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Why do I begin?
5.Dynamic tagging system or ratings doesn't stop bots or ignorant masses to
assign their garbage top score.And don't forget Advertisement.
What does any of this have to do with the discussion?
6.I can access all of my bookmarks if i use them from a network drive or my website hosted on some server.
You can make a freewebs page in few seconds and post your bookmarks there.
We're talking about the functionality of local bookmarks, not what you can do with a network drive, or a free webhost. In fact, your second suggestion is just a clumsy and inefficient way of publishing your bookmarks on the web--isn't that exactly what you are trying to argue as being unnecessary because you have local bookmarks?
There MUCH BETTER venues and options to Meet Other People.IRC Instant Messaging VOIP FORUMs WebChat/websites and Newsgroups are way superior then you pitiful bookmarklets sharing site.
And what does that have to do with the fact that local bookmarks don't combine the social aspects of a web community with the function of keeping bookmarks? How you prefer to communicate over the internet is irrelevant to this discussion. Just cuz you prefer listening to music on a home stereo system doesn't mean that car stereos are superfluous.
Notepad for all it matters excellect and fast editor (in fact i mostly use Metapad,a notepad replacement to get my work done).I know here alot sladhot people who Work with Vi and Emacs
exclusively.
Did I argue that notepad wasn't a good editor? Did I ask whether people on slashdot use vi or emacs? What does any of this have to do with the analogy I used for my argument: Word and notepad don't preclude the usefulness of each other, even though they're both text editors, since they were designed with different purposes in mind.
8."Then I guess a database driven CMS is just the same as an online forum too, right? " Yes.Your forum/blog are database driven entities.
Do you understand what "same" means? I wasn't asking you whether a CMS and online forum are both database-driven, or if they are similar. I asked you if they are the same just because they share a few vague similarities--an example being that both are able to post text on the web (or that both may be database-driven). Sharing a few vague similarities doesn't change the fact that they are entirely different applications designed for completely different purposes. A coloring book and a math book may be constructed of the same materials and share many similarities, but you still can't substitute one for the other because of their functional differences.
"A messageboard thread won't let you rank the bookmarks, or group them, or browse them by tags, or allow slashdot editors to refer to them for news submissions."
A modified forum script would have these features.Its not that significant:
I seen many forums with karma systems,
Moderator only forums(with submission queues,etc.)
See http://www.phpbb.com/mods/ [phpbb.com] for example.
"assign their garbage top score" ex:
A group of harry potter fans would rank their Snape photos Top score.
Advertisement:Think of spam.Links advertised by bots.
Oh, those features aren't significant--even though they require entirely different data structures, table relationships, and interfaces, and by the time you make those modification you are no longer working on a messageboard. Right... And mentioning a few features that Slashdot shares with some messageboards doesn't change the fact that the applications you are comparing serve completely different purposes. You can mention that they both use HTML, HTTP, and both are
Re:Group Blog(web2.0 for forum) Named Slashdot
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The fallacy of your reasoning wasn't in your yes/no answers. It was in the fact that you responded to each argument with completely unrelated information.
Re:Group Blog(web2.0 for forum) Named Slashdot
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In fact i don't even program(though i know abit of Basic) and never been a web administrator.
That explains your oversimplistic views of various web applications.
Even if someone added every possible web browser feature to a particular BitTorrent client, that does not demonstrate that a web browser is just a modified BitTorrent client. IE, Firefox, Opera, etc. are equivalent applications which can be appropriately substituted for one another. But simply being able to add browser features to another application doesn't mean that a browser is just a modification of that applciation.
You are equivocating drastically different applications, such as blogs and forums, simply because you see vague similarities, but they serve completely different purposes, and this is self-evident in the diffference in the functional-flow of the website. I've given you tons of analogies which demonstrate flaws in your reasoning, yet you stubbornly continue to make inane statements about A and B sharing quality X--having one or two similar aspects does not account for the vast disparity in features and overall purpose.
Re:Group Blog(web2.0 for forum) Named Slashdot
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No, I didn't stop drowning puppies, because I never started drowning them to begin with. Your question relied on a false premise, but I can still respond yes or no, even without further clarification. I didn't answer your question because it was irrelevant--as are most of your statements:
Saying that a CMS and a forum can both be database driven is completely irrelevant to whether one can be appropriately substituted for the other. Mentioning that you can send pictures using DCC sends has nothing to do with my argument that, just because you can post pictures on Angelfire, doesn't mean that other applications involving pictures are obsolete. Your responses were completely off-topic and didn't refute or even address my arguments. You simply responded just for the sake of posting a response, and since you couldn't defend your position, you'd just go off on an irrelevant tangent.
And what the hell is "ambiguation?"
Re:Group Blog(web2.0 for forum) Named Slashdot
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The ability to modify a messageboard and add features from other web applications to it is due to the fact that they are, in fact, web applications, and are coded in similar languages with similar features (which does not mean that PHP is redundant because ASP exists). It doesn't mean everything on the web is reducible to a messageboard--which you are claiming again, even though earlier you denied making such claims.
You can add any desktop application feature to a BitTorrent client--does that mean that all desktop applications can be reduced to a BitTorrent client? My BitTorrent client has a browser in it, so does that mean that a browser is just a glorified BitTorrent client? Your reasoning is flawed and utterly absurd.
And, no, I don't have a vested commercial interest in CMS's. If anyone, I think it is you who has the vested interest in a particular web application, which explains why you tout messageboards as the all-purpose solution for all web applications. It also appears that you are letting your commercial interests get in the way of your ability to think objectively.
You can add whatever you want to your messageboard, but in the end it is still just a messageboard. It's not the second coming of the messiah, it will not make del.icio.us or slashdot obsolete, and it's sure as hell not gonna become an operating system. All it's gonna be is a hideous patchwork of disjointed code unless you re-write the whole thing, at which point it ceases to be a messageboard.
Instead of making absurd arguments reeking of blatant self-promotion, maybe you ought to just design a super-messageboard to make slashdot or del.icio.us, or both, obsolete. Maybe you can replace SourceForge too and see how many people want to switch over from these sites to your messageboard. Or how about Gmail? It's probably just a glorified messageboard as well. I mean, I can send people written messages over the web using a forum, so Gmail must be superfluous. Shoot, all we need is a forum script, and we can do anything. That's such an elegant solution, I wonder why more professional enterprises don't adopt that approach instead of hiring expensive developers to build their custom applications.
Get over yourself already. Your messageboard software isn't all that; it's not gonna make any meaningful web application obsolete. Real web developers will continue to produce new and innovative applications instead of just peddling the same old tripe even in completely inappropriate situations. And, aside from novice web admins, no one subscribes to your views.
