been caught planting this evidence on innocent people:
http://wcbstv.com/local/Undercover.NYPD.Officers.2.759420.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20070427/ai_n19063646
That depends. Enterprise NX-01? Absolutely not. Any other variant? Yeah, sounds like a winner.
At the risk of responding to a troll, I was referring to quotes like the following (taken from http://www.spaceandmotion.com/albert-einstein-god-religion-theology.htm ):
So now I've shared the sources for my statement. Care to share yours?By the way, what makes you think I have a worldview bias? I regard myself as a "teapot atheist" (in the sense that Dawkins uses the term) but I think I'm leaning towards agnosticism simply because I'm committed to following the scientific method in every aspect of my life. In a theological context, that means that I simply can't come to any specific conclusion about god without sufficient evidence. From what I can tell, Einstein and I are pretty much in agreement on this point. (Not that it matters- arguments from authority are weak forms of evidence.)
On a more personal level, I humbly recommend that you change the tone you use to debate. While it's certainly true that some people do alter facts to fit their worldview (creationists and scientologists are glaring examples, IMHO), it's seldom productive to explicitly point that out. Furthermore, if you fly off the handle at the slightest provocation and hurl that accusation around, people will regard you as "the boy who cried wolf". It's usually more effective to politely ask the person to provide the sources for their statements.
And, quite frankly, accusing people of "shoveling bullshit" is simply insulting. It's a good thing I'm already a non-theist, otherwise your condescending attitude would have simply convinced me that atheists are arrogant, loudmouthed jerks. When you act this way, you make all non-theists look bad. I'm actually considering the possibility that people like you are, in fact, fundamentalists posing as atheists to reinforce the "obnoxious atheist" stereotype.
Oh, and it's "atheist". Spelled just like it sounds. The more you know...
Putting religious beliefs before science? That's something I really don't understand. If there's anything I've learned by reading about Einstein's views on religion, it's that he was the quintessential scientist even in this respect: he didn't subscribe to any known organized religion, but vehemently refused to rule out the existence of god- and found atheists arrogant for doing so. His religious views seem to be somewhere in between pantheistic and agnostic, and I don't see how they affected his scientific work.
Perhaps you're referring to the famous quote "God does not play dice". I don't think this quote expresses a religious belief as much as it articulates a "gut instinct" about the way the universe worked: that it's fundamentally deterministic. Of course, being Einstein, he had to word it in a deliberately provocative fashion. I think gut instincts have a real place in science- they can often be useful starting points for hypotheses, or used to guide an investigation in a direction that one only grasps subconsciously at first. The only real restriction is that one needs to be able to recognize when experimental evidence has proven one's gut instincts wrong. I don't think Einstein lived to see this point; local hidden variable theories hadn't been experimentally ruled out by Bell inequality experiments such as the Aspect experiments before he died.
And I'm not even sure Einstein was thoroughly wrong about the universe being fundamentally deterministic. Even though the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics contains an element of randomness (the very randomness that Einstein railed against), the Everett-Wheeler interpretation says otherwise. The Many Worlds interpretation, as it is often called, asserts that random wave collapse merely looks random from within our own "branch" of a larger wave function that encompasses many universes. If you were somehow able to view the entire wave function, it would look completely deterministic. The only reason we see randomness in quantum "collapse" is because our macroscopic detectors (such as our eyeballs) induce decoherence in quantum states that cause environmentally-induced superselection. (Explaining that sentence in english would take many pages, so if you're curious I suggest you use those words, plus the abbreviation einselection, to do some googling.)
The data gap next to the shoreline is due to the fact that the radar beam spreads out as it leaves the satellite, so it ends up reflecting off a large area of the ocean's surface. This may actually be intentional- a larger radar footprint would average out short term waves and increase the signal to noise ratio. Or it could be a hard limit imposed by the finite size of the radar transceiver. I dunno. The point is that you can't really use the reflections from this area if it overlaps on land, because the reflective properties of land are so much different than water.
Disclaimer: I don't work on the JASON project, so this may all be wrong. I work on a different project called GRACE, which measures spatio-temporal gravity fluctuations. I'm actually competing with JASON, in a sense, because I'm using the GRACE measurements to get a better estimate of ocean tides. This is possible because when GRACE flies over a region of the ocean during high tide, the gravity is slightly stronger than when GRACE flies over that same region at low tide. I've got nearly 5 years of these sporadic gravity measurements covering the globe, and I think I can convert them into a better ocean tide model using a relatively simple (but disgustingly huge and slow!) matrix equation based on Newtonian gravity due to point masses evenly spaced on the surface of the earth.
