No, I don't because you still didn't provide a different *testable* source of conciousness and I clearly stated my position as an asumption -and a sensible one at that.
Again, I have to say that you talk about things like "scientific method" or "correlation is not causation" but you don't understand their meaning.
". If the observable person is (hypothetically) a hybrid between interface characteristics [...] So, sorry, your reasoning process does not meet scientific standards."
Don't be too fast to talk about others' "scientific standards"; I'm sorry to tell you failed and will have to retake your epystemology 101 next semester.
1) You didn't disprove my theory (you didn't provide an experiment, even if hypotetical, that would render different results than those expected in my theory).
2) You provided an alternate theory but you didn't provide an experiment that would render different results under my theory and yours one, so we can choose between them.
3) Your theory explains the same phenomena than mine but where mine one introduces one perfectly observable object (a brain), yours not only introduces two (a brain and a soul) but the second one is perfectly invisible.
Points 1 and 2 would make Prof. Popper not too glad. Point three would make Prof. Occam menace you with his razor.
"You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain."
Quite a sensible assumption since, by all that we know, any change in conciousness can be mapped to changes in the brain and nowhere else but the brain.
Or are you aware of other sources of conciousness you want to share with us?
"I am not demanding proof of anything. I am merely pointing out that at this time we do not know wither way. "
Of course we know one way for the other: a lot of experiments show that if you mangle the brain in an experimental subject its responses to conciousness measures changes. Theory: brain encloses the feature named "conciousness". Prediction: if somebody enters into the ER with conciousness alterations, look at the brain for there will be the problem.
Now, that's the point I stand for; that's my theory. Now you can't say "we do not know wither way" because I provided you one way. But you are free to provide experiments that disprove my theory or even to provide an alternate *testable* theory in turn. Will you try?
"I was a Data room tech, field engineer, service tech, systems administrator, and second level support tech (not in that order) for over thirty years, and while I had taken (and done well at) algebra, calculus and geometry/trigonometry, etc I don't remember ever actually using it on the job, is it my memory?"
So you never planned a IP network layout? You never tested network load capacity? You never found a off-by-one or a minimax problem?
I know entry-level jobs in the USA are pretty lame but, thirty years in one of them?
It's only they *were* illegal. Even GarzÃn himself recognized that (hits defense was the fiscal agreed and it was common practice anyways -both things being true).
"We really owe a lot to this guy, even if the end it seems like the bad guys are getting their way."
We certainly do. But still, this man has the ego the size of a medieval castle and thought he was above the law. He himself lent the bad guys the weapons they used to destroy him. A pity, but a self inflicted pity.
"Why should the engineers take the blame for everything, even other peoples' failings?"
All I talked about was deflecting blame, as in "make sure it doesn't falls on me", not that it effectively will fall on me and even less if it would be a deserved on undeserved blame.
"It is everyone's responsibility to speak up"
Then it's everyone's responsibility to be sure they are doing all at their reach and proportion to maximize the project's odds to success, which brings the situation back to square one: saying "the issue is with Marketing or perhaps the Project Managers" is maybe a good way to deflect blame away but adds zilch to the project's success odds so, any other suggestion?
"if stubborn, pig-headed PHBs and MBAs won't see the error of their ways, why should anyone else take the blame?"
Because the world is a filthy unfair place and those on a position of power, specially if they are of the stubborn and pig-headed kind, will use their power to deflect away blame making the tryings of their minions not only not conducive to rise the odds for the project to success but moot at deflecting blame away from themselves because power is a much better weapon for this?
"If you want to distribute something for free, that's fine, make something and distribute it."
If you want to do X, that's fine, do Y and X.
No, sir. I don't want to do Y, I just want to do X.
Some time ago, doing X was expensive and time consuming. That's the case no more. But some people that used to earn a lot of money on X want to preserve their exclusive domain on X on a excuse about some irrelevant Y.
"literally, what you are proposing is that no author gets paid to create a work."