Re:Group Blog(web2.0 for forum) Named Slashdot
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Yes/no questions are not ambiguous. You simply chose to dance around the issue with tenuous similarities instead of just admiting that they are disimilar applications. Maybe you should learn how to give straight-forward responses instead of persisting to argue a moot point and then getting angry when you are confronted with the inherent fallacies of your argument.
Clearly a forum cannot be used for all web applications, and not all web applications can be reduced to a modified messageboard. Yet when I demonstrated this by pointing out the inherent differences between these applications, you chose to make off-topic/irrelevant statements about vague similarities. Having vague similarities does not mean you can substitute one application for another. If two applications have disimilar purposes and features, then one does not make the other redundant. Such is the case with local bookmarks and link-sharing sites, and similarly with a link-sharing site and simply posting links in a thread on a forum.
Read your own posts. Were you not trying to reduce every web application out there down to a "modified messageboard?" I was simply making the point that you were oversimplifying and equivocating vastly different applications. But when I mentioned a fundamental difference in the applications you compared, instead of acknowledging the difference, you would simply respond with statements along the lines of "but this feature is similar." Well, similar !== same, and just cuz they are vaguely similar doesn't mean that all the other major aspects in which they differe don't matter. Get it now?
A home-stereo system doesn't make a car stereo-system worthless. Just like local bookmarks don't make link-sharing sites superfluous. They serve completely different purposes. Your initial comparison was flawed, and there's no point raising unrelated issues like but I can post links in a messageboard too. A message board is no more of a substitute for a robust web application designed specifically for a that purpose than are local bookmarks. You can mention all the vague similarities you want about them both being database-driven, or both being able to post information on the web, they aren't the same, not even close. All those similarities can be drawn between a million different applications serving different purposes, and they're just a way of evading the reality of things.
Re:Group Blog(web2.0 for forum) Named Slashdot
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i can't understand
your broken
sentences.
it might
help
if you
stay
on topic
instead of
going off
on random tangents
to avoid
responding
to my
arguments.
OK, that's really annoying.
Re:Group Blog(web2.0 for forum) Named Slashdot
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What's ironic about posting that here? Slashdot isn't running a modified version of phpBB. Slashcode is a specialized CMS designed for newsites that facilitates threaded discussions and a unique peer moderation system. The forum-like aspect of the site is but a small part of the code.
"A messageboard thread won't let you rank the bookmarks, or group them, or browse them by tags, or allow slashdot editors to refer to them for news submissions."
A modified forum script would have these features.Its not that significant:
If a forum were modified into a del.icio.us-like application, then it wouldn't be a forum anymore. There's a difference between a site for sharing/ranking/browsing bookmarks that also happens to allow you to comment on the bookmarks, and a discussion forum where people go simply to have free-form discussions on the web. If you have to completely change the layout and functional flow of the site, you might as well start fresh since you're building an entirely different application.
I seen many forums with karma systems,
Moderator only forums(with submission queues,etc.)
See http://www.phpbb.com/mods/ for example.
And I've seen minivans with DVD screens. Does that make them a movie theater? Combining feature sets is useful, as I said before, but just because there's a partial overlap of features doesn't mean the sites are functionally equivalent.
"assign their garbage top score" ex:
A group of harry potter fans would rank their Snape photos Top score.
Advertisement:Think of spam.Links advertised by bots.
Once again, what does that have to do with anything? Can a spam bot not post spam messages to a message board? And you don't seem to know how content rating systems work. Ofcourse a bunch of harry potter fans are gonna rate their harry-potter-related items high, and others who don't like harry potter as much will rate them lower. The overall rank will be determined by the average consensus of the site's userbase--that's how it's supposed to work. What is wrong with that?
You're going off on completely irrelevant tangents. What is your point? That messageboards prevent people from advertising on them? A folksonomically organized link-sharing site such as del.icio.us handles spammers much more effectively than a messageboard. And all sites where users can submit their own content is going to be vulnerable to spamming.
Slashdot is overhyped news blog,run by OSDN.The only aspects i see here is data sharing.
I don't know what that's supposed to mean...
It doesn't look superflous to have all these features in your forum and del.ici.ous? Do your forum makes it forbidden posting pictures? Do they prevent discusion on pictures?
No, it doesn't look superfluous--because these sites aren't forums. If I wanted to go to a messageboard, I'd go to an actual messageboard. I come here to read the news items and participate in discussions on the news posts. A forum does not have the content generation system that Slashdot has, and the discussions aren't structured as comments to news items, and they don't have the same social features as Slashdot. I could post pictures on a messageboard, but that isn't going to be ideal for sharing photos with people outside of the forum, and it won't be organizable into galleries and grouped with related photos through dynamic tags.
Image IMs are different from IRC DCC sends? Does forum prevent you from sending IM IN The Forum,COntaining these same images?
Did i mention you don't need a proprietary network to run those forum?
Do the images lose quality or "social aspect" just because they sent from a forum,email,or IRC DCC feature?
IRC DCC sends don't let you view the image directly in the IM. But that isn't the point. You're just rambling on incoherently. I asked you whether image
1.You don't have only tinypic(there dozens more) and you can even tag your images.
2.I never said there should be only one forum,one host,one news site.I like diversity in the web(as long its useful).
Then why did you claim that Tinypic precludes the usefulness of Flickr? Your entire argument has been: there's already something that is (slightly) similar, so there's no purpose for X.
3.I can share share my bookmarks by Posting a Thread Titled 'My Bookmarks' or "share your Bookmarks" on a forum.
Yea, just like instead of a photo gallery you can just post a thread titled "my pictures," or instead of an online store, you can just post a thread titled "my store." It's still not going to replace the applications out there which were developed specifically for these tasks. A messageboard is not an all-purpose solution for every web application. It doesn't offer any of the features that a robust custom-tailored web application offers. A messageboard thread won't let you rank the bookmarks, or group them, or browse them by tags, or allow slashdot editors to refer to them for news submissions.
4.Blogs don't have much more funtionality then a moderated forum,where you post your own stories. And you have even less features them a Real forum.
Why would you want all those unnecessary features if you simply wanted to run a blog? Why would you want extra pages and clutter for users to navigate through in order to view your blog?
5.Dynamic tagging system or ratings doesn't stop bots or ignorant masses to
assign their garbage top score.And don't forget Advertisement.
What does that have to do with anything? Does a messageboard prevent any of that? What does "assign their garbage top score" even mean? Yea, ok, I won't forget advertisement...
