on how long before a politician has to resign because of some over the top statements he/she made in a flamewar back in college? Or maybe that webpage of ethnic jokes that seemed so hilarious back in high school.
I have a feeling we are either going to have to become way more forgiving, or we're going to be stuck with only faceless boring types with no opinions as our leaders (no wisecracks, it could be much worse than it is now).
Some scientists seem desperate to find some theory - any theory will do - that might possibly explain the existence of life without the need to postulate a God.
Actually I think most scientists are probably just looking for a theory that best fits reality. Science is, after all, about discovering the truth about the physical world. There's no sinister conspiracy to kill off God. The important thing to realize is that evolution is *not* an atheist concept, it's a scientific concept. Many scientists are religious, and find no problem with the idea that evolution is a part of God's plan for the universe. Atheists would, of course, disagree with that interpretation. But they all agree that evolution is the best scientific theory available.
Putting something like this in a top ten format is obviously pretty much impossible, even once we get past arguing over the finer details of what "geek" means. However, I'd nominate Copernicus to any list like this. The development of the heliocentric system is definitely a millennial moment in my book.
Another example of this in American history is General George Washington. He hardly ever won a battle in our Revolutionary War, but was hailed a great leader of men and was pretty much offered the position of King of the United States of America, if he wanted it.
I think you're short-changing Washington here. In military terms, he was responsible for the Trenton/Princeton campaign of 1776 (which had a crucial impact on colonial morale), and the final campaign of the war which ended with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. In less tangible terms, he inspired a great deal of loyalty in his troops, which no doubt enabled the army to endure in very difficult circumstances.
The point of this is that while Washington may be mythologized, he really does have some pretty important accomplishments to his name. Hope this didn't get too far off-topic, but I thought it was worth mentioning since you were comparing Washington and Linus.
_Why_ should the consult religous leaders at all? It is this very experiment which is going to prove them irrelevant once and for all. After all, if man can create life, then what makes "god" so special?
Hmm. I'm a theist, and I fail to see how this makes God or religious leaders suddenly irrelevant. I believe in a God who gave us rational minds, and an orderly, law-driven universe. Given that, isn't it logical that we should be able to retrace the steps of evolution?
I think it all comes down to accountablility... Everyone needs to be accountable for what they say.
The question is, who's doing the accounting?
Anonymity can certainly be abused, but it is a necessary evil. Accountability may be an appealing concept, but let's remember that not all people in this world live in open, democratic societies. There always have been, and likely always will be people/governments who attempt to restrain free speech, and anonymity is an important final safeguard.
Interesting article. In the end though, I'm not all that surprised that most people are optimistic about technological advances. Yes, techno-bashing seems to be fashionable, but I think most of the griping is only skin deep. The vast majority of people, upon reflection, do realize that their lives are better/easier/longer/healthier due to science and technology. And I think they can also see that the trend will continue, and indeed accelerate, in the coming century.
The neo-Luddites don't worry me very much because technology has one insurmountable advantage over the alternatives: it works. I don't know many people who would go to a faith healer instead of a surgeon, or who use pencil and paper rather than computers. And that says it all really. People realize that the techno-genie is out of the bottle, and most wouldn't want to put it back even if they could.
BeOS is a nice platform, but unfortunately there really isn't a great web browser out for it yet.
This is true, but the earliest we'll even see these machines announced is early next year, according to the article. That's not too far away, but it's enough time to get something together. Net+ isn't bad, Opera's coming along, Mozilla's a bit behind, but AOL could probably get Netscape ported over if they wanted to.
I know Slashdot is mainly a Linux crowd, but I think BeOS would be a great choice for this application. If I had to sell a newbie on the concept of non-MS operating systems, I'd probably use Be to do it. It's easy to use and very quick. Makes a great first impression, and that's obviously a very important issue in this case.
Exactly. Most Christians I know accept the fact that the Bible is a religious text, not a science textbook. In my opinion, so called "Creation Science" simply presents Christians in general in a bad light, and that's an unfortunate fact.
