Stupid customers. The problem is that MS has been getting away with this crap for around 40 years. And not only that, they got filthy rich. Why should they change anything?
You trust MS to code for a simple pocket calculator? Don;t you know that excel has been calculating wrongly for decades? Now, the real problem with MS is that everybody else keeps getting better, but MS just keeps getting richer. Which also means that the actual real problem here is the customer. MS has proven to be incapable and incompetent time and again, but people just continue to use and buy their trash.
Indeed. As to playing media, VLC works pretty well, I don't think I have used the WMC in years. (I am still on Win 7 and preparing to move everything except gaming to Linux when Win10 cannot be avoided anymore...)
The thing that really surprises me is that MS is not getting any better at producing software. This is still the same incompetence that could routinely be observed back when MSDOS got patched. They blunder and bumble and mess up, and they still have the by far largest market-share on the desktop and a significant one on the server. Are their customers really this fundamentally stupid?
You still do not get the defect in your argument. You give arguments that free will cannot be tested for if certain conditions are met, where it is unclear whether reality meets these conditions. That is quite fundamentally different from "cannot be defined". Fail.
Indeed. Probably more of a meta-problem of being willing to take unreasonable risks. He may just have tried other things as well or ignored medical problems he had. Or, as you said, a meta-meta problem of being ad odds with reality and finally having deciding to remove it. The indicators for the first are strong, and the second thing is at least plausible.
Occasionally there are people with money that also have a conscience and do not only care about themselves. Shocking, I know. Don't they know that in true capitalism such behavior is anathema? These dangerous deviants sometimes even happen to live in the US.
And that is wrong. An Axiom is something that you explicitly assume to be true for a specific chain of reasoning, but that has to be independently proven to be correct for that chain of reasoning to relevant.
I think the lesson here is that if you want to find pointless jobs, just look in highly bureaucratic systems -- there are bound to be tons.
Since bureaucrats define their worth by how much time of others they can "bind" (i.e. waste), and since with more people working on the task, you can certainly waste more time, this is a primary purpose of any bureaucracy. The actual problem is that most people do not recognize bureaucracy for the cancer a society has and go along with the fake justification about "orderly processes" and "oversight" and the like.
And now they claim that their probably quite illegal act has just been "misunderstood" and is hence somebody else's fault. I think they pretty much panicked when they talked to some actually competent lawyers about what they had done. May also gave gotten some friendly warnings and an ultimatum from the competition.
Your "definition" of free will does not actually describe "will". The decision is made in the absence of any understanding and that is not "will".
Incidentally, actual Science has no problem with extra-physical things (extra-physical at this time that is, because there is no problem to integrate them when they are found and can be described). Physicalism basically claims that we have the full picture now or at least a good approximation of it that there will not be any major surprises. That is nonsense and has nothing to do with the scientific stat-of-the-art. For one thing, we _know_ that gravity and quantum theory as understood these days do not go together. They cannot both be true. Yet both are extremely well verified. What does that tell us? That likely something pretty important and pretty fundamental is missing from Physics as known today. Actual Science has no problem with that, because actual Science does not claim that either theory is true. It just says that both theories are very well verified and warns that they are incompatible.
From that, it is pretty easy to see that limiting "free will" to quantum noise is a simplistic model that is not actually needed for anything. (Incidentally, Physics does not know how quantum noise works. Calling it "true random" is just hand waving, not Science.) Hence what my objection boils down to is that you use an artificially and incomplete or maybe outright wrong reduced model of reality (and yes, even of physical reality as already known) in order to get rid of "free will". That is not Science, that is a rhetoric trick of the type commonly found in religion. This specific argument is much beloved of physicalists, faulty as it is, because otherwise their belief becomes obviously too simple.
So I am not even arguing that determinism is "bad", I am arguing that the arguments claiming it has a Scientific base are simply wrong at this time. They are a delusion. And the ones having that delusion (like you) use argumentation and "proof" techniques that are very commonly found in fundamentalist religions to justify their messed up beliefs. Just take a look at all the "proofs" that were created for the existence of "God" some time. A real low point of human achievement. And the Physicalist movement is falling into the same traps by having an impersonal God they call "Science", but that actually is not the same as Science. The actual Scientific fact at this time is that it is completely unknown what free will is or whether it exists. Deal with it. Oh, and incidentally, being unable to live with uncertainty in fundamental questions like this is a trait that followers of Physicalism and of fundamentalist religions share as well.
Bullshit. They already have anybody interested. And nobody competent will just have accidentally overlooked them. Incidentally, the "why" has long since been answered, just that reality is not PC here and hence this answer gets ignored.
Sure, if you do not have actual general intelligence at your disposal, you may think that. Because your argument is at best pseudo-profound bullshit, and at worst a sign of fanaticism.
Slashdot Mirror
Stupid customers. The problem is that MS has been getting away with this crap for around 40 years. And not only that, they got filthy rich. Why should they change anything?
MS still has engineers?
You trust MS to code for a simple pocket calculator? Don;t you know that excel has been calculating wrongly for decades? Now, the real problem with MS is that everybody else keeps getting better, but MS just keeps getting richer. Which also means that the actual real problem here is the customer. MS has proven to be incapable and incompetent time and again, but people just continue to use and buy their trash.