You'll likely be even more underwhelmed with the data gap from my analysis- it's more like 100km because gravity is omnidirectional unlike radar which can at least be focused somewhat. However, GRACE's polar orbit gives me an advantage relative to ocean tide models based on JASON in the region north of 66N latitude, which is the maximum latitude that JASON 1/2 samples. I also hope that I can beat the accuracy of JASON 1 in lower latitudes, but I'm still struggling to regularize the solution to my satisfaction so that remains to be seen. I'm definitely looking forward to JASON 2's improved accuracy- hopefully it will help validate my results.
If I can ever get off Slashdot and back to my code, that is...
You're right- I don't accept that axiom. In my moral system the suffering of sapient beings is derived to be "bad", while the suffering of non-sapient creatures occupies a kind of moral grey area that I haven't been able to conclusively pin down one way or the other. Regardless, I don't like to accept arbitrary axioms unless there's no other choice- and I think there is another choice in this instance.
You're right, it was. I didn't fully explain my reasoning behind that statement, because it's a fairly complicated subject. (Note: my ethical system is a modified version of the system Ayn Rand describes in her essay The Objectivist Ethics.)
First, some definitions. I choose to define the word "value" as "that which one acts to gain or keep". I choose this definition because it's purely descriptive- other definitions that I've seen are prescriptive in a way that seems circular to me. Notice several important facets of this definition. Value, as defined, is a relational property. Something can only have value if someone exists to act to gain or keep it. Secondly, only in the presence of beings capable of making choices does "value" become a meaningful word- a stone cannot be said to act to gain lichen in the same manner that a cat acts to gain a mouse.
Similarly, I choose to define "ethical system" as "a hierarchical set of values that guides one's choices". When faced with a choice, one makes an ethical decision by deciding what values are involved and choosing the value which one considers to be most important (the value that ranks highest in the hierarchy of values). Note that this is a descriptive definition that does not actually refer to "good" or "bad"; such a definition would be useless because of its circularity. Also, ethics as defined is only possible for beings who are capable of forming a conceptual hierarchical system- in other words, sapient beings. Thus, according to my definitions, values exist for all sentient creatures (creatures capable of making choices), but an "ethical system" can only be held by a sapient being.
The justification of a value can be expressed as an infinite sequence of purposes and values. As an example: "Johnny values the school bus because he has a purpose of getting to school because he values the self-improvement the school provides because he has a purpose of getting a good job because he values financial well-being, etc." This is not really a justification for the original choice of value, though, because at every single step in the infinite sequence one could ask the reasonable question "Why do you choose that purpose to justify that value?" What we need is a justification for a choice of 'value' that is not dependent on another justification.
Thus we are forced to find a purpose that justifies itself. The only purpose that I can think of which would qualify is the purpose of "preserving one's own ability to make choices." This purpose is self-justifying because without fulfilling that purpose, one's ability to hold values or purposes does not exist. In essence, the only purpose that can be held without justification is the purpose of allowing one's self to continue to hold purposes. Notice that this line of reasoning can be expressed in a slightly different manner: "The ultimate goal of every action taken by a sapient being should be the preservation of his/her/ver own life."
So far, we have only concerned ourselves with a single sapient being. Some additional premises have to be introduced in order to come to a satisfactory conclusion regarding societal ethics. First of all, I take a position of tabula rasa, believing all people to be born with an ethical
By the way, if you manage to find one at a reasonable price, let me know so I can buy one too.
But for Zeus's sake, leave Star Trek out of it. These issues are complicated enough without muddying the waters further with questions of whether Picard could kick Kirk's ass. (For the record, he totally could. But that's only because Kirk would have been exhausted from all the hours spent fucking his green-skinned alien bitches.)
Werd.
I've never really seen anyone make the argument that "ability to feel emotions" implies individual rights. I have, however, often seen people make the argument that the precondition for individual rights is the ability to feel pain. This is a common justification for the idea of "animal rights". I just don't see how the ability to feel pain implies individual rights, though. It seems like an emotional argument to me- we've evolved empathy as a social survival trait, and it is often triggered in response to animal suffering. This causes people to feel sorry for animals, and they try to stop that suffering by grasping at logical straws to find a way to prevent it. Make no mistake- I agree that needless animal suffering is bad. But I don't see a clear logical progression from "ability to feel pain" to "all animals have rights to life, liberty and property".
What I'm trying to say is that I think the standard term "human rights" incorrectly implies that individual rights are somehow inherited through a certain configuration of our DNA. I don't think that's the case- I think any being with the ability to form hierarchical structures of abstract concepts should be assumed to have rights until they prove otherwise by not respecting other beings' rights. And that includes artificial intelligences- and sapient aliens, for that matter. Also, human consciousnesses that have been "uploaded" (if that's even possible) would have individual rights under my definition of the term.