6.I can access all of my bookmarks if i use them from a network drive or my website hosted on some server.
You can make a freewebs page in few seconds and post your bookmarks there.
Yea, that's a lot more convenient than just using del.icio.us or slashdot's bookmarking interface, and I'm sure it'll provide all the same features too...
7.Social aspects of bookmarks
"and it doesn't help you meet other people with similar interests as you. You might as well say that notepad precludes Open Office."
There MUCH BETTER venues and options to Meet Other People.IRC Instant Messaging VOIP FORUMs WebChat/websites and Newsgroups are way superior then you pitiful bookmarklets sharing site.
So I guess the social aspect of Slashdot is useless too because there's IRC. Those are completely different applications, and the whole point of a social bookmarking website is to implement a social aspect to sharing bookmarks over the web. Combining feature sets is what sets these sites apart from others that offer similar features. Del.icio.us gives people topics to talk about, just like Slashdot does, that's the whole point of having these sites. You might as well argue that image IMs are unnecessary because you can just post images to an angelfire page or FTP, or that radios in cars are a bad idea because they're "inferior" to your home stereo system.
Notepad for all it matters excellect and fast editor (in fact i mostly use Metapad,a notepad replacement to get my work done).I know here alot sladhot people who Work with Vi and Emacs
exclusively.
Once again, what does that have to do with this discussion? Yea, I use notepad to code a lot of times too. What's your point? Do people only use Word to make webpages or write C++ code? The bottom line is Word and notepad are completely different applications and they are suited for different tasks. Just like local bookmarks and shared bookmarks are designed for different purposes.
8."Then I guess a database driven CMS is just the same
Tinypic is a terrible website, and why is Flickr useless just because there's another image-hosting site out there? Should there only be one webhost, one internet messageboard, one news site, etc. on the internet? Does Tinypic have the same features/functionality as Flickr? Similarly, blogs don't serve the same purpose as forums, not even close. You're oversimplifying the purpose of these sites to fit your narrow perception of the web. Just because two sites have similarities doesn't mean that one precludes the other.
You're making gross equivocations of complex applications to much simpler ones with unmatched feature sets because you can't see the usefulness of the additional features on these sites. The fact that you seem to think that slashdot bookmarks and del.icio.us are redundant just because you can bookmark webpages on your browser shows that you don't know how to make logical comparisons from which to base your arguments. Your browser bookmarks folder doesn't allow you to share links with other people; it doesn't provide a dynamic tagging system for organizing the bookmarks; it doesn't allow for discussions on the bookmarks; it doesn't let you access your bookmarks from any computer you want; and it doesn't help you meet other people with similar interests as you. You might as well say that notepad precludes Open Office.
And how is an online journal the same as a messageboard? Oh, because you can post text on the internet with both of them? Then I guess a database driven CMS is just the same as an online forum too, right? Just because a lot of idiots like to substitute one for the other doesn't mean that they are appropriate substitutes.
Perhaps it's because of the prevalence of your attitude that a lot of incompetent website administrators don't bother building a real website and setting up an appropriate back-end for it; they just use a blog or messageboard script. However, professional web admins don't use a messageboard or blog script as a CMS. The only people who use blogs/messageboards as an all-purpose CMS are people who don't know how to develop real web applications and can't setup anything else. Nothing worth developing can be accomplsihed simply by tweaking a forum script.
If you did understand what purpose tags were designed to serve, then you wouldn't be making the argument that text-searches obsolete the use of tags. And you have yet to suggest a better way to categorize/group virtual content that would be more effective than the use of folksonomic tags.
That's what 3D Relams should do. They should just port Duke 3D on an updated engine (HL2, perhaps) to Windows XP. The original game was awesome--the game play, the story, the levels, etc. The only thing that really needs to be updated is the game engine. I'd be pretty excited playing the old Duke 3d levels with higher resolution graphics, greater details, and better gfx rendering. I don't need to send e-mail from the game. I just want to shoot pigcops and blow up strippers with pipe bombs.
That's what you prefer. Other people have other preferences. Del.icio.us has actually generated a lot of useful data on social dynamics and folksonomy systems. Besides, there are a lot of useful applications for integrated shared bookmarks on a community website. The summary mentions that this system is meant to help editors pick news submissions. Saying that shared bookmarks are useless because your browser supports bookmarks is like saying that blogs are useless because you already keep a journal, or flickr is useless because you already have a photo album. That's just narrowminded thinking.
You seem to have completely missed the point. Tags aren't an alternative to text searches. They're an alternative to conventional categorization. Meta tag overloading isn't really a problem in most tag system implementations, and by the success of del.icio.us, it seems to be a very effective organizational system for web content. You can still do a text search on the collection, but tags give a more intuitive way of grouping related articles together using the benefits of folksonomy, which increase with the the size of the userbase. So Slashdot's implementation of tags seems to be very appropriate.
I stumbled across the above link while exploring LibraryThing as part of the research I've been conducting for a network library application I'm developing. I was looking for a way to categorize/catalog the ebooks in a virtual library and found conventional catagorization techniques to be inappropriate for a virtual collection. Genre hierarchies seemed inadequate for a collection not limited by physical restrictions. Most books tend to belong in multiple categories, and many subcategories have more than one obvious parent category. Tags seemed to be the perfect solution to the problem as it did not rely on a specific view of how things should be categorized and used a more web-like structure rather than the rigid hierarchical structure of conventional classification systems. This is also more in line with the web's overall structure where all the nodes are interconnected by hyperlinks in a folksonomic organization.
I would recommend reading that article and doing some more research on folksonomy before you dismiss the practical benefits of tagging as opposed to alternative organization methods.
Actually, it is almost *nothing* like the analogy of developing solutions you gave. Chemical developing processes are a necessary step in conventional photography. It wasn't an added step put there to restrict the rights of the photographer. What purpose does Kodak's encryption serve other than to prevent "unauthorized" parties from accessing the photos?
I don't think you understand the issue here. First, you need to realize how far chatbots are from the actual mental processes involved in the use of language. They are parlor tricks, as I said before, which only attempt to outwardly imitate intelligence. True linguistic communication requires more than mere evaluation of syntactic structure. The semantic analysis I mentioned before refers to the ability to understand the meaning of a sentence, not just analyze its syntax. Language directly resulted from the evolutionary development of human cognition. It is innately tied to other areas of human intelligence, with which it is mutually dependent. It is absurd to think that by implementing a few crude linguistic algorithms which merely identify the syntactical structure of a sentence, that you can emulate all of the cognitive processes underlying linguistic communication.