All too many people think that evolution is equated only with atheism, which is of course not the case. If God gave us rational minds, wouldn't He want us to use them to examine our world? I think people would do well to remember that, "The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go"
The problem with Celeron CPUs, is that they were not meant to be used in an SMP machine. They don't scale well. Better off with a PIII.
Sure, for times when money isn't a main factor, like when buying a server for business use. But for the home user a dual P3 550+ might be out of reach in terms of cost. An Abit BP6 with 2 Celerons is a relatively cheap solution which provides the home user with an awful lot of power.
It may not be quite as stable as a Slot-1 dual board, but that's more an issue for professional users. The BP6/Celeron combo is aimed at overclockers, who are generally more concerned about bang for the buck.
I've been reading an awful lot of posts which say, in essence, "It's important to be accountable, if you didn't want people to know about it, you shouldn't have said it!". This sounds like a fairly reasonable sentiment. Newspapers and magazines don't print letters from fake names after all. However, the internet is a different beast, and I'll tell you why I think that.
The problem with archiving comments on the internet is this: 99% of casual internet users I know treat it like a "virtual watercooler". They express their opinions without any particular reservations, just as they would around an office watercooler. The difference is, this is archived forever for all to see. Children are an even thornier problem. High school kids say alot of stupid things in lunch rooms at school. But comments made in school don't get archived for later retrieval when they run for president. I doubt many AOL-using 14 year-olds realize this. It would be terribly unfair to penalize someone for something they said 20 or 30 years earlier, but this is reality after all.
I see only two possible solutions to this. Either society has to become completely open and accepting of all viewpoints, or we need ways (laws?) for people to erase previous comments, and stop them from being archived. I somehow think the second solution is slightly more practical. Accountability is important in many situations, but it's also important to consider the special circumstances which arise with new forms of communication.
If science _really_ is ready to bring back extint animals, it's a shame it's not focusing all it's efforts (and resources) on not letting people (esp. children, of course) die of chickenpox (or any stupid and easily preventable desease you'd like to imagine).
Yes, but different scientists always have and always will focus on different things. I understand what you're saying, but you can apply this to any situation, such as "Why do we waste money on a space program when we don't have a cure for AIDS?" I don't think you can really look at scientists as a monolithic group who would be better off if they all focused on one problem at a time.
I don't foresee a "Terminator"-type war or anything like that; chances are we'd just get nervous and lobotomize or power off the thing.
Would we? If we ended up with a truly conscious, thinking being, could we simply turn it off? Assuming that we can create such a thing, flipping the power off would be awfully close to killing a human.
I'm thinking that the evolutionary imperatives hardcoded into our wetware will probably eventually doom any really generally intelligent system. Instead, you'll probably see a Star Wars-type solution where you have systems that do one or two things really well, but are functionally inept in other places (C3P0 can understand 10 million forms of communication, but a unilingual battle droid could kick his shiny metal ass). That was, we can remain the masters (which, as a human, is the way I prefer it).
I think this depends on how you look at things. When you say you prefer humans as masters, do you mean our particular species, or those with our peculiar qualities (rational thought, consciousness)? If (it isn't proven after all) our machines can develop these qualities, will they really be less "human" than we are?
Re:Science, Religion, and giving up ground
on
Galileo's Daughter
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· Score: 1
Yes, but religion is only giving up ground to which it was never really entitled anyway. The Bible (or any other religious text) has never been a scientific textbook, but unfortunately some people continually mistake it for one.
Religion naturally belongs in the sphere of "ultimate questions", which science cannot deal with. We only have conflict when people improperly attempt to extend this sphere.
For a non-Roman Catholic perspective, here's a link to an excerpt from John Polkinghorne (a particle physicist and Anglican priest) regarding the Galileo affair:
Well, maybe the belief in a God (maybe even a Creator) will not totally determine your views in AI, but if you believe in, say, souls, that will certainly color your position regarding machine consciousness and rights.
I think alot of it depends on how we define "soul", though. If we define it as some sort of ghostly thing that controls the body like a puppet, then there would be a problem. But if one defines "soul" as our rational minds, then it's less of an issue in regards to AI.
