I see this problem in philosophy a lot (not the "two children/son on Tuesday" problem, but the meta problem that causes the confusion).
There is ambiguity in the language, and this ambiguity *allows* for other constraints (i.e. how was the family selected, is only one child male, does order matter etc...).
So you try to solve the problem by anticipating every possible unmentioned constraint that could have been implied. You come to an answer. Then the person who posed the problem says "Aha! You're an idiot! What about constraints X,Y and Z!". Since the question as posed didn't rule out X,Y and Z, you feel stupid and the person who posed the question pats themselves on the back.
The problem is that it's not rational.
In the absence of any explicitly supplied constraints, the only rational course of action is to assume that there are no other constraints and work only with the information given. This is how math works. Have you ever seen a math test where you answer the question with the information given and then the tester adds extra information after the fact and tells you that you're wrong? No? Me either, but that's exactly what's happening here.
The only information given is that this person has two children, at least one of whom is a male born on a Tuesday. The fact that the one child is born on a Tuesday is *only* relevant if you start assuming unmentioned constraints (e.g. maybe the family wasn't selected at random, maybe the child was selected because of his birthday, maybe the man actually has 3 children... etc...).
So, without trying to anticipate each and every *possible* constraint allowed by the ill-posed question, the only certain information you have, and thus the only information it is rational to work with, is: two children, one's a boy.
The answer in this case is simple.
Adding additional constraints after you have already solved the problem with the information provided and then claiming you're wrong is simply a dirty trick philosophers use to make themselves feel smart. If relevant constraints are not provided before hand, they are not part of the problem.
P.S. I should qualify, I don't really have anything against philosophers, I really like a lot of philosophy - but philosophy is the only field I have seen where supplying constraints that affect the outcome of a problem after the fact is a valid way to win an argument.
... what makes that particular Professor tick. The best of them used eye-contact - to a girl at the top-back of the lecture-theater: "do you like being alone?"
Now that's just creepy. I don't want a prof to do this - *ever*
If you are going to sit through a lecture playing games, creeping your neighbour on facebook, watching porn or just generally wasting time and attention - why go to class in the first place?!?!?
At that point, you're not getting anything out of it, and would probably enjoy doing what your doing *even more* somewhere else - I mean a lecture hall has to be one of the most uncomfortable places to consume pr0n I can imagine...
Besides, this is university, it's not like the prof *actually cares* whether you are there or not, but you are probably distracting other students.
When I was in undergrad, if I didn't want to go to a lecture - here's a novel idea - *I didn't go*!
Yeah, I did post that comment rather quickly, and could have been more clear, but I figured most people would get it.
As an example of what I meant, there is a HUGE difference between an increase from 500/100000 to 1000/100000 and an increase from 500/100000 to 502.5/100000, both of which can be described as an increase of 0.5%.
The real issue then is whether the stats they report are relative or absolute. It's a common tactic in journalism and PR to use whichever method will "frame" the message they want to get across the best.
A common symptom of reporting absolute percentages instead of relative ones is leaving out the base rate. When you write something like "an increase of 0.5%/year from 500/100000", it is immediately clear that you are talking about 0.5% of the following figure and not an absolute increase in percentage.
So, unless they actually say what it's a percentage OF, there's no way for you to know (from the article alone) what the numbers actually represent. This is misleading and is simply bad journalism.
I take no issue with the science, I am wholeheartedly in the "cellphones != cancer" camp, but the reporting in TFA was terrible.
I would like an answer to this as well. It seems like the online documentation is purposely obtuse. What kind of AI is it using? Does the player/programmer get to design the Ape's brains? If so how? None of these questions are addressed or even acknowledged in the lack of documentation provided. As an example of how deliberately poor the documentation is, take a look at this sample that I found in the "File Format" section:
Brain Values
brn = 171, 0, 146, 86, 501, 73;/* two bytes */
The brain values are used by the cognitive simulation. The basic brain formula is;
b(t+1) = a*l + b(t)*m + (b(t)-b(t-1))*n;
The first three brain variables are l, m, n for awake, then l, m, n for asleep.