You also don't seem to understand the difference between computer instructions / data and knowledge. Knowledge is a cognitive function requiring conceptualization and awareness. Neither a chess program nor a chatbot possesses the ability to know. They cannot conceptualize the information they are given, nor do they have awareness of the information (or any kind of awareness for that matter). That is why an encyclopedia program possess no knowledge on its own. The only knowledge that comes from it results from a person actually using the encyclopedia (same as a book encyclopedia). So, no, Fritz does not possess any knowledge about chess.
For instance, in high school I had to design a tic-tac-toe game allowing a person to play against the computer. Tic-tac-toe has very simple and logical rules that were trivial to implement in the program. Since there are very few possible board-positions/outcomes for the game of tic-tac-toe, it was easy to "solve" the game and devise an AI to play a perfect game of tic-tac-toe (the strategy is quite simple if you think about it). But did this program understand the strategy which was implemented? Did it understand the game of tic-tac-toe? Could I have a conversation with it about tic-tac-toe? Ofcourse not. Not even close. It would not be difficult to write a mathematical proof to solve the game of tic-tac-toe. But to write an AI that can conceptualize that information, is self-aware, and can emulate the mental processes required for linguistical interaction, is not something that computer scientists are even close to accomplishing.
All a chess program is, is a set of instructions for the computer to follow, and not very complex ones at that. Most chess programs, including Fritz, Shredder, and Deep Blue, rely on brute-force techniques and aren't very intuitive. The main components of a chess program include: board representation, search technique, lead evaluation, and an open book/endgame database. The board represenation is basically how the game keeps track of the board positions. At each turn, the program takes the board position and creates a game-tree of possible moves, counter-moves, counter-counter-moves, etc. Using brute-force, it searches the game-tree for the most promising leafs, performs leaf evaluations on those board-positions, and decides which move to make after performing these calculations. Open book databases simply give the program a set of known "good" opening moves to randomly choose from, and endgame databases are basically used to modify/prune the game tree so that known outcomes do not have to be evaluated. That is pretty much all there is to modern chess programs/computers. There is no sentient intelligence involved.
So, while Fritz can compare the leaf values of different game-positions and determine which is greater, and it may "know" the perfectly-played outcome of an endgame that is recorded in its database, it doesn't actually know what any of this information means, and it doesn't possess any knowledge in the sense that human beings know things. In fact, many people were disappointed to find out that chess computers have taught us basically nothing about human intelligence or mental processes as chess programs don't resemble how human beings play chess. In conclusion, there's a lot more "magic missing" than you think.
You may not be building wire-taps, but you are supporting the Military Industrial Complex. One of the main reasons why I hate the Bush administration is that they are funneling tax payers' money into the defense industry, much more so than is required. I'm sorry, but you are not helping protect our country. You're simply draining our nation of its resources, which would be put to better use in education, healthcare, or social services.
And did you read the GP? Al Gore never claimed to have invented the internet. That's just a strawman attack that Gore critics like to bring up continuously. Al Gore stated that he took the initiative in creating the internet, as he was the first politician to recognize the importance of the internet and did in fact promote and support its development from his seat in Congress in the early days of the net. Even Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn have recognized his initiative as having been vital to the success of the internet as it exists today.
From Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn's joint statement:
No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the
Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among
people in government and the university community. But as the two people
who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the
Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a
Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to
our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.
Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his
role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the
initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have
argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover,
there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's
initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving
Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and
promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it
is timely to offer our perspective.
As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed
telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the
improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official
to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact
than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily
forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial
concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even
earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we
know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in
the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual
leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high
speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on
how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating
the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.
As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies to consolidate
what at the time were several dozen different and unconnected networks into
an "Interagency Network." Working in a bi-partisan manner with officials
in Ronald Reagan and George Bush's administrations, Gore secured the
passage of the High Performance Computing and Communications Act in
1991. This "Gore Act" supported the National Research and Education
Network (NREN) initiative that became one of the major vehicles for the
spread of the Internet beyond the field of computer science.
...
So get a clue before you start discrediting other people and perpetuating gross exagerations of their statements.
Either you misunderstand my position, or you misunderstand the argumentum ad ignorantiam. It applies to the argument that because we do not know that X is true, it therefore MUST be false, or vice versa.
I am not arguing that anything must be true, or that "we should trust" anything. I am saying that I choose to believe that it is true (because it might be), and that I choose to trust (because I can, without compromising logic). I have repeatedly stated that my position cannot be supported logically (nor can it be refuted logically, without further evidence). It may be utterly false. I acknowledge that.
You are arguing over petty semantics. Whethere you say "X is true" or "I believe X," they essentially mean the same thing. The statement "I'm not saying X is true, but Xcould be true" is meaningless in the context of a debate, and it doesn't refute any counter-arguments to X.
Your basic proposition is that God has a benevolent masterplan (X), which includes natural disasters. To support this claim, you essentially argued that since X cannot be proven false, that X is true. That is argumentum ignorantiam. Even appending "I believe" in front of each proposition, the argument still follows the form of an argument from ignorance.
Now, you also concede that this belief cannot be supported by logic. Well, atleast you recognize that, and that is why argumentum ignorantiam is a logical fallacy. Arguments of this form essentially are arbitrary beliefs that aren't supported by a sound line of reason. Your mistake was attempting to construct a line of reasoning where, admittedly, none existed.
You are arguing that because we cannot know God's masterplan, it must be assumed that it is evil. This is a much better example of the argumentum ad ignorantiam than my own argument is. Please demonstrate how your argument is any more logical or less fallacious than mine.
No, I was merely arguing that your claim was illogical. I don't believe in God or any such masterplan.
And I repeat that no one is saying that natural disasters are a good thing. We are saying that they may be a good thing. We do not know. We cannot know. The judgment, either way, is a choice. To decide either way is an act of faith. I would prefer to believe in a benevolent universe; some prefer not to believe that, and that is their (your?) right.
If you don't believe that natural disasters are a bad thing, then you are essentially justifying the sufferng they cause. End of story. Saying that it's a choice whether to believe that they are good or bad is a meaningly statement. Ofcourse we have a choice in what we believe, and you choose to believe that natural disasters are benevolent acts--thus you are implicitly saying that the suffering caused by them are justified. Dancing around semantics only suggests that you are having a hard time reconciling your religious convinctions and your conscience/sense of reason. Clearly you see that there is something wrong with such beliefs, but you still want to hold onto your convictions.
You can read more about the fallacy here and here.