I would suspect that a scientist's religious beliefs would have no effect on their views on inorganic chemistry or geology, for example, but I think that they will probably bear on their views on evolution, animal consciousness or machine intelligence.
I don't think religious belief necessarily needs to interfere with science at all. Take Simon Conway Morris, who wrote "The Crucible of Creation", which for my money is the best Burgess Shale book out there. He's a theist, and his opinions on the Burgess Shale and evolution are taken very seriously. There are other examples of course, but evolution is one of those issues in which people often assume that religion is an obstacle.
Of course people (ahem, Kansas) can create conflict between religion and science, but I don't think it's inevitable.
Penrose put the stake through what exactly? It seems to me that Penrose is just going Theist in his late years...
Exactly what does "going theist" have to do with AI? I know plenty of theists who believe that strong AI is possible. In any case, I wouldn't see any reason for Penrose's religious belief/non-belief (as the case may be) to have any effect on his views on AI.
People wouldn't trust the things. They would be intimidated by the "rigorous training" required and the fact that you die if you screw up.
This is a very real issue that I think gets overlooked sometimes. If the engine in your car dies out, in most cases it rolls to a stop, and you get out unhurt. If the engine on your Solotrek goes out, you die. All it'll take is one accident with these things to dampen public enthusiasm in a hurry.
Personal flying machines may be the way of the future, but until they can make it 100% safe (well close to it anyway), the public won't bite. Of course maybe Moshier's already thought about this and has some solutions. I hope so, because I want one of these things.
Here's a link to a pretty cool site I've had bookmarked. It's got RealAudio files of numbers stations, as well as clandestine stations, unidentified broadcasts, etc:
I recall one theory that predicts that if humans lived long enough we ALL would get Alzheimers by age 120 or so. As versitile as the brain is, there must be some physical limit to the amount of data it can store. And since you can't exactly go back and cut and rewire dendrites and fibers once they've grown into place, (i.e., the brain has no delete command), the brain just can't function anymore and "crashes".
Then wouldn't we see much higher Alzheimer's rates among the more educated? Wouldn't you expect to see scientists (and other intellectual types) getting Alzheimer's much more often, due to the fact that there is more information stored in their brains? I'm not sure if studies have been done, but I doubt Alzheimer's rates go up drastically with education levels.
Of course, if it really is a "disk full" situation, then the best strategy to avoid losing your mind would be to never gain it!;-)
The goal of the theist is to grow closer to God. This sounds like meaning to me.
Nor does atheism "prove" that "life has no meaning" - you give your life meaning.
What's the point of trying to give your life meaning, except perhaps as a cruel joke on yourself? When you're dead, you're dead, and your "meaning" is suddenly rather meaningless.
Religeon is just a retreat into culture, an excuse for misery and war.
This is a very narrow-minded view, I'm afraid. Try looking at the world and the human experience in general, and you will see that religion is much more. Like anything humans engage in it is imperfect (sometimes very imperfect). However, you're making sweeping statements which badly misrepresent the reality of the situation, IMHO.
This is just unintelligible. Religeon, as the most honest theists will admit, is just faith. "Faith seeking understanding" is an oxymoron
Let's consider an example: "I have faith in God, and seek to understand His creation more fully". I think any honest person would admit that this is a coherent statement, whether they agree with the sentiment or not.
Religeon makes a villain of doubt, an enemy of knowledge. Religeon is dishonest, rooted in fear, and is pure bunkum.
Needless to say, your statement is, as luck would have it, entirely fallacious. Religious belief for many people is best described as "faith seeking understanding". Far from an enemy of knowledge, it can be a spur to obtain greater knowledge. Doubt is simply a natural by-product of our quest for understanding.
Making a strawman of religious belief and then knocking it down is an intellectually dishonest tactic, and dishonesty is never an ally in the search for truth.
Slashdot Mirror
on how long before a politician has to resign because of some over the top statements he/she made in a flamewar back in college? Or maybe that webpage of ethnic jokes that seemed so hilarious back in high school.