*That's* what passes for a good description of the "Brain Values"?!? I mean this describes some kind of state space function and at the very least is grammatically correct English, but other than that it's essentially meaningless. What does any of this MEAN in terms of the simulation? Anyone wanna take a stab?
And, trying to say it's the stressors created by sleep deprivation that kill/harm rather than the lack of sleep itself is nonsensical. The stressors arising from sleep deprivation wouldn't exist without the sleep deprivation itself.
A.C. - I'm afraid you've misunderstood and gotten this quite backwards; we agree on the fundamental point and you are actually re-enforcing my argument here.
It's the sleep deprivation that arises from the stressors, not the other way around. They can't tell rats not to sleep, so they have to apply some kind of stressor in order to cause the sleep deprivation. It is the stressors which are causing the lack of sleep, not resulting from it (although I am sure lack of sleep does cause stress - how do you parse them out?)
Your argument is like saying that getting shot in the heart doesn't kill people; that they die from the lack of blood being pumped to their brain and the rest of their body. You completely ignore the primary cause and say the consequences arising out of the primary cause are responsible.
No, that's the argument presented by these studies, and the logical error you are pointing out is the same one I am pointing out in studies of sleep deprivation.
In studies of sleep deprivation:
CAUSE = stressor/aversive stimulus
EFFECT = sleep deprivation
The researchers in these studies would like to say that it is the sleep loss that is causing the rats to die; completely ignoring the primary cause which is the massive amount of stress they are inducing in order to keep the rats awake.
Humans do this to themselves on a regular basis. How many posters here talk about living for extended periods of time with lack of sleep and use stimulants to keep themselves awake when they should be sleeping?
Just because there are no studies that track these people for the next 20 years to see how much their life span has been shortened does not mean it is not being shortened.
Sure. I agree with you 100% on this, people that regularly abuse stimulants to keep themselves awake probably do have shortened life spans. But how can you disentangle the effect on lifespan of the stimulants (PRIMARY CAUSE in this case) from the loss of sleep itself (EFFECT again)? Seeing as how it is the stimulants which are the cause of the lack of sleep; it seems more likely that any loss of lifespan should be attributed to the chronic use of stimulants rather that one of it's effects (loss of sleep).
Again, the issue with people is the same as with the rats. You cannot, through sheer force of will, force yourself to stay awake. If you try, you will eventually fall asleep. Humans also need to apply some kind of external stimuli (e.g. stimulant drugs) in order to stay awake.
Any studies on the harmfulness of sleep deprivation are so horribly confounded as to be practically useless.
The problem lies in the fact that in order to deprive rats of sleep you have to apply some kind of aversive stimulus to disrupt their sleep. Not only that, but the more tired an animal gets, the stronger the aversive stimuli needed to keep them awake. These aversive stimuli cause stress, and we already know that chronic, unavoidable stressors can kill.
So how can they make the attribution to lack of sleep rather than to stress? There's no simple way to separate them.
One of the articles even states that one of the physiological results of lack of sleep is an increase of cortisol and TSH - *BOTH* of which are known effects of stress. I would rather say that the physiological results they are seeing have been caused by the stressors they are applying to keep the animals awake than the lack of sleep.
Imagine horse racing. You are making updates to racing scores throughout the day. Gamblers are monitoring each race. How would you structure this king of thing? One feed per day? One per season?
One feed per track/site. As new results come in (e.g as races finish) new entries added to the feed.
What about comments? You've got a feed per thread/story. When the story is closed for comments, what do you do with the feed?
Either nothing (as a story gets stale it's going to get further and further down the list, most RSS readers won't present old content multiple times, or only present the latest X items. Or alternatively, you could have the story removed from the feed once it is closed. This could be quite easily automated.
What about auctions? You've got an auction and every bid triggers a new entry on your RSS feed. When the auction is over, what do you do with the feed?
Well, auctions might be a problem to handle in RSS, but RSS feeds seem ill-suited to this use. I'm sure there are much better ways to handle online auctions.