Thanks, but I'm quite familiar with the fallacies of logic. But I think perhaps you should re-assess your own beliefs with the common fallacies of logic in mind, for I think you will find that many of the reasons you hold those beliefs to be true are based on logical fallacies--particularly the ones which "cannot be supported by logic."
I don't think the parlor-trick version of language processing is useful for this, but I think linguistics isn't too far off from being able to handle the demands of explaining a chess program's analysis and discussing it at a rudimentary level. A chess master is very intelligent, but this isn't a particularly language-oriented intelligence. We don't need the program to elucidate the analysis with metaphors, or write a sonnet about it, or argue convincingly about the correctness of the analysis; nor do we need to figure out the human's motivations, or understand rhetoric, or odd, archaic, or slang requests. The chess master isn't going to sit down at the computer and say, "So, how about those black bishops?" and expect the computer to have any clue how to respond.
True, I guess this is a more pragmatic subset of language processing. I suppose if the input always follows a set format/syntax, it would be similar to the function of computerized switchboard systems. In that case, the intelligence is just a superficial UI component to make the system more user-friendly. The amount of pre-programmed liguistical patterns required would also be greatly reduced as the system isn't aimed at conversation. But I think concepts like this have probably already been put in action, so this wouldn't really be a new advance in AI.
So this is actually a humble step (once you've got a chess program that plays in a way comprehensible to humans, of course): the human is going to be reasonably formal, stay on a known topic, and not be too demanding about style, while the computer has a large body of information which may be conveyed through language with the shared understanding of the terminology for the computer's chess-playing methods ("sacrifice", "trap", "tempting", etc) as well as chess terminology ("knight", "rank", "move", etc).
Now you are veering away from realistic scenarios and conjuring up an AI system requiring a much deeper grasp of language, which requires cognitive abilities that are too far off into the future technologically to begin speculating about. A computer only understands chess concepts in terms of mathematical equations programmed into the AI; don't confuse this with true cognitive abilities. It "understands" that a knight always moves horizontally-vertically at a 1:2 or 2:1 ratio only as much as a length of wire understands that the electrons it conducts must move from one end to the other. Without creating sentient-AI with cognitive abilities required for true conversations, the only kind of communication you can expect to see would follow the lines of:
User: Explain the last move. Computer: 8. h1 h5:
Tactic: Prophylaxis, Exchange Sacrifice.
Response to: Gamestate analysis suggesting a possible check in 3 or 5 moves by black.
Strategy: Move was made to take a keysquare, eliminating black combinations with the highest probabilities of success. User: Explain move 7. Computer: 7. f3 d4:
Tactic: Cover
Response to: Hanging pawn at f5 and possible line for black rook to king's bishop.
Strategy: Cover hanging pawn at f5 to prevent potential capture which would expose a hole.
In other words, the AI might be able to rephrase through a linguistics module the strategies it is preprogrammed with mathetically; and it might be able to recognize commands typed/spoken in a lax syntactical form; but anything beyond such basic communication would require far more than simple linguistical intelligence. It would not be able to have a free-form discussion about chess strategy. That's why it would only be a superficial UI component. There's no real inherent intelligence in linguistical analysis without accompanying semantical analysis, which programmers have yet to figure out how to code. A program which can only analyze linguistic patterns would be no more capable of holding a
The logical fallacy that I see in the argument is argumentum ad ignorantiam--by arguing that since we can't comprehend God's masterplan, we should trust that God has done the right thing by causing these natural disasters. And by arguing that natural disasters are a good thing, you are thus implying that the sufferng caused by these disasters are justified--in God's masterplan.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do I begin?
What does any of this have to do with the discussion?
We're talking about the functionality of local bookmarks, not what you can do with a network drive, or a free webhost. In fact, your second suggestion is just a clumsy and inefficient way of publishing your bookmarks on the web--isn't that exactly what you are trying to argue as being unnecessary because you have local bookmarks?
And what does that have to do with the fact that local bookmarks don't combine the social aspects of a web community with the function of keeping bookmarks? How you prefer to communicate over the internet is irrelevant to this discussion. Just cuz you prefer listening to music on a home stereo system doesn't mean that car stereos are superfluous.
Did I argue that notepad wasn't a good editor? Did I ask whether people on slashdot use vi or emacs? What does any of this have to do with the analogy I used for my argument: Word and notepad don't preclude the usefulness of each other, even though they're both text editors, since they were designed with different purposes in mind.
Do you understand what "same" means? I wasn't asking you whether a CMS and online forum are both database-driven, or if they are similar. I asked you if they are the same just because they share a few vague similarities--an example being that both are able to post text on the web (or that both may be database-driven). Sharing a few vague similarities doesn't change the fact that they are entirely different applications designed for completely different purposes. A coloring book and a math book may be constructed of the same materials and share many similarities, but you still can't substitute one for the other because of their functional differences.
Oh, those features aren't significant--even though they require entirely different data structures, table relationships, and interfaces, and by the time you make those modification you are no longer working on a messageboard. Right... And mentioning a few features that Slashdot shares with some messageboards doesn't change the fact that the applications you are comparing serve completely different purposes. You can mention that they both use HTML, HTTP, and both are
The fallacy of your reasoning wasn't in your yes/no answers. It was in the fact that you responded to each argument with completely unrelated information.
That explains your oversimplistic views of various web applications.
Even if someone added every possible web browser feature to a particular BitTorrent client, that does not demonstrate that a web browser is just a modified BitTorrent client. IE, Firefox, Opera, etc. are equivalent applications which can be appropriately substituted for one another. But simply being able to add browser features to another application doesn't mean that a browser is just a modification of that applciation.
You are equivocating drastically different applications, such as blogs and forums, simply because you see vague similarities, but they serve completely different purposes, and this is self-evident in the diffference in the functional-flow of the website. I've given you tons of analogies which demonstrate flaws in your reasoning, yet you stubbornly continue to make inane statements about A and B sharing quality X--having one or two similar aspects does not account for the vast disparity in features and overall purpose.
No, I didn't stop drowning puppies, because I never started drowning them to begin with. Your question relied on a false premise, but I can still respond yes or no, even without further clarification. I didn't answer your question because it was irrelevant--as are most of your statements:
Saying that a CMS and a forum can both be database driven is completely irrelevant to whether one can be appropriately substituted for the other. Mentioning that you can send pictures using DCC sends has nothing to do with my argument that, just because you can post pictures on Angelfire, doesn't mean that other applications involving pictures are obsolete. Your responses were completely off-topic and didn't refute or even address my arguments. You simply responded just for the sake of posting a response, and since you couldn't defend your position, you'd just go off on an irrelevant tangent.