I have a feeling we are either going to have to become way more forgiving, or we're going to be stuck with only faceless boring types with no opinions as our leaders (no wisecracks, it could be much worse than it is now).
Actually I think most scientists are probably just looking for a theory that best fits reality. Science is, after all, about discovering the truth about the physical world. There's no sinister conspiracy to kill off God. The important thing to realize is that evolution is *not* an atheist concept, it's a scientific concept. Many scientists are religious, and find no problem with the idea that evolution is a part of God's plan for the universe. Atheists would, of course, disagree with that interpretation. But they all agree that evolution is the best scientific theory available.
Putting something like this in a top ten format is obviously pretty much impossible, even once we get past arguing over the finer details of what "geek" means. However, I'd nominate Copernicus to any list like this. The development of the heliocentric system is definitely a millennial moment in my book.
Another example of this in American history is General George Washington. He hardly ever won a battle in our Revolutionary War, but was hailed a great leader of men and was pretty much offered the position of King of the United States of America, if he wanted it.
I think you're short-changing Washington here. In military terms, he was responsible for the Trenton/Princeton campaign of 1776 (which had a crucial impact on colonial morale), and the final campaign of the war which ended with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. In less tangible terms, he inspired a great deal of loyalty in his troops, which no doubt enabled the army to endure in very difficult circumstances.
The point of this is that while Washington may be mythologized, he really does have some pretty important accomplishments to his name. Hope this didn't get too far off-topic, but I thought it was worth mentioning since you were comparing Washington and Linus.
_Why_ should the consult religous leaders at all? It is this very experiment which is going to prove them irrelevant once and for all. After all, if man can create life, then what makes "god" so special?
Hmm. I'm a theist, and I fail to see how this makes God or religious leaders suddenly irrelevant. I believe in a God who gave us rational minds, and an orderly, law-driven universe. Given that, isn't it logical that we should be able to retrace the steps of evolution?
I think it all comes down to accountablility... Everyone needs to be accountable for what they say.
The question is, who's doing the accounting?
Anonymity can certainly be abused, but it is a necessary evil. Accountability may be an appealing concept, but let's remember that not all people in this world live in open, democratic societies. There always have been, and likely always will be people/governments who attempt to restrain free speech, and anonymity is an important final safeguard.
Interesting article. In the end though, I'm not all that surprised that most people are optimistic about technological advances. Yes, techno-bashing seems to be fashionable, but I think most of the griping is only skin deep. The vast majority of people, upon reflection, do realize that their lives are better/easier/longer/healthier due to science and technology. And I think they can also see that the trend will continue, and indeed accelerate, in the coming century.
The neo-Luddites don't worry me very much because technology has one insurmountable advantage over the alternatives: it works. I don't know many people who would go to a faith healer instead of a surgeon, or who use pencil and paper rather than computers. And that says it all really. People realize that the techno-genie is out of the bottle, and most wouldn't want to put it back even if they could.
Consider too, the iMac would be a natural for firewire but Apple doesn't ship iMac with firewire.
The current base model iMac doesn't have FireWire, but the DV and DV SE models both ship with dual FireWire ports.
BeOS is a nice platform, but unfortunately there really isn't a great web browser out for it yet.
This is true, but the earliest we'll even see these machines announced is early next year, according to the article. That's not too far away, but it's enough time to get something together. Net+ isn't bad, Opera's coming along, Mozilla's a bit behind, but AOL could probably get Netscape ported over if they wanted to.
I know Slashdot is mainly a Linux crowd, but I think BeOS would be a great choice for this application. If I had to sell a newbie on the concept of non-MS operating systems, I'd probably use Be to do it. It's easy to use and very quick. Makes a great first impression, and that's obviously a very important issue in this case.
Exactly. Most Christians I know accept the fact that the Bible is a religious text, not a science textbook. In my opinion, so called "Creation Science" simply presents Christians in general in a bad light, and that's an unfortunate fact.