You might be able to get by with a single feed for each auction room/house, so regardless of the current auction going on, every bid results in a new item on the feed. There's no real need to get rid of the feed or change the feed when the auction changes, since that info could be contained in the item and date of the item itself.
I can see having separate feeds for separate categories (e.g. one feed for Hockey, one feed for Baseball).
But what's the point of creating one-off RSS feeds by time/date? Doesn't that sort of defeat the whole purpose of RSS? Temporal updating is built in!
Instead of having one feed for "Online Competition Foo:2008" and another for "Online Competition Foo:2009", why not simply "Online Competition Foo" and update it with new info/articles as they arrive for each annual instance?
I mean that's supposed to be the point of syndication right?
I think peoples recollections of 1999 are also flawed. Cell phones were *NOT* common.
Thankyou, before about 2000 it was mainly estate agents and other sales types who had mobiles, in the UK at least.
Wow, I guess the UK was a bit behind then. I worked for the Canadian Federal Government from 1997-2006, and by '99 just about every federal employee was issued a cell phone. Ditto for people I knew working on the private side.
First, this is anecdotal. Is this capability ubiquitous? I highly doubt it. I would venture to guess that you are somewhat of an exception to the rule. What are the stats for the availability, access and use of these services for the global population? I certainly don't know, but I doubt they are adequate to call this prediction a success.
Second, the part about predicting world-wide wireless connectivity was a no-brainer (it was already happening in 1999). The REAL predictions on his part had to do with the keywords:
-routine
-ever-present
-reliable
-instantly available
-very high-bandwidth
I would venture to say in a qualified way that none of these have been accurately met.
Routine? My mother and father certainly don't routinely tap into a global wireless network. My sister in-law just got a cell this year and at least 50% of the people I interact with on a regular basis don't even have a cell. Sure making cell calls may be routine for people in the socio-economic upper half of western society, but what about the rest of the planet?. Even so, I don't believe making wireless phone calls is what he was talking about when he meant accessing a global wireless network.
Ever-present? Now that's a laugh. Just take a look at the cell coverage maps of any large carrier and you will find some huge holes, and this is even for the "routine" ability to make analog cell calls. Ever-present, digital, 3G access? You're dreaming.
Reliable? Just as bad. My digital cell phone cuts out when I go under a bridge and the call is disconnected. By now we should have been able to figure out how to at least pause the call momentarily until I come out from under the bridge, if not keep it going the whole time. It's even worse for the technology he was really talking about (i.e. WiFi etc...) Just about every time I access a free WiFi hotspot, my connection cuts out constantly, or I can't get a proper IP address. The most disjointed IM chat session I ever had was from my laptop in the San Diego airport, it kept losing my IP and reconnecting. I think my network icon spent more time in the "Connecting..." state than the "Connected" one.
Instantly available? Now you are really joking. Even in my own home, with my own WLAN, my iPod Touch takes about 30 seconds after turning it on to get network access. If I turn it on, and try to check the weather instantly, it will say "Update failed" without fail (pun intended).
Very high-bandwidth? Do I even need to address this one? Who here can watch streaming-HD on their cell or PDA? Who can even watch streaming SD on their home desktop with a wired broadband connection without stutter?
As you can see, I can also provide many anecdotal counter arguments to these points, but that's essentially irrelevant. I doubt anyone would seriously argue that today's global wireless network qualifies to be described using the keywords Kurzweil mentioned.
Slashdot Mirror
Get an MBA!
You do realize there was an option to turn off the radar eh?
... he built-up Facebook by being mean, cut-throat, and ruthless. That makes him a bad person...
No, this makes him a good businessman.
If the waiter gave them each back $1, then they each paid $9.
$9*3 = $27 dollars.
The restaurant took $25 and the waiter took $2.
$25 + $2 = $27
Where's the problem?
There is ambiguity in the language, and this ambiguity *allows* for other constraints (i.e. how was the family selected, is only one child male, does order matter etc...).