Quite on the contrary: I'm all for authors getting paid what the market see fits for *create* a work. But you insist in paying people -usually not the creator, for other things that are not the act of creating.
"New works become the domain of the ultra-rich"
Do you think copyrights have been there forever? Just look to History to learn how you can't be any more wrong.
"RAH was talking about situations where new businesses supplemented old ones, not where people wholesale copied creative works."
The business *is* copying and distributing such creations (literally: they are not asking for money for them to create new material but for the right to copy and distribute it).
New advancements make copying and distributing a no-business and yet, some people asks for the government and the courts to guarantee such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest.
Vaccines, by definition, are agents that induce immunity to a given virus infection with a lower health cost than the real threat. It can be a "dead" virus, it can be an attenuated one, it can be protein group... as long as it produces the intended effect, it's a vaccine.
"It's interesting to think that would the viruses eventually conquer the world"
A virus, as per the very definition, requires a living host for its metabolic processes.
So it's either not a virus or no, it won't eventually conquer the world.
"The nature will however adapt to what we are doing, and the viruses may be the fastest changing organisms. This probably doesn't bode well for the rest."
If "we", the true living forms, have survived about a billion years the attacks of virus, I'd bet our odds can't be so bad.
"In the absence of copyright, and thus the absence of a GPL with any teeth, how would you force me to hand over source code when you get a binary?"
In the absence of copyright it would just sound so absurd nobody would do it, just like no commerce tries to ask for payment for breathing "their air" while at the premises.
"Let me try to explain: File sharing undermines somebody else's business model."
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
"Why would a Jenkins deployment be in the backlog?"
Because it takes effort and thus it should be priorized just like anything else.
"If you don't have a CI system, or can't put one together as part of your tooling, what makes you think you're qualified to be doing software development on anything but the smallest scale"
But still I've been already hired by the customer, or else there wouldn't be backlog at all.
"Would you hire a plumber if he put a line item on his project estimate "buy tool box"???"
You do it everyday: "hey, wait a second, I have to go to my office to bring tool X or replacement part Y".
"The point stands, you don't do Agile by doing big-bang integration at the end"
Neither Turing nor Von Neumann developed Jenkins (as an example for any other CI tool over there). You can do iterative integration as you go by hand, and in fact, that's been the case for the most part of the history of computing, it only takes time, which is money. You can install and configure a tool-base CI system, it only takes time, which is money. Your customer might not hire a group that doesn't have the proper tooling already in place, or they might do it. In the latter case, I should ask again "When did the customer asked you to add a jenkins deployment to the backlog?"
"If you're not doing that you're wasting time and money."
Wrong. On one hand, it is arguable that in any and all cases the trade off is positive. In the other hand and in any case, it is not "wasting time and money" but "wasting the customer's time and money" which he should be absolutely free to choose how and priorize in what he wastes it.
"If he doesn't have a CI tool he's not even a professional"
You know, that's not even something said in the developer's world, but you can hear it in any other professional field: "if you don't have/do X, then you are not a professional". They forget that being a professional is not about the tooling but about the knowledge and the commitment.
"And strictly speaking you shouldn't speak costs but you should speak hours"
For what you say so are talking about a specific incarnation of "agile", namely Scrum.
Well, being nitpicky, you shouldn't talk about hours either*1, but about "percieved difficulty", whatever that means (it is a "perception" an expert-in-the-field will do when confronted to having to do the thing and that's the best we can have: that's why you have the fibonacci cards instead of simply allowing the developers say "I think this will take me 20 hours").
Another point is that, at least on a mature team, you don't need nor should say what fits in the next sprint, because it is a calculated value: "sumatory of the difficulty points on the N first task on backlog / team speed" will automatically tell you what to expect to be done by next sprint end*2. The burndown chart is the tool both the pigs and the chickens have to learn to do better predictions over time.
*1 And it makes sense: number of hours X cost per hour will automatically tell you a money figure. You are not expected to talk about money, despite of the fact that money is and should be the most important consideration for the customer, because you can't and shouldn't talk about hours either.