And what the hell is "ambiguation?"
The ability to modify a messageboard and add features from other web applications to it is due to the fact that they are, in fact, web applications, and are coded in similar languages with similar features (which does not mean that PHP is redundant because ASP exists). It doesn't mean everything on the web is reducible to a messageboard--which you are claiming again, even though earlier you denied making such claims.
You can add any desktop application feature to a BitTorrent client--does that mean that all desktop applications can be reduced to a BitTorrent client? My BitTorrent client has a browser in it, so does that mean that a browser is just a glorified BitTorrent client? Your reasoning is flawed and utterly absurd.
And, no, I don't have a vested commercial interest in CMS's. If anyone, I think it is you who has the vested interest in a particular web application, which explains why you tout messageboards as the all-purpose solution for all web applications. It also appears that you are letting your commercial interests get in the way of your ability to think objectively.
You can add whatever you want to your messageboard, but in the end it is still just a messageboard. It's not the second coming of the messiah, it will not make del.icio.us or slashdot obsolete, and it's sure as hell not gonna become an operating system. All it's gonna be is a hideous patchwork of disjointed code unless you re-write the whole thing, at which point it ceases to be a messageboard.
Instead of making absurd arguments reeking of blatant self-promotion, maybe you ought to just design a super-messageboard to make slashdot or del.icio.us, or both, obsolete. Maybe you can replace SourceForge too and see how many people want to switch over from these sites to your messageboard. Or how about Gmail? It's probably just a glorified messageboard as well. I mean, I can send people written messages over the web using a forum, so Gmail must be superfluous. Shoot, all we need is a forum script, and we can do anything. That's such an elegant solution, I wonder why more professional enterprises don't adopt that approach instead of hiring expensive developers to build their custom applications.
Get over yourself already. Your messageboard software isn't all that; it's not gonna make any meaningful web application obsolete. Real web developers will continue to produce new and innovative applications instead of just peddling the same old tripe even in completely inappropriate situations. And, aside from novice web admins, no one subscribes to your views.
Yes/no questions are not ambiguous. You simply chose to dance around the issue with tenuous similarities instead of just admiting that they are disimilar applications. Maybe you should learn how to give straight-forward responses instead of persisting to argue a moot point and then getting angry when you are confronted with the inherent fallacies of your argument.
Clearly a forum cannot be used for all web applications, and not all web applications can be reduced to a modified messageboard. Yet when I demonstrated this by pointing out the inherent differences between these applications, you chose to make off-topic/irrelevant statements about vague similarities. Having vague similarities does not mean you can substitute one application for another. If two applications have disimilar purposes and features, then one does not make the other redundant. Such is the case with local bookmarks and link-sharing sites, and similarly with a link-sharing site and simply posting links in a thread on a forum.
Read your own posts. Were you not trying to reduce every web application out there down to a "modified messageboard?" I was simply making the point that you were oversimplifying and equivocating vastly different applications. But when I mentioned a fundamental difference in the applications you compared, instead of acknowledging the difference, you would simply respond with statements along the lines of "but this feature is similar." Well, similar !== same, and just cuz they are vaguely similar doesn't mean that all the other major aspects in which they differe don't matter. Get it now?
A home-stereo system doesn't make a car stereo-system worthless. Just like local bookmarks don't make link-sharing sites superfluous. They serve completely different purposes. Your initial comparison was flawed, and there's no point raising unrelated issues like but I can post links in a messageboard too. A message board is no more of a substitute for a robust web application designed specifically for a that purpose than are local bookmarks. You can mention all the vague similarities you want about them both being database-driven, or both being able to post information on the web, they aren't the same, not even close. All those similarities can be drawn between a million different applications serving different purposes, and they're just a way of evading the reality of things.
i can't
understand your
broken
sentences.
it might
help
if you
stay
on topic
instead of
going off
on random
tangents to avoid
responding
to my
arguments.
OK, that's really annoying.
What's ironic about posting that here? Slashdot isn't running a modified version of phpBB. Slashcode is a specialized CMS designed for newsites that facilitates threaded discussions and a unique peer moderation system. The forum-like aspect of the site is but a small part of the code.
If a forum were modified into a del.icio.us-like application, then it wouldn't be a forum anymore. There's a difference between a site for sharing/ranking/browsing bookmarks that also happens to allow you to comment on the bookmarks, and a discussion forum where people go simply to have free-form discussions on the web. If you have to completely change the layout and functional flow of the site, you might as well start fresh since you're building an entirely different application.
And I've seen minivans with DVD screens. Does that make them a movie theater? Combining feature sets is useful, as I said before, but just because there's a partial overlap of features doesn't mean the sites are functionally equivalent.
Once again, what does that have to do with anything? Can a spam bot not post spam messages to a message board? And you don't seem to know how content rating systems work. Ofcourse a bunch of harry potter fans are gonna rate their harry-potter-related items high, and others who don't like harry potter as much will rate them lower. The overall rank will be determined by the average consensus of the site's userbase--that's how it's supposed to work. What is wrong with that?
You're going off on completely irrelevant tangents. What is your point? That messageboards prevent people from advertising on them? A folksonomically organized link-sharing site such as del.icio.us handles spammers much more effectively than a messageboard. And all sites where users can submit their own content is going to be vulnerable to spamming.
I don't know what that's supposed to mean...
No, it doesn't look superfluous--because these sites aren't forums. If I wanted to go to a messageboard, I'd go to an actual messageboard. I come here to read the news items and participate in discussions on the news posts. A forum does not have the content generation system that Slashdot has, and the discussions aren't structured as comments to news items, and they don't have the same social features as Slashdot. I could post pictures on a messageboard, but that isn't going to be ideal for sharing photos with people outside of the forum, and it won't be organizable into galleries and grouped with related photos through dynamic tags.
IRC DCC sends don't let you view the image directly in the IM. But that isn't the point. You're just rambling on incoherently. I asked you whether image
Then why did you claim that Tinypic precludes the usefulness of Flickr? Your entire argument has been: there's already something that is (slightly) similar, so there's no purpose for X.
Yea, just like instead of a photo gallery you can just post a thread titled "my pictures," or instead of an online store, you can just post a thread titled "my store." It's still not going to replace the applications out there which were developed specifically for these tasks. A messageboard is not an all-purpose solution for every web application. It doesn't offer any of the features that a robust custom-tailored web application offers. A messageboard thread won't let you rank the bookmarks, or group them, or browse them by tags, or allow slashdot editors to refer to them for news submissions.
Why would you want all those unnecessary features if you simply wanted to run a blog? Why would you want extra pages and clutter for users to navigate through in order to view your blog?
