Or they may indicate that a purely logical construct cannot capture all of the nuances we require.
If it exists in the macroscopic world, it can be explained logically. The macroscopic world is governed by causality which is the foundation of logic. Since there is a chain of causation, there must be a rational explanation. I restrict this only to the macroscopic world because on microscopic levels random quantum effects are dominant.
Maybe it can, maybe it cannot. Generations of failure argue that it can't, or at least that it's extraordinarily difficult, but maybe you can succeed where others have failed.
As they say, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Even if I cannot succeed in defining the entire moral code, there is not reason why future generations cannot pick up the torch and further it. I (almost) see this as just another science.
But this is not what your previous statement said. You said that force was only justifiable in response to force. As stated, that means when you hit me, I am justified in hitting you back, regardless of whether there is any likelihood that you will hit me again. That's vengeance, not self-defense.
Then I was inexact. The moral imperative is 'the initiator of force is always in the wrong'. If there is no chance of getting hit again yet you strike out, then you have become the initiator of force.
Further, that statement means that if you're pointing a gun at me and obviously preparing to pull the trigger, I am not justified in applying any force against you. In that case, if I wait for you to apply your force, I may very well not get an opportunity to do anything about it.
The act of pointing a gun is proof of physical threat. I may have been hasty in implying that threat cannot justify defence; one requires proof of threat (which can be construed as an act of force) before morally acting against it. Even in situations where it's a friend just joking around the threat of the gun going off accidentally is still justification for force to neutralize the threat.
But that's not possible, since the force has already been applied to oneself. What can you possibly do that would take it back? One can only act to prevent the future application of force, i.e. the threat of force.
This is again a border case. If you are in a war, there is time to act while the force is still being applied. You are referring to a single case where one is attacked and survives, yet the attacker is still positioning himself for another strike. The first attack indicates proof of violent intent, so the justification of defensive force is still upheld. I merely stated that one is not justified in acting on the perception of threat; the first act of violence against you is not perception, but proof.
Further, this is still inadequate, even with your waffling about it being hard to determine what is enough. Suppose that the only way I can prevent you from breaking my leg is to kill you. Am I justified in applying lethal force to eliminate the threat of non-lethal force?
If it is the only way, it is the only way. As long as the other party initiated the force, you are justified in defending yourself however you can.
Also, your statements still imply that no force can be justified in protection of another.
It can be extended to include this. Remember that the whole foundation is freedom, and that we wish to preserve the freedom of others to ensure our own. If force is brought against another individual this is a threat to his freedom and the freedom of all others. Thus, one is justified in aiding another against force.
Suppose I have a gun and you're about to bring a baseball bat down on a child's leg. You've ignored my shouts and I'm too far away to prevent you from bringing the bat down. Am I justified in shooting you? (BTW, don't give me any crap about shooting to wound -- it doesn't work that way in real life)
One should make an effort not to kill when not necessary, but it is still justified in this scenario.
Keep on this logical path far enough and you'll discover any number of situations where it is not clearcut at all or, as many before you have discovered, that a logical structure that generates many, many "correct" choices also forces some other, bizarre and clearly immoral choices
I never said it was immediately clear-cut, only clear-cut after given enough thought. Furthermore, I never said there was only one correct solution, but only one optimal solution, ie. one that best fulfills the criteria. In a yes/no situation like a moral choice, obviously the solution is either black or white, but within the moral choices there is a spectrum of undesirable to optimal solutions according to how well they fit ones criteria.
Finally, a solution may seem to have immoral consequence, but one should really give it a lot of thought. "Morals" have changed quite a bit over the years and with each generation. What's to say what you view as immoral won't become moral in 20 years? This is why I am attempting a logically consistent moral code that does not change with the seasons.
Just out of curiosity, how old are you? Do you have any children?
23. No.
I would suggest, however, that you refrain from claiming that a complete and consistent moral code can be constructed from pure logic and simple axioms until you've successfully done it
The only way to generate any interest is to make bold claims. Also, since our macroscopic world is causal, there is no reason that I can fathom why it could not have a logically consistent, objective picture.