*2 On a side note, being clear about the fact that the sprint goals are strictly a calculated value helps against "the mythical man-month" problem: a manager feels a project is under goals/overbudgeted and feels the temptation of adding new resources late in the project. Question: how much will it help to make the project evolution faster? Answer (in Scrum): who knows? we don't know how much this new guy will increase the team's speed, if at all. Again, about 1, if you fail at understanding that card points are not hours, the output of a new developer on the team would be obvious (and wrong): adding a new member to the team adds 40 hours a week more and so, you can perfectly can calculate the new burndown chart. Only it doesn't work that way, does it?
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
One can make an effort to understand the business practices and requirements of the client well enough to give them what they need, rather that what they ask for. "
The Henry Ford anecdote might have a different reading that you might think. Henry Ford's on faster horses survived not because of what he said but because of what he didn't say: "...but still, by offering something my prospective customers didn't think they wanted or needed, I did a lot of money in the end".
*That* is the important part. Apply it to software development: you can offer your opinion to your customer about why he should prioritize A over B and you might the right or wrong and you might convince your customer or not. But good luck trying to make money in the software developing-for-hire market by telling your customers "you wanted A but I produced B instead".
Slashdot Mirror
"You are confusing correlation and causation."
No, I don't because you still didn't provide a different *testable* source of conciousness and I clearly stated my position as an asumption -and a sensible one at that.
Again, I have to say that you talk about things like "scientific method" or "correlation is not causation" but you don't understand their meaning.
I mean, really.
". If the observable person is (hypothetically) a hybrid between interface characteristics [...] So, sorry, your reasoning process does not meet scientific standards."
Don't be too fast to talk about others' "scientific standards"; I'm sorry to tell you failed and will have to retake your epystemology 101 next semester.
1) You didn't disprove my theory (you didn't provide an experiment, even if hypotetical, that would render different results than those expected in my theory).
2) You provided an alternate theory but you didn't provide an experiment that would render different results under my theory and yours one, so we can choose between them.
3) Your theory explains the same phenomena than mine but where mine one introduces one perfectly observable object (a brain), yours not only introduces two (a brain and a soul) but the second one is perfectly invisible.
Points 1 and 2 would make Prof. Popper not too glad. Point three would make Prof. Occam menace you with his razor.
"You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain."
Quite a sensible assumption since, by all that we know, any change in conciousness can be mapped to changes in the brain and nowhere else but the brain.
Or are you aware of other sources of conciousness you want to share with us?
"there is room for reincarnation without the religious connotations."
As much room as for a wristwatch about to be hammered to transfer its time to another one.
"You seem to forget that quantum theory made that paradigm obsolete."
Citation?
And the "citation?" part is only to not look too rude saying "you are wrong".
"I am not demanding proof of anything. I am merely pointing out that at this time we do not know wither way. "
Of course we know one way for the other: a lot of experiments show that if you mangle the brain in an experimental subject its responses to conciousness measures changes. Theory: brain encloses the feature named "conciousness". Prediction: if somebody enters into the ER with conciousness alterations, look at the brain for there will be the problem.
Now, that's the point I stand for; that's my theory. Now you can't say "we do not know wither way" because I provided you one way. But you are free to provide experiments that disprove my theory or even to provide an alternate *testable* theory in turn. Will you try?
"Your arguments are valid, but those are certainly not entry-level positions."
Exactly my point. You can bet that what I talked about is considered barely entry position... in other parts of the world.
"You are way out of touch in understanding the IT industry."
Certainly it might be the case, despite of my more than 20 years in the business.
"I was a Data room tech, field engineer, service tech, systems administrator, and second level support tech (not in that order) for over thirty years, and while I had taken (and done well at) algebra, calculus and geometry/trigonometry, etc I don't remember ever actually using it on the job, is it my memory?"
So you never planned a IP network layout? You never tested network load capacity? You never found a off-by-one or a minimax problem?