I think that most people who want AI for pragmatic reasons are essentially advocating the creation of a slave race. You think companies/governments are going to spend billions of dollars creating an AI, and then just let it sit around playing Playstation 7 games? I doubt it. They'd likely want a return on their investment, and they'd force the program to do their bidding in some manner (choosing stocks, acting as intelligent front ends for advanced semantic search engines, etc). Maybe this would involve an imperative built into the AI at ground level: "obey your masters", or it could be more obviously sinister like a pain/pleasure reward system like the ones used to control human slaves.
Do you think that mainstream society would find this as repugnant as I do? I doubt it. Most people seem to find it difficult to empathize with other humans who have a different skin color, a different religion, or a different sexual orientation. If Average Joe doesn't care about the individual rights of people in Gitmo, he's certainly not going to care about the individual rights of a computer program- which is not even a biological life form.
I would say that any serious AI research needs to be preceded by widespread legislation expanding the definition of individual rights (abandoning the "human rights" label as anachronistic along the way). We need to insure that all sapient beings- organic or digital- have guaranteed rights. Until then, I think AI researchers are badly misguided- they're naive idealists working towards a noble goal, without considering that they're effectively working to create a new slave race...
Hey, none of that here. What do you think this is, Digg?
Thank you for your insightful and thought provoking critique. I appreciate your input, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Heh... yes, I've found that physics is often more enjoyable stoned (and I'm a pretty damn big physics geek even when I'm sober, so that's really saying something). So do a lot of other scientists- the most famous being the late Carl Sagan: http://www.marijuana-uses.com/essays/002.html
I say this not to brag, but to preemptively counter the (disturbingly common) notion that all stoners are dumb, lazy slackers. I think this is a direct effect of drug prohibition, and most peoples' inability to recognize when their own conclusions are drawn from biased samples.
For example, no one (myself included) who smokes pot will be willing to discuss this in real life for fear of prosecution. So the only stoners that Average Joe knows about are the ones who are stupid enough to get caught, or people in tie dye t-shirts who don't shower regularly and are thus recognizable. The clean cut guy in a suit walking to his job as a doctor or a lawyer isn't recognized as a stoner, and he certainly doesn't broadcast that information, so the sample of people from which this perception is drawn is statistically biased- extremely so.
This is bad, because some of the things the government says about drugs are true. This due more to random statistics than diligent research, I'd say- if you make 1000 completely random statements, some of them are bound to be true simply by chance. For instance, meth, crack and heroin really do have a great addictive potential, and the ratio of the LD50 dose to the active dose is disturbingly small. Unfortunately, kids simply don't listen when they're told this, because cops say the same things about weed.
Even worse, some kids actually buy into the propaganda. These are the kids who believe that illegal drugs are dangerous because they're illegal, so they huff paint cleaner and other "legal" drugs. These "legal" methods of getting high are actually more dangerous than heroin, but they don't carry the illegal stigma so kids don't see them as dangerous if they believe the drug prohibition propaganda.
I'd much rather see all drugs be made legal- ALL of them. Then sell them at convenience stores to adults in packages with certain ratings on the package. Addictiveness could be quantified (by independent medical professionals, not the government) and placed on the package. Also, the ratio of the LD50 dose to the active dose could be printed in big letters. The time to take effect could also be printed, so that people don't accidentally overdose thinking the first hit didn't work. This would increase government revenue through more taxes and less money spent on the DEA, destroy the black market and its associated violence, drastically empty our prisons of nonviolent offenders, restore faith in the police as a force to protect people rather than imprison them for "victimless crimes", and make it more difficult for kids to buy drugs. (Yes, more difficult. Children regularly report that it's more difficult to obtain alcohol than drugs, for the simple reason that most drug dealers don't ask for ID.) It would also help more drug addicts get treatment, because they'd no longer have to fear prosecution if they want to get treatment. Oh, and it would give us back a free society where citizens are treated as adults who can make their own decisions about their own bodies.
If you're looking for an objective information source regarding drugs, I highly recommend erowid.org. This website contains information about damn near every psychoactive drug in existence. Not only chemical information and physiological effects, but also specific legal information and many, MANY personal experiences.
Strangely enough, I find myself recommending the South Park episode about weed to anyone who wants a decent way to sum up the dangers of marijuana. After most of the episode centers around ridiculous propaganda, Stan's father eventually wises up and says: "Son, weed isn't going to make you a criminal. It will make you okay with being bored, though, and every day you spend stoned on the couch is one less day you could be learning a new hobby or developing a new skill." I found that very insightful. Frankly, I also liked the recent drug commercial where a stoner says "I smoked weed, and I didn't become homeless or start smoking crack. We just sat on my friend's couch... and sat... and sat... I'd rather take my chances outside, where it's dangerous."
This kind of honest approach would do wonders, in my opinion. And, yes, I'm a regular stoner- I just know how and when to put the drugs down and work on my physics PhD thesis (if you don't believe this, look at my history and read the posts I've written regarding quantum entangleme
That's not something that an IQ test would detect, unfortunately...