Ok, let's establish what we mean by local access. There is local access such as terminal users, and there is local access such as machine owner. A machine owner can do whatever the hell he wants. He can disassemble the entire system, apply disk forensics, read the motherboard EPROMS, whatever. As far as the machine is concerned, he is God and not even a capability system could stop him from doing what he wanted (unless it employed encryption, or disk randomization schemes like EROS is currently implementing).
Local access at the terminal/user level is secure for any pure capability system (properly configured of course).
Other formulations are possible if you don't like that one. Think about it
Other formulations may be valid (though likely are not synonymous), but the one presented was so unlikely that it may as well be impossible. Exploring boundary cases is all well and good for the sake of purity and completeness, but ensuring you have exhaustively covered all of these cases is quite difficult. Since I am starting this from scratch, I would much rather focus on the common cases first, and leave special corner cases for later.
The logical construct is just an attempt to formalize a set of axioms that produce the results demanded by deeper beliefs.
The great thing about the mind is that it can often intuit the correct answers before they are formally proven, but one must take care not to allow it to interfere with the actual reasoning. One should certainly strictly follow the rules of inference and not fall prey to fallacies to be certain of the correct answer. One must then accept that answer or admit to being hypocritical.
The attempt to create a self-consistent theory of morality that does not ever defy "commonsense" morality has occupied philosophers for centuries now
"Common sense" morality does not mean good sense morality. Simply because a conclusion runs counter to what we think it should be, does not mean it is not the best answer for the outcomes we desire. Results that run contrary to our beliefs simply indicate a contradiction in one's thinking.
I think that a variant of Goedel's first Incompleteness Theorem applies
While I have not studied it in sufficient depth, I do not think it applies. Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem applies to mathematical systems of sufficient complexity that they can perform arithmetic. I do not think I will end up approaching that degree of complexity, but time will tell.
Face it: Logic has limits.
Certainly. This is not in dispute. Logic cannot predict random events, nor can logic wholly describe everything and be simulateously consistent as Goedel proved. This is not to say that it cannot describe a consistent and applicable moral code.
Ah, so moral people are only allowed to retaliate. A morality of force based on selfish vengeance.
Self-defence, not selfish vengeance. Vengeance is very different. Defence means you still have something to gain/defend by applying retaliatory/defensive force; vengeance is when all you have to gain is inflicting damage out of spite.
The only time one is justified in using force is to pre-emptively remove a credible threat of unjustified force against oneself or others.
No. Who defines a threat? Who defines when a threat is sufficiently "dangerous" that all of a sudden it is justified to initiate force? This is all perception, relative, arbitrary and so has no place in an objective moral code. Only the real existence of a physical force is justification for utilizing force. The initiator of force is always in the wrong.
That's incomplete as well, since you also have to define what level of force is justifiable, and justify that.
Only that which is sufficient to neutralize the force against oneself of course. How much that actually is naturally depends on the situation. Of course, even when in a situation it may still be difficult to discern how much force is necessary.
Nothing is ever simple, is it;-)
Rarely simple, but very clear-cut when given enough thought. (and hindsight sometimes)
Artificial and meaningless question. What is the point of pondering questions that would never happen in reality?
In general however, it wrong to sacrifice a person for another, unless they are willing to sacrifice themselves voluntarily. The only time one is justified in using force is in response to force brought against one first.
Nowhere did I accuse you of attacking me. You didn't, and I made no such accusation. I just explained my reasoning for having the sig.
Ah, then I misunderstood.
Since I have no such predilection toward attacking people, your thesis falls on its face, hence my response.
As I said, I used the sig merely as an example of why many people consider that there are only shades of gray, not as the basis of the argument, so it's still valid, though not necessarily applicable to you. It was a general statement.
Further, it's often true that what one person perceives as good, another perceives as evil and no one other than God can have a perspective that reveals the full truth of the matter.
I disagree. I believe logic can discern between the two. In other words, logic produces a moral code.
Even ideas are neither absolutely right nor absolutely wrong.