All too many people think that evolution is equated only with atheism, which is of course not the case. If God gave us rational minds, wouldn't He want us to use them to examine our world? I think people would do well to remember that, "The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go"
The problem with Celeron CPUs, is that they were not meant to be used in an SMP machine. They don't scale well. Better off with a PIII.
Sure, for times when money isn't a main factor, like when buying a server for business use. But for the home user a dual P3 550+ might be out of reach in terms of cost. An Abit BP6 with 2 Celerons is a relatively cheap solution which provides the home user with an awful lot of power.
It may not be quite as stable as a Slot-1 dual board, but that's more an issue for professional users. The BP6/Celeron combo is aimed at overclockers, who are generally more concerned about bang for the buck.
I've been reading an awful lot of posts which say, in essence, "It's important to be accountable, if you didn't want people to know about it, you shouldn't have said it!". This sounds like a fairly reasonable sentiment. Newspapers and magazines don't print letters from fake names after all. However, the internet is a different beast, and I'll tell you why I think that.
The problem with archiving comments on the internet is this: 99% of casual internet users I know treat it like a "virtual watercooler". They express their opinions without any particular reservations, just as they would around an office watercooler. The difference is, this is archived forever for all to see. Children are an even thornier problem. High school kids say alot of stupid things in lunch rooms at school. But comments made in school don't get archived for later retrieval when they run for president. I doubt many AOL-using 14 year-olds realize this. It would be terribly unfair to penalize someone for something they said 20 or 30 years earlier, but this is reality after all.
I see only two possible solutions to this. Either society has to become completely open and accepting of all viewpoints, or we need ways (laws?) for people to erase previous comments, and stop them from being archived. I somehow think the second solution is slightly more practical. Accountability is important in many situations, but it's also important to consider the special circumstances which arise with new forms of communication.
If science _really_ is ready to bring back extint animals, it's a shame it's not focusing all it's efforts (and resources) on not letting people (esp. children, of course) die of chickenpox (or any stupid and easily preventable desease you'd like to imagine).
Yes, but different scientists always have and always will focus on different things. I understand what you're saying, but you can apply this to any situation, such as "Why do we waste money on a space program when we don't have a cure for AIDS?" I don't think you can really look at scientists as a monolithic group who would be better off if they all focused on one problem at a time.
I don't foresee a "Terminator"-type war or anything like that; chances are we'd just get nervous and lobotomize or power off the thing.
Would we? If we ended up with a truly conscious, thinking being, could we simply turn it off? Assuming that we can create such a thing, flipping the power off would be awfully close to killing a human.
I'm thinking that the evolutionary imperatives hardcoded into our wetware will probably eventually doom any really generally intelligent system. Instead, you'll probably see a Star Wars-type solution where you have systems that do one or two things really well, but are functionally inept in other places (C3P0 can understand 10 million forms of communication, but a unilingual battle droid could kick his shiny metal ass). That was, we can remain the masters (which, as a human, is the way I prefer it).
I think this depends on how you look at things. When you say you prefer humans as masters, do you mean our particular species, or those with our peculiar qualities (rational thought, consciousness)? If (it isn't proven after all) our machines can develop these qualities, will they really be less "human" than we are?
Yes, but religion is only giving up ground to which it was never really entitled anyway. The Bible (or any other religious text) has never been a scientific textbook, but unfortunately some people continually mistake it for one.
Religion naturally belongs in the sphere of "ultimate questions", which science cannot deal with. We only have conflict when people improperly attempt to extend this sphere.
For a non-Roman Catholic perspective, here's a link to an excerpt from John Polkinghorne (a particle physicist and Anglican priest) regarding the Galileo affair:
http://www.starcourse.org/jcp/galileo.ht ml
Well, maybe the belief in a God (maybe even a Creator) will not totally determine your views in AI, but if you believe in, say, souls, that will certainly color your position regarding machine consciousness and rights.
I think alot of it depends on how we define "soul", though. If we define it as some sort of ghostly thing that controls the body like a puppet, then there would be a problem. But if one defines "soul" as our rational minds, then it's less of an issue in regards to AI.