So you try to solve the problem by anticipating every possible unmentioned constraint that could have been implied. You come to an answer. Then the person who posed the problem says "Aha! You're an idiot! What about constraints X,Y and Z!". Since the question as posed didn't rule out X,Y and Z, you feel stupid and the person who posed the question pats themselves on the back.
The problem is that it's not rational.
In the absence of any explicitly supplied constraints, the only rational course of action is to assume that there are no other constraints and work only with the information given. This is how math works. Have you ever seen a math test where you answer the question with the information given and then the tester adds extra information after the fact and tells you that you're wrong? No? Me either, but that's exactly what's happening here.
The only information given is that this person has two children, at least one of whom is a male born on a Tuesday. The fact that the one child is born on a Tuesday is *only* relevant if you start assuming unmentioned constraints (e.g. maybe the family wasn't selected at random, maybe the child was selected because of his birthday, maybe the man actually has 3 children... etc...).
So, without trying to anticipate each and every *possible* constraint allowed by the ill-posed question, the only certain information you have, and thus the only information it is rational to work with, is: two children, one's a boy.
The answer in this case is simple.
Adding additional constraints after you have already solved the problem with the information provided and then claiming you're wrong is simply a dirty trick philosophers use to make themselves feel smart. If relevant constraints are not provided before hand, they are not part of the problem.
P.S. I should qualify, I don't really have anything against philosophers, I really like a lot of philosophy - but philosophy is the only field I have seen where supplying constraints that affect the outcome of a problem after the fact is a valid way to win an argument.
... what makes that particular Professor tick. The best of them used eye-contact - to a girl at the top-back of the lecture-theater: "do you like being alone?"
Now that's just creepy. I don't want a prof to do this - *ever*
If you are going to sit through a lecture playing games, creeping your neighbour on facebook, watching porn or just generally wasting time and attention - why go to class in the first place?!?!?
At that point, you're not getting anything out of it, and would probably enjoy doing what your doing *even more* somewhere else - I mean a lecture hall has to be one of the most uncomfortable places to consume pr0n I can imagine...
Besides, this is university, it's not like the prof *actually cares* whether you are there or not, but you are probably distracting other students.
When I was in undergrad, if I didn't want to go to a lecture - here's a novel idea - *I didn't go*!
What the sequel desperately needs is the light sab^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H plasma cutter from the movie.
I played the whole first game in the hope I would get to slice up zombies with the plasma cutter and it never happened :(
It's sad that you think CNN is any kind of authority...
Yeah, I did post that comment rather quickly, and could have been more clear, but I figured most people would get it.
As an example of what I meant, there is a HUGE difference between an increase from 500/100000 to 1000/100000 and an increase from 500/100000 to 502.5/100000, both of which can be described as an increase of 0.5%.
The real issue then is whether the stats they report are relative or absolute. It's a common tactic in journalism and PR to use whichever method will "frame" the message they want to get across the best.
A common symptom of reporting absolute percentages instead of relative ones is leaving out the base rate. When you write something like "an increase of 0.5%/year from 500/100000", it is immediately clear that you are talking about 0.5% of the following figure and not an absolute increase in percentage.
So, unless they actually say what it's a percentage OF, there's no way for you to know (from the article alone) what the numbers actually represent. This is misleading and is simply bad journalism.
I take no issue with the science, I am wholeheartedly in the "cellphones != cancer" camp, but the reporting in TFA was terrible.
1974 to 2003, the incidence rate of glioma increased by 0.5 per cent per year among men and by 0.2 per cent per year among women," they wrote.
Incidence of meningioma tumours rose by 0.8 per cent a year among men, and rose by 3.8 per cent a year among women
0.5% of what? 0.2% of what?
Give us base rates or it's meaningless!
How much red matter does the LHC use anyway?