Given a set of circumstances, a proposed solution is either optimal, or it is not; it is either moral, or not. Alter the circumstances, and the conclusion may change, but there is always a best solution.
and that they must be held accountable to their own beliefs and not mine, insofar as their beliefs don't hurt anyone else
This is the starting point of a moral code based on logic. Each human being is an individual that wishes to make his own choices. In order to maximise one's own freedom, one must respect the freedom of others (do unto others as you would have done unto you). Thus, we bind ourselves to a social contract of sorts where we place limitations on our own actions to maximize freedom for us all (ie. no killing, or stealing, etc.).
2. I did not assume you actually believed what your sig said. I simply pointed out that the belief the world seems gray because people evaluate situations from a people perspective (like in your sig) and see all this complexity as a result.
It seems you are stuck in a prejudiced simply because I mentioned your sig.
The reason it seems gray is because of your sig in fact ("Attack people, not ideas."). There are no evil people, but people can certainly hold absolutely evil ideas. In this case, the religious side simply has the right idea. You cannot say someone is absolutely evil because an individual has many ideas, some which are bound to be right, and others which are wrong. However, each of these ideas which they hold are absolutely either right or wrong. So I disagree, life is certainly black and white from the standpoint of ideas and principles, and one should attack ideas not people.
Finally, I would like to conclude by agreeing with you that it is not always simple to discern the best answer, but it's always there waiting to be discovered.
Ha! I beat you despite even though I'm an engineer (AQ is not a measure of scientific or mathematical leaning, but of behavioural traits). I'm more normal than you!;-)
I also believe that many of these traits have more to with environment than genetics. It's possible that severe autism has genetic ties though.
You misunderstand. Asyncrhonous circuits certainly have different features from synchronous circuits, there is no disputing this. But in terms of input and output, you would expect an asynch and synch chip to produce the same results if running the same program right? The logic is the same. I mention this because Kurzweil is a proponent of strong AI which claims that consciousness is merely some form of algorithm that any computational device can run. I was merely doubting that consciousness is purely a function of logic, and therefore consciousness cannot be expressed algorithmically. Consequently, since asynch logic is still defined by logic, it adds nothing new to the AI equation and will no more produce consciousness on a chip than synchronous circuits.
For synchronous logic, that's not hard. For async logic, the toolset similarly has to enforce rules that eliminate the possibility of race conditions. This requires some formal way of dealing with these issues.
I have strong reservations about whether logic alone can achieve consciousness at all. The fact that it is asynchronous adds nothing that wasn't there before.
Did you ever consider the fact that it may not have been a high priority and that's why it "took so long" to implement? The desktop is still not the main use for *nux you know.
A couple of years ago I heard a story on All Things Considered that was about a gentleman who had opened what is basically a free/open repository of genome info on families with autism.
Here is a Globe and Mail article on autism which mentions the genetic database and the people who started it if you are interested.
I'm totally serious. There's a brief test at the end of this Globe and Mail article on the autism explosion and the apparent geek link.
Interestingly enough, I received an AQ of 12 (below the average of 18), meaning I'm more well-adjusted than "normal" people. Rather amusing I thought.:-)
As the commentary intimated, the spread of autism cannot be accounted for genetically since autistics rarely have children. (source: comprehensive Globe and Mail article on this very subject)
Here is the Globe and Mail article entitled: Is there a 'geek' syndrome?. The title points out that parents with a technical background are far more likely to produce autistic children. Some studies have shown that parents of autistic children are twice as likely to be engineers. Rather alarming. The article also features an "autism quotient" quiz to determine the prominence of ones autistic traits.
You take away the terrorist's ability to complain by making his country somewhat wealthy. Hard to get recruits when they're all fat, dumb and happy, isn't it?
I partially disagree.
"One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances."
Slashdot Mirror
And let's build it in Canmore!
Those sure don't seem to be signs of consciousness to me... Speaking as a Canadian, of course. ;-)
Or they may indicate that a purely logical construct cannot capture all of the nuances we require.
If it exists in the macroscopic world, it can be explained logically. The macroscopic world is governed by causality which is the foundation of logic. Since there is a chain of causation, there must be a rational explanation. I restrict this only to the macroscopic world because on microscopic levels random quantum effects are dominant.