I would suspect that a scientist's religious beliefs would have no effect on their views on inorganic chemistry or geology, for example, but I think that they will probably bear on their views on evolution, animal consciousness or machine intelligence.
I don't think religious belief necessarily needs to interfere with science at all. Take Simon Conway Morris, who wrote "The Crucible of Creation", which for my money is the best Burgess Shale book out there. He's a theist, and his opinions on the Burgess Shale and evolution are taken very seriously. There are other examples of course, but evolution is one of those issues in which people often assume that religion is an obstacle.
Of course people (ahem, Kansas) can create conflict between religion and science, but I don't think it's inevitable.
Penrose put the stake through what exactly? It seems to me that Penrose is just going Theist in his late years...
Exactly what does "going theist" have to do with AI? I know plenty of theists who believe that strong AI is possible. In any case, I wouldn't see any reason for Penrose's religious belief/non-belief (as the case may be) to have any effect on his views on AI.
People wouldn't trust the things. They would be intimidated by the "rigorous training" required and the fact that you die if you screw up.
This is a very real issue that I think gets overlooked sometimes. If the engine in your car dies out, in most cases it rolls to a stop, and you get out unhurt. If the engine on your Solotrek goes out, you die. All it'll take is one accident with these things to dampen public enthusiasm in a hurry.
Personal flying machines may be the way of the future, but until they can make it 100% safe (well close to it anyway), the public won't bite. Of course maybe Moshier's already thought about this and has some solutions. I hope so, because I want one of these things.
Here's a link to a pretty cool site I've had bookmarked. It's got RealAudio files of numbers stations, as well as clandestine stations, unidentified broadcasts, etc:
.htm
http://www.cisquet.demon.nl/soundsframe
I recall one theory that predicts that if humans lived long enough we ALL would get Alzheimers by age 120 or so. As versitile as the brain is, there must be some physical limit to the amount of data it can store. And since you can't exactly go back and cut and rewire dendrites and fibers once they've grown into place, (i.e., the brain has no delete command), the brain just can't function anymore and "crashes".
;-)
Then wouldn't we see much higher Alzheimer's rates among the more educated? Wouldn't you expect to see scientists (and other intellectual types) getting Alzheimer's much more often, due to the fact that there is more information stored in their brains? I'm not sure if studies have been done, but I doubt Alzheimer's rates go up drastically with education levels.
Of course, if it really is a "disk full" situation, then the best strategy to avoid losing your mind would be to never gain it!
theism does not mean that life has meaning
The goal of the theist is to grow closer to God. This sounds like meaning to me.
Nor does atheism "prove" that "life has no meaning" - you give your life meaning.
What's the point of trying to give your life meaning, except perhaps as a cruel joke on yourself? When you're dead, you're dead, and your "meaning" is suddenly rather meaningless.
Religeon is just a retreat into culture, an excuse for misery and war.
This is a very narrow-minded view, I'm afraid. Try looking at the world and the human experience in general, and you will see that religion is much more. Like anything humans engage in it is imperfect (sometimes very imperfect). However, you're making sweeping statements which badly misrepresent the reality of the situation, IMHO.
This can't be by Kermit's own free will, he'd never do something like this.....where's the animal rights lobby when we need them? ;-)
This is just unintelligible. Religeon, as the most honest theists will admit, is just faith. "Faith seeking understanding" is an oxymoron
Let's consider an example: "I have faith in God, and seek to understand His creation more fully". I think any honest person would admit that this is a coherent statement, whether they agree with the sentiment or not.
Religeon makes a villain of doubt, an enemy of knowledge. Religeon is dishonest, rooted in fear, and is pure bunkum.
Needless to say, your statement is, as luck would have it, entirely fallacious. Religious belief for many people is best described as "faith seeking understanding". Far from an enemy of knowledge, it can be a spur to obtain greater knowledge. Doubt is simply a natural by-product of our quest for understanding.
Making a strawman of religious belief and then knocking it down is an intellectually dishonest tactic, and dishonesty is never an ally in the search for truth.