I mean this section of the documentation might as well say:
"Colourless green ideas sleep furiously"
I would like an answer to this as well. It seems like the online documentation is purposely obtuse. What kind of AI is it using? Does the player/programmer get to design the Ape's brains? If so how? None of these questions are addressed or even acknowledged in the lack of documentation provided. As an example of how deliberately poor the documentation is, take a look at this sample that I found in the "File Format" section:
/* two bytes */
Brain Values
brn = 171, 0, 146, 86, 501, 73;
The brain values are used by the cognitive simulation. The basic brain formula is;
b(t+1) = a*l + b(t)*m + (b(t)-b(t-1))*n;
The first three brain variables are l, m, n for awake, then l, m, n for asleep.
*That's* what passes for a good description of the "Brain Values"?!? I mean this describes some kind of state space function and at the very least is grammatically correct English, but other than that it's essentially meaningless. What does any of this MEAN in terms of the simulation? Anyone wanna take a stab?
And, trying to say it's the stressors created by sleep deprivation that kill/harm rather than the lack of sleep itself is nonsensical. The stressors arising from sleep deprivation wouldn't exist without the sleep deprivation itself.
A.C. - I'm afraid you've misunderstood and gotten this quite backwards; we agree on the fundamental point and you are actually re-enforcing my argument here.
It's the sleep deprivation that arises from the stressors, not the other way around. They can't tell rats not to sleep, so they have to apply some kind of stressor in order to cause the sleep deprivation. It is the stressors which are causing the lack of sleep, not resulting from it (although I am sure lack of sleep does cause stress - how do you parse them out?)
Your argument is like saying that getting shot in the heart doesn't kill people; that they die from the lack of blood being pumped to their brain and the rest of their body. You completely ignore the primary cause and say the consequences arising out of the primary cause are responsible.
No, that's the argument presented by these studies, and the logical error you are pointing out is the same one I am pointing out in studies of sleep deprivation.
In studies of sleep deprivation:
CAUSE = stressor/aversive stimulus
EFFECT = sleep deprivation
The researchers in these studies would like to say that it is the sleep loss that is causing the rats to die; completely ignoring the primary cause which is the massive amount of stress they are inducing in order to keep the rats awake.
Humans do this to themselves on a regular basis. How many posters here talk about living for extended periods of time with lack of sleep and use stimulants to keep themselves awake when they should be sleeping?
Just because there are no studies that track these people for the next 20 years to see how much their life span has been shortened does not mean it is not being shortened.
Sure. I agree with you 100% on this, people that regularly abuse stimulants to keep themselves awake probably do have shortened life spans. But how can you disentangle the effect on lifespan of the stimulants (PRIMARY CAUSE in this case) from the loss of sleep itself (EFFECT again)? Seeing as how it is the stimulants which are the cause of the lack of sleep; it seems more likely that any loss of lifespan should be attributed to the chronic use of stimulants rather that one of it's effects (loss of sleep).
Again, the issue with people is the same as with the rats. You cannot, through sheer force of will, force yourself to stay awake. If you try, you will eventually fall asleep. Humans also need to apply some kind of external stimuli (e.g. stimulant drugs) in order to stay awake.
Let me be the first to call shenanigans on this.
Any studies on the harmfulness of sleep deprivation are so horribly confounded as to be practically useless.
The problem lies in the fact that in order to deprive rats of sleep you have to apply some kind of aversive stimulus to disrupt their sleep. Not only that, but the more tired an animal gets, the stronger the aversive stimuli needed to keep them awake. These aversive stimuli cause stress, and we already know that chronic, unavoidable stressors can kill.
So how can they make the attribution to lack of sleep rather than to stress? There's no simple way to separate them.
One of the articles even states that one of the physiological results of lack of sleep is an increase of cortisol and TSH - *BOTH* of which are known effects of stress. I would rather say that the physiological results they are seeing have been caused by the stressors they are applying to keep the animals awake than the lack of sleep.
Shenanigans I say, shenanigans.
Be serious! That would *never* work!
Imagine horse racing. You are making updates to racing scores throughout the day. Gamblers are monitoring each race. How would you structure this king of thing? One feed per day? One per season?
One feed per track/site. As new results come in (e.g as races finish) new entries added to the feed.
What about comments? You've got a feed per thread/story. When the story is closed for comments, what do you do with the feed?