Maybe it can, maybe it cannot. Generations of failure argue that it can't, or at least that it's extraordinarily difficult, but maybe you can succeed where others have failed.
As they say, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Even if I cannot succeed in defining the entire moral code, there is not reason why future generations cannot pick up the torch and further it. I (almost) see this as just another science.
But this is not what your previous statement said. You said that force was only justifiable in response to force. As stated, that means when you hit me, I am justified in hitting you back, regardless of whether there is any likelihood that you will hit me again. That's vengeance, not self-defense.
Then I was inexact. The moral imperative is 'the initiator of force is always in the wrong'. If there is no chance of getting hit again yet you strike out, then you have become the initiator of force.
Further, that statement means that if you're pointing a gun at me and obviously preparing to pull the trigger, I am not justified in applying any force against you. In that case, if I wait for you to apply your force, I may very well not get an opportunity to do anything about it.
The act of pointing a gun is proof of physical threat. I may have been hasty in implying that threat cannot justify defence; one requires proof of threat (which can be construed as an act of force) before morally acting against it. Even in situations where it's a friend just joking around the threat of the gun going off accidentally is still justification for force to neutralize the threat.
But that's not possible, since the force has already been applied to oneself. What can you possibly do that would take it back? One can only act to prevent the future application of force, i.e. the threat of force.
This is again a border case. If you are in a war, there is time to act while the force is still being applied. You are referring to a single case where one is attacked and survives, yet the attacker is still positioning himself for another strike. The first attack indicates proof of violent intent, so the justification of defensive force is still upheld. I merely stated that one is not justified in acting on the perception of threat; the first act of violence against you is not perception, but proof.
Further, this is still inadequate, even with your waffling about it being hard to determine what is enough. Suppose that the only way I can prevent you from breaking my leg is to kill you. Am I justified in applying lethal force to eliminate the threat of non-lethal force?
If it is the only way, it is the only way. As long as the other party initiated the force, you are justified in defending yourself however you can.
Also, your statements still imply that no force can be justified in protection of another.
It can be extended to include this. Remember that the whole foundation is freedom, and that we wish to preserve the freedom of others to ensure our own. If force is brought against another individual this is a threat to his freedom and the freedom of all others. Thus, one is justified in aiding another against force.
Suppose I have a gun and you're about to bring a baseball bat down on a child's leg. You've ignored my shouts and I'm too far away to prevent you from bringing the bat down. Am I justified in shooting you? (BTW, don't give me any crap about shooting to wound -- it doesn't work that way in real life)
One should make an effort not to kill when not necessary, but it is still justified in this scenario.
Keep on this logical path far enough and you'll discover any number of situations where it is not clearcut at all or, as many before you have discovered, that a logical structure that generates many, many "correct" choices also forces some other, bizarre and clearly immoral choices
I never said it was immediately clear-cut, only clear-cut after given enough thought. Furthermore, I never said there was only one correct solution, but only one optimal solution, ie. one that best fulfills the criteria. In a yes/no situation like a moral choice, obviously the solution is either black or white, but within the moral choices there is a spectrum of undesirable to optimal solutions according to how well they fit ones criteria.
Finally, a solution may seem to have immoral consequence, but one should really give it a lot of thought. "Morals" have changed quite a bit over the years and with each generation. What's to say what you view as immoral won't become moral in 20 years? This is why I am attempting a logically consistent moral code that does not change with the seasons.
Just out of curiosity, how old are you? Do you have any children?
23. No.
I would suggest, however, that you refrain from claiming that a complete and consistent moral code can be constructed from pure logic and simple axioms until you've successfully done it
The only way to generate any interest is to make bold claims. Also, since our macroscopic world is causal, there is no reason that I can fathom why it could not have a logically consistent, objective picture.
Ok, let's establish what we mean by local access. There is local access such as terminal users, and there is local access such as machine owner. A machine owner can do whatever the hell he wants. He can disassemble the entire system, apply disk forensics, read the motherboard EPROMS, whatever. As far as the machine is concerned, he is God and not even a capability system could stop him from doing what he wanted (unless it employed encryption, or disk randomization schemes like EROS is currently implementing).