What does that have to do with anything? Does a messageboard prevent any of that? What does "assign their garbage top score" even mean? Yea, ok, I won't forget advertisement...
Yea, that's a lot more convenient than just using del.icio.us or slashdot's bookmarking interface, and I'm sure it'll provide all the same features too...
So I guess the social aspect of Slashdot is useless too because there's IRC. Those are completely different applications, and the whole point of a social bookmarking website is to implement a social aspect to sharing bookmarks over the web. Combining feature sets is what sets these sites apart from others that offer similar features. Del.icio.us gives people topics to talk about, just like Slashdot does, that's the whole point of having these sites. You might as well argue that image IMs are unnecessary because you can just post images to an angelfire page or FTP, or that radios in cars are a bad idea because they're "inferior" to your home stereo system.
Once again, what does that have to do with this discussion? Yea, I use notepad to code a lot of times too. What's your point? Do people only use Word to make webpages or write C++ code? The bottom line is Word and notepad are completely different applications and they are suited for different tasks. Just like local bookmarks and shared bookmarks are designed for different purposes.
Tinypic is a terrible website, and why is Flickr useless just because there's another image-hosting site out there? Should there only be one webhost, one internet messageboard, one news site, etc. on the internet? Does Tinypic have the same features/functionality as Flickr? Similarly, blogs don't serve the same purpose as forums, not even close. You're oversimplifying the purpose of these sites to fit your narrow perception of the web. Just because two sites have similarities doesn't mean that one precludes the other.
You're making gross equivocations of complex applications to much simpler ones with unmatched feature sets because you can't see the usefulness of the additional features on these sites. The fact that you seem to think that slashdot bookmarks and del.icio.us are redundant just because you can bookmark webpages on your browser shows that you don't know how to make logical comparisons from which to base your arguments. Your browser bookmarks folder doesn't allow you to share links with other people; it doesn't provide a dynamic tagging system for organizing the bookmarks; it doesn't allow for discussions on the bookmarks; it doesn't let you access your bookmarks from any computer you want; and it doesn't help you meet other people with similar interests as you. You might as well say that notepad precludes Open Office.
And how is an online journal the same as a messageboard? Oh, because you can post text on the internet with both of them? Then I guess a database driven CMS is just the same as an online forum too, right? Just because a lot of idiots like to substitute one for the other doesn't mean that they are appropriate substitutes.
Perhaps it's because of the prevalence of your attitude that a lot of incompetent website administrators don't bother building a real website and setting up an appropriate back-end for it; they just use a blog or messageboard script. However, professional web admins don't use a messageboard or blog script as a CMS. The only people who use blogs/messageboards as an all-purpose CMS are people who don't know how to develop real web applications and can't setup anything else. Nothing worth developing can be accomplsihed simply by tweaking a forum script.
If you did understand what purpose tags were designed to serve, then you wouldn't be making the argument that text-searches obsolete the use of tags. And you have yet to suggest a better way to categorize/group virtual content that would be more effective than the use of folksonomic tags.
yea, but ping in Cygwin has a nasty habit of going on forever even when you don't append the -t option.
That's what 3D Relams should do. They should just port Duke 3D on an updated engine (HL2, perhaps) to Windows XP. The original game was awesome--the game play, the story, the levels, etc. The only thing that really needs to be updated is the game engine. I'd be pretty excited playing the old Duke 3d levels with higher resolution graphics, greater details, and better gfx rendering. I don't need to send e-mail from the game. I just want to shoot pigcops and blow up strippers with pipe bombs.
There's a difference between protecting citizens from criminals and making an example of someone.
That's what you prefer. Other people have other preferences. Del.icio.us has actually generated a lot of useful data on social dynamics and folksonomy systems. Besides, there are a lot of useful applications for integrated shared bookmarks on a community website. The summary mentions that this system is meant to help editors pick news submissions. Saying that shared bookmarks are useless because your browser supports bookmarks is like saying that blogs are useless because you already keep a journal, or flickr is useless because you already have a photo album. That's just narrowminded thinking.
In the second drawer, next to the oxycontin and xanax.
You should try harder to remember these things.
You seem to have completely missed the point. Tags aren't an alternative to text searches. They're an alternative to conventional categorization. Meta tag overloading isn't really a problem in most tag system implementations, and by the success of del.icio.us, it seems to be a very effective organizational system for web content. You can still do a text search on the collection, but tags give a more intuitive way of grouping related articles together using the benefits of folksonomy, which increase with the the size of the userbase. So Slashdot's implementation of tags seems to be very appropriate.
I stumbled across the above link while exploring LibraryThing as part of the research I've been conducting for a network library application I'm developing. I was looking for a way to categorize/catalog the ebooks in a virtual library and found conventional catagorization techniques to be inappropriate for a virtual collection. Genre hierarchies seemed inadequate for a collection not limited by physical restrictions. Most books tend to belong in multiple categories, and many subcategories have more than one obvious parent category. Tags seemed to be the perfect solution to the problem as it did not rely on a specific view of how things should be categorized and used a more web-like structure rather than the rigid hierarchical structure of conventional classification systems. This is also more in line with the web's overall structure where all the nodes are interconnected by hyperlinks in a folksonomic organization.
I would recommend reading that article and doing some more research on folksonomy before you dismiss the practical benefits of tagging as opposed to alternative organization methods.
Actually, it is almost *nothing* like the analogy of developing solutions you gave. Chemical developing processes are a necessary step in conventional photography. It wasn't an added step put there to restrict the rights of the photographer. What purpose does Kodak's encryption serve other than to prevent "unauthorized" parties from accessing the photos?
I don't think you understand the issue here. First, you need to realize how far chatbots are from the actual mental processes involved in the use of language. They are parlor tricks, as I said before, which only attempt to outwardly imitate intelligence. True linguistic communication requires more than mere evaluation of syntactic structure. The semantic analysis I mentioned before refers to the ability to understand the meaning of a sentence, not just analyze its syntax. Language directly resulted from the evolutionary development of human cognition. It is innately tied to other areas of human intelligence, with which it is mutually dependent. It is absurd to think that by implementing a few crude linguistic algorithms which merely identify the syntactical structure of a sentence, that you can emulate all of the cognitive processes underlying linguistic communication.
You also don't seem to understand the difference between computer instructions / data and knowledge. Knowledge is a cognitive function requiring conceptualization and awareness. Neither a chess program nor a chatbot possesses the ability to know. They cannot conceptualize the information they are given, nor do they have awareness of the information (or any kind of awareness for that matter). That is why an encyclopedia program possess no knowledge on its own. The only knowledge that comes from it results from a person actually using the encyclopedia (same as a book encyclopedia). So, no, Fritz does not possess any knowledge about chess.