I know entry-level jobs in the USA are pretty lame but, thirty years in one of them?
"It does seem that the few private companies are making more progress in 5 years than NASA can in 15"
Private companies are not even at Gemini level; that's about NASA's 45 years ago, so I'd say you are a bit overenthusiastic, don't you think so?
Â"These wiretaps were not illegal."
It's only they *were* illegal. Even GarzÃn himself recognized that (hits defense was the fiscal agreed and it was common practice anyways -both things being true).
"We really owe a lot to this guy, even if the end it seems like the bad guys are getting their way."
We certainly do. But still, this man has the ego the size of a medieval castle and thought he was above the law. He himself lent the bad guys the weapons they used to destroy him. A pity, but a self inflicted pity.
"Why should the engineers take the blame for everything, even other peoples' failings?"
All I talked about was deflecting blame, as in "make sure it doesn't falls on me", not that it effectively will fall on me and even less if it would be a deserved on undeserved blame.
"It is everyone's responsibility to speak up"
Then it's everyone's responsibility to be sure they are doing all at their reach and proportion to maximize the project's odds to success, which brings the situation back to square one: saying "the issue is with Marketing or perhaps the Project Managers" is maybe a good way to deflect blame away but adds zilch to the project's success odds so, any other suggestion?
"if stubborn, pig-headed PHBs and MBAs won't see the error of their ways, why should anyone else take the blame?"
Because the world is a filthy unfair place and those on a position of power, specially if they are of the stubborn and pig-headed kind, will use their power to deflect away blame making the tryings of their minions not only not conducive to rise the odds for the project to success but moot at deflecting blame away from themselves because power is a much better weapon for this?
"when the Europeans act stupid suddenly there is silence"
They were not Europeans; they were French. Even worse they were from Paris!
"The Death Star was so massive that when it orbited a planet it became a binary system."
But of course it's a binary system: that's no moon.
"If you want to distribute something for free, that's fine, make something and distribute it."
If you want to do X, that's fine, do Y and X.
No, sir. I don't want to do Y, I just want to do X.
Some time ago, doing X was expensive and time consuming. That's the case no more. But some people that used to earn a lot of money on X want to preserve their exclusive domain on X on a excuse about some irrelevant Y.
"literally, what you are proposing is that no author gets paid to create a work."
Quite on the contrary: I'm all for authors getting paid what the market see fits for *create* a work. But you insist in paying people -usually not the creator, for other things that are not the act of creating.
"New works become the domain of the ultra-rich"
Do you think copyrights have been there forever? Just look to History to learn how you can't be any more wrong.
"RAH was talking about situations where new businesses supplemented old ones, not where people wholesale copied creative works."
The business *is* copying and distributing such creations (literally: they are not asking for money for them to create new material but for the right to copy and distribute it).
New advancements make copying and distributing a no-business and yet, some people asks for the government and the courts to guarantee such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest.
"XP has had On-site Customer as part of its method from the very beginning."
Then I stand corrected. Thanks, sir.
"vaccines, by definition, are dead viruses"
No, they aren't.
Vaccines, by definition, are agents that induce immunity to a given virus infection with a lower health cost than the real threat. It can be a "dead" virus, it can be an attenuated one, it can be protein group... as long as it produces the intended effect, it's a vaccine.
"It's interesting to think that would the viruses eventually conquer the world"
A virus, as per the very definition, requires a living host for its metabolic processes.
So it's either not a virus or no, it won't eventually conquer the world.
"The nature will however adapt to what we are doing, and the viruses may be the fastest changing organisms. This probably doesn't bode well for the rest."
If "we", the true living forms, have survived about a billion years the attacks of virus, I'd bet our odds can't be so bad.
"In the absence of copyright, and thus the absence of a GPL with any teeth, how would you force me to hand over source code when you get a binary?"
In the absence of copyright it would just sound so absurd nobody would do it, just like no commerce tries to ask for payment for breathing "their air" while at the premises.