Local access at the terminal/user level is secure for any pure capability system (properly configured of course).
Other formulations are possible if you don't like that one. Think about it
;-)
Other formulations may be valid (though likely are not synonymous), but the one presented was so unlikely that it may as well be impossible. Exploring boundary cases is all well and good for the sake of purity and completeness, but ensuring you have exhaustively covered all of these cases is quite difficult. Since I am starting this from scratch, I would much rather focus on the common cases first, and leave special corner cases for later.
The logical construct is just an attempt to formalize a set of axioms that produce the results demanded by deeper beliefs.
The great thing about the mind is that it can often intuit the correct answers before they are formally proven, but one must take care not to allow it to interfere with the actual reasoning. One should certainly strictly follow the rules of inference and not fall prey to fallacies to be certain of the correct answer. One must then accept that answer or admit to being hypocritical.
The attempt to create a self-consistent theory of morality that does not ever defy "commonsense" morality has occupied philosophers for centuries now
"Common sense" morality does not mean good sense morality. Simply because a conclusion runs counter to what we think it should be, does not mean it is not the best answer for the outcomes we desire. Results that run contrary to our beliefs simply indicate a contradiction in one's thinking.
I think that a variant of Goedel's first Incompleteness Theorem applies
While I have not studied it in sufficient depth, I do not think it applies. Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem applies to mathematical systems of sufficient complexity that they can perform arithmetic. I do not think I will end up approaching that degree of complexity, but time will tell.
Face it: Logic has limits.
Certainly. This is not in dispute. Logic cannot predict random events, nor can logic wholly describe everything and be simulateously consistent as Goedel proved. This is not to say that it cannot describe a consistent and applicable moral code.
Ah, so moral people are only allowed to retaliate. A morality of force based on selfish vengeance.
Self-defence, not selfish vengeance. Vengeance is very different. Defence means you still have something to gain/defend by applying retaliatory/defensive force; vengeance is when all you have to gain is inflicting damage out of spite.
The only time one is justified in using force is to pre-emptively remove a credible threat of unjustified force against oneself or others.
No. Who defines a threat? Who defines when a threat is sufficiently "dangerous" that all of a sudden it is justified to initiate force? This is all perception, relative, arbitrary and so has no place in an objective moral code. Only the real existence of a physical force is justification for utilizing force. The initiator of force is always in the wrong.
That's incomplete as well, since you also have to define what level of force is justifiable, and justify that.
Only that which is sufficient to neutralize the force against oneself of course. How much that actually is naturally depends on the situation. Of course, even when in a situation it may still be difficult to discern how much force is necessary.
Nothing is ever simple, is it
Rarely simple, but very clear-cut when given enough thought. (and hindsight sometimes)
What makes you think computer science and politics are so unrelated that talking about one excludes talking about the other?
Artificial and meaningless question. What is the point of pondering questions that would never happen in reality?
In general however, it wrong to sacrifice a person for another, unless they are willing to sacrifice themselves voluntarily. The only time one is justified in using force is in response to force brought against one first.
Nowhere did I accuse you of attacking me. You didn't, and I made no such accusation. I just explained my reasoning for having the sig.
Ah, then I misunderstood.
Since I have no such predilection toward attacking people, your thesis falls on its face, hence my response.
As I said, I used the sig merely as an example of why many people consider that there are only shades of gray, not as the basis of the argument, so it's still valid, though not necessarily applicable to you. It was a general statement.
Further, it's often true that what one person perceives as good, another perceives as evil and no one other than God can have a perspective that reveals the full truth of the matter.
I disagree. I believe logic can discern between the two. In other words, logic produces a moral code.
Even ideas are neither absolutely right nor absolutely wrong.
Given a set of circumstances, a proposed solution is either optimal, or it is not; it is either moral, or not. Alter the circumstances, and the conclusion may change, but there is always a best solution.
and that they must be held accountable to their own beliefs and not mine, insofar as their beliefs don't hurt anyone else
This is the starting point of a moral code based on logic. Each human being is an individual that wishes to make his own choices. In order to maximise one's own freedom, one must respect the freedom of others (do unto others as you would have done unto you). Thus, we bind ourselves to a social contract of sorts where we place limitations on our own actions to maximize freedom for us all (ie. no killing, or stealing, etc.).