Either nothing (as a story gets stale it's going to get further and further down the list, most RSS readers won't present old content multiple times, or only present the latest X items. Or alternatively, you could have the story removed from the feed once it is closed. This could be quite easily automated.
What about auctions? You've got an auction and every bid triggers a new entry on your RSS feed. When the auction is over, what do you do with the feed?
Well, auctions might be a problem to handle in RSS, but RSS feeds seem ill-suited to this use. I'm sure there are much better ways to handle online auctions.
You might be able to get by with a single feed for each auction room/house, so regardless of the current auction going on, every bid results in a new item on the feed. There's no real need to get rid of the feed or change the feed when the auction changes, since that info could be contained in the item and date of the item itself.
I can see having separate feeds for separate categories (e.g. one feed for Hockey, one feed for Baseball).
But what's the point of creating one-off RSS feeds by time/date? Doesn't that sort of defeat the whole purpose of RSS? Temporal updating is built in!
Instead of having one feed for "Online Competition Foo:2008" and another for "Online Competition Foo:2009", why not simply "Online Competition Foo" and update it with new info/articles as they arrive for each annual instance?
I mean that's supposed to be the point of syndication right?
Your woman? You can't be a slashdot regular...
This whole article is obviously one big Duke Nukem troll!
Actually the Alanis Morissette song is an example of meta-irony.
What's ironic about it is that it's a song about irony that doesn't contain any irony.
Who was the guy on the VIP podium wearing the red fedora?
Thankyou, before about 2000 it was mainly estate agents and other sales types who had mobiles, in the UK at least.
Wow, I guess the UK was a bit behind then. I worked for the Canadian Federal Government from 1997-2006, and by '99 just about every federal employee was issued a cell phone. Ditto for people I knew working on the private side.
First, this is anecdotal. Is this capability ubiquitous? I highly doubt it. I would venture to guess that you are somewhat of an exception to the rule. What are the stats for the availability, access and use of these services for the global population? I certainly don't know, but I doubt they are adequate to call this prediction a success.
Second, the part about predicting world-wide wireless connectivity was a no-brainer (it was already happening in 1999). The REAL predictions on his part had to do with the keywords:
-routine
-ever-present
-reliable
-instantly available
-very high-bandwidth
I would venture to say in a qualified way that none of these have been accurately met.
Routine? My mother and father certainly don't routinely tap into a global wireless network. My sister in-law just got a cell this year and at least 50% of the people I interact with on a regular basis don't even have a cell. Sure making cell calls may be routine for people in the socio-economic upper half of western society, but what about the rest of the planet?. Even so, I don't believe making wireless phone calls is what he was talking about when he meant accessing a global wireless network.
Ever-present? Now that's a laugh. Just take a look at the cell coverage maps of any large carrier and you will find some huge holes, and this is even for the "routine" ability to make analog cell calls. Ever-present, digital, 3G access? You're dreaming.
Reliable? Just as bad. My digital cell phone cuts out when I go under a bridge and the call is disconnected. By now we should have been able to figure out how to at least pause the call momentarily until I come out from under the bridge, if not keep it going the whole time. It's even worse for the technology he was really talking about (i.e. WiFi etc...) Just about every time I access a free WiFi hotspot, my connection cuts out constantly, or I can't get a proper IP address. The most disjointed IM chat session I ever had was from my laptop in the San Diego airport, it kept losing my IP and reconnecting. I think my network icon spent more time in the "Connecting..." state than the "Connected" one.
Instantly available? Now you are really joking. Even in my own home, with my own WLAN, my iPod Touch takes about 30 seconds after turning it on to get network access. If I turn it on, and try to check the weather instantly, it will say "Update failed" without fail (pun intended).
Very high-bandwidth? Do I even need to address this one? Who here can watch streaming-HD on their cell or PDA? Who can even watch streaming SD on their home desktop with a wired broadband connection without stutter?
As you can see, I can also provide many anecdotal counter arguments to these points, but that's essentially irrelevant. I doubt anyone would seriously argue that today's global wireless network qualifies to be described using the keywords Kurzweil mentioned.