For instance, in high school I had to design a tic-tac-toe game allowing a person to play against the computer. Tic-tac-toe has very simple and logical rules that were trivial to implement in the program. Since there are very few possible board-positions/outcomes for the game of tic-tac-toe, it was easy to "solve" the game and devise an AI to play a perfect game of tic-tac-toe (the strategy is quite simple if you think about it). But did this program understand the strategy which was implemented? Did it understand the game of tic-tac-toe? Could I have a conversation with it about tic-tac-toe? Ofcourse not. Not even close. It would not be difficult to write a mathematical proof to solve the game of tic-tac-toe. But to write an AI that can conceptualize that information, is self-aware, and can emulate the mental processes required for linguistical interaction, is not something that computer scientists are even close to accomplishing.
All a chess program is, is a set of instructions for the computer to follow, and not very complex ones at that. Most chess programs, including Fritz, Shredder, and Deep Blue, rely on brute-force techniques and aren't very intuitive. The main components of a chess program include: board representation, search technique, lead evaluation, and an open book/endgame database. The board represenation is basically how the game keeps track of the board positions. At each turn, the program takes the board position and creates a game-tree of possible moves, counter-moves, counter-counter-moves, etc. Using brute-force, it searches the game-tree for the most promising leafs, performs leaf evaluations on those board-positions, and decides which move to make after performing these calculations. Open book databases simply give the program a set of known "good" opening moves to randomly choose from, and endgame databases are basically used to modify/prune the game tree so that known outcomes do not have to be evaluated. That is pretty much all there is to modern chess programs/computers. There is no sentient intelligence involved.
So, while Fritz can compare the leaf values of different game-positions and determine which is greater, and it may "know" the perfectly-played outcome of an endgame that is recorded in its database, it doesn't actually know what any of this information means, and it doesn't possess any knowledge in the sense that human beings know things. In fact, many people were disappointed to find out that chess computers have taught us basically nothing about human intelligence or mental processes as chess programs don't resemble how human beings play chess. In conclusion, there's a lot more "magic missing" than you think.
Yea, or if we simply didn't have poor people who got sick. God, I hate those people!
You may not be building wire-taps, but you are supporting the Military Industrial Complex. One of the main reasons why I hate the Bush administration is that they are funneling tax payers' money into the defense industry, much more so than is required. I'm sorry, but you are not helping protect our country. You're simply draining our nation of its resources, which would be put to better use in education, healthcare, or social services.
Internet != ARPAnet
And did you read the GP? Al Gore never claimed to have invented the internet. That's just a strawman attack that Gore critics like to bring up continuously. Al Gore stated that he took the initiative in creating the internet, as he was the first politician to recognize the importance of the internet and did in fact promote and support its development from his seat in Congress in the early days of the net. Even Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn have recognized his initiative as having been vital to the success of the internet as it exists today.
From Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn's joint statement:
So get a clue before you start discrediting other people and perpetuating gross exagerations of their statements.
You are arguing over petty semantics. Whethere you say "X is true" or "I believe X," they essentially mean the same thing. The statement "I'm not saying X is true, but X could be true" is meaningless in the context of a debate, and it doesn't refute any counter-arguments to X.
Your basic proposition is that God has a benevolent masterplan (X), which includes natural disasters. To support this claim, you essentially argued that since X cannot be proven false, that X is true. That is argumentum ignorantiam. Even appending "I believe" in front of each proposition, the argument still follows the form of an argument from ignorance.
Now, you also concede that this belief cannot be supported by logic. Well, atleast you recognize that, and that is why argumentum ignorantiam is a logical fallacy. Arguments of this form essentially are arbitrary beliefs that aren't supported by a sound line of reason. Your mistake was attempting to construct a line of reasoning where, admittedly, none existed.
No, I was merely arguing that your claim was illogical. I don't believe in God or any such masterplan.
If you don't believe that natural disasters are a bad thing, then you are essentially justifying the sufferng they cause. End of story. Saying that it's a choice whether to believe that they are good or bad is a meaningly statement. Ofcourse we have a choice in what we believe, and you choose to believe that natural disasters are benevolent acts--thus you are implicitly saying that the suffering caused by them are justified. Dancing around semantics only suggests that you are having a hard time reconciling your religious convinctions and your conscience/sense of reason. Clearly you see that there is something wrong with such beliefs, but you still want to hold onto your convictions.
Thanks, but I'm quite familiar with the fallacies of logic. But I think perhaps you should re-assess your own beliefs with the common fallacies of logic in mind, for I think you will find that many of the reasons you hold those beliefs to be true are based on logical fallacies--particularly the ones which "cannot be supported by logic."
True, I guess this is a more pragmatic subset of language processing. I suppose if the input always follows a set format/syntax, it would be similar to the function of computerized switchboard systems. In that case, the intelligence is just a superficial UI component to make the system more user-friendly. The amount of pre-programmed liguistical patterns required would also be greatly reduced as the system isn't aimed at conversation. But I think concepts like this have probably already been put in action, so this wouldn't really be a new advance in AI.
Now you are veering away from realistic scenarios and conjuring up an AI system requiring a much deeper grasp of language, which requires cognitive abilities that are too far off into the future technologically to begin speculating about. A computer only understands chess concepts in terms of mathematical equations programmed into the AI; don't confuse this with true cognitive abilities. It "understands" that a knight always moves horizontally-vertically at a 1:2 or 2:1 ratio only as much as a length of wire understands that the electrons it conducts must move from one end to the other. Without creating sentient-AI with cognitive abilities required for true conversations, the only kind of communication you can expect to see would follow the lines of:
In other words, the AI might be able to rephrase through a linguistics module the strategies it is preprogrammed with mathetically; and it might be able to recognize commands typed/spoken in a lax syntactical form; but anything beyond such basic communication would require far more than simple linguistical intelligence. It would not be able to have a free-form discussion about chess strategy. That's why it would only be a superficial UI component. There's no real inherent intelligence in linguistical analysis without accompanying semantical analysis, which programmers have yet to figure out how to code. A program which can only analyze linguistic patterns would be no more capable of holding a
The logical fallacy that I see in the argument is argumentum ad ignorantiam--by arguing that since we can't comprehend God's masterplan, we should trust that God has done the right thing by causing these natural disasters. And by arguing that natural disasters are a good thing, you are thus implying that the sufferng caused by these disasters are justified--in God's masterplan.