1. Please point out my ad hominem attack.
2. I did not assume you actually believed what your sig said. I simply pointed out that the belief the world seems gray because people evaluate situations from a people perspective (like in your sig) and see all this complexity as a result.
It seems you are stuck in a prejudiced simply because I mentioned your sig.
So get a PDA with a hi-res screen like the Sony SL-10 (cheap!) or the SJ-20 that I just bought (a little more expensive). Very clean text, very nice.
The reason it seems gray is because of your sig in fact ("Attack people, not ideas."). There are no evil people, but people can certainly hold absolutely evil ideas. In this case, the religious side simply has the right idea. You cannot say someone is absolutely evil because an individual has many ideas, some which are bound to be right, and others which are wrong. However, each of these ideas which they hold are absolutely either right or wrong. So I disagree, life is certainly black and white from the standpoint of ideas and principles, and one should attack ideas not people.
Finally, I would like to conclude by agreeing with you that it is not always simple to discern the best answer, but it's always there waiting to be discovered.
Ha! With 20,000 you can damn near take over all of Canada. ;-) (speaking as a Canadian)
The data was not compromised now was it?
Ha! I beat you despite even though I'm an engineer (AQ is not a measure of scientific or mathematical leaning, but of behavioural traits). I'm more normal than you! ;-)
I also believe that many of these traits have more to with environment than genetics. It's possible that severe autism has genetic ties though.
You misunderstand. Asyncrhonous circuits certainly have different features from synchronous circuits, there is no disputing this. But in terms of input and output, you would expect an asynch and synch chip to produce the same results if running the same program right? The logic is the same. I mention this because Kurzweil is a proponent of strong AI which claims that consciousness is merely some form of algorithm that any computational device can run. I was merely doubting that consciousness is purely a function of logic, and therefore consciousness cannot be expressed algorithmically. Consequently, since asynch logic is still defined by logic, it adds nothing new to the AI equation and will no more produce consciousness on a chip than synchronous circuits.
For synchronous logic, that's not hard. For async logic, the toolset similarly has to enforce rules that eliminate the possibility of race conditions. This requires some formal way of dealing with these issues.
aka, Design Patterns.
I have strong reservations about whether logic alone can achieve consciousness at all. The fact that it is asynchronous adds nothing that wasn't there before.
Using the components from QuietPC you can achieve less than 30 dB. You can't even hear this level in a quiet room.
Hmmm... in reading the article, they mention that the sound readings were taken right next to the power supply, so that may be why they are so high.
Did you ever consider the fact that it may not have been a high priority and that's why it "took so long" to implement? The desktop is still not the main use for *nux you know.
A couple of years ago I heard a story on All Things Considered that was about a gentleman who had opened what is basically a free/open repository of genome info on families with autism.
Here is a Globe and Mail article on autism which mentions the genetic database and the people who started it if you are interested.
I'm totally serious. There's a brief test at the end of this Globe and Mail article on the autism explosion and the apparent geek link.
:-)
Interestingly enough, I received an AQ of 12 (below the average of 18), meaning I'm more well-adjusted than "normal" people. Rather amusing I thought.
As the commentary intimated, the spread of autism cannot be accounted for genetically since autistics rarely have children. (source: comprehensive Globe and Mail article on this very subject)
Hmm, I posted this story with an article in the Globe and Mail yesterday and got rejected, but "ce la vie".
Here is my slashdot commentary on the article with the direct link to the Globe and Mail article (also in my sig).
Here is the Globe and Mail article entitled: Is there a 'geek' syndrome?. The title points out that parents with a technical background are far more likely to produce autistic children. Some studies have shown that parents of autistic children are twice as likely to be engineers. Rather alarming. The article also features an "autism quotient" quiz to determine the prominence of ones autistic traits.
I partially disagree.
People like the rich Osama Bin Laden.
And if they want to avoid getting shot at the gas station, just use a bike, public transit or walk. Added bonus of more exercise to boot.