Indeed. As to playing media, VLC works pretty well, I don't think I have used the WMC in years. (I am still on Win 7 and preparing to move everything except gaming to Linux when Win10 cannot be avoided anymore...)
The thing that really surprises me is that MS is not getting any better at producing software. This is still the same incompetence that could routinely be observed back when MSDOS got patched. They blunder and bumble and mess up, and they still have the by far largest market-share on the desktop and a significant one on the server. Are their customers really this fundamentally stupid?
Satire-challenged much? Or are things in the US now so bad than anybody could actually believe that is a real opinion?
You still do not get the defect in your argument. You give arguments that free will cannot be tested for if certain conditions are met, where it is unclear whether reality meets these conditions. That is quite fundamentally different from "cannot be defined". Fail.
I agree. Unfortunately also quite non-surprising. Just a standard technique to avoid responsibility and put a "spin" on things.
Indeed. Probably more of a meta-problem of being willing to take unreasonable risks. He may just have tried other things as well or ignored medical problems he had. Or, as you said, a meta-meta problem of being ad odds with reality and finally having deciding to remove it. The indicators for the first are strong, and the second thing is at least plausible.
Occasionally there are people with money that also have a conscience and do not only care about themselves. Shocking, I know. Don't they know that in true capitalism such behavior is anathema? These dangerous deviants sometimes even happen to live in the US.
Protecting people against activities that make the rich richer and violate the non-rich? What is capitalism coming to! This must be socialism, right?
And that is wrong. An Axiom is something that you explicitly assume to be true for a specific chain of reasoning, but that has to be independently proven to be correct for that chain of reasoning to relevant.
I think the lesson here is that if you want to find pointless jobs, just look in highly bureaucratic systems -- there are bound to be tons.
Since bureaucrats define their worth by how much time of others they can "bind" (i.e. waste), and since with more people working on the task, you can certainly waste more time, this is a primary purpose of any bureaucracy. The actual problem is that most people do not recognize bureaucracy for the cancer a society has and go along with the fake justification about "orderly processes" and "oversight" and the like.
Nice catch!
Exactly this. They may also have discovered what kinds of penalties can actually be imposed for doing something like this.
And now they claim that their probably quite illegal act has just been "misunderstood" and is hence somebody else's fault. I think they pretty much panicked when they talked to some actually competent lawyers about what they had done. May also gave gotten some friendly warnings and an ultimatum from the competition.
You are deranged.
Do you know what a p-zombie is? Apparently not. Your "though experiment" is nonsense.
Your "definition" of free will does not actually describe "will". The decision is made in the absence of any understanding and that is not "will".
Incidentally, actual Science has no problem with extra-physical things (extra-physical at this time that is, because there is no problem to integrate them when they are found and can be described). Physicalism basically claims that we have the full picture now or at least a good approximation of it that there will not be any major surprises. That is nonsense and has nothing to do with the scientific stat-of-the-art. For one thing, we _know_ that gravity and quantum theory as understood these days do not go together. They cannot both be true. Yet both are extremely well verified. What does that tell us? That likely something pretty important and pretty fundamental is missing from Physics as known today. Actual Science has no problem with that, because actual Science does not claim that either theory is true. It just says that both theories are very well verified and warns that they are incompatible.
From that, it is pretty easy to see that limiting "free will" to quantum noise is a simplistic model that is not actually needed for anything. (Incidentally, Physics does not know how quantum noise works. Calling it "true random" is just hand waving, not Science.) Hence what my objection boils down to is that you use an artificially and incomplete or maybe outright wrong reduced model of reality (and yes, even of physical reality as already known) in order to get rid of "free will". That is not Science, that is a rhetoric trick of the type commonly found in religion. This specific argument is much beloved of physicalists, faulty as it is, because otherwise their belief becomes obviously too simple.
So I am not even arguing that determinism is "bad", I am arguing that the arguments claiming it has a Scientific base are simply wrong at this time. They are a delusion. And the ones having that delusion (like you) use argumentation and "proof" techniques that are very commonly found in fundamentalist religions to justify their messed up beliefs. Just take a look at all the "proofs" that were created for the existence of "God" some time. A real low point of human achievement. And the Physicalist movement is falling into the same traps by having an impersonal God they call "Science", but that actually is not the same as Science. The actual Scientific fact at this time is that it is completely unknown what free will is or whether it exists. Deal with it. Oh, and incidentally, being unable to live with uncertainty in fundamental questions like this is a trait that followers of Physicalism and of fundamentalist religions share as well.
Don't be lazy. Go looking yourself.
You do not know what an "axiom" is.
Physicalist nonsense. You do realize that Physicalism is Religion, not science, right?
Bullshit. They already have anybody interested. And nobody competent will just have accidentally overlooked them. Incidentally, the "why" has long since been answered, just that reality is not PC here and hence this answer gets ignored.
Probably just a coward that went along with it....
Sure, if you do not have actual general intelligence at your disposal, you may think that. Because your argument is at best pseudo-profound bullshit, and at worst a sign of fanaticism.