"Let me try to explain: File sharing undermines somebody else's business model."
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Robert A. Heinlein
I think that says it all.
"Why would a Jenkins deployment be in the backlog?"
Because it takes effort and thus it should be priorized just like anything else.
"If you don't have a CI system, or can't put one together as part of your tooling, what makes you think you're qualified to be doing software development on anything but the smallest scale"
But still I've been already hired by the customer, or else there wouldn't be backlog at all.
"Would you hire a plumber if he put a line item on his project estimate "buy tool box"???"
You do it everyday: "hey, wait a second, I have to go to my office to bring tool X or replacement part Y".
"The point stands, you don't do Agile by doing big-bang integration at the end"
Neither Turing nor Von Neumann developed Jenkins (as an example for any other CI tool over there). You can do iterative integration as you go by hand, and in fact, that's been the case for the most part of the history of computing, it only takes time, which is money. You can install and configure a tool-base CI system, it only takes time, which is money. Your customer might not hire a group that doesn't have the proper tooling already in place, or they might do it. In the latter case, I should ask again "When did the customer asked you to add a jenkins deployment to the backlog?"
"If you're not doing that you're wasting time and money."
Wrong. On one hand, it is arguable that in any and all cases the trade off is positive. In the other hand and in any case, it is not "wasting time and money" but "wasting the customer's time and money" which he should be absolutely free to choose how and priorize in what he wastes it.
"If he doesn't have a CI tool he's not even a professional"
You know, that's not even something said in the developer's world, but you can hear it in any other professional field: "if you don't have/do X, then you are not a professional". They forget that being a professional is not about the tooling but about the knowledge and the commitment.
"And strictly speaking you shouldn't speak costs but you should speak hours"
For what you say so are talking about a specific incarnation of "agile", namely Scrum.
Well, being nitpicky, you shouldn't talk about hours either*1, but about "percieved difficulty", whatever that means (it is a "perception" an expert-in-the-field will do when confronted to having to do the thing and that's the best we can have: that's why you have the fibonacci cards instead of simply allowing the developers say "I think this will take me 20 hours").
Another point is that, at least on a mature team, you don't need nor should say what fits in the next sprint, because it is a calculated value: "sumatory of the difficulty points on the N first task on backlog / team speed" will automatically tell you what to expect to be done by next sprint end*2. The burndown chart is the tool both the pigs and the chickens have to learn to do better predictions over time.
*1 And it makes sense: number of hours X cost per hour will automatically tell you a money figure. You are not expected to talk about money, despite of the fact that money is and should be the most important consideration for the customer, because you can't and shouldn't talk about hours either.
*2 On a side note, being clear about the fact that the sprint goals are strictly a calculated value helps against "the mythical man-month" problem: a manager feels a project is under goals/overbudgeted and feels the temptation of adding new resources late in the project. Question: how much will it help to make the project evolution faster? Answer (in Scrum): who knows? we don't know how much this new guy will increase the team's speed, if at all. Again, about 1, if you fail at understanding that card points are not hours, the output of a new developer on the team would be obvious (and wrong): adding a new member to the team adds 40 hours a week more and so, you can perfectly can calculate the new burndown chart. Only it doesn't work that way, does it?
"You asked wrong. You don't ask for the priorities, you ask for the order he'd like them resolved in."
"all of them by the end of this week, or yesterday, whatever is sooner".
There.
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
One can make an effort to understand the business practices and requirements of the client well enough to give them what they need, rather that what they ask for. "
The Henry Ford anecdote might have a different reading that you might think. Henry Ford's on faster horses survived not because of what he said but because of what he didn't say: "...but still, by offering something my prospective customers didn't think they wanted or needed, I did a lot of money in the end".
*That* is the important part. Apply it to software development: you can offer your opinion to your customer about why he should prioritize A over B and you might the right or wrong and you might convince your customer or not. But good luck trying to make money in the software developing-for-hire market by telling your customers "you wanted A but I produced B instead".